CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

The literature on Soviet politics teaches us that the lack of established, democratic procedures for leadership transitions exposed the USSR to succession crises. One might expect, then, that the authoritarian regimes dominating post-communist Central Asia would be prone to disruptive leadership transitions, and yet that has not been the case. In fact, if one leaves aside the tumultuous early years of Tajikistan’s independence, it is only in Kyrgyzstan—which boasts the region’s most competitive political environment—that one finds deeply disruptive succession crises, the latest of which is on full display this year. After a review of the transitions of power in Central Asia (including Azerbaijan) over the last quarter-century, Huskey uses, inter alia, the works of Barbara Geddes on personalism and Henry Hale on patronalism to seek to explain the political transitions paradox.

Russia’s interests in Central Asia are similar to those of China and the United States. Today, all three powers are mostly concerned with security in the region. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian troops were withdrawn from Central Asia, with the exception of those in Tajikistan and small forces on the Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan borders with China. Both Russia and China were threatened by the spillover of Islamic militancy, terrorism, and arms and drug trafficking from the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security bloc jointly led by China and Russia, now includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, and Pakistan, and is currently engaged in military, security, economic and technological cooperative efforts in Central Asia. In this talk, Maltsev discusses the current state of affairs and the development of international political cooperation in Central Asia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

On the morning of April 26, 1986, the world witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. In his lecture, Serhii Plokhii draws on new sources to lay bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of Communist party rule, the regime’s control of scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else. Today, the risk of another Chernobyl, claims Plokhii, looms in the mismanagement of nuclear power in the developing world.

In its third year of power, Poland’s far right Law and Justice party enjoys greater public support than ever before. Where other far right parties have alienated large numbers of citizens, has Law and Justice found a way to make “fascism” acceptable again? With policies including family benefits, enforced labor laws, higher wages for the working poor, a government takeover of the courts, state promotion of racism, and fanatic nationalism, Law and Justice harks back to classical notions of “national socialism,” with the modern twist of allowing an opposition to exist (though with restrictions limiting its capacities). Can it work? What are the conditions for its success? Why is the party so difficult to challenge? Can it be replicated by Trump or in western Europe? The far right no longer just threatens to take power. In Poland and Hungary it already has, even while it faces critics even further to the right. Its model, moreover, is applicable elsewhere, including the United States. Poland helps us understand the sources of the far right’s new strength, and provides hints as to its potential weaknesses.​

Conflict between states or actors belonging to different identity groups is often accompanied by sharply divergent historical narratives about responsibility for past wrongs. Indeed, shared understanding of past events is often a constituitive element of a social identity, and these diverging narratives of the past can prevent cooperation in the present. In formal models of cooperation such as the Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma, many strategies that facilitate cooperation depend upon shared beliefs about who is responsible for prior defections. Absent such agreement, these strategies are likely to perpetuate conflict rather than overcome it. In contrast, we examine alternative “blame-free” strategies that can sustain cooperation in the absence of shared beliefs about guilt for past transgressions. We present the results from a computer tournament of several strategies and show how if there are divergent perceptions, “temporary mutual punishment” is the the strategy that tends to prevail, if cooperation is possible at all. We consider this model of cooperation with a case study of the current context of U.S.-Russian relations since the Crimea crisis.

Murav’s new project, Archive of Violence: Neighbors, Creatures, and the Witness Literature of the Russian Civil War, explores the strangeness of neighborly relations, enacted both in violence and reconciliation. The talk examines both kinds of relations in one of the most important witness texts of the time, Itsik Kipnis’s 1926 Yiddish novel Months and Days (Khadoshim un teg).

A panel of UW-Madison experts discusses the nature and impact of Russian influence in U.S. elections. Faculty members from the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA) and the Elections Research Center will speak about Russian hacking efforts leading up to the 2016 presidential election, as well as what we can expect going into the 2018 midterm elections. Timeline of podcast: 0:00: Introduction. Moderator: Ted Gerber, Director, Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia & Professor of Sociology 3:16: Opening Remarks by Barry Burden, Director, Elections Research Center & Professor of Political Science 6:52: Opening Remarks by Scott Gehlbach, Professor of Political Science 13:49: Opening Remarks by Young Mie Kim, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication & Political Science 21:53: Opening Remarks by Megan Metzger, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Wisconsin Russia Project 27:55: Dialogue among panelists

The law against ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations’ (homosexuality) has operated in Russia since 2013. It legitimized homophobia, causing a wave of increased homophobia resulting in hate crimes (bashing, abuse, homicide) against people identified as lesbians, gay men or transgender. My research sought to identify the sources of data for further statistical generalization. As a result, I collected texts of court decisions on criminal law sentences of violence against members of the LGBT community. The generated data shows existing dynamics of hate crime against LGBT in Russia characterized by a dramatic growth in such crimes after the adoption of the ‘propaganda’ law. Further, narratives produced by judges demonstrate their views on different sexualities, perpetrator emotions, and other related themes. The texts of the legal sentences are powerful enunciations of juridico-political discourse supported by institutions of criminal law. Thus, many new venues of analysis exist that could be pursued to further scrutinize relations of power in Russia.

The canon of political theory rarely deals with Eastern European political thought, either as a regional category or in relation to particular thinkers. The East-West duality describes and prescribes a hermeneutic relationship that delineates a form of (subaltern) engagement with the East European other. Popescu discusses the implications of this hermeneutic relationship for how the region is conceived, including its much contested variants, like the Balkans, and how it is reflected on the study of political thought coming from the region. To illustrate the argument, she briefly invokes the example of Vaclav Havel's writings and their reception. Popescu uses this case study as a springboard to propose a reconsideration of both the study of political theory (and its canon) and, more specifically, of the East-West duality as an analytical category.

The effectiveness of property rights -- and the rule of law more broadly -- is often depicted as depending primarily on rulers' "supply" of legal institutions, overlooking the crucial importance of private sector "demand" for law. In this talk, based on his recent book Property Rights in Post-Soviet Russia: Violence, Corruption, and Demand for Law, Gans-Morse unpacks the demand for law in Russia, building on an original enterprise survey as well as extensive interviews with lawyers, firms, and private security agencies. By tracing the evolution of firms' reliance on violence, corruption, and law over the two decades following the Soviet Union's collapse, the book clarifies why firms in various contexts may turn to law for property rights protection, even if legal institutions remain ineffective or corrupt.