Description:
Thirty years ago, the failure of the 1991 August coup in Moscow accelerated the disintegration of the USSR. Within a few months, the Soviet Union, a nuclear superpower which for decades had represented the political and economic alternative to the capitalist West, ceased to exist. Fifteen former Soviet republics embarked on nation and state building, market reforms and democratization. Three decades later, the outcomes of the post-communist transition in the region could not be more diverse. While the Baltic states have built stable democratic systems and joined the NATO and the European Union, authoritarian tendencies dominate in Russia, Belarus and Azerbaijan. Such countries as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, while having preserved political pluralism and competitiveness, are caught in a vicious circle of political instability. Do the post-Soviet states still have something in common? Is the ‘post-Soviet moment’ already gone or do the successor states still deal with the political, economic and cultural legacies of the Soviet Union? Is the process of disintegration completed? Mass protests and revolutions have shaken many countries of the region in the last decade. The political geography is also in flux: the post-Soviet space has been re-shaped by territorial and ethnic conflicts, secessionism and emergence of de facto states. The annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict have demonstrated the fragility of the European post-Cold war security architecture and raised fears of a new Cold war. Thirty years after the crash of the “Communist alternative”, Russia’s “anti-liberal capitalism” presents itself as a new alternative to the West.
This course offers an overview of the main developments in the post-Soviet space in the last decades and addresses such topics as transformations of post-communist political regimes, nation building and language politics, political protests, territorial conflicts and quasi-states, post-Soviet integration projects, and regional security. It covers various aspects of post-communist transition and different countries of the region in comparative perspective. The lectures will be given by international experts from Europe, USA, Russia and other post-Soviet states. The aim of this course is to introduce students to the main concepts and approaches in post-Soviet studies as well as to make them acquainted with recent publications and current debates. Each session will consist of a one-hour lecture followed by a discussion. The lectures will be given in digital format. All contents (videos, PowerPoint presentations, literature etc.) will be provided via Moodle.
Registration:
The lectures will be held in ZOOM and are open to the general public.
If you want to attend but are not registered for this course as a student, please contact Maximilian Rigele (maximilian.rigele@univie.ac.at) in good time before the lecture you are interested in.
Program:
The lectures will be held in ZOOM weekly on Wednesdays from 16:45 to 18:15.
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06.10.2021
Introduction
Tatiana Zhurzhenko (University of Vienna / ZOiS Berlin)
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13.10.2021
Gorbachev, the Perestroika and the Dissolution of the USSR
Wolfgang Mueller (University of Vienna)
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20.10.2021
Trajectories of Post-Communist Regimes: A Framework for Comparison
Bálint Madlovics (Central European University, Budapest)
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27.10.2021
The Politics of Authoritarian Regime Building in Russia
Vladimir Gel’man (University of Helsinki / European University at St Petersburg)
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03.11.2021
Politics of History in Putin’s Russia
Maria Lipman (Moscow)
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10.11.2021
Nations and Nationalising Regimes post-1991
Diana T. Kudaibergenova (University of Cambridge)
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17.11.2021
Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria as Russia’s Client States: Degrees of Independent Agency for Eurasia’s ‘De Facto States’
Pål Kolstø (University of Oslo)
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24.11.2021
Religion in the Post-Soviet Space: Findings from Russia and Ukraine
Kristina Stöckl (University of Innsbruck)
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01.12.2021
The Baltic Way of Becoming European
Maria Mälksoo (University of Copenhagen)
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15.12.2021
Gendering post-socialist transformation: Women's Agency During Belarusian Protests
Elena Gapova (Western Michigan University)
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12.01.2022
Post-Soviet Regional Integration from an IR-Theoretical perspective: Between Neofunctionalism and Neo-Imperialism?
Aliaksei Kazharski (Comenius University, Bratislava)
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19.01.2022
The Ukraine-Russia Conflict and its Implications for the West
Paul D’Anieri (University of California, Riverside)
