ABSTRACT Since 1991, Russia has attempted to maintain its hegemonic role in the region. Although it has primarily relied on military and economic means, Russia’s actions have also been accompanied by a normative agenda. Using the Crimean intervention, we outline the basic features of this agenda. Russia maintained that its actions were guided by humanitarian concerns, which was widely rejected as disingenuous. We contend that Russia used the humanitarian frame to circulate a regional alternative to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, a zombie norm it revived from the past to shape the rules of international conduct in its immediate neighborhood.

ABSTRACT This article explores the KGB’s penetration of the transition economy by examining its self-reforms and collective practices during perestroika. A formerly classified KGB in-house journal demonstrates how Chekists adapted their work to economic liberalization. The KGB strengthened counterintelligence measures for Soviet–Western joint ventures by infiltrating active reserve officers and establishing intimate relationships with new Soviet businesses by supplying them with commercial secrets stolen from Western partners. Business and foreign trade positions became new covers for Lubyanka. These institutional arrangements, rather than the individual entrepreneurship of Chekists, paved the way for their prominence in the post-Soviet Russian economy.

ABSTRACT Global transformation of academia under “new public management” and metrics-based assessment has brought forth intense debates on the governance of science. This study investigates key values and visions of academic governance in Russia through a set of focus groups with scientists plus a nationwide survey (n = 6,166) conducted in 2019. Russian scholars defy both state pressures and grassroots self-governance (due to fundamental distrust of peers); the preservation of privacy is their key concern. Finally, we present basic self-images of science (competitive, cooperative, and mobilizational) and point out the tensions between liberalism and democracy in post-Soviet academia.

ABSTRACT The European Union is often seen as a bulwark of progressive values, including LGBTI rights. By restricting such rights, politicians thus appear to reject the EU’s fundamental principles. This paper argues, however, that anti-gender politics is often a surprisingly pro-European phenomenon. Many of its practitioners rebuff accusations of Euroskepticism. For them, rights restrictions are less an attempt to reject European integration than to redirect its trajectory. They aim to reconnect the EU with Europe’s civilizational roots. The paper illustrates this argument by analyzing the discourse actors have used to justify anti-gender policies in three countries: Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia.

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the temporary (2015) and permanent (2018) expositions of Moscow’s GULAG History Museum (GHM), and the documents surrounding its creation. The analysis demonstrates two key findings. First, focusing on the Gulag and omitting post-Gulag Soviet repression, the GHM ultimately works to historicize the former. Second, while prominently ending the permanent exposition with Stalin’s death, the GHM nevertheless downplays his role in the repression. The Gulag becomes a thing of the past, something to acknowledge––and leave behind. Stalin, however, is extracted from that past: he remains in the present, as part of the official “Great Patriotic War” memory.

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have paused the alliance of the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church. When the government announced lockdown measures and demanded that all churches cease services with the public, not all priests agreed to comply. The church-state crisis manifested in two divisions: between the Church and the state, between pragmatists and fundamentalists. We argue that although these cleavages posed a threat to the Patriarchate’s power, the Church managed to maintain the loyalty of most believers. Using individual-level data from the Values in Crisis project, the authors show that the ROC proved its loyalty to the Kremlin.

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic inevitably influences different sorts of interstate interactions, including regional integration. The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is a young regional integration bloc without experience of major external shocks. Bearing in mind the complex nature of the bloc (supranational institutions alongside high preferences for sovereignty and weak market integration), we suggest an analytical scheme to test the resilience of the EAEU to the pandemic shock. We look at collective action, solidarity embodied in bilateral and multilateral intergovernmental reactions, and market integration. Unexpectedly, the EAEU demonstrated relatively high short-term resilience in collective action and market integration, while regional solidarity was quite high at the rhetorical level but low at the level of real actions.

ABSTRACT Does the Kremlin have a coherent approach in the way it deals with the memory of the Soviet atrocities? If so, what does it consist in? In this paper, I address these questions by turning to a study of the “Russia—My History” chain of multimedia historical parks. I reconstruct the interpretation of the Soviet atrocities as it is (re)produced in the Moscow-located headquarters of the chain and the broader historical interpretation that this interpretation—at the same time statist and patriotic—is nested within. I argue that this interpretation is indicative of the Kremlin’s way of dealing with Russia’s difficult past, which consists in transforming it into a tool of ingenious political manipulation.

ABSTRACT This article explores the growing environmental activism of nondemocratic regional organizations (NDROs) by investigating the case of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), addressing the following questions: What explains the emergence of environmental regionalism in the SCO? What are its characteristics and effects? We show that China has acted as the driver of environmental regionalism in the SCO —whose members rank among the world’s top CO2 emitters— providing positive incentives for the establishment of regional environmental institutions and fostering member states’ green energy transition through the top-down deployment of Chinese financial institutions and construction companies. In so doing, China has sought to consolidate its regional leadership in Eurasia, while promoting its economic statecraft and its bid for global environmental leadership.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between institutional trust and party cues, and individual geopolitical preferences in Moldova. Based on the idea that deciding whether to join either the EU or the EAEU is a complex decision, I argue that the use of national proxies could help some Moldovans in shaping their geopolitical preferences. Using survey data (2012–2019) and multilevel logistic regression, I show that citizens who trust the national institutions tend to align with the geopolitical preferences of those in charge of said institutions. Similarly, voters tend to support the geopolitical views of their preferred political parties.