No abstract

Nearly three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, early hopes for the integration of the post-Soviet states into a “Europe whole and free” seem to have been decisively dashed. Europe itself is in the midst of a multifaceted crisis that threatens the considerable gains of the postwar liberal European experiment. This book provides a panoramic view of the process of “Europeanization” in Russia and all fourteen of the other former Soviet republics since 1989, in a study that is both theoretically grounded (with five chapters that discuss the historical and contemporary meanings of “Europe” in its cultural-civilizational, political, and security guises) and empirically rich (with case studies that examine the question of Europeanization in Russia and each of the other fourteen ex-Soviet republics). It argues that deeply rooted ideas about Europe’s cultural-civilizational primacy and about who “belongs” in Europe, and who doesn’t—and who might be able to “become European” someday, and who definitely cannot—to influence both internal politics in contemporary Europe and the processes of Europeanization in Russia and the former Soviet Union. From the “European dreams” of people in Ukraine and Georgia, who continue to see Europe as a beacon of liberal values, democratic institutions, and economic prosperity, to Russia’s efforts to weaken the postwar European order by presenting an alternative, more ethnonationalist, realist, and revanchist view of “Europe,” it demonstrates the necessity and utility of viewing contemporary Eurasian politics as a struggle over the meaning and practices of “Europeanness.”

No abstract

No abstract

Uses Tatarstan's relations with Russia as a case study of the new opportunities for the nationalist exercise of state sovereignty, which the post‐Cold War international system affords to actors that are nominally sub‐state members of another state. Explores how Tatarstan has attempted to construct a sovereign presence in the international arena in the post‐Soviet period: first, by establishing bilateral relations with other states, and by increased participation in international politico‐economic organizations and networks; second, by pursuing a type of ‘anticipatory adaptation’, wherein Tatarstani elites have attempted to raise the country's profile in the international community.