Series of lectures and seminars analysing political, social, economic and security developments in contemporary Russia
The Centre for EU-Russia Studies (CEURUS) at the University of Tartu invites you to attend a series of lectures and seminars analysing political, social, economic and security developments in contemporary Russia. Please find detailed information below. All events are in English and are open to everyone interested in Russian society and politics.
October 18th: Prof Andrey Makarychev (University of Tartu) and Prof Andre Mommen (University of Amsterdam) will present their new co-edited volume entitled Russia’s Changing Economic and Political Regimes: The Putin years and afterwards (Routledge 2013). At the full-day seminar, the authors of individual chapters from Russia, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland, as well as other leading experts on contemporary Russia will reflect on Russian political trajectories under the current regime, its cultural landscape and economic prospects.
The book deals with the social, ideological and economic changes that have occurred in Russia since 2000, a period also called the Putin era. The large-scale demonstrations and protest actions in Russia that erupted immediately after the State Duma election on 4 December 2011 illustrate the deep crisis of the model of governance instituted by Vladimir Putin more than a decade ago. The book address a number of questions pertinent to the discourses of power and resistance, the new social media, the new urban middle class, cross-border and trans-national projects, energy security, and Russia’s relations with its neighbors (the EU, Ukraine, China and others).
The seminar will be held on October 18th, 9:30 to 17:15 at Domus Dorpatensis (Raekoja plats 1 / Ülikooli 7). Additional information, including a detailed programme, is available here: http://ceurus.ut.ee/seminars-lectures/book-presentation-seminar/
To participate, please register at this site: http://www.rti.ut.ee/en/book-presentation by October 15th.
October 24th: Alexander Golts, an independent journalist and an expert on Russian military and security affairs, will give a public lecture entitled “Military reform in Russia: causes, contradictions and prospects.” The lecture is held from 10.15 to 11.45 at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Education (Lossi 36-103).
Lecture abstract: Over the last twenty years in Russia there have been five attempts to reform the military; all of them failed. What is the reason? Is there any hope for the success of the most recent and the most radical of them, launched by former Defense Minister Serdyukov? Will the reform come into conflict with the interests of the most powerful people in Russia, including Vladimir Putin?
Mr. Golts is deputy editor-in-chief of the website ej.ru and a columnist for The Moscow Times. He has previously been deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine Yezhenedelnyi Zhurnal, military editor for the newsmagazine Itogi, and a member of the editorial board of Krasnaya Zvezda. In 2002 and 2003, he was a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. His publications include Russia's Armed Forces: 11 Lost Years (Zaharov, 2004) and Militarism: The Main Obstacle to Russia's Modernization (Liberal'naya Missiya Foundation, 2005). In 1978 he received a master's degree in journalism from Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Alexander Golts’s visit to Tartu is co-organised by the Baltic Defense College and the Centre for EU-Russia Studies at the University of Tartu.
October 24th: Prof. Andrey Makarychev (University of Tartu) and Dr. Alexandra Yatsyk (University of Kazan, Russia) will give a public lecture on “Global Sports, International Norms and World Politics”. The lecture will take place from 12:15 to 13.45 (Lossi 36 – 306). It addresses sports mega-events from the viewpoint of glocalization, i.e. meeting points of global normative trends, on the one hand, and regional / urban strategies of branding and identity-making, on the other. In its empirical part, the lecture will focus on experiences of Euro-2012 (Ukraine) and Universiade-2013 (Kazan).
Dr. Alexandra Yatsyk is Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism, Institute of Mass Communication & Social Sciences, at the University of Kazan. Her research focuses on sociology of urban transformations, civil society engagement in contestation of urban spaces, cultural dimensions of mega-events, local identity discourses and gender studies. For more information, see: http://www.lektorium.tv/speaker/?id=3193
November 6th: Prof. Andrey Tsygankov, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at San Francisco State University will give a public lecture entitled “Foreign Policy and Qualitative Discourse-Analysis: Understanding Russia’s Shift toward the Language of Civilization.” The lecture takes place on November 6th, 14.15 to 15.45 at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Education (Lossi 36-304)
Lecture abstract: Scholars of discourse-analysis have recently turned to studying civilizations and languages of civilization. Recently, prominent officials in Russia have begun to advocate the vision of their country as a civilization in the world of competitive cultural entities. The Kremlin’s civilizational discourse should be understood in the context of resistance to the United States’ spread of democratization and fear of radicalized Islam.
Prof. Tsygankov teaches Russian/post-Soviet affairs, comparative politics and international relations at San Francisco State University. He is a graduate of Moscow State University (Candidate of Sciences, 1991) and University of Southern California (Ph.D., 2000). He has published widely in western and Russian academia and is the author of Russia's Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Whose World Order? Russia 's Perception of American Ideas after the Cold War ( University of Notre Dame Press , 2004), and Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin: Honor in International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2012), along with many articles.
For more information, see: http://politicalscience.sfsu.edu/andrei-tsygankov
All are welcome, no pre-registration is required!