The focal point presents the findings of the project ‘Eurasia in Global Dialogue’ being carried out at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna (IWM). It is edited by Clemena Antonova at the IWM. The focal point is an extension of the earlier focal point, ‘Russia in Global Dialogue’ that ran in Eurozine and at the IWM from 2012–2018 and was edited by Tatiana Zhurzhenko. Further texts have been contributed by journals in the Eurozine network.

In collaboration with

Generation Putin
Why Russian youth has disappointed hopes for democratic change
Russia’s younger generation have failed to build upon the democratic achievements of their predecessors of the 1990s. Surveys show a reversion to Soviet-era conformism, whether as passivity and cynicism, or individualism and status obsession.

Pro-Kremlin propaganda spread through social media is causing a shift to the far-Right among Germany’s native Russian population. Nikolai Mitrokhin considers the implications for German politics in advance of the September elections.

Not content with controlling service providers and intimidating users, the Kremlin is turning to China for technology to filter Russian cyberspace. Beijing is all too willing to lend a hand.

Moscow and the far right in France and Austria
From Plan A to Plan B (and back?)
While Moscow’s support of the Front National appears to be waning in advance of the French presidential elections, its ties with Austria’s far right have been cemented by a unique agreement. What does this say about Russian strategy in western Europe?

Russian hackers were able to interfere in the US election because of public receptivity to anti-establishment messages. Investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan argue that distrust in traditional media provides fertile ground for Russian disinformation.

In a new economy, the contours of which we are only beginning to grasp – post-industrial, post-scarcity, post-work – what might the state look like? How will a society of people who do not “go to work” in a twentieth-century sense be governed? Are we in for a “new socialism” or for the dissolution of the traditional nation-state, and are these two scenarios really different? What will happen to those who do not fit into this brave new world?

"Us" and "Them"
Post-Soviet migration in Russia and (re)making symbolic boundaries
Researchers have been too quick to accept the premise that Russia is the second largest immigration state (after the United States). An uncritical stance towards this assertion leads us to ignore the specificities of the post-Soviet context of migration processes. In this context, the phenomenon referred to as “immigration” is, to a significant degree, the same thing as geographic mobility within the bounds of the former USSR. The people that belong to the two sides of this process that are referred to as host society and immigrants were until recently part of the same political and cultural community. What we have observed in the last quarter century is the process of becoming alien, of othering those who, in the memories of generations still living today, were either entirely or partially “ours”. In other words, we are witnessing an about-face in the process of constructing and reconstructing symbolic boundaries, which affects different groups in different ways.
The conflict over YUKOS, between Russia’s two most powerful men at the time, became a turning point in post-Soviet Russian history, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko. The expropriation of YUKOS opened the way to the annexation of Crimea a decade later; meanwhile, a new Russian masculinity was born.
The haunted house
Contemporary Russia between past and past
Twenty-five years after the USSR’s collapse, writes Maria Stepanova, history has turned into a kind of minefield, a realm of constant, traumatic revision. As a result, Russia is living in a schizoid present where the urgent need for a new language is far from being met.
The pressure valve
Russian nationalism in late Soviet society
In the 1970s and early 1980s, a movement of Russian nationalists attempted to reshape the USSR in a Russian-patriotic spirit. Alexander Mikhailovsky considers the reception of this movement among intellectual circles at the time and whether its legacy still plays a role in official Russian politics today.
Re-atomization
Or, the deliberate devaluation of social capital
At a certain point, every authoritarian state must choose democratization or collapse. But according to Ella Paneyakh, the Russian system is seeking a third way. It has in its sights nothing less than the social fabric: human interrelations, mutual support mechanisms and the capacity for joint action.
Towards a Greater Asia?
The prospects of a Sino-Russian entente
Would it be pure fantasy to suppose that the forging of closer ties between Moscow and Beijing really offers Russia an alternative to growing international isolation? No, says Andreas Umland. There is however plenty of ground for scepticism about the venture’s viability.
Siberian neo-regionalism has recently gained momentum, writes Stanislav Zakharkin; a development fuelled not least by widespread concern about the uneven distribution of revenues from the region’s oil and mineral resources. But is this diverse grassroots movement capable of effecting real change?
Anyone trespassing on any kind of sacred territory in Russia today must reckon with “millions of believers” taking offence and earnest calls to protect “traditional values”. This, writes Dmitry Uzlaner, is the stuff of political fetishism. And the stronger the fetish, the weaker the responsible citizen.
As Russia revives the tradition of wars of aggression on European territory, Vladimir Putin has chosen to rehabilitate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as good foreign policy. But why violate now what was for so long a Soviet taboo? Timothy Snyder explains.