Die Frage nach dem Verhältnis Osteuropas zum Westen ist nicht nur aktueller denn je, sondern hat auch eine lange und ambivalente Geschichte. Diese hing jeweils stark von den Selbstwahrnehmungen der beteiligten Kulturen ab. Brücken bauen beschäftigt sich nicht nur mit den Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmungen aus historischer, literaturwissenschaftlicher, philosophischer und politikwissenschaftlicher Sicht, sondern beleuchtet auch die Beziehungen zwischen West und Ost sowie gemeinsame ebenso wie jeweils eigene Phänomene und Strömungen. Mit den Beiträgen soll Leonid Luks, Direktor des Zentralinstitutes für Mittel- und Osteuropastudien an der Katholischen Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt und einer der fleißigsten Brückenbauer zwischen Ost und West, zu seinem 65. Geburtstag geehrt werden. So spiegelt Brücken bauen Luks' eigene Forschungsschwerpunkte wider. Dabei vereinigt der Band Analysen, Aufsätze, Skizzen und Gedanken etwa zu Fragen der vergleichenden Totalitarismusforschung, der Ideengeschichte und der Aufarbeitung des kommunistischen Erbes in Osteuropa solch etablierter Wissenschaftler, Philosophen und Persönlichkeiten wie Uwe Backes, Boris Chavkin, Jerzy Holzer, Heinz Hürten, Nikolaus Lobkowicz, Bernhard Sutor und Hans-Georg Wieck.

"Reports by international governmental and non-governmental organizations on the 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine constituted a significant factor in generating, facilitating and completing the Orange Revolution. Ukrainian civil society, mass media, courts and political parties were the main driving force behind the popular uprising that returned Ukraine to the path of democratization it had embarked on in 1991. Yet, the unambiguous stance and political weight of such institutions as the EU, PACE, NATO, and, above all, OSCE played their role too. The democratic movement benefited from the spectre of international isolation and stigmatization of the Ukrainian state had President Leonid Kuchma decided to prevent a repetition of the second round of the voting. The volume collects not all, but some of the most widely discussed reports, including English translations of selected sections of the three reports produced by the CIS International Observers Mission. The latter as well as a report by an Israeli institute depart from the assessments of the other organizations represented here, allowing for comparison of diverging evaluations of the same events. The volume assembles full or excerpted official reports of the International Republican Institute, Tel Aviv Institute for the Countries of Eastern Europe and CIS, European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, and Commonwealth of Independent States. Contributions by Jevgen Shapoval and Roman Kupchinsky introduce and conclude the collection.
CONTENTS: "Introduction: The Institute of International Election Observation in Ukraine" by Jevgen Shapoval; "Reports by Non-Governmental Institutions (The International Republican Institute, Tel Aviv Institute for the Countries of Eastern Europe and CIS, European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations)"; "Reports by Governmental Institutions (The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, The Commonwealth of Independent States)"; "Conclusions: Monitoring the Election Monitors" by Roman Kupchinsky."

"The fourth volume of Aspects of the Orange Revolution continues the previous volume's discussion on the impact of foreign actors on Ukrainian politics. It provides both scholarly analyses and first-hand accounts. The collection not only investigates, but also gives voice to, some of those involved in the events of 2004. While most of the volume's contributors have an academic background, some of them report here from the perspective of official election or informal participant observers of the three rounds of the Ukrainian presidential elections. Part One juxtaposes some contrasting views on how far Russia's and the West's various interests, activities and tools influencing the Orange Revolution were comparable to each other, and adequate given the circumstances. Part Two presents individual reports by a number of international election observers who were following the campaign and voting in various parts of Ukraine in 2004. Part Three presents three additional on-the-ground observations focusing solely on the notorious electoral district No. 100 of Kirovohrad Oblast. The contributions by Andreas Umland, Iris Kempe, Iryna Solonenko, Vladimir Frolov, Valentin Yakushik, Matthias Brucker, Jake Rudnitsky, Rory Finnin, Adriana Helbig, Paul Terdal, Tatiana Terdal, Peter Wittschorek, Hans-Jörg Schmedes, Adrianna Melnyk, Ingmar Bredies, Oxana Shevel and Volodymyr Bilyk add a number of novel points of view to those presented in the previous volumes. These partly contradictory and emotional texts as well as a number of photographs document the tense atmosphere and confrontational climate within which Ukraine's second phase of post-Soviet democratization started in 2004.
CONTENTS: "Domestic and Foreign Factors in the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections" by Andreas Umland; "Foreign Involvement and International Orientation in the Orange Revolution" by Iris Kempe and Iryna Solonenko; "Democracy by Remote Control" by Vladimir Frolov; "The Orange Revolution's Distortion of the Citizenry's Will: Material for a Complaint by the Party of Regions" by Valentin Yakushik; "Trans-national Actors in Democratizing States: The Case of German Political Foundations in Ukraine" by Matthias Brucker; "Ukrainians in the Mist: Gorilla Tactics in the Campaign for Ukraine's Highest Office" by Jake Rudnitsky; "Prelude to a Revolution: Reflections on Observing the 2004 Presidential Elections in Ukraine" by Rory Finnin and Adriana Helbig; "Observations from the Cherkasy Region" by Paul Terdal and Tatiana Terdal; "From Sunset to Sunrise in a Territorial Election Commission: Special Observations during a Crucial Night" by Peter Wittschorek and Hans-Jörg Schmedes; "Optimism and Gratitude: Reflections of an Election Observer in the Poltava Region" by Adrianna Melnyk; "Election Observation in a `Notorious' Region: The 100th Constituency in Kirovohrad Oblast" by Ingmar Bredies; "The Repeat Second Round of the 2004 Presidential Elections in Kirovohrad" by Oxana Shevel; "My Experience of a Lifetime: Elections 2004 in Kirovohrad" by Volodymyr Bilyk."

"The third volume of Aspects of the Orange Revolution complements the essays of the first two collections providing further historical background on, and analytical insight into, the events at Kyiv in late 2004. Its seven contributions by both established and younger specialists range from electoral statistics to musicology, and deal with, among other issues, such questions as: Why had blatant election fraud not generated mass protest before 2004, but, in that year, did? How was Viktor Yushchenko able to collect enough votes to defeat the establishment candidate Viktor Yanukovych, and become the new President of a socially, geographically and culturally divided country? How was it possible to prevent large-scale violence, and which role did the judiciary play during the quasi-revolutionary events in autumn-winter 2004? What legal foundations and court decisions made the repetition of the second round of the presidential elections possible? Which campaign instruments, and political 'technologies' were applied by various domestic and foreign actors to activate the Ukrainian population? How did the internet and music become factors in the emergence of mass protests involving hundreds of thousands of people? To which degree and how did external influences affect the Orange Revolution? Erik S. Herron, Paul E. Johnson, Dominique Arel, Ivan Katchanovski, Ralph S. Clem, Peter R. Craumer, Hartmut Rank, Stephan Heidenhain, Adriana Helbig and Andrew Wilson present a multifarious panorama of the origins and dynamics of the processes that changed the nature of political and civic life during and between the three rounds of Ukraine's fateful 2004 presidential elections.
CONTENTS:  "Approaches to a 'Watershed' in Ukrainian Politics" by Ingmar Bredies, Andreas Umland and Valentin Yakushik; "Fraud before the 'Revolution': Special Precincts in Ukraine's 2002 Parliamentary Election" by Erik S. Herron and Paul E. Johnson; "Orange Ukraine Chooses the West, but Without the East" by Dominique Arel; "Regional Political Cleavages, Electoral Behavior, and Historical Legacies in Post-Communist Ukraine" by Ivan Katchanovski; "Shades of Orange: The Electoral Geography of Ukraine's 2004 Presidential Elections" by Ralph S. Clem and Peter R. Craumer; "The Legal Evolution behind the Orange Revolution" by Hartmut Rank and Stephan Heidenhain; "The Cyberpolitics of Music in Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution" by Adriana Helbig; "Foreign Intervention in the 2004 Elections: 'Political Technology' versus NGOs" by Andrew Wilson."

"Welche Bedeutung haben grenzüberschreitende Bildungsprojekte und Hochschulkooperationen zwischen West- und Osteuropa 20 Jahre nach Beginn der Auflösung des Sowjetimperiums? Was für Einflußmöglichkeiten haben westliche Akteure auf den Transformations- und Internationalisierungsprozeß östlicher Universitäten? Welche Rolle spielen Stereotypen und Vorurteile im länderübergreifenden Hörsaal? Mit welchen Herausforderungen sehen sich deutsche Hochschulmitarbeiter beim Aufbau von Kooperationsbeziehungen mit osteuropäischen Partnern konfrontiert? Die 16 Beiträge dieses Bandes dokumentieren, analysieren und interpretieren regionale Entwicklungen, nationale Transformationen und internationale Begegnungen im postsowjetischen Hochschul- bzw. Bildungsbereich. 23 west- und osteuropäische Autoren untersuchen neue Bildungsangebote in Belarus, Rumänien sowie ost-, mittelost- und südosteuropäischen Ländern mit Deutsch- bzw. DaF-Studiengängen, Rußlands Schritte auf dem Weg zur europäischen Bildungsintegration, erste Ergebnisse mehrjähriger Kooperationsprojekte mit Osteuropa sowie kulturbedingte Verstehensprobleme am Beispiel russisch-deutscher universitärer Zusammenarbeit.
INHALT: Matthias Bürgel: Internationale Hochschulkooperation(en) zwischen Ost und West - Tobias Knubben: Von der Europäischen Humanistischen Universität zum Center for International Studies Minsk: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen nicht-formaler Bildung in Belarus - Tanja Becker: Zur Rolle und Bedeutung deutschsprachiger Studiengänge in Rumänien - Annegret Middecke/Julia Schmidt: Kernprobleme osteuropäischer Deutsch-als-Fremdsprache-Studiengänge vor dem Hintergrund des Bologna-Prozesses - Stefan Gänzle/Stefan Meister/Guido Müntel: Chancen und Grenzen internationaler Hochschulkooperation: Erfahrungen aus der russischen Exklave Kaliningrad - Stefan Schwan/Matthias Bürgel: Wie international sind russische Hochschulen? Ergebnisse einer Befragung zum Grad ihrer Internationalisierung - Corinna Sons/Matthias Bürgel: Internationale Mobilität in Rußland: Ergebnisse einer Umfrage unter Studierenden im Ural - Jürgen Weber: Hlucna Samota - Berufs- und Karriereverlauf von Absolventen des Instituts für Internationale Studien der Karlsuniversität Prag: Eine Verbleibstudie - Sebastian Litta/Tim B. Peters: Pioniere der Völkerverständigung? Deutsche Gastdozenten in Mittel- und Osteuropa - Annett Polk/Lil Reif: Alte Herausforderungen und neue Wege in der Hochschulzusammenarbeit zwischen Ost und West am Beispiel des Lektorenprogramms der Robert Bosch Stiftung - Katharina Lampe: Das Bulgarisch-Rumänische Europazentrum: Einschätzungen über das Entstehen internationaler Hochschulkooperationen - Kerstin Pezoldt/Marina Kolesnikova: Interkulturelles Lernen im deutsch-russischen Kooperationsprozeß - Olga Frik: Hochschulaustausch zwischen Rußland und Deutschland: Ein Erfahrungsbericht - Astrid Ertelt-Vieth/Elena Denisova-Schmidt: Kulturbedingte Unterschiede und Verstehensprobleme zwischen russischen und deutschen Wissenschaftlern - Galina Koptelzewa: Interkulturalität in der akademischen Zusammenarbeit zwischen Ost und West - Andreas Umland: Historische Erblasten, interkulturelle Kommunikationsprobleme und sozioökonomische Ungleichheiten: Zum vierten Band des Projektes «Hochschullehre in Osteuropa»."

"Wie verändert sich höhere Bildung in Zeiten nachlassender staatlicher Steuerung? Welches Erbe hat der Staatssozialismus stalinistischer Prägung im Hochschulwesen zurückgelassen? Wie schlägt sich die wiedergewonnene Freiheit in universitären Strukturen und Praktiken nieder? Welche Handlungs- und Eingriffsmöglichkeiten haben internationale, nationale, regionale und lokale Akteure in der postkommunistischen Hochschullandschaft? Die Beiträge dieses Bandes dokumentieren, analysieren und interpretieren historische und heutige Bestimmungsfaktoren der osteuropäischen Bildungs- und Wissenschaftssituation nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges. 19 west- und osteuropäische Dozentinnen und Dozenten beleuchten institutionelle, disziplinäre sowie kulturelle Voraussetzungen und Veränderungen geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Hochschullehre in Rußland, der Ukraine, Rumänien, Litauen, Lettland und Kyrgyzstan.
INHALT: Michael Daxner: Zum Geleit - Andreas Umland: Zum Stand und zur Zukunft des Projektes «Hochschullehre in Osteuropa» - Matthias Bürgel: Osteuropäische Hochschullehre zwischen Politik und Gesellschaft - Claudia Dathe/Uwe Dathe: «Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in ukrainischem Sinn»: Der Provinzialismus im Hochschulwesen behindert die Nationsbildung - Svetlana Malyseva/Alla Sal'nikova: Die russische akademische Kultur im 20. Jahrhundert: Kontinuitäten und Brüche am Beispiel der Universität Kazan' - Julia Dröber: Aufstieg und Niedergang einer «Liberal Arts Institution»: Die American University - Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan - Alexander Wolters: Die American University - Central Asia: Über eine revolutionäre Bildungseinrichtung in Zeiten der Revolution - Annette Freyberg-Inan: Politikwissenschaft in Rumänien: Eine Fachdisziplin im Wandel - Maria Golubeva: Diskurse zu Nation, Staat und Gesellschaft an geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Fakultäten Lettlands - Bernd Gliwa: Geisteswissenschaften in Litauen: Internationalisierung oder Selbstisolierung? - Christopher Williams/Elena Lucinskaja: Ausbildungsprogramme und -praxis im Bereich Sozialarbeit: Reflexionen nach einem TEMPUS-Projekt in Udmurtien - Robert Hulme/Elena Lucinskaja: Kommunikation und Autorität an russischen Universitäten: Erfahrungen eines internationalen Online-Dialog-Projektes - Stefan Meister: Die Regionalisierung der russischen Hochschule: Ein schwieriger Weg in der Neuorientierung - Christine Teichmann: Staatliche Förderung versus private Finanzierung: Quo vadis akademische Ausbildung in Rußland? - Matthias Bürgel: Die Hochschulentwicklung in Ekaterinburg am Beispiel der Uraler Universität - Dietmar Wulff: Zwei Schritte vorwärts, einen zurück: Überlegungen aus der russischen Provinz."

"Welche Herausforderungen erwarten deutschsprachige Fachkräfte bei der Annahme von Lehraufträgen an Universitäten ehemals staatssozialistischer Länder? Wie verhalten sich die dortigen Studierenden und wie reagieren sie auf ausländische Gäste? Welche Tipps können ehemalige oder derzeitige Lektoren in Osteuropa künftigen Gastdozenten an geisteswissenschaftlichen Lehrstühlen in Transformationsstaaten mit auf den Weg geben? Dieser zweite Band eines von der Robert Bosch Stiftung und dem Deutschen Akademischen Austausch Dienst (DAAD) geförderten Projektes konzentriert sich auf spezifische Probleme des Unterrichts an philologischen und geschichtswissenschaftlichen Fakultäten in jungen Demokratien. 17 Germanisten und Historiker reflektieren Lehrerfahrungen aus Osteuropa.
INHALT: Gregor Berghorn: Zum Geleit - Andreas Umland: Vorwort: Zum Fortgang des Projektes «Hochschullehre in Osteuropa» - Thomas Keith: Gastlektorinnen und -lektoren in Osteuropa: Unterrichten gegen Hindernisse - Joachim Rogall: Zwischen Bimber und Ritterschlachten: Als Stipendiat des DAAD und der polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Polen Anfang der 80er-Jahre - ein Zeitbild - Matthias Bürgel: Zur Situation der Germanistik in Russland oder: Wer kann Dornröschen aus dem Schlaf erwecken? - Andreas Decker: Jenseits von Goethe und Schiller: Germanistik in Russland aus der Sicht eines deutschen Gastes - Marion Scull: Wo man noch wirklich staunen kann: Kulturvermittlung in Tatarstan - Nicole Stirnberg: Literaturgeschichte als Herausforderung: Schwierigkeiten und Lösungsansätze bei Vorlesungen zur Literaturgeschichte in der Republik Moldau - Antje Kirchhof: Deutsche Literatur in Kiew unterrichten: Studierende, Lehrstuhl und Boschlektorin - unvereinbare Ansprüche - Torsten Szobries: Textproduktion und -rezeption an der postsowjetischen Hochschule: Erfahrungen aus der Germanistik in Kasachstan - Dietmar Wulff: Wissenschafts- und Hochschulkultur in Russland am Beispiel der Geschichtswissenschaften - Karsten Brüggemann: Geschichte erleben und Geschichte lehren in Narva: Eindrücke von der neuen Ostgrenze Europas - Anuschka Tischer: Die akademische Geschichtswissenschaft in Lettland: Ein Erfahrungsbericht - Christian Rohr: Europäisches Mittelalter in Sibirien: Erfahrungen im Zuge einer Gastvorlesung in Novosibirsk - Jocasta Gardner: Geschichtsunterricht in Albanien - Christine Teichmann: Auf dem Weg nach Bologna: Osteuropäische Lehrerfahrungen aus der Perspektive der Hochschulforschung - Tim Peters: «Ostblock» ade? - Das (Hochschul-)Abenteuer Osteuropa."

"Wie funktioniert universitäres Lehren und Lernen in den postkommunistischen Staaten? Was unterscheidet west- und osteuropäische Hochschullehre und -strukturen voneinander? Was erwartet westliche Gastlektoren an einer Universität der ehemaligen Sowjetunion oder Ostmitteleuropas? Was können erfahrene Lektoren in Osteuropa künftigen Gastdozenten in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften mit auf den Weg geben? Dieser Band ist die erste Veröffentlichung dieser Art in deutscher Sprache. Er vereinigt Berichte, Untersuchungen und lehrmethodische Anleitungen von 15 ehemaligen und derzeitigen Gastdozenten, die hier ihre Beobachtungen, Reflexionen und Ratschläge zur Lehrtätigkeit an Universitäten im ehemaligen Ostblock wiedergeben.
INHALT: Andreas Umland: Einleitung: Der Sinn und die Grenzen dieses Projektes - Stefanie Stegmann: «Go East» - ich ging: Über universitäre Kulturen und eigene Selbstverständnisse - Helge Hellberg: Neue Markierungen und alte Fahrwasser: Geschichtswissenschaften in Riga - Guido Müntel/Stefan Gänzle: «Feind vor dem Tor»? Europastudien und Internationale Beziehungen in Kaliningrad - Sigrid Freunek: Ucit'sja, ucit'sja und nochmals ucit'sja: Einige Schlüsselbegriffe des russischen Hochschulbetriebs und was dahintersteckt - Franka Kühn: «Männer können einfach besser logisch denken»: Geschlechterrollen und Familienplanung in der Transformation - Michaela Klement: Einmal Saratov - Cambridge, bitte...: Eindrücke aus der russischen und britischen Universitätslandschaft - Cyrus Salimi-Asl: Strukturelle und kulturelle Rahmenbedingungen sozialwissenschaftlicher Hochschullehre in Kasachstan: Eine Problemauflistung - Silke Erdmann: «Spree wurde 1789 geboren» oder: Über den notwendigen Unterschied zwischen Landeskunde und Geographie - Andreas Goldthau/Oliver Schütt: Ursachen, Mechanismen und Auswirkungen von Korruption an russischen Hochschulen: Ein Fallbeispiel aus Sibirien - Silke Erdmann: Vernunftbehindert? Über Mut und die vielen kleinen Schritte - Hans Gutbrod: Wie vermittelt man Urteilskraft? Die Essaymethode an georgischen Universitäten - Katja Ezel: Der Einsatz von Planspielen im fremdsprachlichen Unterricht: Ein Erfahrungsbericht aus Polen - Tim Peters: Wahlbeobachtung in Tatarstan: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen politischer Projektarbeit im heutigen Rußland - Andreas Umland: Der Gastlektor zwischen Anpassung und Einmischung - Stefanie Stegmann: «Ich sitze auf gepackten Koffern»: Frustrations(in-)toleranzen von Sprach- und Kulturmittlern."

""In the opinion of some historians the era of fascism ended with the deaths of Mussolini and Hitler in 1945; yet, the academic debate about its nature is as far from resolution as ever. Besides, a number of developments since 1945 make it ever more desirable that politicians, journalists, lawyers, and the general public can turn to "experts" for a heuristically useful and broadly consensual definition of the term. The novel post-war phenomena include: the emergence of a highly prolific European New Right, the rise of radical right populist parties, the flourishing of ultra-nationalist movements in the former Soviet empire, the radicalization of some currents of Islam and Hinduism into potent political forces, and the upsurge of religious terrorism. This book brings alive the intense controversy the topic has generated, while suggesting valuable heuristic strategies for resolving it. Twenty-nine academics, mostly German but including several prominent experts working in English, were invited by the journal "Erwaegen Wissen Ethik" to engage with an article by Roger Griffin, one of the most influential theorists in the study of generic fascism in the Anglophone world. The result is essential reading for all those who realize the need to provide the term "fascism" with theoretical rigour, analytical precision, and empirical content. The book will change the way in which historians and political scientists think about fascism, and make the discussion on the threat it poses to infant democracies like Russia more incisive not just for academics, but for politicians, journalists, and the wider public.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS (with their affiliations as of 2004): David Baker, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Warwick; Jeffrey M. Bale, Assistant Professor of International Policy Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California; Tamir Bar-On, Professor of Politics and Sociology at George Brown College at Toronto; Alexander De Grand, Professor of History at North Carolina State University; Martin Durham, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wolverhampton; Roger Eatwell, Professor of European Politics at the University of Bath; Peter Fritzsche, Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; A. James Gregor, Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley; Roger Griffin, Professor in the History of Ideas at Oxford Brookes University; Siegfried Jäger, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen; Klaus Holz, Director of the Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. at Villigst, Nordrhein-Westfalen; Aristotle Kallis, Lecturer in European Studies at Lancaster University; Melitta Konopka, social psychologist at Bochum; Walter Laqueur, Professor Emeritus of History at Georgetown University, Washington, DC; Werner Loh, Research Fellow in Social Sciences at the University of Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen; Bärbel Meurer, Professor of Sociology at the University of Osnabrück; Philip Morgan, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary European History at the University of Hull; Ernst Nolte, Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin; Kevin Passmore, Lecturer in History at the University of Cardiff, Wales; Stanley G. Payne, Hilldale-Jaume Vicens Vives Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Friedrich Pohlmann, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau; Karin Priester, Professor of Sociology at the University of Münster; Sven Reichardt, Junior Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Konstanz; David D. Roberts, Albert Berry Saye Professor of History at the University of Georgia; Alfred Schobert, Research Fellow in Social Sciences at the Duisburger Institut für Sprach- und Sozialforschung; Robert J. Soucy, Professor Emeritus of History at Oberlin College, Ohio; Mario Sznajder, Leon Blum Professor of Political Science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Andreas Umland, DAAD Lecturer in German Studies at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyïv; Leonard Weinberg, Foundation Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada; Jan Weyand is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg; Wolfgang Wippermann, Professor of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin.""

"In 1996, the Russian Federation became a member of the Council of Europe. Two years later, the Russian parliament ratified the Council's major document - the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). These papers were presented at a conference at Yekaterinburg in spring 2001. The collection represents a snapshot of Russian and Western approaches to human rights protection at a moment when Russia was going through a first phase of adaptation of the political system created by Boris Yeltsin to the new modes of state-society relations being introduced by Vladimir Putin.
CONTENTS: Sergey Alexeyev on human rights and Modernity; Rainer Arnold on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights; Valery Mikhailenko on ethnic separatism; Julia Kharlamova on the impossibility of an ECHR-implementation in Russia; Yekaterina Khodzhayeva on human rights discourses in Tatarstan's mass media; Anatoly Azarov on the Russians' knowledge about the ECHR; Manja Hussner on the incorporation of international treaties into Russian law; Marat Salikov on the Constitutional Court; Anton Burkov on the detention of mentally ill persons; Igor Shirmanov on ambiguities in Russian legal norms; Olga Selikhova on human rights issues in the regions; Olga Aleksenko on the Human Rights Commission of Rostov; Yelena Goncharova on the right to a fair trial; Tatyana Gladkova on the Sverdlovsk Oblast Ombudsman; Andrey Lyamzin on Yekaterinburg's detention system; Andreas Umland with Oxana Stouppo on Western policies towards Russia."

"I.  Антизападные идеологические течения в постсоветской России и их истоки (8)

Александр Янов
"Агония бешеного национализма: распад российского патерналистского мифа в XX веке"

Вера Тольц
"Петербургское востоковедение начала ХХ века и критика европейской науки о Востоке"

Гейр Фликке
"Патриотический левоцентризм: зигзаги Коммунистической партии Российской Федерации в 1990-х годах"

Виктор Шнирельман
"Хазария, Апокалипсис и «Мир Закулисы»: как преподаватель французского бросила вызов Западу"

Марк Йоффе
"Концептуальный карнавал: национальные элементы в русском националистическим роке"

Иво Мийнссен
"Кузница модернизации на озере Селигер: движение «Наши», путинский патриотизм и Всероссийский молодежный образовательный форум 2005-2010 гг."

Раиса Бараш
"Конкуренция оппозиции и власти в России как торговля страхами перед «Другим»: к пониманию мифологической составляющей Белой революции 2011-2012 гг.""

"I. Антизападные идеологические течения в постсоветской России и их истоки (7)

Штефан Видеркер
"Восприятие трудов Л.Н. Гумилёва в поздне- и постсоветский периоды: интеллигенция России в поисках ориентиров"

Виктор Шнирельман
"Неоевразийцы против хазар: особенности антисемитского дискурса в современной России"

Николай Митрохин
"Инфраструктура поддержки эсхатологии в РПЦ: история и современность"

Александр Верховский 
"Идеология патриарха Кирилла, методы ее продвижения и ее возможное влияние на самосознание РПЦ"

Ярдар Остбё
"Исключая Запад: романтико-реалистический образ Европы у Наталии Нарочницкой"

Борис Хавкин
"Новая популярность Сталина: роль cталинизма в процессе переосмысления прошлого в постсоветской России""

"I. Антизападные идеологические течения в постсоветской России и их истоки (6)

Алан Ингрэм
"Геополитика и неофашизм Александра Дугина в контексте
постсоветской России"

Юсси Лассила
"Осмысливая политический стиль «Наших»: Бронзовый солдат и антиоранжевое общество"

Александр Кузьмин
"Становление и развитие русского национализма в
Республике Коми"

Антон Свешников
"«Но ливонец – наш сосед, дело тут похуже»: aнтизападные интенции в детской советской исторической литературе (по страницам поэмы Н.П. Кончаловской 'Наша древняя столица')"

Борис Хавкин
"Споры об учебниках истории в постсоветской России"

Оксана Пахлевска
"Неоевразизм, кризис русской идентичности и  Украина
(часть вторая)""

"I. Антизападные идеологические течения в постсоветской России и их истоки (5)

I.1. Исторические корни современного русского ультранационализма

Франк Грюнер
"Борьба России против «чуждого элемента»: парадигма анти-космополитизма в российской и советской идеологии"

Михаил Суслов
"Кризис мессианства и вопрос о будущем России во взглядах Сергея Шарапова (1855-1911)"


I.2. Вариации антилиберализма в сегодняшнем российском обществе

Оксана Пахлевска
"Неоевразизм, кризис русской идентичности и Украина (Часть первая )"

Маркус Матыль
"Возникновение националистической контркультуры в постперестроечной России 1990-1998 гг."

Мартин Мюллер, Ирина Троцук
"Проект сильной России в элитном образовании путинского периода: взгляд с позиций постструктуралистской теории дискурса"


I.3. Ксенофобия и конспиролигия

Майкл Кирквудн
"Понятие идеологии в творчестве Александра Зиновьева"

Борис Степанов
"Как сделан Господин Гексоген: литературная конструкция идеологического радикализма и ее рецепция"

Николай Сайнаков, Илья Яблоков
"Теории заговора как часть маргинального дискурса (на примере создателей Новой хронологии Н.А. Морозова и А.Т.Фоменко)""

"I.1. Консервативные критики Запада в царской империи:

Михаил Суслов
"Консервативные течения в дореволюционной России: критический обзор новых публикаций"

Петр Рябов
"Михаил Катков или Идеология Охранки: по поводу одного сборника статей"


I.2. Разновидности постсоветской ксенофобии и конспирологии:

Александр Верховский, Эмиль Паин
"Цивилизационный национализм: российская версия «особого пути»"

Валерий Сендеров
"'Прoект Россия' против русского европеизма: по поводу одной многотиражной книги"


I.3. Посткоммунистические «новоправые» тенденции: сравнительные зарисовки:

Александр Кузьмин
"«Новые правые» в современной России: на примере журнала 'Атеней'"

Михаил Соколов
"«Новые правые» интеллектуалы в России: стратегии легитимации постсоветских интегральных традиционалистов"

Антон Шеховцов, Андреас Умланд
"Philosophia Perennis  и «неоевразийство»: роль интегрального традиционализма в утопических построениях Александра Дугина"
"

"I.1 Евразийство и неоевразийство:

Штефан Видеркер
"«Континент Евразия»: классическое евразийство и геополитика в изложении Александра Дугина"

Евгений Мороз
"Евразийские метаморфозы: от русской эмиграции к российской элите"

Виктор Шнирельман
"Евразийцы и евреи"

Джон Б. Данлоп
"«Неоевразийский» учебник Александра Дугина и противоречивый отклик Дмитрия Тренина"


I.2 Национал-большевизм:

Михаил Соколов
"Национал-большевистская партия: идеологическая эволюция и политический стиль"

Артур Вафин
"Идейно-полититическая платформа Национал-большевистской партии в контексте эволюции национал-большевистских идей"
"

"I.1. Консервативная революция в Германии и России и «классическое» евразийство: параллели и различия:

Леонид Люкс
"Евразийство и консервативная революция: соблазн антизападничества в России и Германии"

Мартин Байссвенгер
"«Консервативная революция» в Германии и движение евразийцев: точки соприкосновения"

Валерий Сендеров
"Консервативная революция в постсоветском изводе: краткий очерк основных идей"


I.2. Александр Дугин:

Марлен Ларюэль
"Александр Дугин, идеологический посредник: слияние различных доктрин праворадикального политического спектра"

Леонид Люкс
"«Третий путь» или назад в «Третий рейх?»
О «неоевразийской» группе «Элементы»"

Антон Шеховцов
"Палингенетический проект неоевразийства: идеи возрождения в мировоззрении Александра Дугина"

Андреас Умланд
"Патологические тенденции в русском «неоевразийстве»: о значении взлета Александра Дугина для интерпретации общественной жизни современной России"


I.3. Александр Панарин:

Марлен Ларюэль
"Александр Панарин и «цивилизационный национализм» в России"

Марина Пеунова
"Восточная инкарнация европейских «новых правых»: Александр Панарин и неоевразийский дискурс в современной России""

""Введение:

Андреас Умланд
"Расцвет русского ультранационализма и становление сообщества его исследователей"


I.1. Евразийство и неоевразийство:

Леонид Люкс
"Евразийская идеология в европейском контексте"
             
Вадим Россман
"В поисках русской идеи: платонизм и неоевразийство"

Марлен Ларуэль
"Переосмысление империи в постсоветском пространстве: новая eвразийская идеология"   

Андреас Умланд
"Формирование праворадикального «неоевразийского» интеллектуального движения в России (1989-2001 гг.)"

Валерий Сендеров
"Неоевразийство: реальность, опасности, перспективы"         

Виктор Шнирельман
"Евразия или Европа? Роль Украины в евразийском и Евразии в украинском дискурсе"

Анастасия Митрофанова
"Блеск и нищета неоевразийского религиозно-политического проекта" 

Борис Степанов
"Интеллектуалы и евразийство в эпоху его массовой воспроизводимости"


I.2. Лев Гумилев:

Марлен Ларуэль
"Опыт сравнительного анализа теории этноса Льва Гумилева и западных новых правых доктрин"

Виктор Шнирельман
"Лев Гумилев: от «пассионарного напряжения» до «несовместимости культур»"""

"Starting Post-Soviet Ukrainian Right-Wing Extremism Studies from Scratch: Guest Editor's Introduction." By Andreas Umland. "Ukrainian Integral Nationalism in Quest of a "Special Path" (1920s-1930s)." By Oleksandr Zaitsev. "Ultraright Party Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine and the Puzzle of the Electoral Marginalism of Ukrainian Ultranationalists in 1994-2009." By Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovtsov. "Right-Wing Extremism on the Rise in Ukraine." By Viacheslav Likhachev. "Social-Nationalists in the Ukrainian Parliament: How They Got There and What We Can Expect of Them." By Viacheslav Likhachev. "A Typical Variety of European Right-Wing Radicalism?" By Andreas Umland

""Varieties of Russian Exceptionalism in Putin's Russia: Guest Editor's Introduction

By Andreas Umland

This second RPL edition on the idea of Russia's special path continues a series of M.E. Sharpe Russian translation projects devoted to the roots and varieties of post-Soviet anti-Western ideologies.  The issues dealt with in the previous and following papers translated from Russian have become even more topical than they were already in 2011 when the current translation project had been initiated. During the first half of 2012, Russian society, in general, and its educated classes, in particular, have become increasingly polarized, and divided into pro- and anti-Putin forces. Arguably, the crux of this confrontation comes down to the question of whether Russia should either continue its “special path,” or let herself be measured and criticized according to standards today common across Europe.
To be sure, there is a variety of distinct issues around which the recent conflict between the opposition and authorities has been developing including widespread corruption, manipulated elections, restrictions on the freedom of assembly, misuse of mass media reporting for propaganda purposes, and several others. Nevertheless, in a more general sense, one can interpret the political confrontation that has emerged already before Putin’s third presidential period within the context of the prime foci of the current translation project. The opposition wants Russia to become a "normal" country in the Western sense, whereas Putin and his supporters are claiming legitimacy for the current regime on the basis of Russia's alleged specificity or even uniqueness.
The following papers discuss a number of current ideological permutations, political implications and institutional effects resulting from a practical application of the idea of a “special path” to the peculiarly post-Soviet conditions of today Russia. Aleksandr Kubyshkin and Aleksandr Sergunin provide a succinct survey of the spectrum of Moscow’s foreign policy doctrines that can be seen as expressions of the idea of Russia’s special path. They concentrate on outlooks that have been labeled “neo-Eurasianist,” or “geopolitical.” They engage primarily in a classification of the various subtypes and hybrids of ideas exceptionalism in post-Soviet Russia. Kubyshkin and Sergunin also briefly list the main protagonists of these schools, and outline the evolution of non- or anti-Atlanticist world views during the post-Soviet period.
In my own article, I mention a number of effects that the Orange Revolution in Ukraine had on the political regime, official discourse and public opinion of Russia, since 2005. These repercussions, I argue, partly modified the nature of Putin’s political system making it somewhat distinct from traditional autocracy. I label this alteration “paratotalitarian,” in that it was reminiscent of certain features of totalitarian states, yet did not result in a real regime change from authoritarianism to totalitarianism. I also briefly touch upon some worrying developments in Russian public opinion which, under the influence of an upsurge of anti-Western propaganda in the Kremlin-controlled mass media after the Orange Revolution and in connection with the Russian-Georgian War of 2008, became pre-dominantly anti-American by the end of the last decade.
Emil’ Pain presents an in-depth investigation into Russia’s post-Soviet regime in both historical and comparative perspective. He focuses on classificatory questions and interpretational issues using as his starting points, among other sources, Freedom House scores for the post-Soviet republics. Pain distinguishes Putin’s political system not only from totalitarian ones, but also sees the Russian authoritarian regime as being, in distinction to, for instance, those of Belarus and Kazakhstan, not (yet) consolidated. He discusses the paradox of Russian traditionalism under the conditions of an absence of strong traditional ties in Russia. Pain also touches upon the rise of Russian nationalist xenophobia and the role of Stalinism in relation to the re-emergence of authoritarianism under Putin.
Aleksandr Melikhov, in his brief statement, makes an argument for the adoption of a soft version of an ideology of the “special path.” Such a strategy, Melikhov argues, would be more useful than a simple Westernization because it would both, find more support in the population and, in his opinion, help preventing the rise of a fundamentalist interpretation of the “special path.” In the following discussion between Boris Dubin, Lev Gudkov and Emil' Pain, Melikhov's challenge is taken up, and the role, for Russia, of the idea of a "special path" is analyzed in a lively debate. The three leading social scientist of Russia discuss the meaning and connotation that the word "special" (osobyi) has in today Russia, and whether Russia needs this concept in order to formulate her national idea. Gudkov, for instance, persuasively argues that the idea of a "special path" has played a negative role in Russia's modern history in that it provided a justification for authoritarian or even totalitarian conservatism and isoliationism as well as their stifling effects on Russia's socio-economic development. At best, the idea can play a constructive role as a mean of moral self-defense for peripheral countries that are in the process of a catch-up development.
All in all, the texts of these two special issues of RPL on Russia's "special path" provide a broad overview of the various notions, aspects and applications of one of the crucial ideas which are today used to legitimize Putin's authoritarian domestic and anti-Western foreign policies. The current Russian political system is, in distinction to some other East European and South Caucasian post-Soviet regimes, unlikely to open up any time soon. It will presumably survive for many years to come and may become even more radical in its suppression of internal opposition, intervention into civil society, and manipulation of Russian-Western relations. Against this background, one hopes that more such translation projects - focusing, for instance, on the most recent developments in Russia's political and intellectual scenes - will follow.
CONTENTS: "Varieties of Russian Exceptionalism in Putin's Russia: Guest Editor's Introduction" by Andreas Umland;  "The Problem of the 'Special Path' in Russian Foreign Policy: From the 1990s to the Early Twenty-First Century" by Aleksandr Kubyshkin and Aleksandr Sergunin; "Russia's New 'Special Path' After the Orange Revolution: Radical Anti-Westernism and Paratotalitarian Neo-Authoritarianism in 2005-8" by Andreas Umland; "Special Characteristics of the Post-Soviet Political Regime" by Emil Pain; "The 'Special Path' Ideology as an Instrument of Modernization" by Aleksandr Melikhov; "Does the 'Special Path' Ideology Contain the Potential for Modernization?: A Conversation" by Lev Gudkov, Boris Dubin and Emil Pain.""

"The Claim of Russian Distinctiveness as an Ideational Foundation for Putin's Neo-Authoritarian Regime: Guest Editor's Introduction

By Andreas Umland

During the past years, M.E. Sharpe's Russian translation journals have devoted a number of their individual contributions as well as some special issues to the past and present of Russian anti-Westernism. For instance, Russian Studies in Philosophy (vol. 47, no. 1) published in 2008 a collection of essays on classical Eurasianism  while Russian Politics and Law (vol. 46, no. 4 & vol. 47, no. 1), in 2008  and 2009,  offered two special editions with research papers focusing on extremely right-wing tendencies in post-Soviet political and intellectual life. These themes were already politically topical at the end of the last decade. Yet, they have become even more salient during the last two years. Especially, since the return of Vladimir Putin to the post of President of the Russian Federation in 2012, non-nationalist modes of legitimation for Russia's re-centralized governmental system have been relegated to the back again.
During the presidency of Dmitrii Medvedev in 2008-2012, the promise of a state-led political, social and economic modernization - an idea already exploited, to a lesser degree, under Putin before - had come to the fore as one of the primary ideational foundations for a supposedly temporary semi-authoritarian governmental system. It appeared as if the duumvirate's peculiar form of rule was, by Medvedev and Putin, seen as a transitional stage on the way on Russia's gradual transformation into a "normal" liberal, rule-based and democratic state. According to that script, Putin's centralizing drive from 1999 to 2008 would have appeared as a politically illiberal intermezzo that was unavoidable in order to bring about an urgent consolidation of Russia's administrative system and civil society, after the chaos of the 1990s. Even the manifest escalation of anti-Americanism and various mobilizational measures, such as the creation of state-sponsored youth organizations, in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine of late 2004 could have, within such a scenario, be seen as pragmatic responses to certain destabilizing foreign and domestic impulses which could have threatened the eventually modernizing trajectory of Russia's post-Soviet developmental project.
However, since the announcement, in September 2011, of Putin's re-assumption of the post of RF-President and the impudent electoral falsifications in Moscow and other Russian cities, in December 2012, this narrative of Putinism has lost legitimacy not only as an adequate approach to a historical understanding of the Putin phenomenon in the context of Russia's specifically post-totalitarian situation. The growing confrontation, during 2012, between Putin and Co., on the one side, and the political opposition, civil society and non-conformist artists, on the other, illustrates that the story about Putin as a sort of second Peter the Great does also not fly with many Russians anymore. The officially announced aim of overcoming socio-political backwardness was contradicted by the distinctly pre-modern mode of returning the presidency from Medvedev back to Putin in 2011-2012 as well as the surprisingly primitive methods of falsifying the parliamentary elections of December 2012. Ever since, the peculiar "Putin System" that had emerged in the first decade of the new century has been in crisis, and the Kremlin's political technologists have been in search for a new mode of legitimation of their master's power. 
It is almost "natural" that the Russian authoritarian regime is, under such circumstances, turning to history and the experience of Russia's earlier autocracies. And it is also no surprise that the age-old idea of Russia's "special path" that, supposedly, not only sets her apart from the West, but also entails considerable conflict and, in the worst case, even military confrontation with certain Western countries is gaining popularity again with the current authorities as well as among their various supporters. Since the start of the new Russian protest movement in December 2011, the spread, among the pro-Putinist forces, of ideas about the Russian nation's cultural distinctiveness, historical mission, imperial destiny, Orthodox nature, Eurasian essence, and non-Western character, i.e. ideas closely linked to the vision of Russia's "special path," has been growing by the month.
Fortunately for Russian studies, Emil' Pain, professor of political science at the Higher School of Economics, started already before the latest developments, with the support of the Moscow offices of the Kennan Institute and Friedrich Naumann Foundation, an ambitious project that brought together a number of experts working on ideas of national distinctiveness in Russia and Germany.  On November 20th, 2009, he assembled a binational group of scholars and other researchers at St. Petersburg's Lermontov Library for the Sixth Starovoitova Readings that were devoted to the "Ideology of the 'Special Path' in Russia and Germany."  The literary critic and prolific journalist Aleksandr Arkhangelskii moderated the first session with papers by A. Melikhov, E. Zemskova, M. Maiofis, L. Luks, J. Zarusky, A. Dmitriev, A. Makushinskii, V. Vul'fovich, A. Kubyshkin, M. Gutbrod as well as Iu. Kantor. Pain led the second session consisting of papers by D. Travin, B. Dubin, myself, M. Sokolov, B. Firsov and Pain. Out of this meeting came the collected volume from which the papers of these two special issues of RPL have been drawn.
Sergei Magaril highlights in his broad historical survey some of the sources of Moscow's anti-Westernism, isolationism and provincialism within Russian intellectual, academic, civic and spiritual life. Aleksandr Verkhovskii and Pain provide an exhaustive overview of current ideological trends and political groups espousing the varieties of civilizational nationalism that see the Russian nation as the bearer of some larger supra-national mission. Boris Dubin presents an extensive investigation into the changes and continuities in Russian public opinion about an exceptional distinctiveness of Russia, if compared to other European and non-European nations.
These three papers provide already considerable insight into the origins and nature of contemporary permutations of the idea about Russia's "special path." In combination with the contributions to the following second special issue on the same topic, they constitute a comprehensive illustration for why anti-Western, sometimes radically right-wing ideas have been so tenacious and might become prominent again in Russia. Moreover, the English versions of these investigations have benefited greatly from the fact that their translator, Dr. Stephen D. Shenfield, is himself an accomplished researchers of Russian nationalism, and has thus approached the Russian-language originals of these texts with an especially deep understanding of their substance matter. This translation project should, therefore, contribute to a better understanding, in the West and elsewhere, of the multifarious theoretical foundations, deep historical roots, and varying political consequences of the idea of Russia's "special path."
CONTENTS: "The Claim of Russian Distinctiveness as Justification for Putin s Neo-Authoritarian Regime: Guest Editor's Introduction" by Andreas Umland; "The Mythology of the 'Third Rome' in Russian Educated Society" by Sergei Magaril; "The Myth of the 'Special Path' in Contemporary Russian Public Opinion" by Boris Dubin; "Civilizational Nationalism: The Russian Version of the 'Special Path'" by Aleksandr Verkhovskii and Emil Pain."

"Andreas Umland

ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF THE RUSSIAN EXTREME RIGHT

Guest Editor's Introduction

The collection of articles in this issue of RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW is related to a previous examination of the post-Soviet extreme right in RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW (vol. 46, no. 4 [July 2008]), and a presentation in RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY (vol. 47, no. 1 [Summer 2008]) of recent Russian interpretations of classical Eurasianism. Taken together, these three issues provide insight into the changing context, various sources and different permutations of a particularly virulent, and, arguably, consequential current of anti-Westernism in contemporary Russian intellectual and political discourse.
The five analyses of the Dugin phenomenon in post-Soviet society contained in the current issue sometimes compete with, but more often complement, each other. They all deal with the same object: Aleksandr Dugin, the political context of his activities, and his historical sources as well as – to a lesser degree – his followers, collaborators and competitors. It is telling that, despite such a relatively narrow empirical focus, these papers only rarely duplicate or overlap one other. In view of this circumstance, the purpose of bringing these closely related yet divergent interpretations of “neo-Eurasianism” together was threefold.
First, the papers illustrate the multifarious nature of post-Soviet “neo-Eurasianism,” and eclecticism of Dugin’s ideological worldview. Whereas Leonid Luks identifies in Dugin’s thinking and strategy continuities with inter-war Germany’s “Conservative Revolution,” Mikhail Sokolov interprets the Dugin phenomenon primarily as a specifically Russian variety of the so-called “New Right” in post-war Europe. While supportive of these viewpoints, Marlène Laruelle sets “neo-Eurasianism” initially, like Valery Senderov, within the context of classical Eurasianism and its revival in post-Soviet Russia. Whereas Senderov detects resemblances between classical and “neo-Eurasianism,” Laruelle finds more differences than similarities between these two intellectual movements, and discerns the most important congruence in their political behavior rather than ideology. My essay focuses on Dugin’s positive references to the varieties of inter-war fascism and, in particular, to German Nazism thereby introducing yet another comparative framework within which “neo-Eurasianism” can be viewed.
The issue thus demonstrates that an unambiguous classification of Dugin’s outlook and “neo-Eurasianism’s” nature is not an easy task. This is even more true in view of the fact that the present edition does not even present all relevant historical approaches to Dugin’s ideas. Among the major interpretative frameworks missing here are classical geopolitics, National Bolshevism and conspirological occultism – the latter understood as something yet to be differentiated from the esotericism of Integral Traditionalism on which Sokolov focuses.
The second purpose of this publication – similar to the motivations for producing the earlier RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW issue on the Russian extreme right – is to illustrate the emergence of a nascent international scholarly community that is trying not only to describe but also to understand current trends in Russian ultra-nationalism from a cross-cultural and diachronic perspective. This comparative approach is an advance in relation to most of the publications on Russia’s radical right of the 1990s that could often only chronicle the fast developments within the newly emerging anti-Western trends in a variety of sections of post-Soviet Russian society – party politics, the youth scene, high and popular culture, education, intellectual life, mass media, etc. – after the fall of the Soviet Union.
As in the case of the contributions to the earlier issue on the extreme right, the authors of this collection can regard themselves as lucky that their papers were translated from Russian, in an especially competent way, by one of the founding fathers of post-Soviet Russian right-wing extremism studies, Stephen D. Shenfield. Shenfield’s 2001 monograph RUSSIAN FASCISM: TRADITIONS, TENDENCIES, MOVEMENTS set, in several ways, the standard for later research in that he provided the first comprehensive as well as an especially dense intra- and internationally comparative study of the Russian radical right pushing our sub-field outside the realm of narrowly understood area studies. To be sure, Alexander Yanov’s brilliant 1995 survey WEIMAR RUSSIA AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT too can and should be regarded as a pioneering study that applied the comparative approach to the scholarly study of the post-Soviet Russian extreme right. Although Yanov demonstrated in his book (as he had in earlier publications) prophetic qualities, however, he could rely on an only slim body of primary and secondary sources that had been made available in the early 1990s. By 2001, in contrast, enough Russian and English literature – including the important 1998 monograph THE RUSSIAN QUESTION by Wayne Allensworth – was available to allow Shenfield to produce his in-depth investigation that has been informing and will continue, for years to come, to inform the international study of the Russian extreme right.
The articles in the current issue fall within this trend. The availability of high-quality English translations of them should contribute to further integrating our subfield into the larger disciplines of international studies of political extremism and neofascism. The effect of spreading the findings of Russian right-wing extremism studies to a wider public is here especially relevant with regard to the papers by Sokolov and Laruelle, which were previously published in two recently founded Russian print journals, AB IMPERIO and ACTA EURASICA/VESTNIK EVRAZII, that are available at only few Western libraries, despite their very high quality.
A final and related rationale for the present collection, as well the earlier issue on the extreme right, was to make the members of our subdiscipline and related fields better acquainted with their colleagues’ research. This goal is, of course, rather trivial, but re-stating this general purpose of academic publishing seems worthwhile in this particular case. In a 1997 review article (“The Post-Soviet Russian Extreme Right,” PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM, vol. 44, no. 4 [July-August 1997]) I lamented a tendency toward mutual ignorance among the different subdisciplines of Russian nationalism studies. Since then, some of the contributors to the subfield of Russian right-wing extremism have continued to suffer from a regrettable – and, arguably, unscientific – myopia. Those of us who have been following the stream of scholarly papers and books published on the Russian radical right in recent years might agree that, so far, there has been insufficient communication between, and sometimes plain disregard of, the various authors occupying our field. Therefore, we are no yet justified to call ourselves contributors to an academic subdiscipline. Perhaps, we should, instead, understand ourselves as belonging to an exclusive club of commentators, the members of which often still busy themselves with “re-inventing the wheel” rather than engaging in cumulative research based on previously published scholarly studies and on dialogue with colleagues working on the same or related topics. The current collection of articles should make a small contribution to overcome what was, in the 1990s, a still understandable childhood disease of post-Soviet Russian right-wing extremism studies but is now, in 2009, a situation that has become anachronistic.
CONTENTS: "Publisher's Note: Welcoming Dmitry P. Gorenburg to the Editorship of 'Russian Politics and Law';" "Issues in the Study of the Russian Extreme Right: Guest Editor's Introduction" by Andreas Umland; "A 'Third Way'—or Back to the Third Reich?" by Leonid Luks; "Neo-Eurasianism: Realities, Dangers, Prospects" by Valerii Senderov; "New Right-Wing Intellectuals in Russia: Strategies of Legitimization" by Mikhail Sokolov; "Pathological Tendencies in Russian 'Neo-Eurasianism': The Significance of the Rise of Aleksandr Dugin for the Interpretation of Public Life in Contemporary Russia" by Andreas Umland; "(Neo-)Eurasianists and Politics: 'Penetration' of State Structures and Indifference to Public Opinion?" by Marlène Laruelle."

"Editor’s Introduction
ANDREAS UMLAND

Although Russian nationalism has become a major force in post-Soviet politics and, arguably, an issue of current world affairs, it remains an understudied subject in such disciplines as comparative politics, contemporary history, and international relations as well as a minor theme in regional and cultural studies. Thanks, above all, to the impressive output of the researchers of Moscow’s Panorama and SOVA Centers – Galina Kozhevnikova, Vladimir Pribylovsky, Aleksandr Verkhovsky, Nikolai Mitrokhin, Viacheslav Likhachev, and others – there now exists a large collection of empirical data on Russian right-wing extremist groupings, trends, and leaders. In contrast, the hermeneutic interpretation, comparative assessment, scholarly conceptualization, and theory-driven explanation of these phenomena continue to lag behind the state of international research into, for instance, West European ultra-nationalist politics.
It is a fortunate coincidence that the most important book on the post-Soviet extreme right, the acclaimed monograph Russian Fascism published by M. E. Sharpe in 2001, has been authored by none other than Stephen Shenfield, who translated the articles in this issue. In his groundbreaking study, Shenfield set the standards for such research in a number of ways. His book provides exceptionally detailed and dense descriptions of the persons and groupings in question. He made exemplary use of a wide variety of Russian and English language primary and secondary sources. And, last but not least, he presented the first well-informed, elaborate attempt to apply to contemporary Russian phenomena a major generic concept from international right-wing extremism studies -- namely, “fascism.” For these reasons, Shenfield’s monograph will continue to exert crucial influence on the analysis of post-Soviet affairs, and may be considered a seminal work for the emerging sub-field of Russian right-wing extremism studies.
The five texts that follow were originally published in four Russian scholarly journals between 2005 and 2008. They can be seen as answers to or elaborations of questions that Shenfield first raised in his book. In the first two selections, I apply Roger Griffin’s conceptual apparatus for the study of generic fascism to an interpretation of Russian National Unity (RNU), Aleksandr Dugin’s “neo-Eurasianist” movement, and Vladimir Zhirinovskii’s idea of Russia’s “last dash to the South.” Referring to the findings of Griffin and other comparativists on the international radical right, I attack some “commonplaces” in reports on post-Soviet ultra-nationalism. First, I argue that the mimetic character and historic context of RNU’s neo-Nazism implies that this organization should be seen as a social or sub-cultural rather than fully political phenomenon. Second, I point out the undoubtedly fascist nature of the Dugin phenomenon while questioning the adequacy of descriptions of Dugin as a “neo-Eurasianist” and suggesting tactical rather than ideological reasons for Dugin’s demonstrative embrace of classical Eurasianism. Finally, I argue that Zhirinovskii, often perceived merely as a political clown, is also the propagator of an essentially fascist plan to bring about Russia’s rebirth through her revolutionary expansion to the South.
The next article was published in Russian as recently as February 2008, and approaches post-Soviet society and culture from a historical-analogical perspective. A leading specialist on totalitarianism and contemporary Central and East European history, Leonid Luks synthesizes a wide array of findings from German, Russian, and English studies – including some relevant primary sources – in order critically to assess the degree to which post-Soviet Russia resembles Germany’s abortive first democracy of 1918-33. Luks avoids both traps into which previous analyses have fallen: he is neither alarmist nor blind concerning some obvious resemblances between the post-imperial, crisis-ridden and subverted semi-democracies of interwar Germany and today’s Russia. Instead, Luks soberly lists the similarities and dissimilarities, displaying considerable erudition concerning the modern political history of both countries. On the basis of his comprehensive overview, Luks comes to the conclusion that, while there is sufficient likeness between Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia to make their comparison an informative intellectual endeavor, a number of weighty differences make it altogether unlikely that Russia’s post-Soviet managed democracy will end in the same way as Germany’s first attempt to democratize.
In the concluding two papers on the political style and rhetoric of Russia’s radical nationalist movement, Mikhail Sokolov focuses on RNU, which he regards (somewhat diverging from my assessment) as an important segment of Russia’s ultra-right spectrum. Before embarking on empirical analysis, Sokolov presents the sophisticated theoretical lenses through which he observes various public statements and behavior by RNU activists. Sokolov succeeds in identifying and explaining, in a revealing way, RNU’s stylistic peculiarities not only thanks to his explicitly theory-driven interpretation, inspired in large measure by Pierre Bourdieu, but also through his frequent juxtaposition of the traits of RNU with those of its “rivals” within Russia’s nationalist spectrum. Above all, he contrasts RNU with Eduard Limonov’s National-Bolshevik Party, which, while sharing a number of ideological suppositions with RNU, was even in the 1990s a markedly different public actor. Sokolov also shows that, counter-intuitively, RNU was not an organization dominated by paranoid people, but developed a discourse that had a certain coherence of its own.
Although the five contributions to this issue were written by scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds – political science, history, and sociology, respectively – these analyses are all informed by a decidedly comparative approach. The first two papers use generic concepts developed outside Russian studies to conceptualize post-Soviet phenomena. Luks’ broad survey provides a far-reaching cross-cultural and diachronic juxtaposition of two defective democracies. Sokolov’s articles actively engage in revealing intra-national comparison, and apply sociological theory to Russian phenomena. It is to be hoped that scholarly inquiry into Russian ultra-nationalism will in the future be further integrated into the larger field of international right-wing extremist and fascist studies.
CONTENTS:  "Guest Editor's Introduction" by Andreas Umland; "Conceptual and Contextual Problems in the Interpretation of Contemporary Russian Ultranationalism" by Andreas Umland; "Zhirinovsky's 'Last Thrust to the South' and the Definition of Fascism" by Andreas Umland; "'Weimar Russia?' Notes on a Controversial Concept" by Leonid Luks; "Russian National Unity: An Analysis of the Political Style of a Radical-Nationalist Organization" by Mikhail Sokolov; "Class as Ethnicity: The Rhetoric of the Russian Radical-Nationalist Movement" by Mikhail Sokolov."

Obwohl die Ukraine den territorial zweitgrößten Staat Europas darstellt, ist sie nur selten Objekt adäquater Medienberichterstattung, tiefgehender öffentlicher Diskussionen und politischer Auseinandersetzung in Deutschland. Im Resultat ist das deutsche Engagement für die Gazprom-Unterwasserpipelines Nord und South Stream von unzureichender Berücksichtigung des Spannungspotentials dieser Projekte für die russisch-ukrainischen Beziehungen gekennzeichnet. Der niedrige Stellenwert der Ukraine im deutschen öffentlichen Diskurs steht im Widerspruch zur erheblichen geo- und sicherheitspolitischen Bedeutung des Landes. Eine Neuorientierung der europäischen und deutschen Ostpolitik ist überfällig. While territorially being the second largest state of Europe, Ukraine is only rarely the object of adequate media representation, deep public discussions or political debate in Germany. As a result, the German involvement in Gazprom’s underwater pipelines Nord and South Stream is characterized by a lack of attention to their potential of increasing tensions in Russian-Ukrainian relations. The low salience of Ukraine in German public discourse is in contradiction to the geopolitical importance of the country. A reorientation of the EU’s and Germany’s Eastern policies is overdue.

Die geringe Aufmerksamkeit der deutschen Elite und Öffentlichkeit für die Ukraine ist vor dem Hintergrund der hohen Opferzahlen der Ukrainer im Zweiten Weltkrieg geschichtsvergessen. Trotz einer Reihe begrüßenswerter deutscher Initiativen bezüglich der Ukraine, bestimmen nach wie vor Naivität und Stereotypen das Verhältnis vieler Deutscher zum zweitgrößten Flächenstaat Europas. Das deutsche Engagement in russischen geoökonomischen Projekten wird in Kiew mit Furcht und Verbitterung wahrgenommen. Eine Reorientierung der Ostpolitik und stärkere Präsenz der Ukraine im öffentlichen Leben Deutschlands ist überfällig. Eine intensivere deutsche Beschäftigung mit ukrainischen außen- und innenpolitischen Belangen würde eine schrittweise Heranführung der Ukraine an die EU zum Ziel haben.

I mention a number of effects that the Orange Revolution in Ukraine had on the political regime, official discourse and public opinion of Russia, since 2005. These repercussions, I argue, partly modified the nature of Putin’s political system making it somewhat distinct from traditional autocracy. I label this alteration “paratotalitarian,” in that it was reminiscent of certain features of totalitarian states, yet did not result in a real regime change from authoritarianism to totalitarianism. I also briefly touch upon some worrying developments in Russian public opinion which, under the influence of an upsurge of anti-Western propaganda in the Kremlin-controlled mass media after the Orange Revolution and in connection with the Russian-Georgian War of 2008, became pre-dominantly anti-American by the end of the last decade.

См. также: Галушко К. Другая сторона украинского регионализма: комментарий к статье А. Умланда и А.Шеховцова // Форум новейшей восточноевропейской истории и культуры. 2011. Т. 8. № 2. С. 181-186 http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/forumruss16/8Galushko.pdf

Please, note that the above PDF is a Working Paper still under revision. We shall be grateful for comments, critique, corrections, and additions. Should they result in substantive improvement of the paper, we will happily acknowledge any such advice.

"Reprinted in: Esotericism, Religion, and Politics. Edited by Arthur Versluis, Lee Irwin, and Melinda Phillips. New Cultures Press 2012. Pp. 129-154.
Comment by Mark Sedgwick: http://traditionalistblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/is-dugin-traditionalist.html
Rebuttal by Anton Shekhovtsov: http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-aleksandr-dugin-traditionalist.html
The opposite view by a Duginist: http://evrazia.org/article/1315"

Reprinted in: Mirko Wischke (ed.), Freiheit ohne Recht? Zur Metamorphose von Politik und Recht (=Rechtsphilosophische Schriften. Vol. 17). Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang - Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2012.

In their transitions to democracy since 1989, the post-communist countries were haunted by a so-called “simultaneity dilemma.” They faced the exceptional challenge of simultaneously accomplishing enormous political, economic, social and cultural transformations. This led some scholars to refer to an “impossibility theorem” concerning the chances of success of such complex reforms. The early provision of an official offer to enter the European Union helped to alleviate the effects of the “simultaneity dilemma.” This led to surprisingly positive results of the reform efforts in East-Central Europe. Brussels should draw lessons from its success in the new EU member states, and also provide a long-term, conditional, explicit and official membership perspective to four of the six countries of its Eastern Partnership program, namely to Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, and Armenia.

Die Ukraine ist der größte vollständig in Europa gelegene Flächenstaat. Die geringe Aufmerksamkeit der deutschen Öffentlichkeit und Elite vor dem Hintergrund der hohen Opferzahlen der Ukrainer_innen im Zweiten Weltkrieg ist geschichtsvergessen.