Much has been written to try to understand the ideological characteristics of the current Russian government, as well as what is happening inside the mind of Vladimir Putin. Refusing pundits' clichés that depict the Russian regime as either a cynical kleptocracy or the product of Putin's grand Machiavellian designs, Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime offers a critical genealogy of ideology in Russia today. Marlene Laruelle provides an innovative, multi-method analy...

The European Union in a Reconnecting Eurasia examines the full scope of EU interests in the South Caucasus and Central Asia and analyzes the broad outlines of EU engagement over the coming years. It is part of a six-part CSIS series, “Eurasia from the Outside In,” which includes studies focusing on Turkey, the European Union, Iran, India, Russia, and China.

In Is Russia Fascist?, Marlene Laruelle argues that the charge of "fascism" has become a strategic narrative of the current world order. Vladimir Putin's regime has increasingly been accused of embracing fascism, supposedly evidenced by Russia's annexation of Crimea, its historical revisionism, attacks on liberal democratic values, and its support for far-right movements in Europe. But at the same time Russia has branded itself as...

Since the Ukrainian crisis in 2014, Russia’s support to the European far right—and to a variety of populist leaders more globally—has become a cornerstone of the West’s perception of Moscow as a “spoiler” on the international scene. The fact that Russia’s most fervent supporters are now to be found on the right of the ideological spectrum should not be a surprise. The European far right has always had Russophile tendencies, but these were obscured during the Cold War, when rightist politic...

This book offers the first comprehensive examination of Russia's Arctic strategy, ranging from climate change issues and territorial disputes to energy policy and domestic challenges. As the receding polar ice increases the accessibility of the Arctic region, rival powers have been manoeuvering for geopolitical and resource security. Geographically, Russia controls half of the Arctic coastline, 40 percent of the land area beyond the Circumpolar North, and three quarters of the Arctic popul...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of Russia's Arctic policies since the 2022 war with Ukraine began. Covering geopolitical transformations, domestic evolutions and the role of climate change, it traces how, for around two decades, Russia has renewed its strategic interest in the Arctic region. It reflects on how, with more than half of the circumpolar territories, Russia's Arctic regions generate between 10 and 15% of Russia's GDP and a quarter of its exports, wi...

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 hi...

Over the past three decades, Uzbekistan has attracted the attention of the academic and policy communities because of its geostrategic importance, its critical role in shaping or unshaping Central Asia as a region, its economic and trade potential, and its demographic weight: every other Central Asian being Uzbek, Uzbekistan’s political, social, and cultural evolutions largely exemplify the transformations of the region as a whole. And yet, more than 25 years after the collapse of the Sovi...

Thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union, multiple ghosts haunt Russia, its elites, and its society, from concern over demographic and economic decline to worry about the country’s vulnerability to external intervention, reviving the old notion of Russia as a “besieged fortress.” Faced with both a West that emerged victorious from the Cold War and a shockingly dynamic China, Russia constantly questions its identity and the notion that its fate is to bridge East and West.This ...

The southernmost and poorest state of the Eurasian space, Tajikistan collapsed immediately upon the fall of the Soviet Union and plunged into a bloody five-year civil war (1992–1997) that left more than 50,000 people dead and more than half a million displaced. After the 1997 Peace Agreements, Tajikistan stood out for being the only post-Soviet country to recognize an Islamic party—the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT)—as a key actor in the civil war as well as in postwar reco...

This book, by one of the foremost authorities on the subject, explores the complex nature of Russian nationalism. It examines nationalism as a multilayered and multifaceted repertoire displayed by a myriad of actors. It considers nationalism as various concepts and ideas emphasizing Russia’s distinctive national character, based on the country’s geography, history, Orthodoxy, and Soviet technological advances. It analyzes the ideologies of Russia’s ultra-nationalist and far-right groups, e...

More than two decades after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Central Asian republics—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—continue to reexamine and debate whom and what they represent.Nationalism and Identity Construction in Central Asia explores the complex and controversial process of identity formation in the region using a “3D” framework, which stands for “Dimensions”, “Dynamics,” and “Directions” of nation building. The first part of the framework—...