This book explains the complex relations and entanglements of Russia and its neighboring countries, an area that changed dramatically after the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. The chapters discuss how the strategic cultures of different countries display common characteristics rooted in this special geopolitical space that has been subjected to simultaneous changes over a longer time. Shared historical experiences provide a common ground to interpret outside threats. The spatial context is relevant in this volume because the focus is on a geopolitical in-between-ness. The position in between two ideologically, politically or economically divergent entities affects the states’ security considerations, maneuvering space and policy perspectives. By cross-examining competing Russian and Western influences Miklossy and Smith create a persuasive context of regional political choices.

This timely book analyses ‘soft power’ in the light of neoclassical realist premises as part of the foreign policy toolkit of great powers to expand their sphere of influence. Vasif Huseynov argues that if nuclear armed great powers compete against the same type of powers to expand or sustain their sphere of influence over a populated region, they use soft power as a major expansive instrument while military power remains a tool to defend themselves and back up their foreign policies. Presenting his model of soft power, the author explores the role of soft power projection by great powers in the formation of the external alignment of regional states. He focuses on the rivalries between Russia and the West (i.e. the EU and the USA) over the states located between the EU and Russia (the region known as the “common [or shared] neighborhood”) and on two of these regional states (Ukraine and Belarus) to test his hypotheses.

The second part of this multi-volume project assembles a series of recollections and debates on the Ukrainian revolutions of 1990, 2004, and 2013–2014. After an introduction to the methodology of oral history, it presents twenty interviews with participants and eyewitnesses of the events in Ukraine, and documents a series of workshop discussions conducted at a symposium held in 2017. In these workshops, activists and observers of each of the three revolutions exchanged and compared their memories, analyses, and evaluations. This volume thus not only provides a comprehensive collection of firsthand accounts of the three historic Ukrainian upheavals, but also reveals the interrelations between them. The volume documents assessments from Barbara Krauz-Mozer, Markiyan Ivashchyshyn, Natalia Klymovska, Vakhtang Kipiani, Mykola Kniazhycki, Natalyia Zubar, Yulia Tymoshenko, Aleksander Kwaœniewski, Viktor Taran, Markiyan Matsekh, Yulia Tychkivska, Leonid Findberg, Yulia Mostova, Oksana Zabuzhko, Eduard Drach, Michailo Cherenkoff, Andriy Dudchenko, Oleg Mahdych, Rebecca Harms, Herman van Rumpoy, and Jacek Saryusz-Wolski.

War has returned to Europe, and NATO stands at the forefront of the response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine. But how does NATO function? How do NATO member states perceive and act through the Atlantic Alliance? And ultimately how do states shape NATO's cohesion and relevance in the face of threats? The Nations of NATO explores national policies within the Atlantic Alliance. It examines the foreign policies of 16 allies, focusing on issues such as their strategic cultures, relationship with the United States, contributions to NATO operations, levels of defence spending, domestic challenges, and decision-making processes. The recent crisis in Ukraine has without doubt reinvigorated NATO as a military alliance, but over the last decade it has also been affected by a number of challenges, both endogenous and exogenous. Whether the Alliance is threatened from the outside (Russia, terrorism, China) or is being undermined from within (intra-Alliance politics, diverging threat perceptions) has become an increasingly debated issue. The degree to which the Alliance can adapt to evolving threats has also been at stake. At the heart of these debates are NATO allies' policies, preferences, threat perceptions, and level of commitment to the shared enterprise. By analysing the drivers, constraints, and specificities of relevant national policies, the volume offers an overview of NATO's contemporary functions and challenges, and constitutes an important source of data for future research and comparative analysis.

Volume One of Three Revolutions presents the overall research and discussions on topics related to the revolutionary events that have unfolded in Ukraine since 1990. The three revolutions referred to in this project include: the Revolution on Granite (1990); the Orange Revolution (2004–2005); and the Euromaidan Revolution (2013–2014). The project’s overall goal was to determine the extent to which we have the right to use the term “revolution” in relation to these events. Moreover, the research also uncovered the methodological problems associated with this task. Lastly, the project investigated to what extent the three revolutions are connected to each other and to what extent they are detached. Hence, the research in this volume not only discusses the theoretical aspects but also provides new analyses on such issues as religion, memory, and identity in Ukraine.

Reformers had high hopes that the end of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would lead to significant improvements in legal institutions and the role of law in public administration. However, the cumulative experience of 25 years of legal change since communism has been mixed, marked by achievements and failures, advances and moves backward. This book—written by a team of socio-legal scholars—probes the nuances of this process and starts the process to explain them. It covers developments across the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and it deals with both legal institutions (courts and police) and accountability to law in public administration, including anti-corruption activities. In explaining their findings, the authors probe the impact of such factors as the type of political regime (democratic to authoritarian), international influences (such as the European Union), and culture (legal and political). The volume’s contributors are: Mihaela Serban, Kim Lane Scheppele, Kriszta Kovacs, Alexei Trochev, Peter Solomon, Olga Semukhina, Maria Popova, Vincent Post. Marina Zaloznaya, William Reisinger, Vicki Hesli Claypool, Kaja Gadowska, and Elena Bogdanova.

Russia has changed dramatically since the beginning of this decade. This volume presents a unique collection of articles by Russian scholars and experts, originally published in Russian in the journal Kontrapunkt (Counterpoint). The authors include Yulia Bederova, Andrey Desnitsky, Maria Eismont, Aleksandr Gorbachev, Tatiana Nefedova, Ella Paneyakh, Sergey Parkhomenko, Nikolay Petrov, Kirill Rogov, Sergey Sergeev, Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, Andrey Soldatov, Svetlana Solodovnik, Anna Tolstova, Aleksandr Verkhovsky, and Natalia Zubarevich. Their essays cover a broad range of subjects from the Russian political scene and state-society relations to the politics of culture and the realm of ideas and symbols. These contributions offer fascinating insights into Russia’s multifaceted and complex development after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Romania's communist regime cultivated a thorny relationship with the Soviet Union, which facilitated the development of a national security narrative legitimizing a highly isolationist foreign policy. These factors have heavily weighed on Romanian postcommunist strategic thinking and complicated the transition process.