That Russia will never be a superpower as the USSR once was leaves it searching for a new international identity. Fyodor Lukyanov argues that Moscow’s policy today is a skilful imitation of striving for global status, intended to conceal the narrowing of the sphere of its immediate interests.
She was once the female icon of the Orange Revolution. Lately, the drama of repressed Ukrainian democracy has been staged upon the immobilized and tortured body of the imprisoned opposition leader. But how much longer can this postmodern political spectacle go on?
Ever since the outburst of protests and political discontent around the December 2011 elections in Russia, the country seems to be on the verge of change. But what kind of change? Will civic unrest, which persists with a varying, but hardly increasing intensity, bring about democratization, or will it induce Putin to introduce measures that strengthen his control? Russian political analyst Nikolay Petrov presents his reading of recent developments.
The IWM series “Books in perspective” presents publications related to the Institute’s research fields to the local academic community. Authors are invited to discuss their ideas with the audience. On 22 May 2012, Russian literary scholar Alexander Etkind talked about his recent work Internal Colonization. Russia’s Imperial Experience (Polity, 2011). Here, he explains why he wrote this book.
The “Stalinist order” continues to lurk in aesthetic forms and written documents; from an architectural perspective, it lives on as long as the buildings survive. And merges with the new order, in which the new “elite” buy up the same buildings and imitative newbuilds for artificially inflated prices.
Former communist countries, whether in the EU or on its threshold, should remind themselves more often of what life was like for them only twenty years ago. For Croatia, peace and security should be more important than expected economic gains from EU membership, writes Slavenka Drakulic.
Peter Pomerantsev enters the matrix of managed democracy that underpins postmodern dictatorship in Russia. A society of pure spectacle, with fake parties, fake opposition, fake scandals and fake action: this is the political technologists’ project, in which (almost) everything becomes PR.
Ayse Kadioglu reads the protests in Istanbul as a sign that people demand more than representative democracy. Indeed, it is the citizens’ search for participatory democracy that, for the first time in years, may mean Turkey really does become a model in its region.
Commemorative causality, the confusion between present resonance and past power, denies history its proper subject, writes Timothy Snyder. What is easiest to represent becomes what it is easiest to argue and, in lieu of serious explanations, only emotional reflexes remain.
Kerem Öktem explains why the occupation of Gezi Park in Istanbul’s Taksim Square quickly turned into an enormous eruption of protest; the key factors being increasingly uninhibited neoliberal development, the government’s conservative zeal and a troubled foreign policy.
Süreyyya Evren looks at how an understanding of form gained through the prism of “unrest” is transposed back into contemporary art and finds that one of the most quintessential features of political art is a never-ending process of searching.
As the regional presence of international players diminishes two decades after the privatization of media markets, local business elites looking to win influence are buying into the media sector. Vaclav Stetka takes stock of the consequences for free and independent journalism.
Varun Uberoi and Tariq Modood argue that multiculturalism may mean the emergence of a culturally diverse citizenry, a policy or a vision for the nation. That it has received anything but a good press of late prompts Uberoi and Modood to clarify why multiculturalism is in fact flourishing in Britain.
George Blecher pinpoints exactly what it is that confuses Americans about the actions of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, prior to the bombing of the Boston Marathon, may not have been far off from becoming an ideal American. But then becoming completely American always was a fiction.
What if the attempt earlier this year on the life of a Danish Islam critic proves to be yet another instance of a concentrated assault on free expression by fundamentalist believers? Frederik Stjernfelt slams the critics of Enlightenment values for their complacency.
On Wednesday 22 May 2013, British soldier Drummer Lee Rigby was killed in broad daylight in the street near a military barracks in Woolwich, south-east London. Professor of peace studies Paul Rogers insists that there is a connection between this shocking murder and “remote-control” attacks by western states. Recognizing this connection is crucial if we are to avoid such extreme violence in the future.