UPTAKE — Building Research Excellence in Russian and East European Studies at the Universities of Tartu, Uppsala and Kent

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The goal of the project is to increase research productivity and excellence and to promote international visibility and integration of three European universities – Tartu in Estonia, Uppsala in Sweden, and Kent in the United Kingdom -- in the field of Russian and East European Studies by creating a dynamic, comprehensive, open and sustainable framework for cooperation and transfer of knowledge. In line with the objectives of Twinning, the aim of the project is to reduce the existing gap in scientific and innovation performance between the high-performing (UK and Sweden) and low-performing member states (Estonia). The work plan envisions the launch of an ambitious new academic conference series, the organization of five international summer and winter schools, extensive inter-institutional mobility, joint supervision of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, coordinated promotion of research outputs, joint conceptualization and launch of new collaborative research projects, as well as extensive dissemination and communication measures. The expected impact of the project is a significant improvement in the overall scientific capacity of the University of Tartu in the field of Russian and East European Studies, measured in terms of high-impact publications, external research funding, and integration into relevant international research networks. Due to the regionally leading position of the coordinating institution, as well as the open and inclusive approach chosen by the consortium, the project is expected to make a significant contribution to spreading excellence in the entire Baltic region and post-communist Europe more broadly.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 123

A Tale of Two Orthodoxies: Europe in Religious Discourses of Russia and Georgia
(Routledge, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey; Kakabadze, Shota
The article seeks to analyze discourses of two Orthodox Churches—Georgian (GOC) and Russian (ROC)—from the vantage point of their various interconnections with Europe and the ensuing representations of Europe framed in religious terms. Of particular salience are relations between ROC and GOC, on the one hand, and the Roman Catholic Church, on the other, as well as the positioning of both ROC and GOC within the global community of Orthodox Churches. The analyzed political circumstances force religious hierarchs of both institutions, even if they share the similar ambivalence toward the West, to differently reproduce the image of Europe. The broader geopolitical picture puts the GOC in the position of supporting government’s foreign policy agenda which goes in opposition to the Kremlin, in spite of the fact that the former has a lot of common with the Moscow Patriarchate when it comes to criticism toward the Western liberal value systems.
A Time for Alternative Options? Prospects for the Nordic-Baltic Security Community During the Trump Era
(Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2017) McNamara, Eoin Micheál
Authoritarianism and corporatism in the Baltics
(Routledge, 2017) Kasekamp, Andres
Balancing between consolidation and cartel. The effects of party law in Estonia.
(Routledge, 2017) Pettai, Vello
Over the last decade the institutionalist study of political parties has taken a new turn. The turn has been toward the in-depth study of party law and party regulation. Such institutions ostensibly operate as uniform determinants of behavior, regardless of population size. Hence, the case of Estonia, while being small in size and population, is interesting because it has been one of the more successful post-communist party systems to consolidate over the last 20 years. The argument in this chapter is therefore that this outcome has been a combination of increasing regulation in five particular domains: constitutional provisions, electoral rules, party registration requirements, parliamentary rules, and party finance. These are profiled as they appear across a chronological overview of changes in party law and party regulation over the last 20 years.
Baltic Perspectives on the Ukraine Crisis: Europeanization in the Shadow of Insecurity
(Foundation for Good Politics, 2018) Vilson, Maili
This article reviews the policy positions of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania with respect to the Ukraine crisis – the biggest foreign policy challenge for the Baltic states since they regained independence. Ukraine dominated the Baltic foreign policy agenda from the outbreak of the crisis, because it touched upon a dimension of existential threat for the Baltic countries. While giving an overview of the main policy domains where the effect of the Ukraine crisis could be observed, this article demonstrates that the three Baltic countries adopted a comprehensive approach to security and foreign policymaking, underlining cooperation both at a national and European level. In light of this, the Ukraine crisis can be seen as a maturity test for postindependence Baltic foreign policy.
The Baltic Sea Region: practising security at the overlap of the European and the post-Soviet society of states
(2016) Linsenmaier, Thomas
The chapter ‘The Baltic Sea Region: Practicing Security at the Overlap of the European and the Post-Soviet Society of States’ puts forward an interpretative framework for understanding the political dynamics currently on display in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). It does so from the perspective of the English School of International Relations, approaching the BSR as a particular sub-set of relations, a borderland, in the wider interplay between the European and the post-Soviet regional international society. Given Russia’s presence as the ‘Other within’, events occurring in the wider constellation, such as the conflict in Ukraine, affect also Baltic Sea regionalism and the security constellation in the area. With ambiguity over Russia’s normative outlook resolved, the patterns of regional differentiation cutting across the BSR become manifest. Cooperative frameworks in the area have come under strain and patterns of securitisation increasingly diverge along the regional divide. Drawing on the conceptual apparatus of the English School, the chapter suggests understanding security practice in the BSR before the background of the interplay of two regional international societies, the European and the post-Soviet regional international society.
Belarus’s Asymmetric Relations with Russia: the Case of Strategic Hedging?
(University of Tartu Press, 2017) Preiherman, Yauheni
Belarus is a country with a commonly misunderstood foreign policy, which cannot be grasped by the classic bandwagoning-balancing dichotomy. The paper argues that under the conditions of deeply embedded geostrategic asymmetries and with a view to by-passing structural restrictions of its foreign policy, Belarus pursues strategic hedging, in particular in its relations with Russia.
Between Trump's America and Putin's Russia: Nordic-Baltic Security Relations amid Transatlantic Drift
(Royal Irish Academy, 2017) McNamara, Eoin Micheál
With the ‘return of geopolitics’ in Europe signalled in earnest by Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, this article examines the implications of DonaldTrump’s unpredictable US security policy for regional security in Northern Europe. While Trump’s public rhetoric chastising NATO creates uncertainties for Europe’s security, his administration’s policy has remained committed to NATO’s deterrence efforts. Against initial expectations for US-Russia rapprochementbased on realpolitik during the Trump era, controversies and the administration’s security policy actions have brought some unexpected discord in relations with Russia. A realist ‘grand bargain’ between Moscow and Washington that marginalises Nordic and Baltic security interests has become a remote prospect. Despite these reprieves, enhanced Nordic-Baltic security and defence cooperation is increasingly necessary. Overcoming occasional divergence in strategic preferences for effective military cooperation will ensure that the Nordic and Baltic states can strengthen regional deterrence and improve political relations with the Trump administration in an era of possible ‘transatlantic drift’.
Beyond Geopolitics: Russian Soft Power, Conservatism, and Biopolitics
(Brill’s publications, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey
This article offers a new approach to Russian foreign policy under Putin’s presidency as shifting from its ‘soft power’ model to what might be characterized through the prism of biopower. The author discusses the various meanings attached to the concept of attraction, and scrutinises the biopolitical turn in Russia as a domestic phenomenon and as a key element of Russia’s power projection abroad. It is argued that biopolitics as a power instrument can play different roles – it can be a tool to construct Russian national (and simultaneously imperial) identity and to distinguish Russia from the West, and channel for communication with conservative forces across the globe.
Biopolitical art and the struggle for Sovereignty in Putin’s Russia. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern
(Routledge, 2019) Makarychev, Andrey; Medvedev, Sergey
This article addresses the public appeal of political actionism in today’s Russia through analysis of the political art of Pyotr Pavlensky. The research uses the methodological paradigm of biopower and biopolitics, as outlined by Michel Foucault and further critically developed by Giorgio Agamben, since it helps to better understand both the oppressive nature of the Russian state, and the protest art of Pavlensky. The article seeks to unpack the struggle for the human body that has started in Russia in recent years, with the state imposing its normalizing and regulatory mechanisms upon private lives and corporeal practices of individuals, and people’s responses by re-claiming their bodies, from an open public discussion of sexuality, domestic violence and gender equality, to the radical exposure of the body by artists like Pavlensky. As the argument goes, the centerpiece of political controversy is not just the battle for the human body, but a battle for sovereignty, defining the limits of state intervention, the borders of the political community and the rights of the individual. The article asks a number of questions: how Pavlensky’s performances can be explained within the framework of the biopolitical regime of Putin’s rule? Whether Pavlensky’s use of his own body for political purposes (a “biopolitical art’ of sorts) is a response to the increased biopolitical intervention of the Russian state that has marked Putin’s third term in office? Why did political protest become corporeal? How does the individual body turn into a tool for political contestation and how does it embody collective meanings? How the politicization of the body transpires, and how an individual body can incarnate a collective body of nation?
Biopolitical conservatism and “pastoral power”: a Russia – Georgia meeting point.
(Tbilisi: Georgian Institute of Politics., 2017) Makarychev, Andrey
The paper applies the concept of biopolitics to the analysis of Russia's relations with Georgia. It highlights the centrality of Orthodoxy for Russia's "soft power" and religious diplomacy.
Biopolitics and national identities: between liberalism and totalization
(Routledge, 2017) Makarychev, Andrey
This is an introductory article to the special cluster on the biopolitical reading of nation-building in post-Soviet countries. The authors explain the advatnages of using the biopolitical approach to countries with hybrid identities, and discuss the totalizing potential of biopolitical narratives
Biopolitics and Russian Studies: An Introduction
(Brill’s publications, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey
This introductory article explains how the concept of biopolitics can be used as an analytical tool in the sphere of Russian studies. The author elucidates different approaches to the idea of biopolitics in contemporary political philosophy, and relates the extant theoretical debate to the ongoing political and academic discussions on power and identity in Russia, both from domestic and international perspectives. He claims that biopolitical vocabulary is a nuanced cognitive instrument for unpacking a plethora of social and cultural dimensions inherent to relations of power, and further conceptualizing the specificity of post-Soviet illiberal regimes.
Biopower and Geopolitics as Russia's neighbourhood strategies: reconnecting people or reaggregating lands?
(Routledge, 2017) Makarychev, Andrey
In this article, we address geopolitics and biopower as two different yet mutually correlative discursive strategies of sovereign power in Russia. We challenge the dominant realist approaches to Russia’s neighborhood policy by introducing the concept of biopolitics as its key element, which makes analysis of political relations in the post-Soviet area more nuanced and variegated. More specifically, we address an important distinction between geopolitical control over territories and management of population as two of Russia’s strategies in its “near abroad.”
Biopower at Europe’s eastern margins: new facets of a research agenda
(Routledge, 2019) Makarychev, Andrey
This special issue seeks to explore the perspectives of applying the different modalities of biopolitical analysis to four country-based case studies at Europe’s eastern margins. The ambition of this collection is to examine issues pertaining to national political, social and cultural agendas through the prism of biopolitical theorizing as broadly understood. This issue offers a specific examination of the applicability of the concept of biopolitics to research in Central Europe, Russia, and the Caucasus.
Bordering and Identity-Making in Europe After the 2015 Refugee Crisis
(Routledge, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey
Introduction to the spacial issue that presents and analyzes the state of debate on EU's immigration policies from a geopolitical perspective
Borders in the Baltic Sea Region: Suturing the Ruptures
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Makarychev, Andrey
Based on different case studies, the chapters collected in this volume contribute to the conceptualization of the BSR as a particular borderland case, for example, a complex regional formation located at the intersection of different cultural, ethnic, religious and civilizational flows and poles
Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance
(Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey; Yatsyk, Aleksandra
An edited volume in commemoration of Boris Nemtsov's contribution to Russian politics
Both in-between and out: national sovereignty and cross-border governmentality in the Euro 2012 in Lviv
(London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (New Georgaphies of Europe)., 2016) Makarychev, Andrey; Yatsyk, Alexandra
The chapter focuses on the case of Lviv as a host city of UEFA Cup in 2012, and approaches this case study from the perspective of governmentality
Bridging the divide between parent states and secessionist entities: a new perspective for conflict management?
(Routledge, 2018) Berg, Eiki
This paper departs from the contested nature of the border that separates each side in secessionist conflict – the parent state considers this as an internal administrative line; the de facto state, conversely, sees this as an international border. The argument made builds upon the theoretical aspects of the bordering practices in the current literature, and then examines three cross-border cases – Mainland China-Taiwan, Cyprus-Northern Cyprus and Moldova-Transnistria, to demonstrate different patterns of cross-border interactions and their achieved outcomes. It questions why border-crossing practices have either brought about normalization in degrees, or with a questionable value? This paper makes the conclusion that although border-crossing practices have normalized relations between adversaries, they have also simultaneously brought along self-perpetuating separation as most of the divisions still persist today. Redefining borders and facilitating cross-border interactions has only had a limited contribution to conflict management.

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