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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES
Vol. 63, No. 8, October 2011, 1501–1524
Reviews
Michael McFaul, Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can. Lanham,
MD, New York & Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010, xii þ 288pp., £16.95 h/b.
THIS IS A BOOK WHICH COMBINES EXPLICIT POLICY ADVOCACY to the government of the United
States with an academic analysis of democracy. The latter is intended to make a case for the
legitimacy of the former—the promotion of democracy and its sponsorship abroad. The work is
written for general readers, American policymakers and specialists on democracy promotion.
McFaul describes himself as a political activist—promoting democracy—and also as a political

scientist, committed to ‘rigorous social science standards’ (p. xi). The work reveals an uneasy
tension between academic analysis and policy advocacy, as the latter requires selecting and
interpreting facts and opinions in support of policy priorities.
The early chapters of the book outline and criticise George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda and
its failure as perceived by American opinion. McFaul acknowledges that the policy of democracy
promotion failed in many countries and had significant democratic reversals in others; he
criticises the use of military force for democracy promotion and the policy of regime change. He
concedes that many Americans doubt whether democracy promotion furthered US interests and
contend that it did not enhance security. He recognises that many consider the threat of
terrorism and nuclear proliferation to be of more importance; and he accepts that many argue
that nation building at home in the USA should take priority over its export.
McFaul, nevertheless, argues that under the right circumstances and with the right policies,
the USA can and should promote democracy. ‘Democracy’, it is claimed, gives rise to ‘better
government, more security, and economic development’ (p. ix). Sponsoring democracy, he
asserts, will strengthen not only American values but will also make Americans ‘safer and
richer’. An objective of the work is to ‘rebuild the international legitimacy and domestic support
needed to sustain democracy promotion for the long haul’ (p. 24). Two final chapters detail
changes needed in the policy of the United States and ‘the actions required to further
internationalise democracy promotion efforts’ (p. 24). As ‘special assistant’ to President Obama,
the author indicates intellectual trends which might influence American foreign policy.
The case for democracy promotion, as set out by McFaul, is dependent on the advantages of
democracy as a form of government to citizens as well as on the returns that democracy
promotion abroad may bring to the United States. The arguments in the book are predicated on
systems of government defined as electoral democracies and particularly the conditions
necessary to promote pluralist liberal democracy; and frequent use is made of indexes
constructed by Freedom House. However, such measures are more than conditions for the
functioning of democracy as a political method, they define the type of society which can support
it. This leaves the author open to the criticism that he privileges a certain type of pluralistic
capitalist society and rejects other types of ‘democracy’, which are considered by their advocates,
and other commentators, as equally valid. ‘Sovereign’ democracy and various forms of socialist
and communist democracy are ruled out of the discussion as being constitutive of autocratic
regimes.
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/11/081501-24 Ó 2011 University of Glasgow

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2011.601130
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Whereas many political scientists claim that electoral democracy as a political method does
not entail any particular social or political ‘outputs’, McFaul’s endorsement of democracy
promotion as a policy for the US government is based on the positive effects of democratic
systems. These include economic development and democratic peace.
McFaul skilfully and persuasively marshals his argument by reference to autocracies which
suffer economic and social dislocations. There are also autocracies which have high levels of
growth (South Korea, the Soviet Union for many periods and contemporary China). While
democracies can lead to economic growth, the relationship is not really very strong and McFaul,
following the empirical study by Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheubub and Limongi, correctly concedes
that there is no consistent relationship between regime type and growth.
Similar doubts may be raised about the implications of democratic peace. As McFaul points
out, one of the major findings of contemporary political science is that democracies ‘do not go to
war with each other’ (p. 58). He then concludes that if the number of democratic regimes
increases, then the world will be safer for Americans, thus making democracy promotion a
legitimate political goal. What is overlooked here is that democracies become involved in
conflicts with non-democracies and that there has been a trend for democracies to use surrogate
forces to fight in foreign internal wars. While McFaul documents (and criticises) US use of
military interventions and covert actions, these are not put in the context of the democratic peace
argument. If we consider countries which have been involved in wars, between 1946 and 2003,
the top three countries were democracies: the United Kingdom with 21 armed conflicts, France
with 19 and the USA with 16, followed by Russia (Soviet Union) with nine, Australia with seven,
Netherlands with seven and Israel with six. Moreover, African, Latin American and socialist
societies also have not conducted wars within themselves, but this hardly makes them a recipe
for Western nations to copy.
Study of the correlates of democracy has neither revealed very positive relationships with
growth and non-violence, nor with equality and happiness, which are not discussed in the book.
The criticism remains that the causal factors, even correlations where they do exist, may have
nothing or little to do with democratic mechanisms, but with other factors, such as the extent of
the market, type and distribution of property, culture, effects of globalisation and the
concomitant rise of multinational corporations. Reduction of poverty and promotion of equality
are, as McFaul suggests, desirable policies, but they are more likely to be achieved through
social-democratic or socialist policies, which promote employment, provide state transfers and
curb income from property, than the installation of democracy as such.
McFaul points to the absence of alternatives to ‘democracy’ in the modern world, but it makes
no sense at all to cite cross-national public opinion polls on the ubiquity of ‘democracy’ and thus
to legitimate the US exporting its version of democracy to others. Conceptions of ‘democracy’
vary greatly between respondents both within and between different countries and their ideas of
‘democracy’ refer to different types of regimes (such as ‘sovereign’ democracy) or simply to a
good life. ‘Democracy’, unlike clean air, is a contested concept and cannot be promoted by the
United States as an ‘international public good’ (p. 71).
McFaul calls for a reversal of policies pursued by George W. Bush. Readers may wonder how,
if US democracy is such a superior system of government, as claimed in the book, such policies
came into being in the first place. He also recommends a greater concern with equality, justice
and ‘less of the reverential focus on the individual prevalent in Anglo-American thinking’ (p.
154). Clearly many of McFaul’s proposals would have widespread support if they were
altruistically applied; but what this book does not answer is the question of whether ‘democracy
promotion’ is not a cloak for something else. As he points out:
Rarely can American presidents justify the sustained occupation of another country in the
name of preserving the balance of power or advancing narrow American geo-strategic
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interests such as access to oil or other strategic resources. Instead, the post-war objective must
be a moral one, which usually involves the creation or restoration of democratic
institutions . . . [Bush’s] quest to promote democracy inside Iraq after American forces
occupied the country is an old American tradition. (p. 156)
Many countries exposed to American ‘democracy promotion’ contend that the process occludes
American political and economic interests, and in post-Soviet space advances the installation of
neoliberal policies—exposure to the world market, privatisation and de-statisation.
Readers will find this a provocative, erudite and well written book. (The copy sent for review
was spoiled by the omission of some references in Chapter Five.) It is much stronger on policy
recommendations for the Obama administration than on the political science of democracy
promotion. Though partisan in argument, the author raises counter-propositions and in doing
so gives the reader useful references to other views. The conclusions are likely to be valuable for
proponents of democracy promotion, but are unlikely to convert many sceptics.
University of Cambridge DAVID LANE Ó 2011
Donald Filtzer, The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia: Health, Hygiene, and Living
Standard, 1943–1953. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010,
xxx þ 380pp., £65.00 h/b.
THIS FASCINATING BOOK EXPLORES URBAN LIVING CONDITIONS IN Russia, mainly in the post-
Second World War period, starting the account with the war years and ending in the mid-1950s.
Even the majority of Soviet history specialists cannot imagine today the conditions in which
Soviet citizens actually lived during this period. In this detailed study, Filtzer explores cesspits
and outhouses, problems of sewage systems, hygiene, breastfeeding, diets and nutritional
standards to name but a few topics. The State Sanitary Inspectorate and its local branches, the
Ministry of Health of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR) and the Central
Statistical Administration provide him with a wealth of detailed descriptions in regular reports
and a vast amount of statistical data. In addition the reader is provided with comparisons to
Western Europe and North America, demonstrating that Stalin’s Russia was as unhealthy, badly
fed and unhygienic as Victorian Britain or Wilhelmine Germany.
The study is organised into five chapters exploring the history of hygiene, medicine and
medical care. Filtzer writes highly readable prose, although occasionally he goes into too much
detail. For a labour historian the author has built up an admirable knowledge of medicine,
hygiene and nutrition, which he shares in an adequate and comprehensible way for readers who
might have heard of some diseases or parasites for the first time. His line of argumentation is well
illustrated by a wealth of tables and graphs and an index makes the work easily useable. Filtzer
takes a sample of obviously fairly representative cities and towns in various oblasti of the
Russian SFSR including Moscow, which—with the exception of some places in the Moscow
oblast’—were not directly affected by war or German occupation. Still, it is clear that the war
had an enormous impact on the Soviet hinterland.
The first chapter looks at problems of sanitation. How could cities be kept clean without
proper sewage systems or dirty outhouses? Only in Moscow were the majority of households
connected at all—the lack of decent waste removal being a legacy of war. Filtzer argues
convincingly that the Soviet state had underinvested in this sphere for a long time and the urban
population paid the price. Instead of investment, regular campaigns aimed at cleaning the towns
were held. The focus of Chapter Two is the question of clean water which again was worsened by
the war. Few urban households possessed the luxury of indoor water and during a harsh winter
1504 REVIEWS
outdoor pumps could freeze. In addition, the lack of investment and the enormous pollution by
industrial plants increased problems.
The third chapter deals with questions of personal hygiene and the control of epidemics. Due
to the lack of indoor water, the public bathhouse—the banya—played an important role in
keeping oneself clean, which became more difficult in the 1940s because of chronic shortages of
soap. In many towns people could clean themselves properly only every second or third week.
Washing one’s clothes without indoor water and too few public laundries could be hard work; in
addition the Russians had few clothes to change at all. The state did not invest enough into
public health but attempted, by lots of interventionist measures, to control diseases rather than
to improve the quality of life. Filtzer argues that the Soviet state used its resources for heavy
industry, but he could have also explored the impact of the beginning of the Cold War and the
continuation of high defence spending since the mid-1930s. Nevertheless, the state was able to
reduce mortality rates in the long run.
Chapter Four explores the topics of diet and nutrition and delivers a welcome addition to our
knowledge of post-war famine. It can be definitively stated that the poor were hit most severely
and Filtzer draws interesting comparisons with other famines. The author underlines his
argumentation with a lot of statistical material. Unfortunately, he does not make an attempt to
calculate life expectancy at birth for single towns or regions, which would have illustrated the
crisis well and would be possible with the data he uses. In the fifth chapter, infant mortality is the
centre of attention. The Soviets could improve this situation. Certain factors, like progress in
living conditions and nutrition, which had led to a similar development in Western Europe
nearly half a century earlier, were virtually absent, and thus, while the USSR was lagging behind
and improvement came slow, at least the country could copy methods which had already been
successful in the more developed world.
In general this is a very convincing and readable book. Even experts on the post-war period in
the Soviet Union will learn a lot about everyday life in those years. Sometimes the author uses
too many nearly identical examples and statistics to support his arguments. Unfortunately,
Filtzer does not attempt to give the Russian urban population a real face by using some ego-
documents like diaries or personal letters; instead he employs statistics and bureaucratic reports.
This very small critique aside, the book is an outstanding piece of scholarship broadening our
understanding of the post-war years in Russia.
University of Tartu OLAF MERTELSMANN Ó 2011
Vladimir Gel’man & Cameron Ross (eds), The Politics of Sub-National Authoritarianism in
Russia. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010, xviii þ 230pp., £55.00 h/b.
THE 12 CHAPTERS IN THIS EDITED VOLUME ENVISION SUB-NATIONAL POLITICS and

governance in Russia as internally different, competitive, and changeable while externally
monolithic, authoritarian, and subservient under their own regional political leadership and
elites and the national government in Moscow. Russian regional and local government has
evolved into a particular type of sub-national authoritarianism; from a historical perspective,
Russian sub-national authoritarianism is a by-product of the Soviet communist era, relatively
unchanged in the 1990s under Yel’tsin, and the recentralisation of control in the past decade
under Putin. From a comparative perspective, Russian sub-national authoritarianism is
similar to political party machines like those in the less democratic past of countries like the
United States and Italy but potentially affected in its future by the equivalent internal,
national, and external factors which caused the eventual democratic transformation in these
countries.
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Russian sub-national authoritarianism has changed over the past two decades. Axes of
liberalism and authoritarianism are conceptualised among regions with specific indicators to
differentiate them over time. Non-governmental organisations have continued to play a
somewhat active if reduced role since the 1990s in areas of public policymaking, particularly in
regions where they have been encouraged or just co-opted by political regimes in the regions.
The variable stance of regional elites towards NGOs stems from the federal centre’s ambiguous
signals on how they are supposed to interact with NGOs. The role of big businesses in Russian
regions has varied over time, dependent on their particular ties to regional authorities, national
macroeconomic conditions, and the policies of the federal state, but also determined by
differences in regional characteristics and the particular type of business involved. Three
alternative types of patronage and clientelism are illustrated by the pragmatic calculations made
by Putin in his reassertion of central control over three different Russian regions. Putin adapted
to each region’s unique political circumstances as a strategy in the course of instituting a new
form of national managerial patronage with professional managers and administrators
appointed by political leaders throughout Russia. In one of the most intriguing chapters in
the book, Russian regions are politically differentiated by their cultural non-conformism, an
historical legacy among some traced to the settlement patterns by evangelical German
Protestants from the eighteenth century.
One important distinction among the 83 Russian sub-national locales is the 26 ethnic enclaves.
The enclaves with the most non-Russian ethnic populations statistically have voted in much
higher percentages than any other locales in elections for the national leadership and their
political parties over the past two decades. This has been a trade-off of genuine federal reform
for deference and loyalty by their ethnic leaders manufacturing these favourable electoral
outcomes in exchange for their autonomy. It is a trade-off fraught with uncertain implications
for ethnic relations and political stability particularly now with the replacement of the political
leaders in many of these same ethnic enclaves over the past year. Uncertainty also arises because
ethnic republics with the richest natural resources, like Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Sakha,
took advantage of their privileged status with the central government to privatise their
economies under local families and political clans in the 1990s under Yel’tsin. The same
republics, however, have found their economic resources renationalised through ownership
takeover by national economic conglomerates in the past decade under Putin.
Different, internally competitive, and changeable, sub-national Russian politics and govern-
ance are still unlikely to evolve very soon into real civil society, political pluralism, and
democratic institutions. Russian civil society detailed in responses to surveys reveals Russian
values in the sub-national locales unsupportive of core democratic principles like the positive
tolerance of minorities by the majority. Value differences among Russian regions at their worst
only predict the potential for non-Russian ethnic minorities and non-whites at universities being
attacked or even murdered by roving gangs. Ominously, the greatest probability for anti-minority
violence to occur exists in the otherwise cosmopolitan federal cities of Moscow and St Petersburg.
Russian political parties are merely extensions of local competing and powerful economic
elites, unlikely to consolidate into legitimate and effective institutions for voters to choose their
representatives and mayors. Candidates switch parties solely dependent on the perceived
advantage for them to win seats and influence over economic assets. Even national party and
electoral reforms over the past decade intended to increase central control over parties and
regional elites have produced the opposite effects. The reforms have only intensified internal
party conflict and competition on the regional level among economic elites. Elites scramble to
finance the local branches of the few remaining nationally-registered parties, run their own
candidates often against members of the same political party, and bribe to assure their slots on
proportional representation party lists for deputy seats on the regional assemblies and local
councils.
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The only change has been to make Russian voters even more disaffected, further confirming
the view that the entire electoral process is merely a contest among economic elites with little
personal benefit for themselves. Voters were already disillusioned by the wholesale manipulation
and falsification in regional and local elections, analysed in two other chapters of the book and
termed nothing more than a farcical ‘electoral authoritarianism’ (p. 188). The national
leadership only seems to be cynically encouraging the further alienation of Russian voters by the
current national reform movement to replace the direct election of almost all Russian mayors
with city managers appointed by city councils, dominated by economic elites and consistent with
the suspension of elections for all 83 sub-national leaders since late 2004.
The chapters from these various frameworks of analysis provide historical, statistical,
theoretical, and comparative insights by some of the most knowledgeable Western and native
Russian scholars. The ultimate political future of Russia will be determined by the uncertain
trajectory of changes in the regions and locales. Individual chapters will be widely cited. The
book as a whole should be appraised as a major contribution in comprehending Russia
politically in this second decade of the twenty-first century.
Iowa State University JOEL C. MOSES Ó 2011
Jamie Miller, Soviet Cinema: Politics and Persuasion under Stalin. Kino: The Russian Cinema
Series. London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010, xvi þ 222pp., £49.50 p/b.
IN THE PERIOD PRIOR TO THE INTRODUCTION OF MASS TELEVISION IN the 1960s, cinema played
a central role in the Soviet Union’s political communications network. The film industry,
according to Jamie Miller, became one of the regime’s primary sources in legitimising and
protecting ‘communist ideology, power and—most importantly—the reality they had given rise
to’ (p. 13). Cinema played ‘a fundamental role, not only in politically educating and moulding
the new man, but also in showing ordinary people that their feats and sacrifices were in their own
interests and the interests of society as a whole’ (p. 13).
The author provides an excellent overview of the Soviet cinema industry in the late 1920s
and 1930s. His book contains eight thematic chapters describing and analysing the evolution
of the film administration and industry development (headed by Boris Shumyatsky, Semyon
Dukelsky, and Ivan Bolshakov in this period), censorship, the purges, how the authorities set
film themes, and the emergence of cinema unions and societies and film education and
training. Miller concludes his book with an excellent overview of the development of two film
studios, Mezhrabpomfilm and Mosfilm, and with an analysis of a small number of prominent
films and filmmakers. His chapter on the purges, the threat of political violence, and how
they influenced the film industry in the late 1930s, is the most thorough and significant one in
the book.
The author examines Soviet cinema in the context of the political history of the Soviet Union,
especially after the first All-Union Conference on Cinema, held from 15 to 21 March 1928, under
the auspices of the party’s central committee. This meeting demanded that movies should
provide communist enlightenment, but in a form intelligible to the masses. In the wake of the
Soviet ideological contortions in the 1920s and 1930s, this goal remained difficult (if not
impossible) for Soviet filmmakers to implement.
As Miller admits, most people were not interested in experimental or ‘intellectual’ cinema.
Instead, they wanted action, adventure, love, romance and light comedy. A number of
filmmakers did successfully fuse politics and mass entertainment in the 1930s, but the party’s
excessive politicisation of the film industry ‘undermined the potential for the development of a
truly popular cinema that would engage the ordinary Soviet citizen’ (p. 154).
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Due to the purges and the increased centralisation of the film industry, the number of
Soviet feature films steadily declined in the 1930s and 1940s. As the party placed more
emphasis on the contents of a film’s ideological message than on its entertainment value, the
authorities intervened often, holding up the production of films. Instead of creating 500
feature-length films per year in 1932, as Shumyatsky hoped, the Soviet Union produced only
nine by 1951.
According to Miller, these unintended consequences followed in the wake of the party’s
adherence to a set of unspoken assumptions, which the author terms ‘the Bolshevik defensive
mentality’ (p. 6). This attitude emerged during and after the civil war period and it largely
reflected ‘the gap between what the Bolsheviks wanted to achieve and what the structural
realities allowed them to achieve’ (p. 6).
After the Bolsheviks seized power and gained control, their leaders understood that they
lacked a substantial political legitimacy within Russia, a country too economically backward to
serve as a foundation for a socialist society. In addition to these political and structural
problems, the Bolshevik leadership feared capitalist intervention, if not invasion.
In response to these political, structural, and international pressures, the Soviet regime
adopted ‘defensive measures not unlike those adopted during a war’ (p. 12). This defensive
mentality fuelled the party’s efforts to centralise its power, to crush all real and potential
enemies, and to build the first socialist state by means of collectivisation and industrialisation at
breakneck speed at the cost of millions of lives. Even when this rigid revolutionary worldview
did not produce the desired results, the regime retained its failing policies, in cinema as well as in
other fields. Until the start of Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure as the party’s general secretary in
1985, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union felt that the Soviet public would interpret any
openness to new ideas as an admission of political defeat.
Miller’s book is well argued and well written. Although it often refers to film-related events
and trends in the non-Russian republics, it concentrates on policies and production in Moscow.
Based on Soviet archival sources and secondary works produced in the USSR, Russia, the
United States, and Europe, it provides an excellent introduction not only to the cinema in the
Soviet Union in the 1930s, but also to Soviet politics in this convulsive period.
University of Alabama at Birmingham GEORGE O. LIBER Ó 2011
Anders Åslund, The Last Shall Be the First: The East European Financial Crisis. Washington,
DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2010, xvi þ 136pp., $21.95 p/b.
THIS IS A TIMELY AND MUCH NEEDED BOOK ON THE RECENT ECONOMIC CRISIS in Eastern
Europe, more specifically the 10 new Eastern European members of the European Union. As the
title reveals, the author argues that this crisis, instead of tossing Eastern Europe behind in
economic and political development, has actually revealed the region’s inner strength and
resilience, ultimately leading to closer convergence within the European Union as a whole.
In the second chapter, the narrative of the causes of the crisis and its development is provided.
The book argues that current account deficits not financed with foreign direct investment
inflows are the best explanatory factors for the region’s problems. According to Åslund, the
recent experience in Eastern Europe calls into question the assumption that financial
development is beneficial for long-term economic development. Describing the crisis resolution
in Chapter Three, the author provides a more detailed account of each country’s experience.
This chapter also introduces some innovative ideas. In particular, Åslund notes that the recent
experience in Eastern Europe has cast doubts on the accepted claims about the virtues of
presidential, stable political systems. Instead, the book claims that in fact political
1508 REVIEWS
‘fragmentation caused little harm and political instability was largely positive, facilitating swift
improvement of executives’ (p. 32).
The following chapters focus on several important aspects of the crisis. Åslund manages to
highlight the most important elements of recent developments, including the exchange rate issue
(Chapter Four), the banking crisis that was avoided (Chapter Five), as well as some aspects of
international cooperation (Chapter Six). All of these issues are key to understanding what took
place in the new EU member countries in the midst of financial and economic turmoil. In
Chapter Six, the author provides an interesting evaluation of the European Central Bank,
criticising its activities preceding the crisis and during it. The final chapters of the book present a
comparison between the Eastern European and the eurozone crises. The book argues that ‘old’
Europe has been much less successful in dealing with the crisis, although it eventually managed
to re-focus efforts and started implementing similar adjustment policies as those in the ‘new’
Europe. Therefore, in the author’s opinion, following the crisis, ‘Western Europe will have to
learn from Eastern Europe, thus erasing the current division between first-class and second-class
members in the European Union’ (p. 113).
The book’s strengths definitely include its broad and at the same time concise coverage of the
major important issues in recent developments. The book succeeds in achieving a nice balance
between providing a description of the events and broader causal explanations and comparisons.
Åslund is particularly successful in highlighting the ways in which Eastern Europe has
challenged conventional wisdom, in particular concerning the interrelated issues of the exchange
rate regime and individual countries’ ability to implement very harsh austerity measures. More
specifically, ‘the greatest surprise was that the worst-hit countries—Latvia, Lithuania, and
Estonia—were not forced to devalue, contrary to the claims of a broad chorus of American
economists’ (p. 112). Moreover, ‘many Western observers claimed that such big expenditure
adjustments would be politically and socially impossible’, but ‘democracy persevered, and in fact
social unrest and even populism have been minimal’ (p. 7).
The approach undertaken in this book—a broad overview of a diverse region—perhaps
inevitably results in overlooking certain differences within the new EU member states. Take the
case of the Baltic states, for instance. Åslund is right to highlight the puzzling way in which the
three countries have been able to deal with the crisis—the Baltic states serve as ‘deviant’ cases in
the historical context. There were significant differences among the Baltic countries, however.
While Åslund discusses some differences, his general conclusion is that of the overall economic
and political success of crisis management in these countries, with societies supporting necessary
painful measures of economic adjustment. Indeed, this statement is a good description of
Estonia’s situation. The picture was not as positive in the case of Lithuania or Latvia, however.
While open contestation and protest levels were surprisingly low, support for the government
and trust in national institutions was extremely poor. Lack of trust in the government has
arguably been one of the major reasons why Latvia and Lithuania dealt with the crisis less
successfully than Estonia, recording large budget deficits and rapidly rising public debt levels.
There is also the debatable issue of the prediction of future convergence between the ‘old’ and
the ‘new’ Europe. It is true that many outside analysts have been mistaken in their excessive
pessimism regarding the prospects of the most badly hit countries and, seen in this light,
Åslund’s book is a good corrective. However, one could ask whether he takes his argument too
much in the opposite direction. This is not to suggest that Åslund’s predictions are wrong, but
rather to note that the crisis period has left a number of significant problems, such as high
indebtedness and unemployment (as noticed by the author himself) that are yet to be dealt
with. Besides, one should also ponder the possibility of a wider divergence within the new EU
member states. As recognised by the author himself, the crisis affected individual countries
differently, depending on their accumulated macroeconomic vulnerabilities. For instance, while
the Baltic countries recorded the biggest falls in gross domestic product in the world in 2009,
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Poland was actually the only country in the European Union to post a positive economic growth
figure that year. Furthermore, even among the countries most severely hit by the crisis, as
illustrated by the Baltic states’ comparison above, success in dealing with the crisis has been
uneven.
Overall, this is a highly recommended book for anyone interested in Eastern Europe as well as
in the broader topic of the political economy of crisis resolution. With a good overview of the
main developments leading up to the recent crisis, its resolution and the lessons that can be
drawn from it, Åslund’s book will be a stimulating read for academics as well as those dealing
with the practical aspects of the region’s economic development.
Vilnius University VYTAUTAS KUOKŠTIS Ó 2011
Petr Kratochvı́l & Elsa Tulmets, Constructivism and Rationalism in EU External Relations: The
Case of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010, 200pp., $43.00 p/b.
THIS BOOK EXAMINES TWO THEORETICAL APPROACHES to European integration, constructi-

vism and rationalism, in the case of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The ENP as a
nascent element of EU external policy is still in flux and new initiatives are constantly being
created under its auspices (such as the Union for the Mediterranean and the Eastern
Partnership). This makes it, on the one hand, much more difficult to analyse due to its changing
nature, while on the other hand it increases the importance of complex scrutiny that can help us
to understand its development. By bringing together contemporary theoretical discussion and
empirical examination of the developing external policy of the EU, the authors have managed to
write a publication that reflects some of the main current issues in the study of European
integration.
The first part of the book is theoretical and offers a detailed discussion of the literature that
connects rationalism and constructivism in their explanatory frameworks. The authors prove
their excellent knowledge of theoretical discussions and manage to explain its nuances in a very
readable style, which is, for scholars dealing with constructivism, more often the exception than
the rule. ‘Bridge-builders’ are identified as trying to merge these two approaches (constructivism
and rationalism) into one, while struggling with basic ontological and sometimes even
epistemological contradictions. Omitting these issues and focusing on a pragmatic method,
‘opticians’ are seen as applying the two frameworks as lenses, or methodological instruments,
which can be swapped to offer a more accurate explanation.
Kratochvı́l and Tulmets adopt the latter approach for their analysis since it is ‘better equipped
for a pragmatic synthesis of rationalism and constructivism’ (p. 23). Such a pragmatic method
suggests that theoretical approaches should not be chosen until after the empirical utility has
already been proven. As the authors note, ‘While we are more inclined to adopt the position of
the ‘‘opticians’’, we argue that their a priori methodological choice should be replaced with
empirical testing of the suitability of the two approaches’ (italics in original, p. 46). Since
constructivism suffers from inconsistency and rationalism is an even broader term that
encompasses many theories of European integration, the authors have had to formulate their
own definitions of the terms that would leave out metatheoretical issues and at the same time
would be specific enough to allow for empirical analysis. As a result, constructivism is defined as
the ‘conviction that ideas matter and that the basic behavioural mode of social actors is rule-
following’, while according to rationalism ‘social actors try to maximize their self-interest . . . to
reach their ends’ (p. 26).
In the next step the authors categorise possible relations between actors on the scale from
strong constructivism to strong rationalism, with weak constructivism and weak rationalism in
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between. While the discussion in the first part was on a general level, this part explains
categorisation in the case of relations between the European Union and its partner countries.
The questions that the authors ask concern the mode of behaviour (strong/weak constructivist or
weak/strong rationalist) of the EU towards neighbouring countries and vice-versa as well as
variations between these modes. Unfortunately, however, Kratochvı́l and Tulmets do not deal
with the questions of why such a change in modes of behaviour occurs, and which factors
influence this change.
The next chapter of the book addresses the ENP and its development. After the literature
review on the launch of the ENP, the book proceeds with a detailed description of the evolution
of the policy. It shows the importance of the presidencies of the Council of the EU in the
formation of the ENP since new initiatives in this area were introduced usually by the country
holding the EU presidency (with the arguable exception of the Czech Republic and the launch of
the Eastern partnership).
An added value of the book is that it combines positions on the ENP from the perspective of
EU institutions (the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament), the key member
states (France, Germany and Poland) and also the partner countries (Ukraine, Moldova and
Georgia). Although both the main geographical dimensions of the ENP are discussed (south and
east), the sample of member states is, with the exception of France, focused on countries for
which the Eastern neighbourhood is of principal interest. The Polish preference for engaging
Eastern neighbours spans the pre-accession period. The German role in the creation of the
Eastern partnership (EaP) is considered crucial and even France played a role in its
establishment by trading off support for the Union for the Mediterranean. The three partner
countries analysed in the book are all part of the EaP project, which is incorporated into the
ENP umbrella scheme. Therefore, the book would definitely benefit from a more detailed
examination of the EaP, which is mentioned only marginally.
Relations of these nine actors towards the ENP (strong or weak constructivist, weak or strong
rationalist) are studied in detail in the empirical part of the book. This is based on 34 interviews
conducted with representatives of all of the countries as well as EU institutions and dozens of
official documents and speeches. Every actor’s attitude towards the ENP is examined in a single
subsection with a separate analysis of documents and speeches and interviews. This makes the
empirical part very well structured and easy to approach. Each subsection ends with a summary
table that shows the development of these relations over time but does not provide conclusions
that sum up the main arguments in a nutshell. What is not that clear is the reason for a separate
analysis of the two types of empirical material. Discourse analysis of documents and speeches is
only partially connected to the analysis of interviews. Although interviews were ‘the main
methodological tool’ (p. 49), they follow only after the discourse analysis and are mostly shorter
than the discourse analysis. Moreover, analysis of the interviews seems to have a supplementary
character since it often goes beyond the question of the ENP and examines wider EU-
related topics.
Unfortunately, the book contains a few editorial inaccuracies that, however, by no means lower
the value of the publication and the authors can be hardly blamed for them (twice the heading
‘Chapter II’ appears twice, no heading ‘Chapter III’, different font style for Chapter IV). The
conclusion does not reflect extensive theoretical examination and only marginally evaluates the
usefulness of the employed approach while focusing on the empirical results of the study. Only
strong constructivism, as a mode of relations, is discussed briefly; the other three positions are left
out from the final summary. The concluding analysis discusses the results of the study in terms of
constructivism and rationalism, thus simplifying the original four prepositions and missing the
opportunity to contribute more to the theoretical discussion on a synthesis of these approaches.
To sum up, although the book suffers from the above-mentioned shortcomings, Petr
Kratochvı́l and Elsa Tulmets have succeeded in writing a concise and readable book on
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European Neighbourhood Policy. Thanks to its empirical richness and well elaborated
theoretical approach, they manage to examine the ENP in considerable detail. On the one
hand, the book is accessible to those who are new to the topic, and on the other hand, it brings a
new point of view and data for those who are already familiar with it.
Comenius University MATÚŠ MIŠÍK Ó 2011
Robert Bruce Ware & Enver Kisriev, Dagestan: Russian Hegemony and Islamic Resistance in the
North Caucasus. London & Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2010, xvi þ 252pp., £29.50 p/b.
RUSSIA’S DAGESTAN REGION APPEARS TO BE SLIDING OUT of control—the restive autonomous

republic is saddled by corruption, violent Islamists and a stagnant economy. However, the recent
history of the ethnically diverse and mountainous region is characterised by much more than
violence and underdevelopment. Since emerging as a strategic region between Russia and its
southern neighbours in the nineteenth century, Dagestan has resisted foreign influence and has
looked toward traditional North Caucasian social structures and a meticulously crafted ethnic
balance of power for stability.
According to Robert Bruce Ware and Enver Kisriev’s compelling new volume, Dagestan has
developed sophisticated institutions of democratic governance, egalitarianism and ethno-
political compromise over the last two centuries. The authors closely examine how these unique
arrangements are fraying, and in many ways unravelling, under the stress of the growing
centralisation of power in Moscow, economic stagnation, and the steady rise of a violent Islamic
insurgent movement in the wider region.
The breakup of the Soviet Union was especially difficult for Dagestan because it fractured the
ethnic balance which pervaded and sustained political life in the region. According to Ware and
Kisriev, following the Soviet Union’s collapse, ‘de facto power was concentrated in the hands of
a Kumyk . . . de jure power . . . was in the hands of a Dargin . . . while the largest ethnic group in
Dagestan, the Avars, lost their representation in the highest echelons of power’ (p. 54). As a
result of the post-Soviet reshuffling, Kumyk and Avar national movements emerged, posing a
real threat to Dagestan’s overall stability.
The threat of violence subsided in large part due to the rise of Magomedali Magomedov, a
‘brilliant political operator’ (p. 54) who was instrumental in Dagestan’s transition to democracy in
the 1990s. With apparent awe and respect, Ware and Kisriev thoroughly document Magomedov’s
role in the development of a consociational political system under which wealth and power could
not be monopolised by a single individual or group. Dagestan’s 1994 constitution enshrined the
consociational system. Ware and Kisriev have characterised the fluidity of Dagestan’s political
elites oriented towards ‘[maintaining] a dynamic parity of political forces’ (p. 63) as one of the
great secrets of the region’s stability throughout the 1990s; under the Dagestani system, complex
groupings of ethno-parties ‘ceaselessly transferred themselves from one ethnic nucleus to another’
(p. 63), rendering each coalition highly tenuous and necessitating political accommodation.
Ironically, Dagestan’s delicately crafted stability began to collapse due to the same ceaseless
jockeying that Ware and Kisriev credit for its stability. In their view, Dagestani politicians
neither delivered the modernisation that the region desperately needed nor fashioned the
foundations for a truly pluralistic democratic society. Magomedov’s self-serving manipulation of
Dagestan’s constitution was the beginning of Dagestan’s descent ‘into a maelstrom of
factionalism, clannishness, cronyism, and self-seeking’ (p. 76). Ware and Kisriev argue, without
fully tackling this apparent paradox for readers, that Dagestan’s convoluted consociational
system was essentially democratic but that it ‘never fully satisfied the democratic aspirations of
the Dagestani people’ (p. 87).
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The splintering of Dagestan’s religious establishment in the post-Soviet period resembled the
fractionalisation that had consumed regional politics. While Wahhabism was not unknown in
1990s Dagestan, Ware and Kisriev argue that Soviet repression of religious expression and
Dagestan’s devolving economic and political environment created space for the emergence of
Islamic fundamentalism as an alternative to Dagestan’s unique form of Sufi Islam. The volume’s
description of Wahhabi critiques of Dagestan’s traditional Islam illustrates how different the two
are, and provides a key context for readers. With Wahhabism gaining momentum in the North
Caucasus, leaders in Moscow and Dagestan sought a settlement with Wahhabis and eventually
ceded them ground in exchange for peace, dealing a fatal blow to the local government’s ability
to maintain control.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of Ware and Kisriev’s volume is the overview of their 2000
survey on Dagestanis’ perceptions of Wahhabism. According to the survey, local elites attributed
the rise of Wahhabism to tumultuous economic and political transitions that were underway in
Dagestan at the time. However, the authors concluded that Wahhabism posed little immediate
threat to Dagestan’s stability because it ‘was rejected by an overwhelming majority of
Dagestanis’ (p. 119) and because it was a social response to a crisis rather than ‘an authentic
spiritual or ideological alternative’ to Dagestan’s traditional Islamic belief structure (p. 119).
Despite the perception of Wahhabism as a temporary response to turmoil, the puritanical
ideology has grown in force in Dagestan and the greater Caucasus over the last decade. United
against Wahhabism, officials in Moscow and Dagestan grew closer during the second war in
Chechnya; Ware and Kisriev document how Moscow strategically hedged its influence in
Dagestan, showering resources on the republic to maintain its influence in the South Caucasus
and Caspian Sea region. However, Ware and Kisriev argue that Moscow’s largess and frequent
political intervention disturbed Dagestan’s complex mix of ethnic and religious groupings, for
example, when the Kremlin’s efforts to re-centralise power in the 2000s forced Dagestan to do
away with ethnic compromises entrenched in the constitution.
The volume’s final chapter characterises the situation in Dagestan as a gathering darkness.
Putin’s re-centralisation of power in Moscow ‘progressively undermined and replaced the unique
democratic system that the Dagestanis had innovated in their 1994 constitution to accommodate
their ethnic heterogeneity and their ancient traditions of democracy and egalitarianism’ (p. 203).
Ware and Kisriev also fault Dagestan’s leaders, who have made little progress on political and
economic development since Russia’s independence, for the region’s current instability,
widespread disaffection from government, and for sustaining the influence of Wahhabism.
Through their persuasive study of Dagestan’s complex relationship with Moscow, struggle with
radical Islam, and diverse ethnic composition, Ware and Kisriev provide a thorough overview of
the political and social issues that are shaping the region’s future.
Columbia University MATTHEW SCHAAF Ó 2011
Elena A. Iankova, Business, Government, and EU Accession: Strategic Partnership and Conflict.
Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009, xii þ 294pp., £49.95 h/b.
DURING THE LAST DECADE STUDENTS OF EUROPEAN POLITICS have become increasingly
interested in investigating the impact of the European Union on the domestic level in what has
come to be referred to as ‘Europeanisation’. Europeanisation has become one of the most widely
used theoretical approaches for studying the EU and its influence on current and future EU
member states. The early generation of Europeanisation studies mostly focused on the formal
implications of EU membership through top-down and vertical mechanisms, while the new
generation of scholars emphasise complex interactions (top-down, bottom-up and horizontal) in
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which Europeanisation is not only limited to changes in the formal content of national policy but
also informal structures such as business–government relations.
Elena Iankova’s book is a tempered and thoughtful examination of the Europeanisation of the
business–government relationship in post-communist European countries. In this monograph,
she addresses the question of how accession into the EU changes the legacies and political
realities that affect business–government relations in the Central Eastern European (CEE)
countries. After outlining and explaining specific patterns of Europeanisation of the business–
government relationship as a result of the adaptational pressure of EU accession, she takes the
argument further by looking at the effectiveness of this relationship in facilitating the
preparedness of an EU-acceding country for EU entry.
Working within an institutionalist framework, grounded in comparative Europeanisation
literature, the author sketches a model of accession-driven institutional change in the business–
government relationship, and a model of its Europeanisation in the book’s introduction. In this
regard, she combines vertical and horizontal interactions and identifies legal conditionality and
harmonisation, financial assistance, and capacity building and learning as the mechanisms by
which EU accession affects the interaction between business and state elites. Throughout the
whole book, she traces the actual effects of EU accession by these mechanisms along the three
major dimensions of the business–government relationship: its character, its structure and its
composition.
Iankova emphasises the methodological difficulty in disaggregating the interwoven processes
of the post-communist transformation and European integration. Using Bulgaria as a case
study, she provides a thorough account of the specific patterns of Europeanisation of the
business–government relationship and then examines the level of efficiency of this relationship in
achieving the preparedness of Bulgaria for EU membership. She explores the main elements of
the pattern of change and the determinant factors that have affected the business–government
relationship by examining several sub-national case studies of industries, local regions and
companies. Although the Bulgarian case is argued to have many common characteristics with
the other CEE countries, the author demonstrates that Bulgaria differs due to the peculiarities of
its post-communist transformation and its prolonged preparation for EU membership in the
economic/business realm, which makes it an ‘excellent case study’ for the examination of the
changing business–government relationship within the Europeanisation process (p. 6).
The volume is efficiently structured into nine chapters, proceeding from theoretical and
methodological components to substantive and interesting findings with the first and last
chapters acting as introduction and conclusion. Chapter Two provides space for the arguments
of political elites, the population at large and the business community concerning the advantages
and disadvantages, costs and benefits of EU accession, and where the author backs these up with
various survey results at the national level. Although several controversial points emerged
concerning sensitive issues, the Bulgarian case reveals a strong business–government consensus
on EU accession, muting Euro-sceptic voices. Chapter Three traces the dynamics of the
business–government relationship in Bulgaria from the initial years of transition to the late 1990s
and early 2000s when the Europeanisation project accelerated in the country. Shaped by ‘legacies
of the state-socialist planned economy and practices of non-differentiation of business
establishments from state’, the business–government relationship in Bulgaria was far from
being legitimate and sound (p. 53). However, it is argued that the improvement of the business
climate, the emergence of consultative bodies, and institutionalised channels of interaction have
started to change this grey picture.
Chapter Four and Chapter Five are broadly concerned with the implications of
Europeanisation through legal approximation in Bulgaria. The former examines how adjusting
to the legal conditionalities of the EU initiated the transformation of business–government–
parliament relations toward a model of shared social governance, and points out the emergence
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of new institutions at the political and expert level to deal with this legal approximation process.
The latter deals with sensitive issues of the harmonisation of Bulgarian legislation with EU
common law, such as the establishment of a favourable, transparent, and non-corruptive
business environment, environmental protection, and food safety. This subsequently led to
constraints in business–government relations and to major challenges to several business sectors.
Chapter Six is concentrated on the management, control, and utilisation of EU’s pre-accession
and post-accession financial instruments and the implementation of the partnership principle.
The chapter puts specific emphasis on the emergence of different types of partnerships between
various actors including the European Commission, central and sub-national governments, non-
governmental organisations and the private sector, and their differential impact on the
absorption of EU funds. Chapter Seven tackles the challenges of capacity building in the case of
the adoption, adjustment and restructuring of public administration, and the business
community on the way to EU membership, and uncovers the potential of several applications
of the partnership principle in that area to increase the opportunities of competition,
communication and networking for public and private actors in Bulgaria. Chapter Eight
assesses the Europeanisation of business–government relations at the regional level through the
examination of several forms of partnerships at the level of municipalities, more specifically in
Sofia and Sandanski.
In the conclusion, Iankova demonstrates that EU accession pressure through conditionality,
financial aid and capacity building has led to change in the business–government relationship in
Bulgaria which has been traced along three major developments, i.e., character—greater
collaboration through endorsement of the partnership principle; structure—greater institutio-
nalisation and multilevel interaction; and composition—the embeddedness of the business–
government relationship in organised civil society. Another key conclusion of the book is that
the business–government relationship could play an important role in promoting EU accession,
provided that three additional factors facilitate the process. These are a broad political and
public consensus on accession, effective national accession strategies and institutions, and
effective networks on accession. In this regard, the author is successful in her goal of
demonstrating how the business–government relationship plays a role in facilitating the
preparedness of a country for EU entry. Overall, the book offers an extremely interesting and
insightful analysis of an important issue. Its well founded and comprehensive arguments and the
findings of an in-depth case study prove to be a noteworthy contribution to the recent upsurge in
book-length explorations of the domestic impact of the EU in new member states. Therefore this
book is warmly recommended for all those interested in Europeanisation and domestic change.
Freie Universität Berlin DIGDEM SOYALTIN Ó 2011
Mark Bassin, Christopher Ely & Melissa K. Stockdale (eds), Space, Place and Power in Modern
Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press,
2010, x þ 268pp., $42.00 h/b.
THIS IS AN ELEGANTLY ARRANGED COLLECTION OF ESSAYS THAT ADDS to what has been called
the new spatial history of Russia, and although it is more illustrative and evocative as a whole
than analytically path-breaking, the collection is a valuable contribution to this growing
subfield. The wide range of cases demonstrates the rich potential of thinking about space as more
than just a simple ‘backdrop’ or ‘container’ (p. 6).
The editors open the volume with a concise but thought-provoking introduction to the
concept of space and to its past and present application to Russian history. The contributions
roam freely through the centuries and across the Russian empire, and each draws on its own
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definition of space, inviting the reader to consider the way multiple themes overlap. For example,
in her essay Melissa Clarkdale examines the changing meaning of the discursive space implied by
the words rodina and otechestvo (translated as motherland and fatherland, respectively) from the
eighteenth century to the present. In contrast, the late Richard Stites’ contribution examines the
nineteenth-century ‘dance floor’ as a ‘micro-site’ that ‘served, at various moments, as a venue of
royal display and control; social hierarchy and status marking; courtship and erotic play; and
expressions of national identity’ (p. 100). What all the essays share is an interest in
‘problemat[ising] the relationship between society and space . . . with a strong emphasis on the
subjective cognition of the historical actors and groups in question’ (p. 7).
Many of the essays discuss the way imperial visions of spatial organisation were subverted at
the local level, revealing unexpected possibilities of political agency. John Randolph, for
example, examines Peter the Great’s bol’shaya perspektivnaya doroga (‘big planned road’) from
St Petersburg to Moscow as a similar site of political contest. Initially imagined as a
‘demonstration of imperial power’ (p. 84), the route took on a life of its own as communities of
recruited coach drivers (yamshchiki) used their important role to establish a ‘small—but
tangible—sphere of societal autonomy’ (p. 87). This essay, which ends by comparing Aleksandr
Radishchev and the much less well known Ivan Glushkov’s travelogues, could be used very
profitably in undergraduate courses. A little further afield, Robert Argenbright examines
travelling agitation groups as representative of Bolshevik colonisation practices in 1919–1921. In
contrast to the state’s expectations, he argues that the unpredictable interactions between the
activists and local populations created fleeting moments of ‘civic space in which democratic
practices might have taken root’ (pp. 142–43). Furthermore, in his rich analysis of political life
on St Petersburg’s streets and avenues under Alexander II, Christopher Ely also concludes that a
‘reasonably active, if forcefully contested, public sphere’ briefly emerged (p. 186).
In contrast, Sergei Zhuk’s study of religious conflict in the 1870s and 1880s highlights the way
in which local conflicts sometimes influenced national politics. His ‘place’ is the Dnieper region,
which he describes as a social and cultural borderland shaped by Orthodox priests, German
Protestant farmers, and Ukrainian religious dissidents, among others. Orthodox priests, who
thought of the region as a sacred landscape that represented the ‘unity for Russian and Little
Russian (Ukrainian)’ Orthodoxy, perceived the spread of ‘foreign religion and culture’ as a
dangerous threat and launched a campaign against it. According to his account, it seems that
they had some basis upon which to be concerned. He argues that the Dnieper’s multiethnic
society inspired a trend towards Protestant-based religious dissidence known as Stundism that,
in its radical manifestation (‘its majority’), came to see ‘the Russian Orthodox Church as a
political institution that exploited the Ukrainian rural population’ (pp. 201–202). In the end the
controversy was one of many that factored in Alexander III’s efforts to restore the idea of Holy
Orthodox Russia.
It is a credit to a number of the authors that they do not present an oversimplified view of ‘the
state’ in opposition to ‘society’. In her contribution, for example, Lisa Kirschenbaum explores
the renaming of Soviet streets in late 1980s Leningrad as an act of resistance; but, as she argues,
‘the myriad memories, stories, and hopes’ that residents associated with the urban landscape
made this process surprisingly complicated (p. 244). In particular, the goal of restoring pre-
revolutionary names was contested by groups who feared that eliminating familiar Soviet names
would undermine the memory of the wartime blockade of the city. Cathy Frierson’s
examination of the relationship between memory and identity in the provincial city of Vologda
is equally attentive to the complex relationship between centre and periphery. Two public
controversies in particular, she argues, have tested the city’s ability to reconcile conflicting
aspects of its history: its role as a ‘crucible of Russian culture’ (p. 219) and its tragic position as
a ‘key transit point’ in the Soviet gulag, in particular during the peasant deportations of 1930–
1932 (p. 220). What is striking is that, despite the pain brought upon the city by the Kremlin,
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Vologda’s relationship with Moscow remains the ‘defining aspect of the region’s character and
significance’ (p. 218).
To my mind, the hardest essays to categorise were the contributions by Mark Bassin and
Patricia Herlihy. Bassin’s essay, an examination of ‘environmentalist discourses in classical
Eurasianism’, is the most specialised of the articles and an exception in a collection that overall
will be quite accessible to undergraduates (p. 49). Patricia Herlihy presents a study of Eugene
Schuyler, a young (and brilliant) American official and scholar who was able to parlay his
fascination with Russia and Central Asia, she argues, into a career that influenced Russian
colonial policy and helped create Central Asia as ‘an enduring imagined space in Russia and the
West’ (p. 135). All of the essays make for absorbing reading, but the wide-ranging approach
ensures that the reader must work to make connections and draw broader conclusions. Along
these lines, an analytical chapter concluding the volume might have added to its impact.
University of Toronto AURI BERG Ó 2011

Elana Wilson Rowe (ed.), Russia and the North. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2009,
xii þ 220pp., $29.00 p/b.
THE RUSSIAN NORTH HAS BECOME A FOCAL POINT OF THE GEOPOLITICAL issues of our day as
the once unassailable hydrocarbon reserves of the Arctic become accessible due to the potential
thaw afforded by climate change. However, in the shadow of energy concerns are numerous
socio-political issues at both the regional and local level in the Russian North. The main goal of
this work, an edited volume that counts several authors from the famed Arctic research centre,
the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, is to identify the Russian government’s approach to its northern
territories in the absence of a comprehensive ‘Northern policy’ from Moscow. Elana Wilson
Rowe introduces the book’s central notion that the current Northern policy of Russia has
become an extension of Vladimir Putin’s centralisation projects aimed at wresting resource
development rights from the regions. Moreover, the book argues that the strategic concentration
of mineral reserves has elicited a more focused approach to northern regions than in the Yel’tsin
era for several reasons, but it also served to curtail the success of regional governance and
cooperation amongst the Arctic littoral states.
In the first chapter, Pavel Baev examines the military dimension of Russia’s Northern strategy
and the security agenda in its Arctic periphery. Baev explains that Russia’s military actors have
argued for a renewed presence of the Northern Fleet as a means of protecting Russian claims to
the contested mineral resources of the Arctic basin, as well as promoting the loftier ambitions of
restoring Russia’s diminished military standing. However, security concerns are seen by the
author as preventive measures to stall Western companies from gaining access to the region as
uncompetitive Russian firms have yet to acquire the technological prowess or capital needed to
develop the hydrocarbon potential of the continental shelf.
Geir Hønneland’s exposition of the cross-border initiatives in the European north explains
how international cooperation evolved from the post-Soviet period through increased
coordination on issues such as the environment and how these interactions have been altered
by the emergence of new Russian prerogatives in the region. The analysis compares the
promising cross-border associations of the Yel’tsin era with the Putin era, which saw an
institutional shift that favoured federal authorities over regional ones.
Craig ZumBrunnen’s third chapter on climate change begins by recounting the general
prescriptions of the Kyoto Protocol, which gave Russia a remarkable position in the sale of
carbon-offset credits due to its modern industrial output being dramatically less than as a Soviet
republic. However, arguments are made that the Kyoto Protocol was signed on the basis of
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political expediency, and that its slow implementation in Russia is a sign that the political will to
adhere to the treaty stipulations will last so long as it does not affect the Kremlin’s strategic
interests, despite the potential calamity for the northern communities from climate change.
Anne-Kristin Jørgensen’s contribution begins the volume’s shift away from foreign policy to
the economic development of the north. Jørgensen criticises the state of crisis affecting the fishing
fleets of the Barents Sea and their support facilities that have been debilitated by overfishing and
corruption without effective governmental oversight and planning. The chapter argues that the
institutional crisis is derived from the divergent policy goals of a ‘traditionalist’ camp that wishes
the return to a Soviet-style focus on social welfare and a ‘modernist’ camp that wants the fishing
fleet and related industries to be regulated as profit-driven businesses. Arild Moe joins Rowe in
the fifth chapter to highlight the next progression in Russia’s Arctic maritime, the offshore
reserves—easily the most highly sensationalised policy issue in relation to the Russian North.
Offshore endeavours fall under the purview of Russia’s ‘strategic sectors’ legislation that limits
foreign investments in areas of national security, including vast mineral deposits. This has
entrenched Rosneft and Gazprom as the likely majority owners of any future hydrocarbon
developments in the Arctic. The two companies have coordinated their efforts on the shelf
project, Sakhalin-2, but the authors concede that a northern offshore regime is uncertain and is
likely to be influenced by the need for foreign capital.
The remaining chapters discuss the socio-political concerns of the North. Chapter Six deals
with Northern labour policy; Timothy Heleniak explains that Soviet economic distortions
resulted in much of Siberia and the Far East being considered overpopulated and having to be
continually supported through state subsidies. Heleniak argues that federal labour policy and
migration-assistance programmes have contributed little compared to market incentives that
have seen private enterprise assume responsibility for the coordination of employment in the
North. Indra Øverland introduces the topic of indigenous rights in Chapter Seven, while Anna
Sirina continues the study in the context of oil and gas development in Chapter Eight. Øverland
explores indigenous rights in Russia, claimed on the grounds of traditional heritage rather than
ancestry, and argues that the unwillingness of federal bodies to enforce territorial claims is
undermining the efficacy of existing legislation. Echoing the judgements of Øverland, Sirina’s
case study of the Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean pipeline project portrays how indigenous
territorial rights are overtly susceptible to political exploitation.
Rowe concludes by offering an insightful and erudite commentary on the overarching trends
that appear throughout the volume. She reasserts that the Kremlin’s Northern aims should be
understood as components of its greater national projects and that engaging Northern socio-
political issues may be hindered by strategic factors. Yet, Rowe is hopeful that the current high
status of Arctic relations may build upon previous environmental and scientific collaborations as
a means to alleviate geopolitical tensions.
Overall this work is a very good introduction to the salient issues of the Russian North. The
authors do well to explain the relevant actors, and remarkable amounts of factual evidence are
presented in short chapters without the writing becoming stale or overly complicated. This
volume is a welcome addition to the small, but growing number of texts on Russia’s Northern
policies, and I am sure that it will prove influential as a primer for future debates on the Arctic
basin.
University of Glasgow COLIN SWEET Ó 2011
Timofey Agarin, A Cat’s Lick: Democratisation and Minority Communities in the Post-Soviet
Baltic. On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identify, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the
Baltics. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2010, xviii þ 380pp., e80.00 h/b.
1518 REVIEWS
MINORITY RIGHTS IS ONE OF THE MOST OVER-RESEARCHED TOPICS ON the Baltic states. It
seems that everything that can be said on this politically charged topic has already been said.
Agarin, a native Russian, begs to disagree. As a social scientist who was neither born nor lived
for an extended period of time in the Baltic states but has a unique Soviet migrant labour family
experience, he is curious to find out how and to what extent the members of the Baltic societies
were influenced by political institutions as they sprung to life in the 1990s, and, more specifically,
how minorities participate and contribute to democratisation processes in the Baltic states.
Essentially, Agarin’s book seeks to give voice to the ‘voiceless’ and to present Russian-
speakers’ views on the political, economic, and social challenges that they have faced in the past
20 years.
Agarin identifies several barriers that prevent minorities’ active participation in Baltic political
spheres regardless of the extent of those minorities’ civic engagement. His research indicates that
over the past two decades Baltic political institutions have largely ignored all policy-related
suggestions on minority issues coming from non-titular actors. Evidence suggests that policies
addressing the issues of minorities were passed without consultation with, or input from, the
minority groups. Agarin attributes weak democratisation practices and a lack of learning by
Baltic political institutions to the still-ingrained authoritarian modus operandi practised by local
politicians and socio-political structures. He argues that the structural changes that occurred in
the Baltic states (citizenship, language-use regulations, education reforms, and civic engagement
practices) were based on state titularisation rationale, which, by default, entailed exclusion of
minorities’ arguments, views, and opinions from socio-political spheres. This has resulted in a
situation in which minorities’ activities in the Baltic states are largely self-limited to the areas of
engagement that have no policy-making implications or political foci. Not surprisingly, the
massive disengagement from politics by minority communities (and, I would argue, by majority
civil society groups as well) is profound.
Situating his work within scholarly literature on democracy, processes and waves of
democratisation, and the role (or lack thereof) of civil society and civic engagement in post-
communist transitions, Agarin begins building his case by showing the demographic shifts that
have taken place in the Baltic states since the 1940s. Detailed attention is given to key political
developments in the 1950s and 1960s and their socio-cultural and psychological ramifications,
with some but less analysis of political, societal, and minorities-related processes in the 1970s and
early to mid-1980s. Agarin particularly focuses on the 1989–1991 period to expose ‘how
republican political institutions thrashed minorities’ political activity while propelling Baltic
titular communities into the leadership of post-Soviet nation-building’ (p. 66). The overarching
question in the minds of the Baltic political elites during those years was determining who
belonged to their states’ political communities. Membership in the political community became
the defining factor in the processes of Baltic nation-building and state-building. Citizenship, state
language, and minority education laws were the primary tools used by politicians and became
the dividing instruments of political communities, the author argues.
Agarin claims that in the 1989–1991 period Baltic minorities found themselves between a rock
and a hard place: restrictions on citizenship acquisition prevented the Russian-speaking
communities from participation in political processes, while linguistic and titular language
enforcement policies (particularly in Estonia and Latvia) provided no means to support
language training for non-titulars. The result was the forceful linguistic adaptation by minorities.
Furthermore, informational divisions, emanating from the different media landscapes of each
linguistic community, and poor employment prospects for non-titular actors in social and
political spheres not only increased separation but also prevented the opening of channels of
communication between the Baltic majorities and minorities. Agarin implies that the lack of
linguistic accommodation and the belittlement shown by Baltic policy-makers for contributions
from civic non-titular actors adversely affected democracy-building in the Baltic states.
REVIEWS 1519
The author concludes that Baltic states are only pro forma democracies for several reasons:
political institutions dominated by titular communities do not feel responsibility to respond to
minorities’ concerns; any criticism coming from non-titular communities is perceived as a threat
to the titular nation’s foundations; existing structural constraints do not allow minorities to
participate in or contribute to policy making or decision making on issues that directly concern
them; the current political–social status quo will remain since state institutions are rigid and
paternalistic and coercive practices are firmly entrenched in their modus operandi while titular
and non-titular civic groups have no leverage mechanisms to initiate change.
The book has several weaknesses. Its literature review is strongly Euro-centric and lacks cross-
disciplinary insights from international relations, historical institutionalism, and political
economy fields. While Lithuania’s case is thoroughly backed with evidence, the cases for Latvia
and especially Estonia frequently lack support from hard data. Some core concepts used—
structural constraints, political entrepreneurs/actors, thick and thin language policies, and social
institutions—are left undefined. Also, the book contains no analysis of the heated debates on
civil society and engagement that engulfed Baltic academic circles and the media in 2003–2008.
Predictably, Agarin displays little empathy and understanding towards the deep fear of national
extinction felt by Latvians and Estonians during the Soviet era or nearly extinct national dialect
speakers today (distressingly, he treats the languages of Livs and Russians as equally threatened
by extinction in Latvia). He also labels Baltic political actions and laws as discriminatory if they
contain incentives for learning titular languages, restrict citizenship acquisition, or require state
language proficiency for candidates to Baltic parliaments and municipalities. Agarin adopts an
accusatory tone similar to Moscow’s pronouncements in the second part of the book and begins
using politically-charged terminology (i.e. linguistic segregation, language sabotage, titular
language of alienation, affirmative action necessity). On several occasions diacritical marks and
correct cases in Lithuanian are missing.
Overall, this book has the necessary ingredients to become another important contribution to
the debates on minority issues in the Baltic states, elucidating why non-titular groups ended up
being politically and socially passive civic actors. Given its thought-provoking capacity, one
could wish (but I doubt) that this work will become a popular read among Baltic political
entrepreneurs.
Davidson College AUSRA PARK Ó 2011
Maria Raquel Freire & Roger E. Kanet (eds), Key Players and Regional Dynamics in Eurasia: The
Return of the ‘Great Game’. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, xiv þ 300pp., £60.00 h/b.
THIS EDITED VOLUME FOCUSES ON RUSSIA’S POLICIES TOWARDS, and wider international
politics in, Eurasia. For the purposes of this book, Eurasia is defined as the greater Caspian
Basin consisting of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Transcaucasus and the five
republics of Central Asia, namely Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and
Tajikistan. The articles place Russia’s policies in the context of wider competition with external
actors in the region—a modern equivalent of the nineteenth-century ‘Great Game’ between
Tsarist Russia and the British Empire. The book is divided into three parts: the first examining
Russia’s role in the region; the second covering global and regional powers which may compete
with or complement Russia’s activities in Eurasia; and the third part looking at a variety of
intergovernmental organisations which have interests in the region—some featuring Russia in a
leading role and others serving as potential rivals to Russia in Eurasia.
In the three chapters making up the first part of this volume, Bertil Nygren begins by
providing an overview of Russia’s foreign and security policies in the Commonwealth of
1520 REVIEWS
Independent States (CIS) through three sub-regions (Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia),
and in three arenas (the geopolitical, geoeconomic and geocultural). Nygren argues that through
a variety of means Russia has been seeking to re-establish itself as a hegemonic power in the CIS
since the turn of the century. In the following chapter Stephen Blank offers an introduction to
some of the key rivals for influence in Eurasia, acting as a check on Russia’s ability to act as a
hegemon. The US, China and Iran are shown to have strategic interests in the region, with Blank
concluding that Washington’s policies have been ultimately less effective than the other external
powers engaging in a new Great Game in Eurasia. In the third chapter Maria Raquel Freire
focuses on Russia’s policies towards Eurasia and their impact on the foreign policies of the
republics of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus. Freire emphasises the heterogeneity of the
region and highlights the fact that Moscow’s scope for leverage varies considerable across
Eurasia.
The five chapters in the second part of the book examine the strategies of a number of global
and regional powers with regard to Eurasia—with chapters each on the US, EU, China, India
and finally a chapter covering both Turkey and Iran. Each chapter follows a broadly similar
format, firstly outlining the external power’s relations with Russia (and in the case of China and
India in particular some detailed historical perspective), then its policies with regard to the
region itself, and finally highlighting areas of potential rivalry or shared interest. Themes
common to all the players involved in the Great Game as featured in this volume include
security, energy resources and geopolitical ambitions. The points of view of the countries of the
region themselves are usually only briefly touched upon, however in Roger Kanet’s chapter
tracking the waxing and waning of both Russia and the US’s influence in the region, he notes
that ‘[l]ocal elites are not simple pawns moved on some geopolitical chessboard by the major
powers’ and that they have grown adept at exploiting what leverage they have to pursue their
own interests (p. 94).
In the third part of the book, the attention turns to international organisations, including
a chapter on regional bodies in the post-Soviet space such as the CIS, the Collective Security
Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Community, as well as chapters on
NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). These
chapters tend more towards descriptive chronologies of the activities of these intergovern-
mental bodies rather than a more detailed focus on their policies towards the greater
Caspian Basin itself. The chapter on the OSCE in particular focuses more on Russia than
Eurasia. Heidi Kjærnet provides in her contribution a vital examination of the overlap
between business and politics within Eurasia, examining the role of international oil
companies as well as home-grown, predominantly state-owned national oil companies
in Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. She highlights the differing expectations of inter-
national oil companies as well as the different patterns of response from governments in the
region.
While the title of this work references Eurasia, the authors are careful not to attempt to
ascribe a uniform set of characteristics to the republics of the region, noting the considerable
differences between, for example, contemporary Georgia and Tajikistan. This volume benefits
from not purely focusing on major powers such as Russia, China and the West but also
featuring regional players when discussing the modern Great Game. However the relatively
slender nature of this book in comparison to the breadth of material it seeks to cover could
leave the informed reader wanting more. This collection offers a useful introduction for
students of international relations who are unfamiliar with policies towards the region and can
serve as a launching pad in the search for more detailed information on topics of specific
interest.
University of Birmingham MATTHEW FREAR Ó 2011

REVIEWS 1521
Reiner Martin & Adalbert Winkler (eds), Real Convergence in Central, Eastern and South-
Eastern Europe. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, xvi þ 206pp., £60.00 h/b.
THE ECONOMIC CRISIS HAS HIGHLIGHTED THAT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN Central and Eastern
European countries, often grouped together as a region, matter as much as their similarities. Is
there then a case to be made for painting with broader brushstrokes and taking the region as the
unit of analysis rather than individual countries? This book eloquently argues that by taking a
long-term view of the past 20 years regional similarities indeed emerge. The volume, based on a
conference held by the European Central Bank in the autumn of 2007, identifies Central, Eastern
and South-Eastern Europe as the region to have benefited the most, after China and India, from
the strongest growth period for decades in the early 2000s. The editors provide a critique of
neoclassical growth theory and argue that real convergence cannot be reduced to an increase in
per capita gross domestic product (GDP), something that promises to lend itself as the
conceptual toolkit for the volume. Each chapter focuses on a broad question: sustainability,
underlying causes of convergence, its link to nominal convergence, its speed, impact on
migration and labour markets, and on the balance of payments.

The sustainability and speed of convergence are arguably the most important questions for a
region that saw its real per capita income reach only 40% of the Euro area average in EU-10
accession countries by 2005, and 23% in EU candidate and potential candidate countries. As
Lorenzo Bini Smaghi recalls, the rapid growth of the late 1990s and early 2000s was mainly
driven by improvements in total factor productivity improvement which is unlikely to be the
source of further growth as possible gains have already been realised. This view is largely
supported by Magdalena Morgese-Borys, Éva Katalin Polgár and Andrei Zlate, who, however,
are less than impressed by the speed of income per capita growth. They argue that the EU-10
accession countries and candidate and potential candidate country states have only been slowly
approaching the average of the EU-15 (8% increase for the EU-10, and 3% for candidate and
potential candidate countries in PPP between 1993 and 2005). In contrast, Sarah Lein, Miguel
Leon-Ledesma and Carolin Nerlich claim that real convergence will gain further momentum as
EU and Euro memberships add further stimulus, and will probably continue for the next few
decades. However, their projections about the speed of catching up are a sobering reminder of
the task ahead. In their best case scenario output grows at an average of 7% per annum, in
which case, the EU-9 (Slovenia excluded) can reach 80% of EU average GDP per capita in 2018,
around 30 years after the beginning of the transition, while 100% is forecast for 2050—a
prediction that few politicians in the region would be willing to admit to their electorates.
The argument that total factor productivity improvement has been behind convergence thus
far suggests a potentially bumpier road ahead for the region, even though this conclusion is not
drawn in the volume. Convergence was underpinned by a predominantly FDI-driven
development and privatisation, rapid total factor productivity gains were made possible by a
quick absorption of readily available modern technology through foreign investment, as is
pointed out by István P. Székely and Max Watson. Consequently, further convergence will have
to rely, to a much larger extent than before, on the capabilities and willingness of these countries’
populism-prone governments to implement reforms. The focal point of this is the fact that
unemployment in the region tends to be higher and employment levels lower than in the Euro
area. Many agree with Smaghi’s argument that significantly lower employment rates compared
to the Eurozone, signalling a large informal sector and labour market mismatches, suggests that
further growth might hinge on these countries’ ability to increase employment rates. Morgese-
Borys et al. cogently explain the significantly higher than EU-15 average unemployment among
low-skilled labour as a result of economic transition: old industries and the significance of
agriculture have diminished in EU-10 countries, leaving behind a large group that is difficult to
employ. This raises important questions about the desired upgrading of these economies to
1522 REVIEWS
higher added-value production. If employment rates are to be improved, investment in low-

skilled industries and activities will remain, for the time being, an important means to increase
employment, unless retraining of the long-term unemployed yields significantly better results
than in the past. Thus, Székely and Watson rightly point out that labour market mismatches and
constraints will be hard to address unless education systems can produce more highly skilled
labour; and even if they can, it will take time. Low employment and high unemployment also
manifest themselves in a record number of people migrating to the EU-15, underlining Herbert
Brücker’s main argument that convergence in GDP per capita levels can reduce migration levels
only to a limited extent. More interestingly he finds that migration can close the GDP per capita
gap and level unemployment rates between sending and receiving countries.
The volume also serves as an important record of pre-crisis warnings about the vulnerability
of the region. Examples of this include Jürgen Stark’s warning about the vulnerability of fixed-
exchange countries (Bulgaria and the Baltic Three) because of both the twin-deficits they had
accumulated, and overheating, and the warning by Sarah Lein, Miguel Leon-Ledesma and
Carolin Nerlich about the dangerous credit to GDP ratios. These are reminders that apparently
went unnoticed by many policy makers in the region. Similarly, Angana Banerji and Juha
Kähkönen warn of the high external financing needs of the growing external debt. They also
argue that some of the credit boom might stem from the foreign dominance of these countries’
banking sectors, as local branches accept higher risks to meet the targets set by the parent bank,
while it is unknown how much liquidity the parent bank would provide for the branches in the
case of a crisis—an important issue during the global crisis.
Among the best assets of the volume are its original datasets and models, making it a useful
source for anyone interested in the economic integration of the region. While convergence of the
region is considered to be different from other cases, sound macroeconomic policies and risks
seem to be very similar. However, one is often left wondering whether these countries follow the
same developmental path and are only at different stages in their convergence, or there are other
influencing factors at work which might produce different outcomes in the future.
Central European University DÁNIEL IZSÁK Ó 2011
Katherine E. Graney, Of Khans and Kremlins: Tatarstan and the Future of Ethno-Federalism in
Russia. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009, xxxvi þ 190pp., £18.95 p/b.
TATARSTAN’S SOVEREIGNTY PROJECT AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF the Soviet Union is the subject
of this current book by Katherine Graney. Tatarstan is an autonomous republic in the Russian
Federation that evolved from the former Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the
Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic. For a short time a Tatar Soviet Socialist Republic
was declared, but Tatarstan did not declare its independence after the Soviet Union collapsed. It
nevertheless initiated a sovereignty project and has since then persisted in its claim of being a
‘sovereign state’.
After neighbouring Bashkortostan, Tatarstan is the second most populous autonomous
republic in the Russian Federation. According to the last Soviet Census of 1989 ethnic Tatars
constituted a plurality of the population. According to the 2002 Russian Federation’s census,
however, they constituted a slight majority of the population. Tatars are the second largest
ethnic group in the Russian Federation after Russians. Most Tatars, however, live outside
Tatarstan elsewhere in the Russian Federation.
The author’s main claim is that the Tatarstani sovereignty project has rescued and shaped
Russian federalism in a positive way. Rather than being detrimental to Russian territorial
integrity, on the contrary, it appeared to be a win–win situation for both the Russian Federation
REVIEWS 1523
and Tatarstan. Tatarstan received a high degree of freedom in its internal affairs, while Russia
benefited by the Tatarstani international connections with the Organization of Islamic
Conference (OIC) and Islamic countries. Tatarstan also provides a good example for other
subjects of the Russian Federation not to seek secession from but rather to seek sovereignty
within the realms of the Russian Federation.
The author does not provide any clear definition or explanation of what constitutes
sovereignty in the Tatarstani ‘sovereignty project’. Indeed, the author maintains that due to the
ambiguity of the concept of sovereignty the ‘architects of the Tatarstani sovereignty project’
have been able to act pragmatically in their endeavour. The author maintains that ‘according to
social constructivist theorists . . . state sovereignty has both an institutional, material dimension
and a discursive, symbolic dimension’ (p. xxv).
The symbolic dimension is given fair attention by the author where she describes the choices
for the state seal, flag and also the renovation of the city of Kazan. These symbols represent
Tatarstan to the outside world as it, or its leaders, wish: a modern city suited for a capital of a
sovereign state with an international profile, state seals and flags that harbour both the symbols
of the Tatar ethnic nation and those of a civic Tatarstani nation. A criticism against such a view
on symbolic sovereignty, however, is that every political territorial entity, certainly every
autonomous one, tries to represent itself with symbols which best seem to represent its identity: it
is nothing new. In the case of Tatarstan as well as in other post-Soviet territorial political entities
the old monotonous Soviet symbols are replaced now with those that represent the ethnic and
local identity of their residents better. Very often elements of ethnic culture and mythology as
well as of the dominant religion are visible. However, it is notable that the Tatarstani leaders
chose not to include the Islamic crescent in the new Tatarstani flag, in order not to associate
Tatarstan as a territorial entity too closely with the Muslim titular Tatars, but rather represent a
rather neutral flag which suits the multiethnic population of Tatarstan better.
The discursive dimension, however, is much broader. By claiming to be sovereign and
different, even though this might not be the political reality, it is taken to be real. Within the
Tatarstani discourse of sovereignty, there is a sense of vagueness about what is understood as
sovereignty without independence, yet by virtue of the persistent Tatarstani claim to be
sovereign, an image has been created and has become prevalent that Tatarstan is indeed a
sovereign state, despite the fact that it is not independent.
Considering the above-mentioned demographic facts, in addition to the geographic location of
Tatarstan in the centre of the Russian Federation’s territory, it is not very surprising that
Tatarstan did not push for independence. There is nothing to suggest Mintimer Shaimiyev, the
ex-president of Tatarstan, wanted to push for that direction—and it is difficult to imagine that a
politician who was a vice-chair of the political party ‘United Russia’ would ever have wanted to
do such a thing. The main point, however, is that while an independent Tatarstan is not a totally
impossible option, it is not a realistic one, even at times of weakness for the Soviet/Russian
political centre. Therefore, it is not surprising that Tatarstan has not experienced the same push
for independence as Chechnya did. This is not so much a matter of the Tatarstani architects of
the sovereignty project respecting the Russian Federation’s territorial integrity but rather that
Tatarstan’s geographical location, as well as Tatarstan’s ethnic composition, and ethnic Tatars’
demographic distribution in Russia, limit the space for manoeuvre for any independence-seeking
endeavour.
It may be argued that the possession of territorial autonomy is not a sufficient condition for
the outbreak of an ethnic separatist war; usually the titular ethnic group, notably in the Russian
Federation, should be demographically dominant in its autonomous territory. On the other
hand separatist wars are not the only type of ethno-territorial conflicts that have appeared in the
post-Soviet space. Also horizontal ethno-territorial conflict, such as a conflict between two
subjects of the same country, could happen, as it did between the Ingush and North Ossetians.
1524 REVIEWS
However, its demographic make-up, and generally the patterns of ethnic distribution in the
Volga region, meant that the Tatar ethno-nationalists were aware that it would be impossible to
engage successfully in such a conflict. Nevertheless, the fact that Tatarstan has not been involved
in any violent conflict indicates also its leaders’ political wisdom and sense of responsibility.
Graney appears very defensive in her theoretical discussion. The impression is that she is
putting a great deal of effort into convincing opposing theorists and scholars. Such a defensive
attitude, however, is not necessary, as the author writes primarily for a broader audience. The
author should have been more confident about the merits of her own theoretical message and
formulated it accordingly. The book is of good quality, but unfortunately it is not very well
edited. This, however, cannot be blamed on the author as mistakes during the writing of a
manuscript are inevitable. Nevertheless, the publisher should have taken more time and effort to
correct it before its publication. It is especially unfortunate that there are no more recent sources
than from 2007. At the same time, the book is both informative and very well sourced. Indeed, at
times it appears that it is over-sourced, and as the author can fairly be regarded as an expert on
Tatarstan, she could have dispensed with many of these citations. The book itself is well written
and it is generally easy to read.

The main lesson taught by this book is that asymmetrical federation can be an asset to Russia
as a whole, and to Tatarstan in particular. The author describes the treaty between Tatarstan
and the Russian Federation (2007) as a victory for Tatarstan, acknowledging as it does the
importance of the historical, cultural, economic, environmental, and other specific features of
Tatarstan. This book describes very well Tatarstan’s discursive role in the creation of
asymmetrical federation building in the Russian Federation. In addition, without naming it as
such, the author shows the situation of good governance in Tatarstan and the relatively better
livelihood of its citizens during a time when the Russian Federation itself was in severe crisis
during Yel’tsin’s presidency.
This book has many assets and invites the reader to read more. A thorough analytical case
study with a theoretical base, this study would be very useful source for those engaged in
(theory-building) comparative studies. This book is recommended to scholars of the Russian
Federation, post-Soviet space, and to those of federalism and ethnic relations in general.
University of Amsterdam BABAK REZVANI Ó 2011
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McFaul describes himself as a political activist—promoting democracy—and also as a political

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/11/081501-24 Ó 2011 University of Glasgow

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migration and labour markets, and on the balance of payments.

higher added-value production. If employment rates are to be improved, investment in low-

Central European University DÁNIEL IZSÁK Ó 2011

and it is generally easy to read.

University of Amsterdam BABAK REZVANI Ó 2011

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