Russian Transformations

The transition of Russia to a 'developed market economy' has been slower, more contradictory and less predictable than expected. This book examines contemporary Russian socio-economic development, and explores the degree to which Russian experiences can be incorporated into current social science theories. In particular, it questions how far the concept of 'globalization' is applicable to the situation in Russia.

This book examines contemporary Russian socio-economic development, and explores the degree to which Russian experiences can be incorporated into current social science theories.

This timely book provides a comprehensive overview of the geographical, historical, political, cultural, and geostrategic factors that drive Russia today. Explaining Russia’s perspective, it offers a much-needed analysis that will help readers understand how the country deals with its domestic issues and how these influence Russian foreign policy.

This book looks at Russian women’s mobilization and agency during the two periods of transformation, the turn of the 19th-20th century and the 20th – 21st century. Bringing together the parallels between the two great transformations, it focuses on both the continuities and breaks and, importantly, it shows them from the grassroots point of view, emphasizing the local factor. Chapters show the international and transnational aspects of Russian women’s agency of different spheres and different historical periods. The book goes on to raise new research questions such as the evaluation and comparison of Soviet society and contemporary Russia from the point of view of gender and women’s possibilities in society.

Historical and Cultural Transformations of Russian Childhood is a collection of multidisciplinary scholarly essays on childhood experience. The volume offers new critical approaches to Russian and Soviet childhood at the intersection of philosophy, literary criticism, film/visual studies, and history. Pedagogical ideas and practices, and the ideological and political underpinnings of the experience of growing up in pre-revolutionary Russia, the Soviet Union, and Putin’s contemporary Russia are central venues of analysis. Toward the goal of constructing the "multimedial childhood text," the contributors tackle issues of happiness and trauma associated with childhood and foreground its fluidity and instability in the Russian context. The volume further examines practices of reading childhood: as nostalgic text, documentary evidence, and historic mythology. Considering Russian childhood as historical documentation or fictional narrative, as an object of material culture, and as embodied in different media (periodicals, visual culture, and cinema), the volume intends to both problematize but also elucidate the relationship between childhood, history, and various modes of narrativity.

At no time since the end of the Cold War has interest been higher in Russian security issues and the role played in this by the modernization of Russia’s Armed Forces. The continued transformation of its Armed Forces from Cold War legacy towards a modern combat capable force presents many challenges for the Kremlin. Moscow’s security concerns domestically, in the turbulent North Caucasus, and internationally linked to the Arab Spring, as well as its complex relations with the US and NATO and its role in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014 further raises the need to present an informed analytical survey of the country’s military, past, present and future. This collection addresses precisely the nature of the challenges facing Russian policymakers as they struggle to rebuild combat capable military to protect Russian interests in the twenty-first century. This book was based on a special issue of the Journal of Slavic Military Studies.

Over the past century alone, Russia has lived through great achievements and deepest misery; mass heroism and mass crime; over-blown ambition and near-hopeless despair – always emerging with its sovereignty and its fiercely independent spirit intact. In this book, leading Russia scholar Dmitri Trenin accompanies readers on Russia’s rollercoaster journey from revolution to post-war devastation, perestroika to Putin’s stabilization of post-Communist Russia. Explaining the causes and the meaning of the numerous twists and turns in contemporary Russian history, he offers a vivid insider’s view of a country through one of its most trying and often tragic periods. Today, he cautions, Russia stands at a turning point – politically, economically and socially – its situation strikingly reminiscent of the Russian Empire in its final years. For the Russian Federation to avoid a similar demise, it must learn the lessons of its own history.

Chapter 1 Post-industrial vs. post-socialist: Post-industrial trends and points for investigation in the post-socialist metropolis -- chapter 2 Changes in the functions of St Petersburg as a prerequisite for structural change in the city -- chapter 3 Transformation, tertiary sector and city space: Time'space approach -- chapter 4 Transformation and specific forms of spatial saturation -- chapter 5 The spatial transformation of vertical business structures -- chapter 6 Territorial complex building -- chapter 7 Post-transformation urban space: The results of spatial saturation and the spatial organization of new business forms -- chapter 8 Post-transformation vs. modernization: Conclusions.