Marlene Laruelle

In examining the re-emergence of Russia's White Movement, Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War gets to the heart of the rich 20th-century memory debates going on in Putin's Russia today.

The Kremlin has been giving preference to a Soviet-lite nostalgia that denounces the 1917 Bolshevik revolution but celebrates the birth of a powerful Soviet Union able to bring the country to the forefront of the international scene after the victory in World War II. Yet in parallel, another historical narrative has gradually consolidated on the Russian public scene, one that favours the opposite camp, namely the White movement and the pro-tsarist groups defeated in the early 1920s. This book offers the first comprehensive exploration of this 'White Revenge', looking at the different actors who promote a White and pro-Romanov rehabilitation agenda in the political, ideological and cultural arenas and what this historical agenda might mean for Russia, both today and tomorrow.

analysis of Kazakhstan's independence generations. Its focus on social transformations of the last three decades is an important contribution to breaking with established, and increasingly irrelevant, narratives about the region of Central Asia."-NARGIS KASSENOVA, Harvard University Half of Kazakhstan's population was born during Nursultan Nazarbayev's almost three decades in power. These young generations have lived in a world of political stability and relative material affluence and have developed a strong consumerist culture. Even with growing government restrictions on media, religion, and formal public expression, they have been raised in a comparatively free country. Who are they? What do they think and wish? What are their social and cultural practices and behaviors? How do they see the world and Kazakhstan's place in it? This book offers the first collective study of the "Nazarbayev Generation" and illuminates the diversity of the country's younger generations and the transformations of social and cultural norms that have taken place over the course of three decades. The contributors to this collection move away from state-centric, top-down perspectives in favor of grassroots realities and bottom-up dynamics in order to better integrate sociological data.

The volume “New Voices from Central Asia: Political, Economic, and Societal Challenges and Opportunities” gives the floor to a young generation of experts and scholars from Central Asia and
Azerbaijan. They were fellows at GW's Central Asia-Azerbaijan Fellowship Program, which aims to foster the next generation of thought leaders and policy experts in Central Asia. The Program provides young professionals (policy experts, scholars, and human rights and democracy activists) with opportunities to develop their research, analytical, and communication skills in order to become effective leaders within their communities. The Program serves as a platform for the exchange of ideas and builds lasting intellectual networks of exchange between and amongst Central Asians and the U.S. policy, scholarly, and activist communities. It increases and helps disseminate knowledge
about Central Asian viewpoints in both the United States and Central Asia.

With memory wars between Central and Eastern European states and Russia, the Second World War has become a useable past instrumentalized as a currency for legitimacy on the international scene. These memory wars focus on who was fascist and who colluded with Nazism—the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1941 or the collaborationist forces in Central and Eastern Europe? And, subsequently, who are the new fascists advancing a revisionist interpretation of the Second World War today: Putin’s Russia or Central and Eastern European countries? What is at stake here is the recognition of Russia as having a legitimate say in European affairs because of the Soviet victory, or its exclusion for refusing to repent of its role in dividing Europe and occupying a part thereof. This article debunks the accusation of fascism attributed to Putin’s regime and offers to look at the label of fascism as a mirror game between the West and Russia in defining what Europe should be like and Russia’s inclusion or exclusion.

"Civilization" is surely among those concepts that are the most widely used in world political discourse but taken least seriously by contemporary social science. We argue for jettisoning this concept's Huntingtonian baggage, which has led scholarship into a dead end, and developing a new body of theory on a different foundation, one grounded strongly in recent nonprimordial theories of identity and micro-level research into how ordinary people actually understand the civilizational appeals made by their elites. In what we believe to be the first systematic survey-based study of individual-level civilizational identification, we establish proof-of-concept by asking a question: What influences individuals' primary identification of their own country with particular civilizational alternatives offered up by their elites? Pooling survey data gathered in Russia from 2013-2014, we confirm that civilizational identity reflects the influence of situational considerations and social construction processes. Whether individuals see Russia as part of purported "European," "Eurasian," or "Asian" civilizations depends heavily on gendered and nongendered socialization during the USSR period and factors as contingent as perceived economic performance. Results also confirm our expectation that Huntingtonian concepts fit poorly with real-world patterns of civilizational identification. Access Full Article Online

Research on Russian civil society focuses largely on the repressive legislative side of state policies, to the virtual exclusion of the rise of domestic funding, be it individual, corporate, or public. This article instead contributes to the discussion of state funding for the third sector by looking at the Russian Presidential Grant Fund, a state institution that has disbursed RUB18 billion (approx. $275 million at the August 11, 2019, exchange rate) to the third sector since 2016, making it one of the most influential sources of financial support to Russian civil society. A data-driven analysis of the Fund reveals that, although it prioritizes certain types of non-governmental organizations (NGO s) over others, there is a discernible attempt to address some of the most pressing social ills in Russia today. Whereas some grant directions, such as the "preservation of historical memory" and "development of public diplomacy and support of compatriots," further long-held, Kremlin-sponsored ideological projects, the biggest categories supported by the Fund focus on more classical philanthropic issues, confirming the state's growing delegation of the provision of public services to the third sector. Access Full Article Online

Russia's historical policy towards the centenary of 1917 was composed of several parallel strategies: diminishing the meaning of the event to avoid the head of state and other government figures having to take a stance; outsourcing commemorative events, with no pre-planned grand design; developing a reconciliatory narrative of the 'Whites' and the 'Reds'; and allowing other actors to promote a plurality of contradictory readings of the events. Yet the space left by the state's refusal to commemorate 1917 has been taken over by the Church, which, as today's most active engineer of Russia's historical policy, promoted a very clear pro-Tsarist narrative best embodied by the multimedia historical park 'Russia-my history' (Rossiya-moya istoriya).

How to cope with the end of utopia? How to move from making history on a day-today basis to capitalizing on a legend? That is the dilemma Russian veterans of the Donbas insurgency have faced since the exalting atmosphere of Novorossiya faded away. In this article, I trace the transformations of the Novorossiya utopia from the point at which Russian volunteer fighters began to return to Russia and found themselves compelled to reinvent themselves in a new context. I first look at the difficult reconversion from war to politics of Donbas heroes such as Igor Strelkov and Aleksandr Borodai and how their efforts to launch new structures based on their war legitimacy have succeeded or failed. I then turn to investigate the birth of new heroes, such as the writer Zakhar Prilepin, who wave the metaphorical flag of Donbas at a time when exaltation of the war has declined. After that, I explore how Novorossiya has become a literature genre that occupies the shelves of Russian bookstores, spanning from Novorossievedenie-the "science of Novorossiya"-to the rich subgenre of war memoirs and veteran diaries.

This essay defines three categories of Russian nationalist actors: nonstate actors, whose agenda is anti-Putin; parastate actors, who have their own ideological niche, not always in tune with the presidential administration's narrative, but who operate under the state umbrella; and state actors, in particular, the presidential administration. In the future, the Russian ethnonationalism embodied by nonstate actors is the main trend that could pose a serious threat to the regime. However, the Kremlin is not "frozen" in terms of ideology, and its flexibility allows it to adapt to evolving situations. One of the most plausible scenarios is the rise of a figure inside the establishment who would be able to prevent the polarization of Russian nationalism into an antiregime narrative and could co-opt some of its slogans and leaders, in order to gradually channel the official narrative toward a more state-controlled nationalism.

Russia is becoming increasingly a Muslim country. Out of a total population of over 146 million (including two million in annexed Crimea), it counts about 15 million people of Muslim background—even if not all are believers and even fewer practice Islam. Given forthcoming

At a time when urbanization represents a major trend in human history and when the majority of the world's population lives in an urban environment, the urban regime theory, developed by Clarence Stone in the 1980s, offers an insightful framework for discussing how urban stakeholders are compelled to work together to achieve their goals. While research on urban regimes has historically focused mainly on democratic contexts, this article argues that it is time to use urban regime theory in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian countries in order to better understand how urban politics develop. With growing urban activism and huge territorial contrasts, Russia offers a good case study for testing the notion of "urban regime." This article focuses on three cities in Russia's Far North-Murmansk, Norilsk, and Yakutsk-that face common sustainability challenges in Arctic or subarctic conditions; it delves into the mechanisms of their urban regimes and categorizes them by type: instrumental, organic, and symbolic. Access Full Article Online

The International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) has recently envisioned a number of detrimental environmental effects and challenges that will emerge with the global warming in excess of the 1.5 o C limit set by the Paris Agreement. The Arctic was mentioned as a particularly vulnerable region on the Earth with rapid and amplified warming affecting all components of the cryosphere and biosphere. This chapter characterizes even larger warm temperature anomalies and corresponding environmental changes in the urban Arctic. A large share of the Arctic population is currently living in 1.5 o C and even 3.0 o C warmer climate. We report the urban temperature anomalies-urban heat islands (UHIs)-in 11 Arctic cities. The Arctic urban climate is significantly warmer, especially during the coldest weather spells, than the corresponding regional climate. The winter UHI during the polar night is supported by the anthropogenic heat flux and enhanced air pollution in cities. The summer UHI during the polar day is supported by stronger warming of better drained urban surface. We show that the UHI intensity depends on the land cover types of the surrounding environment. The Arctic UHI is localized, but still affects an area 2-3 times larger than the city itself. The warmer temperatures enhance the vegetation productivity creating "green belts" around cities and towns. Sustainability studies revealed that better * Corresponding Author Email: igore@nersc.no.

Many cities of Russia's Far North face a massive population decline, with the exception of those based on oil and gas extraction in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. Yet, there is one more exception to that trend: the city of Yakutsk, capital of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, whose population is booming, having grown from 186,000 in 1989 to 338,000 in 2018, This unique demographic dynamism is founded on the massive exodus of the ethnic Yakut population from rural parts of the republic to the capital city, a process that has reshaped the urban cultural landscape, making Yakutsk a genuine indigenous regional capital, the only one of its kind in the Russian Far North.

This article advances the notion of "Polar Islam" to describe the birth and structuring of Muslim communities in Russia's Arctic cities. It does not assert that Arctic conditions have created an entirely specific Islam; most of the features attributed here to "Polar Islam" can easily be found in other regions of Russia. Yet the climatic conditions, remoteness, and heavy industrial character of these cities contribute to accentuating certain characteristics that mold the social landscape in which Muslims live, thereby offering a fascinating regional case study of the development of Islam. This article first explores the emergence of Islamic symbols-mosques-on the Arctic urban landscape and the institutional struggles around the control of this Polar Islam. It then delves into Muslim communities' cultural adaptation to their new Arctic identity. The blossoming of this Polar Islam confirms that Islam is no longer geographically segregated in its traditional regions, such as the North Caucasus and the Volga-Urals; it has spread to all the country's big cities. In this respect, Arctic cities are at the forefront of Russia's societal transformations.

The 2014 Arctic Human Development Report identified "Arctic settlements, cities, and communities" as one of the main gaps in knowledge of the region. This article looks at circumpolar urbanisation trends. It dissociates three historical waves of Arctic urbanisation: from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century (the "colonial" wave), from the 1920s to the 1980s in the specific case of the Soviet urbanisation of the Arctic (the "Soviet" wave), and from the 1960s−70s to the present as a circumpolar trend (the "globalized" wave). It then discusses the three drivers of the latest urbanisation wave (resources, militarisation, and public services) and the prospects for Arctic cities' sustainability in the near future.

The arrival into geography, and especially urban geography, of a frame of questioning coming from postcolonial studies has contributed to a fascinating debate about what a "postcolonial" city is and how the urban duality between ethnically, socially, and spatially segregated "European" towns and "native" settlements is being reformulated and transformed. Obviously, Arctic cities are not postcolonial in the political sense of being independent from the former colonial centre-although this process may be under way in Greenland-but they have seen a progressive move from a Eurocentric culture toward greater hybridization. This article looks into two new trends that contribute to making Arctic cities postcolonial: first, the arrival of indigenous peoples in cities and the concomitant diminution of the division between Europeans/urbanites and natives/rurals; and second, the arrival of labour migrants from abroad, which has given birth to a more plural and cosmopolitan citizenry. It advances the idea that Arctic cities are now in a position to play a "decolonizing" role, in the sense of progressively erasing the purely European aspect of the city and making it both more local and rooted (through indigenous communities) and more global and multicultural (through foreign labour migrants).

Although there is a growing body of research on Arctic urbanisation and the development of cities in harsh polar climate, few studies focus on the long-term interaction of urban environments with the natural world and society. As the search for determinative links between natural environmental characteristics and socio-cultural phenomena is exceedingly complex and obscured by human decision-making, it is more fruitful to adopt another perspective-one that views the city as an anthropogenic object combining natural, social, and cultural features and phenomena. The HIARC (Anthropogenic Heat Islands in the Arctic-Windows to the Future of the Regional Climates, Ecosystems and Society) project helps to fill this knowledge gap by bringing together traditional climate science that operates on large spatial and time scales; micro-level high-resolution studies that provide relevant practical details about the changing environment; bio-medical science that studies the physical adaptation of newcomers to the Arctic environment; and an array of social science approaches that range from political science on urban regimes to sociology and cultural anthropology that capture evolving human environments. This article offers a preliminary agenda for thinking about cities as an anthropogenic object in a polar context.

Н емногие проекты развития так возбуждают воображение, как Северный морской путь, также называемый Северо-восточный морской коридор, проходящий вдоль арктического побережья России. Маршрут связан с исто-рией крупнейших полярных экспедиций, от Беринга в XVIII в. до недавних арктических экспедиций в период изменения климата. С ним также связаны воспоми-нания о советской гигантомании и упорном стремлении к промышленному освоению самых удаленных и мало приспособленных для жизни регионов континентальной Сибири. В течение последних лет вокруг Северного морского пути возникали оживленные дискуссии (в отличие от его канадского эквивалента, так называемого Северо-западного коридора): на фоне международной озабоченности потеплением климата высказывались самые невероятные прогнозы по поводу превращения Севморпути в новый Суэцкий канал, который станет поводом для новой «Большой игры» между державами, бьющимися за полезные ископаемые. Но предположения такого рода – результат незнания арктической реальности, и сегодня этот «мыльный пузырь» уступил место гораздо более скромным прогнозам, основанным на повседневных реалиях и проблемах, которые российское госу-дарство должно решать по ходу развития арктических территорий страны.
Марлен Ларюэль, преподаватель Университета Джорджа Вашингтона (США).

Cet article est le premier d'une série de publications sur la présence de la Russie en France. La France constitue l'un des cas les plus intéressants du soft power russe en Europe occidentale, dû à des relations bilatérales anciennes, mais également à la présence d'une importante émigration russe depuis les années 1920 qui joue un rôle majeur de médiation. Ce projet est financé par la Foundation Open Society Institute, en coopération avec l'initiative OSIFE de Open Society Foundations. La relation francorusse s'appuie sur des traditions anciennes d'interaction entre les deux pays : la France était déjà l'une des destinations privilégiées des exilés politiques russes dès le XIXe siècle, elle a ensuite accueilli plusieurs des grandes vagues de l'émigration russe, et s'est positionné en puissance européenne relativement favorable à l'Union soviétique sous la présidence de Gaulle. La forte tradition communiste française a également joué en faveur d'une proximité idéologique certaine, et la langue russe était largement enseignée dans le secondaire jusqu'à la fin de l'URSS. Aujourd'hui, les relations bilatérales sont plus complexes, marquées par des interactions économiques et culturelles denses, mais des difficultés politiques sur les grands dossiers internationaux, Ukraine et Syrie en tête de liste. Depuis le soutien affiché par la Russie à l'extrême-droite européenne et la lune de miel-aujourd'hui bien affaiblie-entre le Front National et certains milieux du Kremlin, les débats sur la « présence russe » et les « réseaux d'influence russes » en France se sont multipliés, atteignant parfois des formes aigues de paranoïa fondées sur des exagérations grossières, des suppositions sans preuve, et une reproduction du discours américain autour de la supposée ingérence russe dans l'élection de Donald Trump. L'objectif du dossier proposé ici est une analyse sobre et sans accusation de la présence russe en France. Toutes les grandes puissances entretiennent de multiples formes de soft power dans les pays qu'elles considèrent comme cruciaux sur la scène internationale, la France étant tout naturellement l'un d'entre eux. Loin de faire de la Russie un cas unique, il serait bon de comparer les actions russes en France aux instruments déployés par les Etats-Unis, la Chine, l'Arabie Saoudite ou le Qatar. Le soft power russe peut prendre plusieurs formes. Ce papier se concentre sur l'une d'entre elles, le soft power culturel et d'affaires. Il ne prend pas en compte les activités organisées officiellement par l'Etat russe ou l'Ambassade de Russie en France-elles sont majeures, par exemple le fait que la Russie soit invitée d'honneur au Salon du Livre en 2010 puis

Though Central Asia is often studied through the prism of its relationships with external powers, research on local public perceptions of these different actors has largely been overlooked. The literature on Kazakhstanis' perceptions of their neighbours, for instance, is scarce, and mostly focused on analysis of official discourse on Kazakhstan's multi-vector policy, with little exploration of how this is received, appropriated or refuted by the population. On the basis of Gallup data spanning the last decade, and several other surveys, we test most of the main hypotheses usually advanced to explain attitudes to the US and Russia-age, ethnicity and access to information-and draw five main conclusions: (1) Kazakhstanis are not defined by an exclusive pro-US/pro-Russian dichotomy; (2) they nevertheless largely choose Russia over the US if forced to pick; (3) age does not have a significant effect on foreign policy attitudes; (4) ethnicity does affect some of the attitudes under consideration, but its effects are not large enough to produce markedly different opinions among ethnic Kazakhs and ethnic Russians in aggregate; and (5) consumption of media from Russia and access to non-governmental and Western sources of information do not seem to have significant effects on the attitudes under consideration.