SCANDAL. Russian terrorists secret training base created in Sevastopol

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 75

New Challenges to Russian Federalism

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 75

Andrey Makarychev 
Nizhny Novgorod Civil Service Academy 
September 2009 

The alleged success of former president (and current prime minister) Vladimir Putin in recentralizing the Russian Federation requires critical appraisal. A number of limitations to the reunification project, as Putin initially conceived it almost a decade ago, are emerging. A growing number of Russian and international scholars assert that center–regional relations did not change all that much during Putin’s presidency and that the mono-polar system of power within most regions remains intact, which not only impedes democratic accountability in the federation but also makes the federal center’s supervision over regional elites problematic. Publicly, those elites express almost ritual loyalty to the Kremlin, yet informal room for bargaining between Moscow and the provinces still exists, as does financial asymmetry within the federation, just as in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, a growing trend of ...

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 78

Russia’s New Model Army

The Ongoing Radical Reform of the Russian Military

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 78

Dmitry Gorenburg 
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies 
September 2009 

Last August, the Russian army undertook its first offensive action on foreign soil since the end of the Afghanistan war in 1989. After the initial outburst of patriotic fervor faded, the Russian military did not have long to bask in the glory of its first definitive military victory in many years. In early October, the civilian leadership of the Ministry of Defense announced a radical restructuring of the armed forces, one that, if enacted in full measure, would completely change the military’s structure and mission capabilities for the foreseeable future. More than nine months have passed since the initial outlines of this reform were announced. This memo will describe the reform’s main goals, the military’s reaction to it, and the extent ...

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 62

Caught in Between

Citizenship, Identity, and Young Ethnic Russians in Estonia

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 62

Theodore P. Gerber & Sarah E. Mendelson 
University of Wisconsin and Center for Strategic and International Studies 
September 2009

Days after U.S. President Barack Obama’s Moscow summit and just before Vice President Joe Biden’s departure for Ukraine, nearly two dozen former leaders and foreign policy experts from Eastern Europe sent a letter to Obama asking Washington not to “forget” them while it tries to reset relations with Russia. The letter is out of sync with Obama’s recent message that, for instance, “Russia’s future is up to the Russian people” or “Africa’s future is up to Africans.” The same should apply to Eastern European societies. These countries have serious problems, some of which are exacerbated and exploited by Russia, including legacies of foreign occupations, politicization of history, and crushing economic crises. Yet their own governments ...