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Enthält Rezensionen von:‡‡Herpen, Marcel H. van: Putin's wars : the rise of Russia's new imperialism. - Lanham : Rowman and Littlefield, 2014‡‡Mendras, Marie: Russian politics : the paradox of a weak state. - London : Hurst and Company, 2012‡‡Zimmerman, William: Ruling Russia : authoritarianism from the revolution to Putin. - Princeton ...: Princeton University Press., 2014‡‡Dawisha, Karen: Putin's kleptocracy : who owns Russia?. - New York : Simon and Schuster, 2014

The oldest Russian document has been called an "immunity charter." It dates from the first half of the twelfth century. Many other immunity charters have survived and are among our most prized sources on medieval Russia. Although few date back to the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, about five hundred remain from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and a recent survey lists 1,039 for the years 1504-84. Such documents have been found from each of the sixty-three districts (uezdy) which comprised the Russian state before Ivan IV's conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, and newly discovered charters, or references to previously unknown charters, are still turning up. The terms of individual charters are usually clear, but scholars have advanced conflicting views on what these documents, taken together, really tell us about Old Russian immunities. Is one justified in claiming that such immunities even existed? If they did, two vexing questions remain.

As the ecological devastation of the former Soviet Union (FSU) becomes well known inside and outside of the Newly Independent States, central and regional government officials, domestic environmental groups, and foreign governmental and nongovernmental organizations are seeking to remediate environmental damage in the midst of economic and political upheaval. In Russia, the search for a sustainable environmental policy rests on a founda tion of five basic parts: the extent to which new policy builds on past Soviet experience; the adjustment to democracy and a market economy; the balance of power among leading actors in the Russian polity; definition of a new role in policymaking for environmental action groups; and immediate steps to remediate the worst environmental "hot spots." In many ways, the debate over how best to craft a long-term environmental policy mirrors historically familiar debates over the role of the West in Russian affairs. This author suggests that U.S., European, and other foreign actors can play a vital role in assisting Russian environmental protection and remediation plans.

This review analyzes the most essential features of the state migration policy of modern Russia. The attention is focused on the religious factor, ethnopolitics, regulation of external labor migration; adaptation and integration of Moslem migrants.

In this timely and incisive book, Sergei Medvedev argues that Russia's war in Ukraine was not merely a whim of Putin's obsession: rather, it was the result of two decades of authoritarian degradation and post-imperial ressentiment, a culmination of Putin's regime and of Russia's entire imperial history. Building on his prize-winning book The Return of the Russian Leviathan, Medvedev argues that it was not only Putin that started this war, but Russia itself, which, by and large, has imagined and embraced it with enthusiasm, seeking to relive its own military glory and colonial past.

Putin's war is a "special operation" against modernity. The invasion has been directed against Ukraine, but the war has a broader target: the modern world of climate awareness, energy transition and digital labor. By trading oil and gas, promoting Trump and Brexit, spreading corruption, boosting inequality and homophobia, subsidizing far-right movements and destroying Ukraine, Putin's clique aims at suppressing the ongoing transformation of modern societies. Alexander Etkind distinguishes between Russia's pompous, weaponized paleomodernity, on the one hand, and the lean, decentralized gaiamodernity of the Anthropocene, on the other. Putin's clique has used various strategies – from climate denialism and electoral interference to war and genocide – to resist and subvert modernity. Working on political, cultural and even demographic levels, social mechanisms convert the vicious energy of the oil curse into all-out aggression. Dissecting these mechanisms, Etkind's brief but rigorous analyses of social structuration, cultural dynamics and family models reveal the agency that drives the Russian war against modernity. This short, sharp critique of the Russian regime combines political economy, social history and demography to predict the decolonizing and defederating of Russia.