Postcommunist Belarus

Author : Stephen White
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742535558
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.5X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Postcommunist Belarus written by Stephen White and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belarus is one of the least studied European states to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In fact, few Western specialists paid much attention to its affairs during the Soviet era. Nevertheless, Belarus constitutes an important and sensitive border region between Russia and the western part of the continent. In Postcommunist Belarus, a stellar group of contributors examines the issues and the search for identity that Belarus has confronted in the period leading up to and following independence. The country is run in an authoritarian fashion by President Alexander Lukashenko and many observers, both inside and outside Belarus, would use the term "dictatorship" to describe his rule. Belarusian authorities prefer to emphasize the strong support of the people for the president and his cautious approach to economic reform. It seems unlikely that the country can hold out permanently against the wider pressures of democratization and economic reform that are transforming its neighbors. The country's situation offers political scientists many facets for comparison with established models. Belarus is grappling with challenges that are conceptual and psychological as much as they are political, economic, and social. Through new research, the contributors to Postcommunist Belarus offer an important, coherent, and comparative perspective on this little-known country.

Author : David Marples
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134411901
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Belarus written by David Marples and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In any assessment and understanding of Belarus, the key questions to address include; why has Belarus apparently rejected independence under its first president Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and sought a union with Russia? Why has the government rejected democracy, infringed on the human rights of its citizens and fundamentally altered its constitution in favour of presidential authority? Has the country made any progress toward market reforms? How have Russia and the West responded to the actions of Belarus? And what is the future likely to hold for its ten million citizens? The author's conclusions are optimistic. Belarus, he believes, will survive into the twenty-first century, but as a Eurasian rather than a European state.

Author : Bálint Magyar
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633862159
Total Pages : 713 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stubborn Structures written by Bálint Magyar and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The editor of this book has brought together contributions designed to capture the essence of post-communist politics in East-Central Europe and Eurasia. Rather than on the surface structures of nominal democracies, the nineteen essays focus on the informal, often intentionally hidden, disguised and illicit understandings and arrangements that penetrate formal institutions. These phenomena often escape even the best-trained outside observers, familiar with the concepts of established democracies. Contributors to this book share the view that understanding post-communist politics is best served by a framework that builds from the ground up, proceeding from a fundamental social context. The book aims at facilitating a lexical convergence; in the absence of a robust vocabulary for describing and discussing these often highly complex informal phenomena, the authors wish to advance a new terminology of post-communist regimes. Instead of a finite dictionary, a kind of conceptual cornucopia is offered. The resulting variety reflects a larger harmony of purpose that can significantly expand the understanding the “real politics” of post-communist regimes. Countries analyzed from a variety of aspects, comparatively or as single case studies, include Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.

Author : Margarita M. Balmaceda
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633862221
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Living the High Life in Minsk written by Margarita M. Balmaceda and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living the High Life in Minsk looks at the sources of stability and instability in post-Soviet authoritarian states through the case study of President Lukashenka’s firm hold on power in Belarus. In particular, it seeks to understand the role of energy relations, policies, and discourses in the maintenance of this power. The central empirical question Balmaceda seeks to answer is what has been the role of energy policies in the maintenance of Lukashenka’s power in Belarus? In particular, it analyzes the role of energy policies in the management of Lukashenka’s relationship with three constituencies crucial to his hold on power: Russian actors, the Belarusian nomenklatura, and the Belarusian electorate. In terms of foreign relations, the book focuses on the factors explaining Lukashenka’s ability to project Belarus’ power in its relationship with Russia in such a way as to compensate for its objective high level of dependency, assuring high levels of energy subsidies and rents continuing well beyond the initial worsening of the relationship in c. 2004. In terms of domestic relations, Balmaceda examines Lukashenka’s specific use of those energy rents in such a way as to assure the continuing support of both the Belarusian nomenklatura and the Belarusian electorate.

Author : David Marples
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134411979
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Belarus written by David Marples and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In any assessment and understanding of Belarus, the key questions to address include; why has Belarus apparently rejected independence under its first president Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and sought a union with Russia? Why has the government rejected democracy, infringed on the human rights of its citizens and fundamentally altered its constitution in favour of presidential authority? Has the country made any progress toward market reforms? How have Russia and the West responded to the actions of Belarus? And what is the future likely to hold for its ten million citizens? The author's conclusions are optimistic. Belarus, he believes, will survive into the twenty-first century, but as a Eurasian rather than a European state.

Author : Karen Dawisha
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521597326
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova written by Karen Dawisha and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-13 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Methodologies - Karen Dawisha.

Author : Bálint Magyar
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633863708
Total Pages : 834 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes written by Bálint Magyar and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-20 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a single, coherent framework of the political, economic, and social phenomena that characterize post-communist regimes, this is the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the study provides a systematic mapping of possible post-communist trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of “relational economy”; an analysis of China as “market-exploiting dictatorship”; the sociology of “clientage society”; and the instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond a cataloguing of phenomena—actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships—Magyar and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist regimes. While being the most definitive book on the topic, the book is nevertheless written in an accessible style suitable for both beginners who wish to understand the logic of post-communism and scholars who are interested in original contributions to comparative regime theory. The book is equipped with QR codes that link to www.postcommunistregimes.com, which contains interactive, 3D supplementary material for teaching.

Author : Katja Yafimava
Publisher : ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press
ISBN 13 : 3838256557
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Post-Soviet Russian-Belarussian Relationships written by Katja Yafimava and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the February 2004 gas crisis when Gazprom cut off all gas flows via Belarus, the issue of Belarus as a gas transit route was not addressed seriously despite this country’s transiting around 20% of Russia’s gas exports to Europe. The gas crisis threatened the reliability of gas supplies to Europe. It demonstrated the necessity of bringing Belarus back into focus, explaining how and why the seemingly amicable Russian-Belarussian relationship had deteriorated to such an extent, and suggesting how the problem might evolve in the future. This book shows that the reliability of the Belarussian gas transit routes is influenced by changes in the intensity of the Russian-Belarussian integration and explores whether Belarus is in a position to manage (or, indeed, survive) within the new, ‘commercial’ framework to which the gas issues had shifted following the failure to establish political union. The book predicts that the mainstay of Belarussian welfare is bound to deteriorate as Russia continues to increase its domestic gas prices at 20% annually as part of its energy strategy and in line with WTO requirements – thus, also making Belarus’s independent stance vis-à-vis Gazprom unsustainable. In order to secure gas prices at the level of, at least, Russian domestic prices, Belarus is likely to return to negotiating a joint venture operating the Belarussian transit network together with Gazprom. Yet, even if such a joint venture were to be formed, it would not eliminate the main reason of the unreliability of gas transit via Belarus – the weakness of the national economy. Therefore, unless Belarus embarks on reforms leading to substantial gas conservation, it will continue to be tempted to resort to unauthorised gas off-takes and non-payments undermining the reliability of transit.

Author : Julie Fedor
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319665235
Total Pages : 506 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus written by Julie Fedor and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection contributes to the current vivid multidisciplinary debate on East European memory politics and the post-communist instrumentalization and re-mythologization of World War II memories. The book focuses on the three Slavic countries of post-Soviet Eastern Europe – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus – the epicentre of Soviet war suffering, and the heartland of the Soviet war myth. The collection gives insight into the persistence of the Soviet commemorative culture and the myth of the Great Patriotic War in the post-Soviet space. It also demonstrates that for geopolitical, cultural, and historical reasons the political uses of World War II differ significantly across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, with important ramifications for future developments in the region and beyond. The chapters 'Introduction: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus', ‘From the Trauma of Stalinism to the Triumph of Stalingrad: The Toponymic Dispute over Volgograd’ and 'The “Partisan Republic”: Colonial Myths and Memory Wars in Belarus' are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. The chapter 'Memory, Kinship, and Mobilization of the Dead: The Russian State and the “Immortal Regiment” Movement' is published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

Author : Andrew Savchenko
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351789570
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rationality, Nationalism and Post-Communist Market Transformations written by Andrew Savchenko and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-27 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2000: A comparative analysis of market transformation in Poland, Belarus and the Baltic states with particular emphasis on cross-national variations in speed and direction of post-Communist economic reforms. While many studies tend to concentrate on the economic aspects of market reforms, analysis of the broader institutional framework is less common. This book, therefore, focuses on the influence of historical and cultural conditions on the formation of economic policy. The findings presented indicate that, far from being a purely rational process driven exclusively by considerations of economical efficiency, post-Communist market transformation is influenced by socio-political and cultural factors which are able to account for cross-national variations in speed and direction of reforms.