171 articles tagged with russia were found.
Building mutual trust was for years one of the desired aims of international cooperation in the Nordic region; the existence of trust was intended to contribute to the reduction of political tensions and lead to more sustainable and peaceful region. In practice, working with international cooperation in the Nordic region, where Russia was one of the actors until 2022, has never been easy. One of the main obstacles on the way was the deficit of trust.
Essay by
Ekaterina Kalinina
August 23, 2023
This Special Issue include eight articles that endeavor to analyze more deeply different aspects of the influence of transnational “soft power” aimed at coopting youth in authoritarian and hybrid regimes through radical and nationalist youth organizations, patriotic education, and youth wings of ruling parties. By means of such activities, governments try to distract the youth from countercultural movements and opposition politics as well as to educate an obedient and loyal generation. The purpose is to “vaccinate” such generations with illiberal or authoritarian values in order to eliminate potential threats to regimes’ stability.
Essay by
Oleg Antonov and Olena Podolian
August 23, 2023
February 2023 will be remembered for a lavish propaganda event of the Russian government in Luzhniki stadium in Moscow dedicated to the anniversary of the second Russian invasion of Ukraine. This year it was combined with a celebration of the most significant regular ideological commemoration — a day of “The Defender of Otechestvo
[the Fatherland]. Using the propaganda transfer technique, Russia frames the invasion as a fight against the “Ukrainian
Nazis”, providing parallels with winning WWII, thys inheriting Soviet traditions intended to increase feelings of patriotism and national pride.
One of the key narratives promoted by Russian propaganda is the “protection of the people of Donbas”, in particular using propaganda materials with children, especially those deported from Ukraine.
Essay by
Alyona Hurkivska
June 20, 2023
The war against Ukraine sank the civil society of Russia into despair. The dreams of turning the country with a centuries long tradition of despotic power and imperialist foreign policy into a peaceful postmodern liberal democracy were brutally crushed. Alongside the tragedy of thousand Ukrainians, this full-scale invasion has meant a defeat of the Russian intellectuals, liberals, and political dissidents who had been trying for many years to persuade themselves and the outside world that the strange reality they inhabited was an inevitable part of being a transitional society. This defeat forced them out of their country. Cursed by their compatriots as “traitors” and by some public abroad1 unwilling to stand up to the criminal regime, the new Russian émigré are now trying to construct a new “Civitas Solis” in exile, a different future for themselves and their country which is supposed to rise in place of the apocalyptic darkness of the present.
Essay by
Alexander Generalov
June 20, 2023
Since the beginning of Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the repression of civil society has gradually intensified in Russia. During recent years political activism has been under threat and pressure, and in the last year activism has largely gone underground due to the escalating level of repression; therefore one sees few mass protests. The Russian authorities have consistently taken restrictive measures against any street protest, and the last permissible form (a single-person action) in the end also turns out to be almost impossible.
Essay by
Inga Koroleva (pseudonym)
June 20, 2023
Alexandra Talaver is one of the coordinators of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR), that was promptly launched on February 25, 2022, with a manifesto that was later translated into dozens of languages. The manifesto called for peaceful resistance to the war and Putin’s regime, support for Ukraine, and solidarity with feminists in Russia resisting the invasion (see next page). Together with the manifesto, social media accounts were launched on Telegram, Instagram, and Twitter as the main means of mobilization.
FAR immediately gained dozens of thousands of subscribers due to the number of feminist media activists joining FAR, and due to a strong and clear anti-war stance, while many political forces and organizations in Russia failed to articulate it that fast.
By
Alexandra Talaver and Yulia Gradskova
June 20, 2023
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and during the ongoing war, questions about Russian civil society — its resistance (or the insufficiency of such), its defeat, its very existence — have been on many people’s minds. I suggest that we take a step back and look into something that has existed and, while on the brink of extinction today, has played an important role in forming societal discourse on a regional level: independent media in the republic of Dagestan.
Essay by
Elena Rodina
June 20, 2023
One cannot go back in time and cannot experience it as it was. Yet this collection of memoirs is an attempt at the restoration of the immaterial culture of the 1990s in St. Petersburg. It was written with the awareness of the integrated failure of the project by all its participants.
Essay by
Anna Kharkina
January 18, 2023
After the years of Covid closure, when the world was making socializing a possibility once more, Putin attacked Ukraine in February 2022. This meant controversies about how Russians are seen in all industries, including in fashion. So, what has happened to the Russian Fashion Mafia?
By
Karin Winroth
January 18, 2023
Statistics show that around 40 000 Russians escaped through Finland from the day that President Putin declared the mobilization and during the nine days that followed until the border closed. I am on my way to Karelia, a region along the southern part of the Finnish-Russian border where some of the most intense battles between two countries took place during the Second World War. As I write this October 2022, the atmosphere around the border is tense, the relations between the two countries are colder than in a long time, and people on either side of the border have difficulties even seeing each other. That, however, has not always been the case...
By
Påhl Ruin
January 18, 2023
Issue 2025, 1: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.