post-Soviet Research Articles

Некоторые проблемы, связанные с уголовнопроцессуальными функциями в законодательстве Азербайджанской Республики

The presented article is devoted to the problems of separation from each other of the functions of subjects of criminal proceedings. It provides a comparative analysis of how the Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan does not provide for a specific norm defining the division of criminal procedural functions, but in the legislation of the Russian Federation and Ukraine provide, respectively. It is argued that, despite the implementation of legal reforms, the improvement of criminal procedure legislation and the proclamation of a number of democratic principles in criminal proceedings, the adversarial nature of the parties in the preliminary investigation is still declarative in nature. The historical and political roots of this have the same source - the repressive traditions of the totalitarian Soviet state. As a result of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that in order to eliminate the existing problems, to ensure the suspect and the accused have the right to defense provided for by the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan, to exercise the defense function at the level of relevant requirements, along with the improvement of criminal procedural legislation, the precise definition of the functions of the subjects of criminal proceedings and the elimination of existing contradictions by completely separating them from each other, it is necessary to develop and implement measures related to the development of the legal consciousness of these subjects and the strengthening of their responsibility.

Empirical Analysis of Energy Consumption and Economic Growth in Post-Soviet Eurasia: Do They Matter for Foreign Policy?

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and economic growth in post-Soviet Eurasian countries by employing panel data from 15 countries from 1996 to 2018. The results reveal that the contribution of renewable energy consumption (REC) to economic growth is greater than non-renewable energy consumption. The overall findings imply that the transformation of energy consumption from non-renewable to renewable offers environmental advantages and growth opportunities. Furthermore, the transition to renewables may also expand the range of foreign relations policy options available for these countries, which, in turn, might contribute to a better alignment with evolving global regimes. Transition demands towards the long-term sustainability of global energy sources put pressure on countries to expand their domestic policy efforts and join international cooperation efforts. Therefore, post-Soviet Eurasian countries should develop strategic policy mechanisms and reforms designed to accelerate investments in renewable energy technologies.

The Polish Air Force in transition: lessons from the F-16 programme

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to analyse the process of equipping the Polish Air Force with the F-16 aircraft. The Polish F-16 programme serves as an essential source of knowledge for avoiding errors that may occur when introducing new weapon systems in Poland, or other post-communist countries that are still reliant on Soviet-designed military technologies. Due to various external and internal factors, not all elements of the F-16 programme are suitable for replication in the acquisition of new weapon systems; however, some solutions have been applied in Poland’s F-35 and WISŁA air defence programmes. The authors examined selected aspects of the F-16 programme, including its historical background, legal and organisational framework, personnel training, infrastructure, logistics, and the economic implications of the offset agreement.

Ukraine's parliament in war: the impact of Russia's invasion on the Verkhovna Rada's ability and efforts to legislate reforms and join the European Union

ABSTRACT Other than the Baltic countries, Ukraine has made the most progress in the transition to democracy than any other post-Soviet country. Ukraine's Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has been an instrumental institution in the democratisation process, and has played an increasingly significant role in furthering the public's desire to align with Europe, sometimes in opposition to Ukrainian presidents who have tried to steer the country towards Russia. Nonetheless, the path to join the European Union has not been a smooth one. On 16 September 2014, the Verkhovna Rada ratified the Association Agreement with the European Union and set out to meet its requirements. However, progress in passing the necessary reform legislation has been slow, in part due to the political dynamics operating in the country and the Parliament; proliferation of parties, repeated shifting party memberships, regional differences and oligarchic influence have all played a role in preventing agreement on reforms. The Russian invasion in February of 2022 has transformed the political dynamics in the country and the Parliament. Long-stalled reform legislation passed in a few months. This article examines the impact of Russian's invasion on the changing political dynamics that spurred Ukraine's Parliament to pursue compliance with EU requirements. It discusses the actions the Ukrainian Parliament has taken to combat corruption, improve the rule of law, and to achieve economic reform that is necessary for EU compliance. Ukraine is trying to accelerate its efforts to join the European Union and to succeed, it must meet the requirements of the EU acquis which is the body of Community rights and obligations that is binding on all the EU member states. It includes the content, principles, and obligations of the EU treaty and legislation adopted pursuant to the treaty and the case law of the Court of Justice.

Introduction: LGBTQ+ visibilities in the Caucasus and Central Asia

ABSTRACT The idea for this collection of papers emerged from a desire to showcase queer scholarship in and on the region, following a panel discussion about the visibility of queer communities in the post-Soviet space at the ASEEES virtual convention in December 2021. The panellists’ discussions highlighted the ongoing challenges of queer knowledge production and the tendency for scholarship produced by and on queer people in the region to be regarded as either ‘anomalous’ and/or ‘exotic’ and therefore treated as marginal. The contributions here challenge the latter argument by demonstrating that there are lessons to be learned from the experiences of queer people in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this introduction, the guest editors explore the dominant themes that emerged from the articles in this issue. They also reflect on the politics of representation, reflexivity and research, and how they have sought to engage with them in editing this issue.

Capitalist Heterotopia & Lost Social Utopia: Documenting Class, Work, and Migration in Post-Communist East-Central European Fiction

ABSTRACT Some of the most acclaimed novels from post-communist countries deal with communism through an anti-communist ethos. The emerging international canon of post-communist representations of communism and transition to capitalism has always sought to enfoce a convincing anti-communist ideal. Writers have only recently formulated critiques of the post-communist transition through what Boris Buden describes as post-communist cultures without social utopias. Those novels are not rooted in anti-communism but rather criticize the death of utopias following the fall of communism. Drawing on the Romanian case, we try to outline the heterotopias of capitalism in post-communism from the standpoint of novels on migration and work abroad, addressing contemporary understandings of capitalist realism, post-socialist realism, autofiction, and documented realism. Analysing novels by Liliana Nechit, Mihai Buzea, and Adrian Schiop, we reveal the subjective nature of the testimonial literature on migration and contrast it to the need to incorporate workers’ agency into this literary process. While the description of Eastern European capitalism through novels about migration has become an indictment of communism and a subtle plea for a ‘better’ form of capitalism, the novels about internal migration recover a lost social utopia that ended with the 1989 collapse of Romanian communism.

Prisoners of Impunity: What the Global Community Should Know about and Learn from the Russo-Ukrainian War

While the world awoke to the horrors of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia’s military intervention into Ukraine’s internal affairs had its roots in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. Long before 2014, Russia had sought to influence Ukraine’s electoral outcomes, foreign policy and political alliances, as well as exert economic coercion through trade wars. The overarching imperialist vision of Ukraine has long been evident in political addresses delivered by Russia’s leadership and the narratives projected by state-controlled media. Much of the world community, however, perceived these actions through the lens of Ukraine as a post-Soviet country presumed to belong to the so-called Russian sphere of influence. Despite numerous historic and modern-day atrocities against those perceived to be part of its geopolitical periphery, Russia enjoyed political, economic and moral impunity. Too often, Western powers prioritized regional stability and trade with Russia over upholding the rule of law and respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty. This was evident in the tepid reaction to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the instigation of war in Donbas. Settling for a state of ‘negative peace’ in the case of Minsk accords (2014, 2015) – rather than holding Russia accountable for its actions, revealed a lack of holistic understanding of Russia, Ukraine, and what it truly takes to achieve “positive peace”. This essay offers a broader historical context for Ukraine’s nation building and Russia’s enduring and centuries-long colonial drives toward Ukraine. It argues that the Russo-Ukrainian war, beginning with the annexation of Crimea, marks a unique moment in the post – World War II international world order. This event poses a challenge to the current international legal framework while also presenting an opportunity to draw lessons for preserving the liberal world order.

What is Tamizdat?

ABSTRACT Since the Soviet state declared its monopoly on publishing in 1929, many authors whose works became unpublishable at home were forced out from the official literary field into the underground and abroad. Comprising manuscripts rejected, censored or never submitted for publication in the former USSR but smuggled through various channels out of the country and published elsewhere with or without their authors’ knowledge or consent – and often for the purpose of being sent back as ideologically subversive material – tamizdat (literally, “published over there,” or abroad) was as emblematic of Soviet literary culture as its more familiar and better researched domestic counterparts, samizdat (“self-publishing”) and gosizdat (“state-publishing”). As a literary practice and political institution, tamizdat remained firmly engraved on Russian literature of the Soviet era until perestroika, when works that first saw the light of day abroad could finally make their homecoming.

ПРОСТРАНСТВЕННЫЙ ФАКТОР В РАСПРЕДЕЛЕНИИ КОНФЛИКТОГЕННОСТИ НА ПОСТСОВЕТСКОЙ ТЕРРИТОРИИ (1992–2022 ГГ.)

Given that socio-political processes develop not only in time but also in space, their relative spatial configuration caninfluence their genesis and further evolution, which is manifested in the existence of neighborhood effect. Similar values of a phenomenon are clustered: the characteristics of the phenomenon in one location are determined not only by the qualities of this location itself but also by the characteristics of the same phenomenon in neighboring locations. The purpose of this study is to determine whetherneighborhood effect has influenced the spread of conflictogenicity in the post-Soviet space in 1992–2022 or, in other words, whetherconflictogenicity and its changes in this macroregion are clustered phenomena. The authors of this research define conflictogenicity asa cumulative indicator equal to the sum of conflictness scores of a unit of analysis (first-order administrative units of the former USSRrepublics) assigned to this unit from 1992 to 2022 by the Conflict Barometer project implemented by Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research. Conflictogenicity changes are defined as the difference between conflictogenicity scores assigned to administrative units in 1992–1999 and in 2000–2022. To achieve the purpose of the research, the authors use global and local Moran’s indicesof spatial and differential spatio-temporal autocorrelation. The results of the study demonstrate that during the given period in the postSoviet space both conflictogenicity and conflictogenicity changes are relatively clustered phenomena. The most robust autocorrelationrelationships are registered for administrative units with the highest conflict rates and regions where conflictogenicity changes turnedout to be very significant. Moreover, these two groups of territorial units are almost identical to each other: the greatest conflictogenicitychanges have been noted in local clusters with high conflictogenicity levels. Thus, during the post-bipolar period spatial patterns havebeen visible in the post-Soviet space both in the distribution and in the evolution of conflicts.

Methodology for studying conflicts. Specific features of studying conflicts in the post-Soviet space

Conflicts in the modern world becoming more and more relevant and requires a close expertise from different perspectives. Conflict resolution, peaceful and more importantly legal regulation of the conflict are the main goals, but the way for its achievement relies on detailed research. Additionally, it is crucial to take into consideration the region of the conflict to understand the nature and deep roots of the conflict, otherwise conflict resolution would not be achieved and transfer it to a frozen state. That is why it is necessary to understand the structure of conflicts, its principles and methodology of the research. The author proposes a comprehensive methodology that takes into account these specific features and challenges. This methodology incorporates multi-disciplinary approaches, drawing from political science, sociology, history, and international relations. In conclusion, this article contributes to the ongoing discourse on conflict studies by providing a specialized methodology that addresses the specific challenges presented by conflicts in the post-Soviet space. By recognizing the unique features of this region, researches, policymakers, and analysts can develop more informed strategies for conflict prevention, management, and resolution, ultimately contributing to peace and stability in the post-Soviet space and beyond.

KAZAKHSTAN IN EURASIAN REGIONALISM: PROBLEM STATEMENT

This article raises an important issue of Kazakhstan’s potential to transcend the traditional understanding of Eurasian regionalism, which is mainly associated with the post-Soviet space, including the Eurasian Economic Union. The authors question the broadening of the definition of “Eurasian regionalism” and assess new opportunities for Kazakhstan’s participation in the Eurasian regional process within a broader continental context. Approaching Eurasian regionalism from a new perspective allows us to consider Kazakhstan not only as a participant in the post-Soviet space, but also as a key player at the continental level. The article raises the question of Kazakhstan’s capabilities in the context of Eurasian regionalism, given its geopolitical location and economic potential; the limitations of Kazakhstan’s participation in regional initiatives such as the EAEU and SCO compared to global trends and roles in the region. The article examines the new challenge for Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries as maintaining independence in the face of changes in the geopolitical environment; the role of international cooperation and integration for Kazakhstan as a strategic element in its foreign policy and economic development. The necessity of diversity of external relations and strategic partnership for Kazakhstan in the conditions of multi-vector approach is emphasized. The article also points out the importance of Kazakhstan’s active participation in international integration processes and its role in global production chains and infrastructure projects to strengthen the economy and increase the country’s status in the global community.

ЯДЕРНЫЙ ФАКТОР В РОССИЙСКО-УКРАИНСКИХ ОТНОШЕНИЯХ В 1990-Е ГГ.

The article considers the impact of the issue of Ukraine’s denuclearization on the development of Russian-Ukrainian relations in the 1990s. It describes in detail the difficult negotiations on the withdrawal of Soviet tactical and strategic nuclear weapons from Ukrainian territory, which first took place in a bilateral format between Russia and Ukraine, and then joined by the United States. The author notes that Russia sought to maintain a monopoly in possession of that type of weaponry in the post-Soviet space. Washington was also not interested in increasing the number of nuclear states, especially in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The position of the Ukrainian side was characterized by inconsistency and contradiction. The author explains why Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear status was necessary and in the interests of all parties, including, first and foremost, Ukraine itself. In particular, the signing of the Budapest Memorandum not only helped ease tensions in Russian-Ukrainian relations in the mid-1990s, stabilized the international situation in the post-Soviet space, but also allowed Ukraine to receive international recognition and financial assistance. The article clearly refutes the thesis, quite popular in modern Ukraine, that it was possible for the country to retain a part of the Soviet nuclear arsenal after the collapse of the USSR. It was ruled out, among other things, because Ukraine did not have the technical capability to maintain such arsenal under the new conditions.

THE TOPIC OF THE UKRAINIAN GREEK CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE STUDY OF THE UKRAINIAN DIASPORA IN CANADA IN 1900–1991

The Ukrainian diaspora in Canada is one of the largest communities of Ukrainians outside of Ukraine. Only in the last hundred years has it managed to become a powerful voice for Ukrainians outside their homeland. Its voice was especially important during the interwar period and the Soviet era. Thanks to Ukrainian intellectuals, the Western world was exposed to the Ukrainian world, the resilience of the Ukrainian people, and the markers of its national identity, including the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. With the development of Ukrainian studies in Canada, the UGCC was increasingly well-represented in the scientific and information space. Between 1940 and 1980, the Ukrainian community in Canada became the voice of the repressed Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and was involved in shaping the narrative of the Church as a «martyr». The purpose of the article is to synthesize the key historiographical basis for the history of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada in 1900–1991. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that only those publications by Ukrainian scholars in Canada in which the subject of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was the key one were singled out from the significant historiographical layer of scientific literature. In addition, through the separation of publications, it was possible to determine the main stages of the development of the historiography of the UGCC among the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. The methodological basis of the study is based on the methods of critical analysis and synthesis of sources, as well as the analytical method. Conclusions. The article presents a synthesized analysis of the publications of Ukrainian diasporans in Canada on the history of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from the beginning of the twentieth century to 1989. At the same time, it is noted that the development of Ukrainian historical studies in Canada laid a solid foundation for the formation of a bibliography of Ukrainian publications and publications on Ukrainian historical topics. The Ukrainian diaspora in Canada has managed to accumulate resources for the development of historical studies. Publications initiated by Ukrainian communities, publishing houses, and organizations should be viewed as an attempt to capture memory, events, processes, and phenomena in the history of the UGCC. It was in the post-Soviet era that they became the foundation for the study of the development of historical thought in the Ukrainian diaspora.

Changes in the ethnic structure of the population of Central Asia countries in the post-Soviet period

Central Asia is the only macro-region of the post-Soviet space where population growth has been observed over the past three decades, accompanied by a significant restructuring of the ethnic structure. The purpose of the study is to identify the most significant factors that influenced the change in the national composition of the population of the countries of Central Asia that occurred in the post-Soviet era, or more precisely, in the period between 1989 and 2021. The study is based on statistical, graphical and cartographic methods. The analysis showed that the most important factor influencing the change in the ethnic structure of the population of Central Asia in the post-Soviet period was the high natural increase in the titular peoples of the countries of the macroregion, which led to a more than doubling of their numbers in their republics. The second important factor in the ethnic restructuring of the Central Asian states was the reduction in the size of the non-titular population of the republics as a result of their migration outflow and natural decline. The opposite dynamics of the titular and non-titular populations of the Central Asian republics in the post-Soviet period led to a sharp increase in the share of titular peoples in their populations. Currently, in all countries of Central Asia, the share of titular peoples exceeds 70 %, and Tajikistan can already be considered a mononational state.

“THE PAST IS IN FRONT OF US”, OR APPROACHING ONE POSSIBLE HISTORY OF BELARUSIAN THEATRE

The article navigates both the existing models of the Belarusian theatre history, challenging the narratives constructed by Soviet historiography, and the nationally oriented models that emerged during the post-Soviet era. By focusing on the decolonial methodology and performative theory, particularly the bodily approach, the author suggests a reevaluation of key concepts such as “tradition” and “experiment” as the primary categories for structuring the theatre framework concept. The central argument is that decolonizing the theatre history goes beyond the emancipation of the cultural narrative within the geopolitical binary “centre-periphery”. The issue is more complex, as it involves a mode of imagination including the emancipation/decolonization/decentralization of theatrical production methods. This approach might facilitate the emergence of multiple historical narratives.

Fundamental Ethics of P. A. Kropotkin and L. N. Tolstoy and the “New Ethics” of Postmodernism

The purpose of this article is to analyze the moral and ethical concepts of Kropotkin and Tolstoy, that became the fundamental ethics of Russian social thought in the early twentieth century. The significance of these ethics is essential for the resolution of contemporary socio-cultural problems pressing on Russian statehood in the post-Soviet era. The crisis in the spiritual sphere of Russian society has forced the issues of preserving traditional values through legislative acts and decrees. The aim of this study is to identify the cultural and philosophical foundations of ethical concepts of Russian thinkers using established paradigmatic approaches. The division of ethics into fundamental and applied, i.e. professionally oriented, is the methodological basis of our study. The novelty of the article lies in the fact that the thesis of super-relevance of Kropotkin’s and Tolstoy’s fundamental ethics today in the context of the crisis of traditional values that has embraced the whole post-Soviet space, including Russia, is argued. One of the leading developers of the concept was the postmodernist Michel Foucault, who argued that freedom is an ontological condition of ethics. Ethics is the form that freedom takes in different socioeconomic and political contexts. The general conclusion is that the main line for the ethical outlook of Kropotkin and Tolstoy was their social sharpening, which today can be seen as the antithesis of postmodernist values. For Kropotkin, the social orientation of ethics was ensured by the universality of the principle of mutual help and support in Nature and Society. For Tolstoy, it is rationalistically justified and based on the principles of solidarity and justice, based on the Christian precepts of the beatitudes. Tolstoy’s moral utilitarianism rested on the idea of the universality of the principle of non-violence in social life, on the philosophy of the social good.

ТЕЛЕВИДЕНИЕ В ПОЭЗИИ ВИКТОРА КРИВУЛИНА

The paper explores the representation of television and the television screen in the later poetry of Viktor Krivulin (1944–2001), a prominent figure in independent Russian literature. The analysis is framed within the concept of the underground culture, which highlights a creative individual’s media engagement, as well as media selection based on credibility, message relevance, and replicability. It is hypothesized that this experience significantly influenced Krivulin’s depiction of television. The study evaluates the utility of Lacan’s methodology, as interpreted in Kittler’s media theory,for analyzing Krivulin’s poems. The world he portrays is consistently one of historical devastation, where television often serves to obscure reality. However, the nature of news changes in the post-Soviet era: it is no longer cultural updates, but news from the world of media, with a peculiar self-destructive language. Not only television shapes news presentation; it also influences modes of existence in front of and behind the screen, which could be compared to pre-mortem and post-mortem states following the collapse of the culture’s symbolic body. In Krivulin’s work from the 1990s, the portrayal of television as a broadcasting medium undergoes several transformations, influenced by shifts in artistic objectives and changes in television stylistics during this period. The paper delineates a timeline of these shifts and identifies a common trajectory in this evolution. Initially perceived as an innovative force building new social and political connections between generations, television later transitioned into a part of everyday life during a period of significant change and the disruption of previous social connections between people and their former media provisions. Eventually, television began to be viewed as a distinct form of information delivery, akin to theater and dreaming, heralding a positive narrative of historical memory. At all stages, television is contrasted with radio broadcasting as the notification of a catastrophic disaster.

Unveiling the Dynamic Social Work Education Landscape in Albania

Social work has little tradition as an academic or professional path in most post-communist countries. The need for well-trained social workers is grave in all of these societies, with Albania being no exception. The aim of this paper is to review the current plans of study of the major three departments of social work in Albania using as benchmarks the Global Standards of Quality of Social Work Education and the Albanian Credit Framework. For the purposes of this paper a content analysis of the curriculum and the detailed syllabi was employed. This analysis revealed the following themes: (1) the nature of the curriculum in relation to global social work education quality standards (2) possible bottlenecks of the three curricula related to the Albanian Credit Framework and (3) compatibility level among the three curricula in the framework of the Bologna process. Results showed a satisfying level of adaptation of social work curricula with Global Standards of Quality of Social Work Education, with a reasonable division among theoretical courses of different orientations in the core theoretical curriculum. However, field practice hours were much less than the required ones, but the current Albanian Credit Framework created a bottleneck in relation to it, because it sets limits and hampers the universities in adapting and implementing the international best practices of 170-200 field placement days. It is suggested to systematically benchmark all three curricula to the Global Standards of Quality of Social Work Education and to create space for the field practice for professions like social work.

On Some Features of Teaching Mathematics in Universities of the Union Republics and Post-Soviet Countries

On Some Features of Teaching Mathematics in Universities of the Union Republics and Post-Soviet Countries

Investigating the political and regulatory context of corruption and foreign direct investment in post-Soviet countries

Investigating the political and regulatory context of corruption and foreign direct investment in post-Soviet countries