Russian Politics and Law, January 2010 Table of Contents

Vol. 48 No. 01/January-February 2010 Dmitry Gorenburg: “Center-Periphery Relations After Ten Years of Centralization: Editor’s Introduction” p. 3 Aleksandr Libman: “Cycles of Decentralization in the Post-Soviet Space” p. 8 Alla E. Chirikova: “Regional Elites in Contemporary Russia: Conceptual Discussions and Political Practice” p. 21 Alla E. Chirikova: “The Power Vertical in the Assessments of Regional Elites: the Dynamics of [...]

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Center–Periphery Relations After Ten Years of Centralization

In the 1990s the dominant paradigm that governed studies of center- periphery relations in Russia focused on the weakness of the central state and the perception that it might result in the breakup of the Russian Federation, much as state weakness in the late Gorbachev period led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Then Vladimir Putin became president and [...]

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The Future of the Sevastopol Russian Navy Base

The following article recently appeared in the Russian Analytical Digest.[1] Some of the research for this article was carried out under the auspices of CNA Strategic Studies. The recent election of Victor Yanukovich as president of Ukraine has brought the future status of Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol back to the forefront of Russian-Ukrainian bilateral [...]

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Russian military threat assessment stays old school

I recently came across an interesting article in Voennaia Mysl, the most authoritative official Russian military publication on matters of doctrine and military planning. The title translates to “Political-military aspects in the formation of Russian interests on the southern geopolitical vector.” This article, written by Colonel Maruev and Lt. Colonel Karpenko and published last November, [...]

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Stratfor’s expanding ignorance

Stratfor, the company that provides  ”global intelligence” to the world, seems to have completely lost its collective mind. It is currently in the middle of publishing a four part series on “Russia’s Expanding Influence.” (The reports are only accessible through the website to subscribers, though they are being reprinted in Johnson’s Russia List.) No author [...]

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A French perspective

I recently received a communication from a French expert on the Russian Navy that provides an interesting (and I think quite accurate) perspective on the Mistral sale. As you know, France is about to agree to sell four Mistral LHDs to Russia. Many see it as a signal to Russia that “this is ok” to [...]

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