The Russian White House Under Siege
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The Russia You Never Met
The Russia You Never Met MATT BIVENS AND JONAS BERNSTEIN fter staggering to reelection in summer 1996, President Boris Yeltsin A announced what had long been obvious: that he had a bad heart and needed surgery. Then he disappeared from view, leaving his prime minister, Viktor Cher- nomyrdin, and his chief of staff, Anatoly Chubais, to mind the Kremlin. For the next few months, Russians would tune in the morning news to learn if the presi- dent was still alive. Evenings they would tune in Chubais and Chernomyrdin to hear about a national emergency—no one was paying their taxes. Summer turned to autumn, but as Yeltsin’s by-pass operation approached, strange things began to happen. Chubais and Chernomyrdin suddenly announced the creation of a new body, the Cheka, to help the government collect taxes. In Lenin’s day, the Cheka was the secret police force—the forerunner of the KGB— that, among other things, forcibly wrested food and money from the peasantry and drove some of them into collective farms or concentration camps. Chubais made no apologies, saying that he had chosen such a historically weighted name to communicate the seriousness of the tax emergency.1 Western governments nod- ded their collective heads in solemn agreement. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank both confirmed that Russia was experiencing a tax collec- tion emergency and insisted that serious steps be taken.2 Never mind that the Russian government had been granting enormous tax breaks to the politically connected, including billions to Chernomyrdin’s favorite, Gazprom, the natural gas monopoly,3 and around $1 billion to Chubais’s favorite, Uneximbank,4 never mind the horrendous corruption that had been bleeding the treasury dry for years, or the nihilistic and pointless (and expensive) destruction of Chechnya. -
Title of Thesis: ABSTRACT CLASSIFYING BIAS
ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: CLASSIFYING BIAS IN LARGE MULTILINGUAL CORPORA VIA CROWDSOURCING AND TOPIC MODELING Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang Thesis Directed By: Dr. David Zajic, Ph.D. Our project extends previous algorithmic approaches to finding bias in large text corpora. We used multilingual topic modeling to examine language-specific bias in the English, Spanish, and Russian versions of Wikipedia. In particular, we placed Spanish articles discussing the Cold War on a Russian-English viewpoint spectrum based on similarity in topic distribution. We then crowdsourced human annotations of Spanish Wikipedia articles for comparison to the topic model. Our hypothesis was that human annotators and topic modeling algorithms would provide correlated results for bias. However, that was not the case. Our annotators indicated that humans were more perceptive of sentiment in article text than topic distribution, which suggests that our classifier provides a different perspective on a text’s bias. CLASSIFYING BIAS IN LARGE MULTILINGUAL CORPORA VIA CROWDSOURCING AND TOPIC MODELING by Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Gemstone Honors Program, University of Maryland, 2018 Advisory Committee: Dr. David Zajic, Chair Dr. Brian Butler Dr. Marine Carpuat Dr. Melanie Kill Dr. Philip Resnik Mr. Ed Summers © Copyright by Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang 2018 Acknowledgements We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to our mentor, Dr. -
Threats to Russian Democracy and US-Russian Relations
After Chechnya: Threats to Russian Democracy and U.S.-Russian Relations ARIEL COHEN Introduction : All Politics Is Local , Al¡ Foreign Policy Is Domestic Half a year alter Russian tanks rolled into Chechnya, the future of Russian democracy and free markets is under threat. The internal situation in Russia bears a direct influence on Russia's relations with the outside world and the United States. While the world's leaders gather in Moscow to celebrate the victory over Nazism, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev is calling for the use of force to "protect" Russian co-ethnics living outside the borders of the Russian Federation. Kozyrev's declarations go beyond mere rhetoric. Russia is introducing its new 58th field army in the Northern Caucasus, in clear and conscious violation of the Conventional Forces Europe (CFE) Treaty, a centerpiece of post-Cold War European security. If Russia is not planning an agressive action either against Ukraine or its Transcaucasus neighbors, why does it need to revise upwards the CFE limitations of 164 tanks and 414 artillery systems? Why was General Alexander Lebed, a self-proclaimed restorer of the old Soviet Union and Commander of the l4th Army in Moldova, applauding Kozyrev? Chechnya became the testing ground for the new Russian policy, both foreign and domestic. The people who engineered it, the so-called Party of War in Moscow, are watching for reactions at honre and abroad to this version of the "last thrust South." The West is facing its greatest challenge since the collapse of communism: how to deal with the Russia that is emerging from under the rubble. -
Yevgeny Primakov's Operational Code and Russian Foreign Policy
University of Tampere Faculty of Management Politics/International Relations YEVGENY PRIMAKOV’S OPERATIONAL CODE AND RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY Pihla Bernier Master’s Thesis in International Relations Advisor: Tuomas Forsberg ABSTRACT University of Tampere Faculty of Management BERNIER, PIHLA: Yevgeny Primakov’s Operational Code and Russian Foreign Policy Master’s Thesis, 82 pages International Relations August 2018 Keywords: Yevgeny Primakov, Operational Code, Russian Foreign Policy, Russia, Primakov Doctrine Yevgeny Primakov was an important figure in both Soviet and Russian foreign policy circles throughout his lifetime until 2015. He was a critical leader in the 1990s holding positions of both Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister, which also coincided with times when Russia was charting a new foreign policy course. He reinvented a foreign policy school of thought called Statism which has been the most influential with Russian leaders for many years and continues to be so today. Current research has not adequately addressed his importance. This thesis set out to investigate his beliefs and worldview utilizing the operational code method using Alexander George’s ten question model. Research was conducted based on Primakov’s own writings, speeches and interviews. Yevgeny Primakov has been called both a westernizing leader and a hard-liner, but it was found both of these labels are incorrect. Rather, he should be viewed as a patriotic pragmatist. His actions were motivated by advancing Russian interests of which one of the greatest was restoring Russia as a major player in international relations again. His attitude towards the United States was complex, viewing them as a rival, yet not as an enemy. -
After the Revolution: Rethinking U.S.-Russia Relations
After The Revolution: Rethinking U.S.-Russia Relations Speech by Bill Bradley at the Keenan Institute, Washington, DC - August 8, 1995 “For the mystery of man’s being is not only in living, but in what one lives for.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov I Four years ago Boris Yeltsin mounted a tank outside the Russian White House and helped to seal the fate of an empire. His act of defiance consigned the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to the dustbin of history and launched his country – and ours – into uncharted waters. Today, America’s policy toward Russia has strayed off course. To manage this essential relationship requires a clear view of Russia. Lacking such a vision, we are like the proverbial blind man before the elephant. II From the end of World War II until the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, U.S. policy was largely based on the analysis of Soviet behavior first set out in George Kennan’s seminal 1947 Foreign Affairs arti - cle, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”. For 40 years, through periods of evil empire and détente, we sought to contain an adversary we viewed as inherently expansionist. The marriage of ideology and circumstances that Kennan identified eventually eroded under the deadening weight of a stagnant party bureaucracy and a withering command economy. By the time Gorbachev took power, he inherited a spiritually and economically bankrupt empire. Over time, as glasnost exposed the soviet Union’s underlying weakness, and perestroika tried to bolster its waning strength, it became clear that we were seeing something new, a Soviet union that had to reform or die. -
Impacts on Nato Expansion: the Partnership for Peace Program and the Kosovo War
IMPACTS ON NATO EXPANSION: THE PARTNERSHIP FOR PEACE PROGRAM AND THE KOSOVO WAR by James Jarosz A research study submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Global Security Studies Baltimore, Maryland August 2020 © 2020 James Jarosz All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Considerable academic debate has arisen about the causes of the deteriorating U.S.- Russia relationship. Despite the early promise for improved relations after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Washington and Moscow have struggled to move forward with a productive relationship. A constructive relationship has failed to materialize for numerous reasons, but one of the most prominent legacy issues for today’s adversarial relationship is the original decision to expand NATO in the 1990s and the failure to integrate Russia into the post-Cold War European security architecture. This research paper is attempting to answer how and why Russia failed to become integrated into NATO during the debates surrounding NATO expansion in the 1990s. This paper hypothesizes that Russia’s discontentment with the Partnership for Peace (PFP) and NATO’s Kosovo campaign served as “rupture points” in the relationship that ultimately precluded them from joining. By utilizing a historical methods approach, leveraging recently declassified primary source documents, memoirs, diaries and secondary sources, this paper constructs a broader narrative about the arguments surrounding PFP and NATO involvement in the Balkans, in order to assess the impacts of the Partnership for Peace Program and the Kosovo war on Russia’s failure to join NATO. The paper finds split causality, with evidence supporting the Kosovo hypothesis, but not the PFP. -
Russia's Islamic Diplom
Russia's Islamic Diplom Russia's Islamic Diplomacy ed. Marlene Laruelle CAP paper no. 220, June 2019 "Islam in Russia, Russia in the Islamic World" Initiative Russia’s Islamic Diplomacy Ed. Marlene Laruelle The Initiative “Islam in Russia, Russia in the Islamic World” is generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation Cover photo: Talgat Tadjuddin, Chief Mufti of Russia and head of the Central Muslim Spiritual Board of Russia, meeting with the Armenian Catholicos Karekin II and Mufti Ismail Berdiyev, President of the Karachay-Cherkessia Spiritual Board, Moscow, December 1, 2016. Credit : Artyom Korotayev, TASS/Alamy Live News HAGFW9. Table of Contents Chapter 1. Russia and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation: Conflicting Interactions Grigory Kosach………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5 Chapter 2. Always Looming: The Russian Muslim Factor in Moscow's Relations with Gulf Arab States Mark N. Katz………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2 1 Chapter 3. Russia and the Islamic Worlds: The Case of Shia Islam Clément Therme ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 25 Chapter 4. A Kadyrovization of Russian Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Autocrats in Track II Diplomacy and Other Humanitarian Activities Jean-Francois Ratelle……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3 1 Chapter 5. Tatarstan's Paradiplomacy with the Islamic World Guzel Yusupova……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3 7 Chapter 6. Russian Islamic Religious Authorities and Their Activities at the Regional, National, and International Levels Denis Sokolov………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 41 Chapter 7. The Economics of the Hajj: The Case of Tatarstan Azat Akhunov…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..4 7 Chapter 8. The Effect of the Pilgrimage to Mecca on the Socio-Political Views of Muslims in Russia’s North Caucasus Mikhail Alexseev…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5 3 Authors’ Biographies……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5 9 @ 2019 Central Asia Program Chapter 1. -
The City of Moscow in Russia's Foreign and Security Policy: Role
Eidgenössische “Regionalization of Russian Foreign and Security Policy” Technische Hochschule Zürich Project organized by The Russian Study Group at the Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research Andreas Wenger, Jeronim Perovic,´ Andrei Makarychev, Oleg Alexandrov WORKING PAPER NO.7 APRIL 2001 The City of Moscow in Russia’s Foreign and Security Policy: Role, Aims and Motivations DESIGN : SUSANA PERROTTET RIOS Moscow enjoys an exceptional position among the Russian regions. Due to its huge By Oleg B. Alexandrov economic and financial potential, the city of Moscow largely shapes the country’s economic and political processes. This study provides an overall insight into the complex international network that the city of Moscow is tied into. It also assesses the role, aims and motivations of the main regional actors that are involved. These include the political authorities, the media tycoons and the major financial-industrial groups. Special attention is paid to the problem of institutional and non-institutional interaction between the Moscow city authorities and the federal center in the foreign and security policy sector, with an emphasis on the impact of Putin’s federal reforms. Contact: Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research ETH Zentrum / SEI CH-8092 Zürich Switzerland Andreas Wenger, head of project [email protected] Jeronim Perovic´ , project coordinator [email protected] Oleg Alexandrov [email protected]; [email protected] Andrei Makarychev [email protected]; [email protected] Order of copies: Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research ETH Zentrum / SEI CH-8092 Zürich Switzerland [email protected] Papers available in full-text format at: http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/ Layout by Marco Zanoli The City of Moscow in Russia’s Foreign and Security Policy: Role, Aims and Motivations By Oleg B. -
02 Intro.Indd
AUGUST 1991 Introduction: Coup de Grâce? Ann E. Robertson The collapse of the Soviet N August 4, 1991, Soviet president Mikhail Gor- Obachev left for the Crimea, to relax at his newly con- Union was the product of a structed dacha in Foros. Russian president Boris Yeltsin retired to his dacha, a two-story building outside Moscow. multifaceted struggle for power Both leaders planned to return to work by August 20 to between the center (Moscow) sign a controversial new Union treaty. At the same time, opponents of the treaty were meet- and the extensive periphery. ing in secret near Moscow, debating whether to pre-empt the ceremony. These men held high-ranking positions in The August putsch was the all-Union institutions, such as the military, police, and critical tipping point at which intelligence services, and their power bases would be drastically reduced under the new confederal union. With the advantage shifted from the August 20 deadline looming, they resolved to seize power, overthrow Gorbachev, and preserve the Soviet Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Union. They failed on all counts. After the attempted coup failed, the editors of Problems of Communism solicited contributions for a special issue focusing on the August events. Starting from the assump- tion that “the swift, bloodless collapse of this abortive ‘state of emergency’ accelerated the very processes that the plotters hoped to block or reverse and effectively administered the coup de grâce to seven decades of Bol- shevik rule,”1 seven noted scholars were asked to analyze the August events and “reflect on the political, economic, social, and foreign policy ramifications of the disintegra- tion of the Soviet Union.”2 Their studies covered events through mid-October, when the November/December 1991 issue went to press. -
The Fifteenth Anniversary of the End of the Soviet Union: Recollections and Perspectives Conference Proceedings Edited by Markian Dobczansky
The Fifteenth Anniversary of the End of the Soviet Union: Recollections and Perspectives Conference Proceedings Edited by Markian Dobczansky Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars OCCASIONAL PAPER #299 KENNAN One Woodrow Wilson Plaza 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW INSTITUTE Washington, DC 20004-3027 Tel. (202) 691-4100 Fax (202) 691-4247 www.wilsoncenter.org/kennan ISBN 1-933549-34-3 The Kennan Institute is a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Through its programs of residential scholarships, meetings, and publications, the Institute encourages scholarship on the successor states to the Soviet Union, embracing a broad range of fields in the social sciences and humanities. The Kennan Institute is supported by contributions from foundations, corporations, individuals, and the United States Government. Kennan Institute Occasional Papers The Kennan Institute makes Occasional Papers available to all those interested. Occasional Papers are submitted by Kennan Institute scholars and visiting speakers. Copies of Occasional Papers and a list of papers currently available can be obtained free of charge by contacting: Occasional Papers Kennan Institute One Woodrow Wilson Plaza 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20004-3027 (202) 691-4100 Occasional Papers published since 1999 are available on the Institute’s web site, www.wilsoncenter.org/kennan. This Occasional Paper has been produced with the support of the Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union of the U.S. Department of State (fund- ed by the Soviet and East European Research and Training Act of 1983, or Title VIII). The Kennan Institute is most grateful for this support. -
Russia and the Arms Trade
Russia and the Arms Trade Stockholm International Peace Research Institute SIPRI is an independent international institute for research into problems of peace and conflict, especially those of arms control and disarmament. It was established in 1966 to commemorate Sweden’s 150 years of unbroken peace. The Institute is financed mainly by the Swedish Parliament. The staff and the Governing Board are international. The Institute also has an Advisory Committee as an international consultative body. The Governing Board is not responsible for the views expressed in the publications of the Institute. Governing Board Professor Daniel Tarschys, Chairman (Sweden) Dr Oscar Arias Sánchez (Costa Rica) Sir Marrack Goulding (United Kingdom) Dr Ryukichi Imai (Japan) Dr Catherine Kelleher (United States) Dr Marjatta Rautio (Finland) Dr Lothar Rühl (Germany) Dr Abdullah Toukan (Jordan) The Director Director Dr Adam Daniel Rotfeld (Poland) Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Frösunda, S-169 70 Solna Sweden Telephone: 46 8/655 97 00 Telefax: 46 8/655 97 33 Email: [email protected] Internet URL: http://www.sipri.se Russia and the Arms Trade Edited by Ian Anthony OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1998 Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © SIPRI 1998 All rights reserved. -
Chechnya the Russian Federation in Crisis
arl rvic CIJ IEF ealt 0 ISSN 1321-1560 Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 1995 Except to the extent of the uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means including information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written coiisent of the Department of the Parliamentary Library, other than by Members of the Australian Parliament in the course of their official duties. Published by the Department of the Parliamentary Library, 1995 Foreign Affairs, De 7 February 1995 ri si Further copies of this publication may be purchased from the Publications Distribution Officer Telephone: (06) 277 2711 A list of Parliamentary Research Service publications is available on the ISR database A quarterly update of PRS publications may be obtained from the PRS Head’s Office Telephone: (06) 277 7166 The author of this paper would like to thank Dr Frank Frost, Dr Robert Miller, Mr Gary Brown and Dr Ravi Tomar for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper and Helen Phillips and Doreen White for their technical assistance. This paper has been prepared for general distribution to Members of the Australian Parliament. Readers outside the Parliament are reminded that this is not an Australian Government document, but a paper prepared by the author and published by the Parliamentary Research Service to contribute to consideration of the issues by Senators and Members. The views expressed in this Paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Parliamentary Research Service and are not to be attributed to the Department of the Parliamentary Library.