CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

In this lecture, Dr. Nikita Zakharov explores the political economy of media harassment in Russia by using a unique monthly dataset on the incidents of harassment of the media in Russian cities between 2004 and 2017 to establish political cycles driven by local elections. This research analyzed frequency of harassment incidents during the two months before a local election – a period that coincides with the official period of the electoral campaign. The lecture will also discuss how the effect differs with respect to the level of local election.

This talk examines Soviet nationalities policy in Central Asia through the lens of a prosopographical overview of ethnic Kazakhs within the Kazakhstan’s pre-war nomenklatura, using biographical data to provide a statistical picture of Kazakhstan’s Party elite. Analyzing those Kazakhs who served as members of the republic’s Party Bureau between 1920 and 1937—examining when and where they were born, where they went to school, and when and how they joined the Party—offers insight into the broader process of elite formation in the early Soviet period, revealing clear patterns in terms of who became a Bolshevik and what types of people achieved political success in the first two decades of Soviet rule. It also illustrates the enduring resonance of the Russian colonial presence in Kazakhstan in determining the course of revolutionary change in the republic, and indeed its political landscape across the following decades.

This talk introduces key themes from Scott Levi’s recent book on the Khanate of Khoqand, a surprisingly dynamic state that emerged over the course of the eighteenth century in eastern Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley. The lecture addresses the ways that political, economic, technological and environmental developments influenced life in Central Asia and contributed to the rise, and fall, of Khoqand. It also identifies a number of ways that Central Asians influenced the policies of their much larger imperial neighbors on the Eurasian periphery – especially Tsarist Russia and Qing China.

The past three decades are marked by substantial improvements in many Reproductive Health indicators across the countries of Central Asia. Increases in aggregate levels of knowledge, access, and practice of family planning are particularly impressive and represent substantial improvements in the health and well being of women. However, are these benefits shared equally across all women? Employing qualitative and quantitative data Cynthia traces the impact of cultural norms and structural factors on limiting the ability of rural, less educated, unmarried, and childless men and women to reap the benefits of reproductive health improvements.

When you enter to field to collect data for your dissertation or thesis, what are some basic safety precautions you need to consider? What does it mean to receive informed consent from individuals in a Tajikistani village? This short talk will delve into these and other related topics for you to consider as you prepare to enter the field. Christopher Whitsel has been involved with education in Central Asia since 1999, including teaching English in Uzbekistan, conducting fieldwork in Tajikistan, and most recently working at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. He has published several articles addressing education and inequality of access, including trends in inequality in the Soviet and Post-Soviet periods, gender differences, as other social inequalities in education. More specifically, his work highlights barriers that families face in sending their children to school and the ways that community differences constrain their decisions. In addition to his academic endeavors, Dr. Whitsel has worked with international organizations like UNICEF-Tajikistan and the Open Society Foundation on projects about education, as well as social aspects of poverty in Tajikistan.

China’s on-going policies of transforming Uyghurs have been increasing more rapidly than ever before. In this talk, Mr. Aksu discusses the main policies that the Chinese government is enforcing in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; how did state policies influence the Uyghur people, and how different are these policies from previous ones. He explores these transforming policies by providing both quantitative and qualitative examples in terms of labor transfer, language change, and the “Re-education” Camps.

Patronage is often described as the ‘glue’ that binds Central Asian patronal presidents and elites, creating strong material incentives to uphold the political status quo. With one hand, the president rewards loyal elites, giving them access to ‘the fruits of office’ and other valued resources; with the other, the president punishes wayward elites, taking away whatever benefits they have accumulated and closing off access to future ones. Yet, material conceptions of patronage-based rule are incomplete without consideration of norms–the rules and expectations governing ‘who gets what, how’ and how much. As a routinized practice, patronage entails a ‘mutual promise-keeping’: just as elites agree to comport themselves according to expectations, the president promises to do the same, enforcing patronage norms as needed. Presidential legitimacy depends in large part on how well he is able to satisfy the demands of those closest to him (patronage norm #1: differential access) while also meeting his obligations to the broader set of elites whose support he depends upon to stay in power (patronage norm #2: fair play). To do otherwise not only risks alienating a broad swath of elites, but is also likely to make the president appear weak and ineffective, a ruler who is controlled by his inner circle rather than in control of it. The cases of President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan under President Karimov illustrate the argument.

The siege of Leningrad was one of the most tragic episodes of World War II. Blockaded for almost three years, the city suffered staggering losses; perhaps as many as one million civilians died, primarily of starvation. During the war, the Soviet state covered up the extent of the losses and propagated the story of Leningrad as a “hero city.” In the presentation, I seek to explain how and why this heroic story outlasted the state that promoted it. Drawing on a variety of commemorative projects and memoirs, I show the ways in which personal memories underpinned the “official” narrative of Leningrad as a “hero city” and how the official narrative in turn offered a resource for survivors attempting to cope with and make sense of painful memories. The case of Leningrad illustrates how difficult it can be to separate the political and personal impacts of war. Recognizing the personal importance, if not internalization, of shared, ostensibly official narratives helps to explain why in contemporary Russia it has been so difficult to decouple ideology, politics, and memory.

The lecture focuses on the structure of the legal profession, the lack of professional filters, and the priority of organizational, but not professional, rules and ethics norms. The problems of a non-organized legal market and the possibility to practice law in Russian courts with neither a professional license nor a formal legal education are presented together with the current project of legal market reformation launched by the Ministry of Justice.

In the nearly two decades between the first transatlantic satellite television broadcast demonstration in 1962 and the rise of direct broadcast satellite service after 1980, the US and USSR developed two rival, intergovernmental satellite communications networks, the US-led INTELSAT and the Soviet-led Intersputnik. Yet this apparently typical story of Cold War competition and division conceals a much messier reality of interconnection, mutual influence, and shared anxieties that helped shape the future of both satellite communications and international cooperation in space from the early 1970s onward. Drawing on US and Soviet diplomatic and technical archives, interviews, and marketing and training materials, this talk explores what the history of communications satellite infrastructure can tell us about the Cold War and of the US-Soviet “space race.”