All Books

Anastasia Lysyvets’s memoir Tell us about a happy life … (Skazhy pro shchaslyve zhyttia …), published in Kyiv in 2009 and now available for the first time in an English trans¬la¬tion, is one of the most powerful testimonies of a victim of the Holodomor, the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine. This mass starvation was organized by the Soviet regime and resulted in millions of deaths by hunger. The simple village teacher Lysyvets’s testimony, written during the 1970s and 1980s without hope of publication, depicts pain, death, and hunger as few others do.

In his commentary, Vitalii Ogiienko explains how traumatic traces found their way into Lysyvets’s text. He proposes that the reader develops an alternative method of reading that replaces the usual ways of imagining with a focus on the body and that detects mechanisms of transmission of the original Holodomor experience through generations.

The “Joint Declaration of Twenty-two States,” signed in Paris on November 19, 1990 by the Chiefs of State or Government of all the countries which participated in World War Two in Europe, is the closest document we will ever have to a true “peace treaty” concluding World War II in Europe. In his new book, retired United States Ambassador John Maresca, who led the American participation in the negotiations, explains how this document was quietly negotiated following the reunification of Germany and in view of Soviet interest in normalizing their relations with Europe. With the reunification of Germany which had just taken place it was, for the first time since the end of the war, possible to have a formal agreement that the war was over, and the countries concerned were all gathering for a summit-level signing ceremony in Paris. With Gorbachev interested in more positive relations with Europe, and with the formal reunification of Germany, such an agreement was — for the first time — possible. All the leaders coming to the Paris summit had an interest in a formal conclusion to the War, and this gave impetus for the negotiators in Vienna to draft a document intended to normalize relations among them. The Joint Declaration was negotiated carefully, and privately, among the Ambassadors representing the countries which had participated, in one way or another, in World War Two in Europe, and the resulting document—the “Joint Declaration” — was signed, at the summit level, at the Elysée Palace in Paris. But it was overshadowed at the time by the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe — signed at the same signature event — and has remained un-noticed since then.

No one could possibly have foreseen that the USSR would be dissolved about one year later, making it impossible to negotiate a more formal treaty to close World War II in Europe. The “Joint Declaration” thus remains the closest document the world will ever see to a formal “Peace Treaty” concluding World War Two in Europe. It was signed by all the Chiefs of State or Government of all the countries which participated in World War II in Europe.

Rural women have not had a formative role in the public histories of Central Eastern Europe. Izabella Agárdi aims to correct that by concentrating on their life stories and their connections to general histories. She investigates how Hungarian-speaking, ordinary women in rural contexts born in the 1920s and 1930s remember and talk about the twentieth century they have experienced, and how, through their stories, they articulate historical change and construct themselves as historical subjects.


In her analysis, Izabella Agárdi traces the interactions between micro- and macro- narratives as well as the specific tools women of this generation appropriate to talk about personal memories of their often traumatic past. From these stories, a particular mnemonic community emerges, one that speaks from a highly precarious position ‘on the verge of history’. It is up to future generations whether these women’s experiences will be remembered or forgotten.

Oleksandra Keudel proposes a novel explanation for why some local governments in hybrid regimes enable citizen participation while others restrict it. She argues that mechanisms for citizen participation are by-products of political dynamics of informal business-political (patronal) networks that seek domination over local governments. Against the backdrop of either competition or coordination between patronal networks in their localities, municipal leaders cherry-pick citizen participation mechanisms as a tactic to sustain their own access to resources and functions of local governments.


This argument is based on an in-depth comparative analysis of patronal network arrangements and the adoption of citizen participation mechanisms in five urban municipalities in Ukraine during 2015–2019: Chernivtsi, Kharkiv, Kropyvnytskyi, Lviv, and Odesa. Fifty-seven interviews with citizen participation experts, local politicians and officials, representatives of civil society and the media, as well as utilization of secondary analytical sources, official government data, and media reports provide a rich basis for an investigation of context-specific choices of municipal leaders that result in varying mechanisms for citizen participation.

This monograph provides a detailed yet concise narrative of the history of the ethnic Germans in the Russian Empire and USSR. It starts with the settlement in the Russian Empire by German colonists in the Volga, Black Sea, and other regions in 1764, tracing their development and Tsarist state policies towards them up until 1917. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet policy towards its ethnic Germans varied. It shifted from a generally favorable policy in the 1920s to a much more oppressive one in the 1930s, i.e. already before the Soviet-German war.

J. Otto Pohl traces the development of Soviet repression of ethnic Germans. In particular, he focuses on the years 1941 to 1955 during which this oppression reached its peak. These years became known as “the Years of Great Silence” (“die Jahre des grossen Schweigens”). In fact, until the era of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (rebuilding) in the late 1980s, the events that defined these years for the Soviet Germans could not be legally researched, written about, or even publicly spoken about, within the USSR.

Memory is Our Home is a powerful biographical memoir based on the diaries of Roma Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc, who was born in Warsaw before the end of World War I, grew up during the interwar period and who, after escaping the atrocities of World War II, was able to survive in the vast territories of Soviet Russia and Uzbekistan.

Translated by her own daughter, interweaving her own recollections as her family made a new life in the shadows of the Holocaust in Communist Poland after the war and into the late 1960s, this book is a rich, living document, a riveting account of a vibrant young woman’s courage and endurance.

A forty-year recollection of love and loss, of hopes and dreams for a better world, it provides richly-textured accounts of the physical and emotional lives of Jews in Warsaw and of survival during World War II throughout Russia. This book, narrated in a compelling, unique voice through two generations, is the proverbial candle needed to keep memory alive.

This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe?

Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging degrees of Europeanization stands in contrast to institutionalist-rationalist, interest-based accounts of democratic transition and international integration in post-communist Europe.

She thereby makes a case for the need to include ideational factors into the study of International Relations and demonstrates that identities are not easily malleable and may not be as fluid as often assumed. She proposes a theoretical “middle-ground” argument that calls for “qualified post-positivism” as an integrated per¬spective that combines positivist and post-positivist orientations in the study of IR.

Since the beginning of the Coronavirus crisis, our lives have completely changed: Shutdowns, working in home offices, contact restrictions, daily bulletins from virologists, protest movements, and conspiracy fantasies seem to have become part of our new everyday life.

Could we have been prepared for this?

Totally.

It’s all been there before: in the movies.

Science fiction films and series have always dealt with the future and its possible course, social changes, and conflicts in a speculative way.

Denis Newiak searches through the scenes of pandemic movies and series to bring out ideas for how to cope with the social, political, and economic challenges of the crisis.

Can the scenarios developed in film help us to pass this test—and to emerge from it with greater strength?

Berthold M. Kuhn and Dimitrios L. Margellos present a thoroughly reflected analysis of future global trends by drawing on insights and expertise from leading researchers, think tanks, and activists. Climate change and sustainability transformation, digitalization, growing inequalities, urbanization and smart cities, green economy, and sustainable finance are among the key megatrends.


Addressing geopolitical shifts and the future of multilateralism, the authors also discuss new trends in democracy and governance, migration, the futures of health and nutrition, and civilizational developments: demography, diversity, identity politics, individualization, and gender shift. Based on their own research and a series of future talks with leading analysts and researchers from different world regions, they present cutting-edge content of future studies.

Dead phones, chaos in hospitals, looming nuclear meltdowns: For years, experts all over the world have been warning of a widespread power blackout—and the devastating consequences for society as a whole. However, just as before the COVID-19 pandemic, politicians and the public are hardly aware of the far-reaching risks: A blackout would catch us almost completely unprepared.

As for other (supposedly improbable) disruptive events, disaster movies and sci-fi series have long shown what would happen if modern society were to lose its lifeblood. Denis Newiak looks into those filmic fictions for answers to pressing questions:

How can we prepare ourselves for the dramatic consequences of such a crisis? And can the collapse of modernity still be stopped?

To the older generations in her native Slovakia, Hana Ponická is well-known for her successful children’s books and courageous fight against the communist regime. Her psychological ordeal began in February 1977 when the elderly lady refused to sign the so-called anticharta, a condemnation of the human rights group Charter 77, which had published its first manifesto in the West on 1 January 1977. All Slovak and Czech artists had to sign the anticharta; they were forced by the regime to condemn the dissidents, the most prominent among them being Václav Havel (1936–2011), who were standing up against the violation of basic human rights enshrined in the Czechoslovak constitution following the conclusion of the CSCE treaty of Helsinki. Ponická, like most of her fellow artists, had neither read the Charter 77 manifesto nor the text of the anticharta; she thus refused to sign. Her courage prompted the regime to terrorize her psychologically.


This political biography is the first ever written about Ponická, despite her being a household name in Slovakia. Josette Baer’s analysis is based on Ponická’s memoirs of that cruel year of 1977, newspaper articles she published prior to 1971, when the regime effectively banned any critical voice from publication, and newspaper articles she published after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 to promote the establishing of a rule-of-law state and democracy.


The documents of the StB, the Slovak and Czech Security Services, are analyzed for the first time; they are evidence of how the StB tried to pressure the resilient and disciplined grandmother of three into obedience.


Oral history interviews with Dirk Matthias Dalberg, Vlasta Jaksicsová, and Mary Šamal inform the reader about the situation of the Slovak dissidents of Charter 77, how normal citizens lived in the regime, and how the Czech and Slovak exile communities in the USA saw the dissidents in Communist Czechoslovakia.

Martina Napolitano explores the poetics of one of the most significant Russian authors of the 20th century. Sasha Sokolov’s oeuvre represents a milestone in the development of Russian literature; his legacy can be traced in most prose and poetry appearing in post-Soviet Russia. Taking as point of departure the studies and analyses written so far and considering the new suggestions contained in Sokolov’s last published book Triptych (2011), Napolitano further examines the keystones and the theoretical framework that arise from a close reading of Sokolov’s works, trying to systematize the findings into what can be considered as a structured authorial theory of literary creation.

The study demonstrates how Sokolov’s oeuvre cannot be fully understood but within the widened perspective of inter-artistic creation: In fact, the writer, a “failed composer”, as he admits, in his literary work has tried to draw natural and spontaneous connecting lines between the artificially categorized realms of art (word, sound, painting, performance).

Finally, the book sets forth the first solid analysis of Sokolov’s concept of proeziia, not merely a genre nor style of his own invention, but a more significant theoretical reflection of the writer about the role and value of literature, art, creation, and finally beauty.

Following Einstein’s sentence: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” this book puts a spotlight on the complex marketing ecosystem from a physicist’s point of view.

Today’s marketing world is overcomplex; CMOs face the challenge to transform their current target operating models towards a 100% customer-centric and data-driven way of working. A journey from good old mad-men toward math-men marketing.


This book consists of three parts: The first part strips down the complexity of the marketing universe to the leanest frame of reference and then brings back the complexity, step by step, in single dimensions.
Part two and three just follow these thoughts and provide a detailed description of 56 small atoms that can be used in a maturity assessment of your marketing. How to use them in a broader transformation concludes the book.

In summary: An end-2-end guideline how to pursue and master the transformation from mad-men towards a math-men marketing operating model.

For many people, Pakistan is a rogue state, but for those who think of it as Pakistani citizens do, it is the place where they are confronted with dangers and issues to which they answer with incredible courage and dignity.


This volume, a reflection on Pakistan’s history from a compassionate insider’s perspective, pays homage to the many Pakistanis who face with a generous and open heart the problems created by a complex geopolitical context, many ethnic and religious contradictions, a tormented path towards self-definition, independence, democracy, and freedom.

Although productive imagination has played a highly significant role in (post-) Kantian philosophy, there have been very few book-length studies explicitly dedicated to its analysis.

In his new book, Saulius Geniusas develops a phenomenology of productive imagination while relying on those resources that we come across in Edmund Husserl’s, Max Scheler’s, Martin Heidegger’s, Ernst Cassirer’s, Miki Kiyoshi’s, Jean-Paul Sartre’s, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s, and Paul Ricoeur’s writings, while also engaging in present-day philosophical discussions of the imagination. Investigating the relation between imagination and embodiment, affectivity, perception, language, selfhood, and intersubjectivity, the book provides a phenomenological conception of productive imagination, which is committed to basic phenomenological principles and which is sensitive to how productive imagination has been conceptualized in the history of phenomenology.

Against such a background, Geniusas develops a new conception of productive imagination: It is a basic modality of intentionality that indirectly shapes the human experience of the world by forming the contours of action, intuition, knowledge, and understanding. It is not so much a blind and indispensable function of the soul, but an art concealed in the body, for it springs out of instincts, drives, desires, and needs.

The author demonstrates in which unexpected ways phenomenology of productive imagination enriches our understanding of embodied subjectivity.

The recent history of post-Soviet societies is heavily shaped by the successor nations’ efforts to geopolitically re-identify themselves and to reify certain majorities in them. As a result of these fascinating processes, various new ideologies have appeared. Some are specific to the post-Soviet space while others are comparable to ideational processes in other parts of the world.

In this collected volume, an international group of contributors delves deeper into recent theoretical constructions of various post-Soviet majorities, the ideologies that justify them, and some respectively formulated policy prescriptions.

The first part analyzes post-Soviet state-builders’ fixation on certain constructed majorities as well as on these imagined communities’ symbolic self-identifications, in- or outward othering, and national languages. The second part deals specifically with post-Soviet ideas of sovereigntism and the way they define majorities as well as imply changes in internal and external policies and legal systems. These processes are analyzed in comparison to similar phenomena in Western societies.

The book’s contributors include (in the order of their appearance): Natalia Kudriavtseva, Petra Colmorgen, Nadiia Koval, Ivan Gomza, Augusto Dala Costa, Roman Horbyk, Yana Prymachenko, Yuliya Yurchuk, Oleksandr Fisun, Nataliya Vinnykova, Ruslan Zaporozhchenko, Mikhail Minakov, Gulnara Shaikhutdinova, and Yurii Mielkov.

Wondering how people manage to laugh in the face of unrelenting political assault is one thing; puzzling at the explosion of stand-up comedy across Africa is another. With the former, one ponders the question of social resilience among agents desperate to rescue and preserve dignity and self-worth; with the latter, one launches a sociological inquest into the emergence and diverse facets of an industry that has taken full advantage of all the affordances of the emergent techno-media.

Stand-up Comedy in Africa is a timely, interdisciplinary survey of an art form whose ubiquity prompts sundry technical, artistic, and political questions. For those seeking critical guidance on the ethics and praxes of popular performance in Africa, this is as good a place as any to start.

In Statu Nascendi is a peer-reviewed journal that aspires to be a world-class scholarly platform encompassing original academic research dedicated to the circle of Political Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Theory of International Relations, Foreign Policy, and the political Decision-making process. The journal investigates specific issues through a socio-cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approach to raise a new type of civic awareness about the complexity of contemporary crisis, instability, and warfare situations, where the “stage-of-becoming” plays a vital role.

Issue 2022:1 focuses on the novels of Haruki Murakami.

Haruki Murakami: What is the relation between philosophy and an acclaimed Japanese literary writer? Murakami himself has been reluctant to expound on any deeper meaning to be found in his stories. The answer can be found in the great interest in and diverse engagement of readers with Murakami’s work. In a truly global sense, readers have sensed such a depth in Murakami. Whether it is psychoanalytical, sociological, mythological, or political, readers are motivated to extend Murakami’s texts: to think about and work with them long after their initial reading. The objective of this special issue of ISN is to explore this depth to Murakami’s work from an interdisciplinary perspective in order to present novel arguments to the growing research community.

In a review of the work of Karl Jaspers composed several years before the publication of his book Being and Time, Martin Heidegger suggested that the philosophical orientations of his period had made a wrong turn and skirted by the fundamental path of thought. He suggested that instead of taking up a heritage of original questions, his contemporaries had become preoccupied with secondary issues, accepting as fundamental what was in fact only incidental. In the years that followed, Heidegger’s promise to reorient philosophy in terms of the Seinsfrage, the question of Being, exercised a well-known influence on successive generations of thinkers on a global scale.


The present book delves into the philosophical sources of this influence and raises the question whether Heidegger indeed made good on the promise to reveal for thought what is truly fundamental. In proposing this investigation, the author assumes that it is not sufficient to take Heidegger at his word, but that it is necessary to scrutinize what is posited as fundamental in light of its broader implications–above all for ethico-political judgment and for historical reflection. After addressing this question in the first part of the book, the second part examines the significance of Heidegger’s reorientation of philosophy through the prism of its critical reception in the thought of Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricœur.

What is Man? What is his nature? Where is he going?

These are but some of the questions this book is trying to find answers to. They are questions that will take us on a fascinating intellectual journey encompassing politics, history, sociology, philosophy, religion, and science. Along the way you will encounter many great thinkers such as Aristotle and Nietzsche (to name but two) as well as be confronted by some of humanity’s most sublime achievements and horrific failures.

After reading this book, you will have a better understanding of humankind’s potential for good and evil and our chances for survival and transcendence in the not too distant future.

The geopolitics of post-communist Europe are not only important for Ukraine itself, but ultimately also for the future of the continent as a whole. This concerns the interactions between Kyiv, on the one hand, and the capitals of East-Central Europe as well as the Southern Caucasus, on the other. Where does Kyiv currently stand geopolitically and how should it engage in the region between the Baltic, Adriatic, Black, and Caspian Seas?

This volume examines which interests and motivations some select countries in East-Central Europe and the Caucasus have towards Ukraine and provides answers to the question which chances there are for new multilateral networks or structures. Such multilateralism around Ukraine could go beyond the already existing, yet geographically and functionally circumscribed Organization for Democracy and Economic Development (GUAM), the Visegrad Four, the Bucharest Nine Group, and the Three Seas Initiative.

The volume also illustrates how the ever-present “elephant in the room”—Russia—shapes the international relations of the post-Soviet space. Researchers from several post-communist countries examine these issues from their specific points of view.

With a Foreword from Pavlo Klimkin who held, among other positions, the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine in 2014–2019.

Going from classic to contemporary authors, the authors of this volume consider theorists that provided contributions that became representative of trends, schools of thought and original theoretical perspectives, and that grew into the backbone of Marxist thought: Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Gramsci, Edward Palmer Thompson, Nicos Poulantzas, Erik O. Wright, Antonio Negri, and John Holloway, with references to Rosa Luxemburg, Georg Lukács, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ralph Miliband.
The authors seek to provide a basis for the knowledge of the main contributions in contemporary Marxism and to place the debate on the concept of social class at the center of current sociological reflections. In this sense, the last chapter is not a balance nor an assessment, but offers an exercise in the problematization of the concepts of struggle and class, geared towards highlighting its relevance and potential in Marxist sociology within an agenda centered in the principle of antagonism.
Beyond the endeavor to recognize and revitalize the Marxist perspective, the authors offer tools for reflection that allow readers to refresh and expand their knowledge on a fundamental concept and a debate of great theoretical importance in social thought.

The social sciences and humanities worldwide are discovering the necessity to self-critically reshape their theorizing: The first critique of social science theorizing calls for ‘globalizing’, the second, parallel critique, for ‘de-colonizing’ social thought.

In his highly topical book, Michael Kuhn discusses why and how the ‘globalization’ of social science theorizing introduces thinking through nation state perspectives as an up-to-date methodological must; how the ‘de-colonialization’ of social science theorizing with the critique of Eurocentrism and its thinking through space paves the way for the worldwide implementation of thinking through nation-state views, transforming the social science world into a multiplicity of ’provincialized’ theories; with which odd argumentations the ’indigenization’ of thought produces contributions to the ideological armament of the new states in the so-called 3rd world after their transformation into the very society system of the former colonizers; how these indigenized theories make discourses among de-colonized theories a matter of which ‘provincialized’ theory manages to rule the worldwide creation of theories; how the masterminds of globally de-colonized thinking present imperial thought as guiding theories for mankind’s thinking; what templates for the turn from anti-capitalist towards nationalistic thinking Historical Materialism has provided, and what consequences all this has for the social sciences as a voice in political debates about the world.

In Statu Nascendi is a peer-reviewed journal that aspires to be a world-class scholarly platform encompassing original academic research dedicated to the circle of Political Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Theory of International Relations, Foreign Policy, and the political Decision-making process. The journal investigates specific issues through a socio-cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approach to raise a new type of civic awareness about the complexity of contemporary crisis, instability, and warfare situations, where the “stage-of-becoming” plays a vital role.

Issue 2021:2 comprises, amongst others, the following articles:

Culture as Understood in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Hans-Georg Gadamer
Literature as a Modern Art (Letërsiasi art modern)
Aristotle’s Phronesis and Socratic Skepticism: A Starting Point for the Development of Applied Ethics
The 30th Anniversary of the Visegrád Group (V4) Seen through the Perspective of Selected Integrationist Theories
Book Review: Conflict Resolution Beyond the International Relations Paradigm Evolving Designs as a Transformative Practice in Nagorno-Karabakh and Syria by Philip Gamaghelyan

What is the relationship between writing systems and nationalism? How can different alphabets coexist in the same country? What is the destiny of the Cyrillic alphabet in Europe?

Giustina Selvelli’s original work provides detailed answers to these far-reaching and potentially divisive questions and many more by examining several intriguing debates on topics of alphabets and national identity in a number of countries from the Balkan area over the course of the last 100 years. Following an encompassing perspective on alphabetic diversity, Selvelli, an expert on Southeast European Studies, reconstructs the ideological context of national discourses connected to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, also taking a look at the Arabic and Glagolitic scripts, and interweaving issues on the symbolism of the alphabet with the complex recent history of the region, marked by the parallel influences of the East and the West. She also sheds light on the impact of a range of alphabet policies on ethnolinguistic minorities, proposing a new definition of “alphabetic rights” with special regard to the multiethnic legacy of the former Ottoman and Habsburg empires.

This comprehensive book makes us discover the privileged role that writing systems played in the region’s delicate post-imperial and post-socialist transitions, leaving us captivated by peculiar stories such as that of the utopian “Yugoslav alphabet”.

Vanessa Freerks analyzes how Baudrillard re-actualizes Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, investigating how themes and approaches in Baudrillard’s Consumer Society, Simulacra and Simulations and Symbolic Exchange and Death resonate with Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. This book fills a gap in the limited literature available on the relation between Baudrillard’s thought to that of Nietzsche and Heidegger.
Baudrillard with Nietzsche and Heidegger: A Contrastive Analysis is essential reading for students and scholars of Continental Philosophy, sociology, and cultural theory.

The book series European Studies in the Caucasus offers innovative perspectives on regional studies of the Caucasus. By embracing the South Caucasus as well as Turkey and Russia, it moves away from a traditional viewpoint of European Studies that considers the countries of the region as objects of Europeanization.

This second volume demonstrates this by looking into forms of inter-regionalism in the Black Sea–South Caucasus area in fields of economic cooperation, Europeanization of energy and environmental policies, discussing how the region is addressed in the elaboration of a new German Eastern Policy.

In the section on norm diffusion, the contributors assess the normative power strategy of the EU and its paradoxes in the region, its impact on civil society development in Armenia, and democracy promotion in Georgia. In the section on legal approximation, issues of a global climate change regime and competition law in Georgia as well as penitentiary governance reform in the South Caucasus according to EU standards and policies are analyzed. All contributions also review regional or local contestations for the topics discussed here.

Traditionally, far-right terrorism has been the black swan of terrorism studies—receiving less attention than Jihadi extremism. In this book, William Allchorn takes a deep dive into multiple geographical locales and the online space of far-right movements, uncovering the crisis narratives that are animating violent far-right extremist milieus and presenting solutions on what we can do to stop them.

Using eight country case studies and the results of an online pilot project, this is the first book-length presentation and discussion of counter techniques to far-right narratives—exploring their effectiveness, the ethics of such techniques, and their ability to disrupt pathways from radicalism towards violent extremism. Coming at a time of a renewed global wave of far-right violence, this book is of use to scholars as well as practitioners in the fields of far-right studies, terrorism studies, and strategic communications.

Philosophical Ideas: A Historical Study invites the reader to consider central ideas from Plato, Hegel, Vico, and Cassirer from points of view that have not been fully articulated in the most frequently encountered interpretations of their works. It is an examination of the ideas of poetics, dialectics, science, and symbol as they function in their works with focus on the problem of knowledge as present in each of them.
The history of philosophy, approached in this way, is a treasure house of ideas that constitutes the subject matter of the contemplative life.

One quarter of all Holocaust victims lived on the territory that now forms Ukraine, yet the Holocaust there has not received due attention. This book delineates the participation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed force, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska povstanska armiia—UPA), in the destruction of the Jewish population of Ukraine under German occupation in 1941–44. The extent of OUN’s and UPA’s culpability in the Holocaust has been a controversial issue in Ukraine and within the Ukrainian diaspora as well as in Jewish communities and Israel. Occasionally, the controversy has broken into the press of North America, the EU, and Israel.

Triangulating sources from Jewish survivors, Soviet investigations, German documentation, documents produced by OUN itself, and memoirs of OUN activists, it has been possible to establish that: OUN militias were key actors in the anti-Jewish violence of summer 1941; OUN recruited for and infiltrated police formations that provided indispensable manpower for the Germans' mobile killing units; and in 1943, thousands of these policemen deserted from German service to join the OUN-led nationalist insurgency, during which UPA killed Jews who had managed to survive the major liquidations of 1942.

The scope of multilingualism and multiculturalism within societies is increasing on a global scale. As this is happening, discussions are emerging concerning the significance of including a variety of perspectives in classroom discourse as well as the imperative of ridding it of a prevailing monocultural straitjacket. Against the backdrop of these changing realities, authors have advocated for a revision and adaptation of current teaching methodology and classroom materials in order to do greater justice to an increasingly diverse student population.

This book presents the findings from a qualitative research project conducted in Australia, a country acclaimed for its linguistic and cultural diversity. Specifically, the study investigated the educational context of Indigenous Australian learners by shedding light on the incorporation of First Nations perspectives in teaching materials and methodology. Additionally, the project identified therewith-related challenges and possibilities for improvement. The results provide insights into the multifacetedness of language- as well as culture-related factors, which prove vital for learning processes. Moreover, the results reveal the complexities arising in connection with the incorporation of First Nations perspectives in classroom discourse. The data also point towards dimensions for improvement and recommendations for action for educators working in diverse classroom settings.

As growing linguistic and cultural diversity has become a global reality, this volume, addressing Australian First Nations perspectives, offers an important contribution to the field of contemporary education.

The biannual, peer-reviewed Journal of Romanian Studies, jointly developed by The Society for Romanian Studies and ibidem Press, examines critical issues in Romanian studies, linking work in that field to wider theoretical debates and issues of current relevance, and serving as a forum for junior and senior scholars. The journal also presents articles that connect Romania and Moldova comparatively with other states and their ethnic majorities and minorities, and with other groups by investigating the challenges of migration and globalization and the impact of the European Union.
Issue No. 6 is a Special Issue on Communication, guest-edited by Raluca Radu and Ioana Coman. It contains contributions by Radu Silaghi-Dumitrescu, Lucian-Vasile Szabo, Alla Rosca, Marius Dragomir, Dumitrița Holdiș, Cristina Lupu, Manuela Preoteasa, Marian Voicu, Antonio Momoc, Onoriu Colăcel, Tibori Szabo Zoltan, Andrei Richter, Paolo Mancini, Anca Șincan, Roland Clark, Dana Domsodi, R. Chris Davis.

This volume focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. It explores the transformations that art in Ukraine and the Baltic states has undergone since their independence in 1991, discussing how the conflicts and challenges of the last three decades have impacted the reconsideration of identity and fostered resistance of culture against economic and political crises. It analyzes connections between the past and the present as seen by the artists in these countries and looks at their visions of the future.

Contemporary Ukrainian art portrays various perspectives, addressing issues from controversial historical topics to the present military conflict in the East of the country. Baltic art speaks out against the erasure of past historical traumas and analyzes the pertinence of its cultural scene to the European community. The contributions in this collection open a discussion of whether there is a single paradigm that describes the contemporary processes of art production in Ukraine and the Baltic countries.

With contributions by Ieva Astahovska, Svitlana Biedarieva, Kateryna Botanova, Olena Martynyuk, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkevičė, Margaret Tali, and Jessica Zychowicz.

Using the Russian president’s major public addresses as the main source, Bo Petersson analyzes the legitimization strategies employed during Vladimir Putin’s third and fourth terms in office. The argument is that these strategies have rested on Putin’s highly personalized blend of strongman-image projection and presentation as the embodiment of Russia’s great power myth. Putin appears as the only credible guarantor against renewed weakness, political chaos, and interference from abroad—in particular from the US.

After a first deep crisis of legitimacy manifested itself by the massive protests in 2011–2012, the annexation of Crimea led to a lengthy boost in Putin’s popularity figures. The book discusses how the Crimea effect is, by 2021, trailing off and Putin’s charismatic authority is increasingly questioned by opposition from Alexei Navalny, the effects of unpopular reforms, and poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, Russia is bound to head for a succession crisis as the legitimacy of the political system continues to be built on Putin’s projected personal characteristics and—now apparently waning—charisma, and since no potential heir apparent has been allowed on center stage. The constitutional reform of summer 2020 made it possible in theory for Putin to continue as president until 2036. Yet, this change did not address the Russian political system’s fundamental future leadership dilemma.

By sensing the fundamental ideas of space and place on earth, this collection seeks to negotiate with and react to the underlying semasiological or psycho-geographical principle of geopoetics that cuts across varied and at times conflicting schools. From reading some geopoetical texts to understanding the idea of the earth in Humboldt and Marx-Engels, topolitics in Tintin, reef-thinking and the geography of exile, the volume tries to understand how we poetically exist with the earth. Isn’t literature, taking a cue from Hölderlin, a symptom of the way “man lives poetically on the earth”? How is our psyche an integral part of the earth-thought? How does literature deal with the concepts of space and place? How does literature enable us to comprehend the underlying principle of geopoetics—the principle of finding art in earth? These are some of the pivotal questions which this volume seeks to explore.

Literature exemplifies a geographical consciousness—an “intimate and subjective” experience of the earth. This book is an attempt to conceive this eclectic infusion of art and earth, so that we are able to ensure that the world of the art always remains in touch with the earth of the world. Let us, through this book, un-earth this deep-rooted spatiality in literature. Let us imitate earth through art, as this is the only place where we can live.

The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative has produced a flurry of activities both in the countries of the South Caucasus and in Russia. While mostly analyzed through the lens of geo-politics and geo-economics, there is new research emerging that represents more sophisticated approaches from a variety of social science disciplines.

This volume, based on the AESC Annual Convention in December 2020, collects a sample of critical voices to study the effects of infrastructure projects on local livelihoods, on sustainable and environmentally sound development, transparency, and inclusiveness.

This study launches a systematic inquiry into the nature of the concept of humanitarian intervention, focusing on its primary function of the protection of the endangered civilian populations who find themselves at the grave risk of genocide. This is strengthened by a recollection of selected historical examples of similar events and the responses to them by the international community, empowered by our modern understanding of the principle of state sovereignty, human rights, and anti-genocide legislation.
Applying the in-statu-nascendi ontology that accounts for the latest hybridized compartmentalization of various IR-related theories, the author provides a deep ontological inquiry into the nature, origin, and genesis of the idea of humanitarian intervention and opens up a broader debate on the limits of the principle of state sovereignty as well as on the international community’s ignorance of some of the most severe cases of human rights abuses around the world.

The future of our world over the next decade is being shaped by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that seek to uphold children’s wellbeing and, by their call to leave no one behind and to reach the furthest behind first, shine a spotlight on the world’s most vulnerable populations including children and adolescents living in poverty and exclusion. The transformative steps promised in the SDGs to ‘shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path’ assumes greater significance in the post-COVID-19 world where structural exclusions are starkly exposed and deep societal inequalities thickly underlined.

This volume seeks to address the main drivers of poverty, exclusion, urbanization, and violence against children and adolescents and investigates how knowledge, information, data collection, measurement, and monitoring can support strategies and innovations to effectively implement the SDGs by drawing on data and experience from several countries across the world including Bangladesh, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Malawi, MENA countries, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Suriname, and Thailand. As a result, it contributes to revealing the politics of social inclusion, offering policy proposals towards overcoming inequality and exclusion among children and adolescents.

Society is characterized by a constant flow of multimodal products, which increasingly blur the lines between screen and reality, and audiovisual translation allows overcoming geographical and linguistic frontiers between small realities across the planet. However, research has long struggled to adapt its methodologies to effectively analyze such phenomena, and even more to scale its results through larger corpus analyses.

Dora Renna proposes a pioneering framework, informed by the latest trends in audiovisual translation and multimodality and fit to achieve the complex task of operatively including multimodality in a rigorous corpus analysis of source and target versions of films characterized by language variation as a key element of character design.

While language is at the core of her analysis, its role in the broader audiovisual context is explored thanks to a solid network of relations that shed light on linguistic and translational choices as well as on their implications. Framework and methodology are explained in detail and thoroughly applied to the case study to show how this perspective contributes to move a step forward in corpus-based audiovisual translation studies. The results obtained are unexpected and urge readers to overcome old attitudes towards audiovisual translation and multimodal corpora.

Considered to be sub-ordinated and sub-prime to the city, suburban areas receive little attention by researchers and designers. However, it is the rapidly growing areas outside central cities that pose the biggest questions of the urban millennium: How can the scattered patchwork of urban areas and social spaces linked by networks of highways and public transportation function as a sustainable and livable urban environment? Answering this question requires understanding suburban spaces as heterogeneous urban areas with distinct local characteristics, qualities, and problems.

Following this path, Variations of Suburbanism explores the formation, characteristics, and trends of suburban areas all over the world. It provides insights on common features and differences of suburban governance, design, and infrastructure and discusses strategies to understand and design suburban areas in an increasingly suburbanizing world.

While the COVID-19 pandemic overshadowed all else and would quickly have a lasting impact on our daily lives, other events related to the radical right in 2020 soon surfaced. From terrorist attacks in Germany and India to anti-mask protests across the U.S. and Europe, radical right violence escalated in the midst of circulating conspiracy theories and disinformation. The yearbook draws upon insightful analyses from an international network of scholars, policymakers, and practitioners who explore the dynamics and impact of the radical right. It explores a wide range of topics including reflections on authoritarianism and fascism, the role of ideology and (counter-)intellectuals, and radical-right responses to the pandemic and calls for police reform in the height of the Black Lives Matter protests. It ends with important assessments on best approaches towards countering the radical right, both online and offline.

This timely overview provides a broad examination of the global radical right in 2020, which will be useful for scholars, students, policymakers, journalists, and the public.

In his timely study, Andrii Demartino investigates the multitude of techniques how social media can be used to advance an aggressive foreign policy, as exemplified by the Russian Federation’s operation to annex Crimea in 2014. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Demartino traces the implementation of a series of Russian measures to create channels and organisations manipulating public opinion in the Ukrainian segment of the internet and on platforms such as Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, LiveJournal, and Twitter.

Addressing the pertinent question of how much the operation to annex Crimea was either improvised or planned, he draws attention to Russia’s ad-hoc actions in the sphere of social media in 2014. Based on an in-depth analysis of the methods of Russia’s influence operations, the book proposes a number of counterstrategies to prevent such “active measures.” These propositions can serve to improve Ukraine’s national information policy as well as help to develop adequate security concepts of other states.

Urban space is an important part of the political environment—a place where people congregate to discuss, deliberate, and interact with each other. In times of great public discontent, people often turn to urban spaces to make their opinions heard and to demand change, with varying degrees of success. How are mass protests affected by the urban public space in which they occur?

This book provides a theoretical model to analyze city spaces, based on the use of theories from political science, urban planning, and sociology. Hansen’s approach consists of a mapping of the causal mechanisms between spatial elements, the political environment, and their combined effects on protests. This mapping is applied to three case studies—Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow.

In addition to the spatial perspective model, Urban Protest provides new insights as to how the interactions in space occur, and demonstrates how geography can create limitations and opportunities in a large variety of ways.

This handbook is the first collection of comprehensive teaching materials for teachers and students of Central Asian Studies (CAS) with a strong pedagogic dimension. It presents 22 chapters, clustered around five themes, with contributions from more than 19 scholars, all leading experts in the field of CAS and Eurasian Studies.

This collection is not only a reference work for scholars branching out to different disciplines of CAS but also for scholars from other disciplines broadening their scope to CAS. It addresses post-colonial frameworks and also untangles topics from their ‘Soviet’ reference frame. It aims to de-exoticize the region and draws parallels to European or to historically European-occupied territories.

In each chapter, the handbook provides a concise but nuanced overview of the topics covered, in which way these have been approached by the mainstream literature, and points out pitfalls, myths, and new insights, providing background knowledge about Central Asia to readers and intertwine this with an advanced level of insight to leave the readers equipped with a strong foundation to approach more specialized sources either in classroom settings or by self-study. A list of recorded lectures to be found on YouTube will accompany the handbook either as instruction materials for teachers or visual aids for students.

This is the first monograph to analyse Beckett’s use of the visual arts, music, and broadcasting media through a transdisciplinary approach. It considers how Beckett’s complex and varied use of art, music, and media in a selection of his novels, radio plays, teleplays, and later short prose informs his creative process.

Investigating specific instances where Beckett’s writing adopts musical or visual structures, Lucy Jeffery identifies instances of Beckett’s transdisciplinarity and considers how this approach to writing facilitates ways of expressing familiar Beckettian themes of abstraction, ambiguity, longing, and endlessness. With case studies spanning forty years, she evaluates Beckett’s stylistic shifts in relation to the cultural context, particularly the technological advancements and artistic movements, during which they were written.

With new examples from Beckett’s notebooks, critical essays, and letters, Transdisciplinary Beckett evidences how the drastic changes that took place in the visual arts and in musical composition influenced Beckett and, in turn, were influenced by him. Transdisciplinary Beckett situates Beckett as a key figure not just in the literary marketplace but also in the fields of music, art, and broadcasting.

Built on up-to-date field material, this edited volume suggests an anthropological approach to the palimpsest-like milieus of Wrocław, Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Chişinău. In these East-Central European borderline cities, the legacies of Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, and violent ethno-nationalism have been revisited in recent decades in search of profound moral reckoning and in response to the challenges posed by the (post-)transitional period. Present shapes and contents of these urban settings derive from combinations of fragmented material environments, cultural continuities and political ruptures, present-day heritage industries and collective memories about the contentious past, expressive architectural forms and less conspicuous meaning-making activities of human actors. In other words, they evolve from perpetual tensions between choices of the past and the burden of the past.

A novel feature of this book is its multi-level approach to the analysis of engagements with the lost diversity in historical urban milieus full of post-war voids and ruptures. In particular, the collected studies test the possibility of combining the theoretical propositions of Memory Studies with broader conceptualizations of borderlands, cosmopolitan sociality, urban mythologies, and hybridity. The volume’s contributors are Eleonora Narvselius, Bo Larsson, Natalia Otrishchenko, Anastasia Felcher, Juliet D. Golden, Hana Cervinkova, Paweł Czajkowski, Alexandr Voronovici, Barbara Pabjan, Nadiia Bureiko, Teodor Lucian Moga, and Gaelle Fisher.

In Statu Nascendi is a peer-reviewed journal that aspires to be a world-class scholarly platform encompassing original academic research dedicated to the circle of Political Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Theory of International Relations, Foreign Policy, and the political Decision-making process. The journal investigates specific issues through a socio-cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approach to raise a new type of civic awareness about the complexity of contemporary crisis, instability, and warfare situations, where the “stage-of-becoming” plays a vital role.

Issue 2021:1 comprises, amongst others, the following interviews & articles:

Constructivism in the Study of Sustainable Development
Interview with Krzysztof Żęgota on the Kaliningrad Oblast Role in the Contemporary Russian Federation’s Geostrategic Outlook
‘Democracy to come’: Derrida’s ‘undecidability’ and Laclau’s ‘Ethical’ as Investment Everydayness
New Digital Aesthetics and Eventual New Global Tribes: A Brief Overview of Manovich’s Instagrammism

The Western understanding of what happened in Ukraine during World War II has been shaped by historical and ideological constructs created in the Kremlin. The Ukrainian specificity has been dissolved in the concept of the “great victorious Russian people” and distorted by attempts to equate Ukrainian nationalists to German Nazis, while the occupation and colonization of Ukraine by Russian Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s has widely been ignored or artificially silenced.

In her Four Essays on World War II, Olena Stiazhkina inscribes the Ukrainian history of the war into a wider European and world context.

The Soviet and contemporary Russian narratives about World War II have been used to justify the Kremlin’s policies towards democratic countries. Today, Russia re-mains deeply engaged in the falsification of the past, which underpins the claims of the so-called “Russian World” and the ongoing war against Ukraine.

Olena Stiazhkina’s book promotes a new, historically adequate understanding of what happened in Ukraine before, during, and after World War II.

In our daily lives, the rule of law matters more than anything and yet remains an invisible presence. We trust in the rule of law to protect us from governmental overreach, mafia godfathers, or the will of the majority. We take the rule of law for granted, often failing to recognize its demise—until it is too late. For under attack it is, not only in the growing number of authoritarian countries around the world but in Europe, too.

As a citizen’s guide, this book explains in plain language what the rule of law is, why it matters, and why we have to defend it. The starting point is to ask why EU efforts to promote the rule of law in candidate countries have succeeded or failed, and what this tells us about what is happening inside the EU. The authors move on to suggest ways of strengthening the rule of law in Europe and beyond. This book is a call to action in defense of the most precious human invention of all time.

The right to be elected, although an important political right guaranteed in human rights documents on international and regional levels, is still an under-researched and undertheorized concept with many synonyms in use. While the right to vote is often correlated with democracy, the closely related right to be elected is often neglected, and the constitutions of most countries are silent about it.

The 2009 European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision in the case of Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina started the discussions concerning the discrimination in enjoyment of the right to be elected in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although the right to be elected is not explicitly guaranteed in the Dayton Constitution but only in the Law on Election, the ECHR considered equal enjoyment of this right by everyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina of high importance and declared the relevant Dayton Constitution’s provisions discriminatory.

The book explains the conceptual relevance of the right to be elected, its interrelatedness with the right to vote and both these rights’ significance for democratic systems. Through analyzing and explaining the regional human rights tribunal’s decisions concerning the right to be elected, the importance of this political right is elucidated.

Numerous political commentators have noted the rise of the radical right worldwide. How has the radical right responded to the COVID-19 pandemic? Has the radical right been legitimized in a world of closed borders and greater securitization? Have radical right regimes in power cracked under the strains of the crisis and thus undermined their own political fortunes? Have radical right-wing responses to COVID-19 been uniform or diversified? These are some of the questions tackled in Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic by the Radical Right.

This volume gathers a collection of short pieces, which highlight the multi-faceted ways in which right-wing and radical right-wing political forces have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents research by scholars from all around the world concentrating on the evolution of radical right-wing movements since the COVID-19 crisis began and their influence on mainstream and alternative narratives.

The edited volume includes case studies as well as far-reaching reports on the radical right’s utilizing of the crisis to re-shape ideas about sovereignty, globalization, democracy, equality, diversity, and political legitimacy. Such studies comprise cases on gender and class, racism, religious hatred, scapegoating, anti-Semitism and Sinophobia, conspiracy theories, and online radicalization, focusing on locations as diverse as the US, Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, France, Spain, Ukraine, Latvia, Israel, and India. All such studies are compiled in a total of six chapters and an epilogue, organized thematically and by country.

Our Others: Stories of Ukrainian Diversity is an award-winning exploration of both the histories and personal stories of fourteen ethnic minority groups living within the boundaries of present-day Ukraine: Czechs and Slovaks, Meskhetian Turks, Swedes, Romanians, Hungarians, Roma, Jews, ‘Liptaks’, Gagauzes, Germans, Vlachs, Poles, Crimean Tatars, and Armenians. Based on a combination of academic research, fieldwork, and interviews, Olesya Yaremchuk’s literary reportages paint realistic, thoughtful, and historically informed depictions of how these various groups arrived in Ukraine and how they have fared within the country’s borders. Accompanied by vivid photographs that bring the reportages to life, Our Others is in some respects a chronicle of the myriad voluntary and forced migrations that have rolled through Ukraine for centuries. Simultaneously, the book offers a tender—and timely—study of the little islands of cultural diversity in Ukraine that have survived the Soviet steamroller of planned linguistic, cultural, and religious unification and that deserve acknowledgement in Ukraine’s broader cultural identity.

The volume’s contributors are: Marta Barnych (contributing co-author), Anton Semyzhenko (contributing co-author), Ostap Slyvynsky (foreword)

The Russian Federation’s official acknowledgement of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008 has since been undermining both overall political stability in the Southern Caucasus in general and future perspectives of Georgia’s development in particular. Such recognition of new quasi-legal entities without consent of the parent state and a subsequent erosion of the principle of territorial integrity are pressing challenges in current world affairs. The Kremlin’s controversial 2008 decision continues to be an important bone of contention in Russian-Western relations.

This study explores the emergence and recent transformation of modern norms of recognition, secession, and self-determination in international law. It traces the evolution of Soviet and Russian perspectives on the recognition of new states, and discusses overall Georgia-Russia relations in order to answer the question: Why did the Kremlin recognize Georgia’s two breakaway entities in contradiction to traditional Russian approaches to recognition? The author argues that Moscow’s deviant behavior vis-à-vis Tbilisi was caused by three major reasons, namely: the earlier recognition of Kosovo by many Western nations in disregard of Russia’s stance, the intention to prevent Georgia’s accession to NATO, and the necessity to legitimize a continued presence of Russian armed forces in Georgia’s two breakaway provinces.

A number of books have been written on the death camp of Treblinka, but The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance is unique. Webb and Chocolaty present the definitive account of one of history's most infamous factories of death where approximately 800,000 people lost their lives. The Nazis who ran it, the Ukrainian guards and maids, the Jewish survivors and the Poles living in the camp's shadow—every angle is covered in this astonishingly comprehensive work.

The book attempts to provide a Roll of Remembrance with biographies of the Jews who perished in the death camp as well as of those who escaped from Treblinka in individual efforts or as part of the mass prisoner uprising on August 2nd, 1943. It also includes unique and previously unpublished sketches of the camp's ramp area and gas chamber, drawn by the survivors.

For this second, revised edition, the authors incorporated new information and provided sources for the Jewish Roll of Remembrance. A significant number of new entries have been added. The Roll of Remembrance has also been greatly expanded to include the names of Jews deported from Germany to Treblinka. In addition, more names have been added to the Perpetrators’ biographies, and other entries have also been enhanced with additional information.

At 11 o´clock in the evening of 20th August 1968, the armies of four Warsaw Pact countries, the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary, crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia, starting the “Operation Danube”. Literally overnight the Czechoslovak experiment with Alexander Dubček´s liberalization reforms was transformed from living reality into history. Although the Soviet Union’s action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, it had unintended consequences for both the unity of the communist bloc and the establishment of the new Soviet foreign doctrine. This book brings the international context of the 1968 crisis in Czechoslovakia to the center of attention. It brought together experts from within as well as from without Central Europe with the hope of igniting, or, perhaps better, re-igniting an international discussion on the Prague spring, its origins, its unfolding, its aftermath, and, most importantly, the international context.

The volume’s contributors are: Ljubodarg Dimić, Jakub Drábik, Mihail Gruev, Slavomír Michálek, Miklós Mitrovits, Jackques Rupnik, Alexander Stykalin, Mirosław Szumiło, Michal Štefanský, and Virgiliu Tarau

The USSR’s dissolution resulted in the creation of not only fifteen recognized states but also of four non-recognized statelets: Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria. Their polities comprise networks with state-like elements. Since the early 1990s, the four pseudo-states have been continously dependent on their sponsor countries (Russia, Armenia), and contesting the territorial integrity of their parental nation-states Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova. In 2014, the outburst of Russia-backed separatism in Eastern Ukraine led to the creation of two more para-states, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), whose leaders used the experience of older de facto states. In 2020, this growing network of de facto states counted an overall population of more than 4 million people.

The essays collected in this volume address such questions as: How do post-Soviet de facto states survive and continue to grow? Is there anything specific about the political ecology of Eastern Europe that provides secessionism with the possibility to launch state-making processes in spite of international sanctions and counteractions of their parental states? How do secessionist movements become embedded in wider networks of separatism in Eastern and Western Europe? What is the impact of secessionism and war on the parental states?

The contributors are Jan Claas Behrends, Petra Colmorgen, Bruno Coppieters, Nataliia Kasianenko, Alice Lackner, Mikhail Minakov, and Gwendolyn Sasse.

In 2012, soon after his election to a third presidential term as president, following a four-year stint as prime minister (to avoid modifying the constitution), and in the wake of an unprecedented wave of popular protests, Vladimir Putin issued his “May Decrees.” Notable among them was the government’s commitment to increase the salaries of doctors, scientific researchers and university teachers to double the average in their respective regions by 2018. But then on December 30 of that year, the government issued a “road map” for education, revealing that the salary increases in higher education would be paid for, not by significant new government funding, but by “optimization,” which would eliminate 44% of the current teaching positions in higher education. This was justified in part by a forecasted drop in student enrollment.
Thus opened a new, accelerated period of reform of higher education. David Mandel examines the impact of these reforms on the condition of Russia’s university teachers and the collective efforts of some teachers, a small minority, to organize themselves in an independent trade union to defend their professional interests and their vision of higher education.
Apart from the subject’s intrinsic interest, an in-depth examination of this specific aspect of social policy provides valuable insight into the nature of the Russian state as well as into the condition of “civil society,” in particular the popular classes, to which Russian university teachers belong according to their socio-economic situation, if not necessarily their self-image.

Inez De Florio, born blind, tells us the moving, fascinating, and true story of her recovery from blindness at the age of 48 and how she coped with learning to see. Eyesight seems to be completely effortless for us, but for persons blind since birth these processes of adaptation are overwhelmingly demanding. For that reason, more than half of the patients commit suicide within the first years after successful surgery.

De Florio, whose late recovery from blindness did not stop her from making a brilliant academic career as a professor in didactics, foreign languages, and intercultural communi¬ca¬ti¬on, not only reveals astounding insights into the world of the visually impaired and their interactions with sighted people. Based on newest scientific findings, she also offers an illuminating report on how to learn to see and how to appreciate visual perception without over-emphasizing the importance of eyesight.

This book draws on the author’s experience from 26 years of Ukrainian diplomatic service in, among others, Bonn, Berlin, Washington, and Vienna, and his work as a speechwriter to most Ukrainian foreign ministers for the last two decades. Scherba’s captivating essays reflect his views of international affairs from a Ukrainian perspective. His deliberations are presented in uncomplicated, plain language. The articles assembled here have repeatedly caused discussion in Ukraine and abroad.

By his opponents, Scherba is often described as being surprisingly undiplomatic and even provocative. For instance, his article “Why nationalism can’t be the national idea of a European Ukraine”, published on a Ukrainian nationalist website, stirred considerable controversy in Ukraine. Aside from explaining Kyiv’s take on some key issues of international relations, these essays provide insights into Ukrainian political thinking since the start of Russia’s military aggression in 2014, and into the painful political intramural fights in Ukrainian society ever since.

This volume of collected papers takes stock of what has become known about the war in eastern Ukraine’s Donets Basin (Donbas) between April 2014 and mid-2020. It provides an introduction to the conflict and illustrates the key point of contention in the academic debate surrounding it—the question whether this war is primarily an internal Ukrainian phenomenon or the result of a covert Russian invasion. The contributions by recognized specialists from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and Japan offer multifaceted views and insights into this long-lasting conflict for both expert readers and those who are new to the topic.

The volume’s contributors are Tymofii Brik, Jakob Hauter, Sanshiro Hosaka, Yuriy Matsiyevsky, Nikolay Mitrokhin, Maximilian Kranich, and Ulrich Schneckener.

Freedom of religious expression and assembly has never been under greater threat in post-Soviet Russia. The infamous Yarovaya Law of 2016 has made good on previous legislative endeavors to curtail the activities of undesirable religious entities. Behind the curtain, the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church looms large over state policy and the decline in religious liberties and pluralism.

Lincoln E. Flake explains the church’s hostility to nontraditional groups as a consequence of historical-structural factors arising from its Soviet experience and immediate-strategic factors arising from its experience in the post-Soviet religious free market.

It was not until the 2014 annexation of Crimea that church-state interests coincided to produce unprecedented collusion. The Church, which had previously only served symbolic purposes for domestic political advantage, was now required for more meaningful ‘active measures’ in Russia’s all-of-government approach to advancing its national security strategy. Reciprocation produced the Yarovaya Law and further quid pro quos account for the relapse into religious intolerance.

This study contextualizes the church’s present-day posture on religious pluralism by appealing both to historical experience and insights that Rational Choice Theory offers to the study of religious actors and religious behavior.

The bilingual, French–English journal Méthod(e)s, founded in 2015, is an African initiative with the objective to enlarge the methodological debates on the Global South. The desire for a strong understanding of methodology is to situate it above academic trends, thereby placing it in line with a universal history of the sciences. Just as calling dominant paradigms into question leaves room for creative opportunities, so does the comparison of theoretical approaches and technical models of data collection. Questions related to methods are not purely technical or merely philosophical reflections. The examination of the method used in scientific investigations necessarily leads us to question the validity and consequences of research results. From this point of view, the journal Méthod(e)s is not a forum for simple discussions on the mechanics of research but a tool to question social interests influencing academic research and giving it a political function. It is also intended to lead to a more critical look at the creation of theories dealing with the status of individuals and societies in Africa and the Global South.

Méthod(e)s aims to bring into question, connect, and compare the theoretical, technical, and political foundations of the social sciences as applied to human societies.

South Asian diasporic writing—poetry, fiction, literary theory, and drama by writers from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka now living in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA—is one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary world literature. In this volume, eighteen acclaimed writers from this tradition are interviewed by experts in the field about their political, thematic, and personal concerns as well as their working methods and the publishing scene. The book also includes an authoritative introduction to the field, and essays on each writer and interviewer.

The interviewers and interviewees are: Rukhsana Ahmad, Maryam Mirza, Michelle Cahill, Chris Ringrose, Shankari Chandran, Birte Heidemann, Amit Chaudhuri, Pavan Kumar Malreddy, R. Cheran, Aparna Halpé, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Reshmi Lahiri-Roy, Sulari Gentill, Angela Savage, Romesh Gunesekera, Susheila Nasta, Kaiser Haq, Mohammad A. Quayum, Tabish Khair, Mridula Koshy, Neel Mukherjee, Anjali Joseph, Karthika Naïr, Laetitia Zecchini, Mariam Pirbhai, Sehba Sarwar, Rajith Savanadasa, Alexandra Watkins, Sungchuk Kyi, Ruth Gamble, Samrat Upadhyay, and Prakash Subedi.

The contributions gathered in this fascinating collection, in which scholars from a diverse range of disciplines share their perspectives on Russian covert activities known as Russian active measures, help readers observe the profound influence of Russian covert action on foreign states’ policies, cultures, people’s mentality, and social institutions, past and present. Disinformation, forgeries, major show trials, cooptation of Western academia, memory, and cyber wars, and changes in national and regional security doctrines of states targeted by Russia constitute an incomplete list of topics discussed in this volume. Most importantly, through a nexus of perspectives and through the prism of new documents discovered in the former KGB archives, the texts highlight the enormous scale and the legacies of Soviet/Russian covert action.

Because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its on-going war in Ukraine’s Donbas, Ukraine lately gained international recognition as the epicenter of Russian disinformation campaigns, invigorating popular and scholarly interest in conventional and non-conventional warfare.

The studies included in this collection illuminate the objectives and implications of Russia’s attempts to ideologically subvert Ukraine as well as other nations. Examining them through historical lenses reveals a cultural clash between Russia and the West in general.

The contributors to this collection explore the multidimensional transformation of independent Ukraine and deal with her politics, society, private sector, identity, arts, religions, media, and democracy. Each chapter reflects the up-to-date research in its sub-discipline, is styled for use in seminars, and includes a bibliography as well as a recommended reading list. These studies illustrate the deep changes, yet, at the same time, staggering continuity in Ukraine’s post-Soviet development as well as various counter-reactions to it. All nine chapters are jointly written by two co-authors, one Ukrainian and one Western, who respond here to recent needs in international higher education.

The volume’s contributors include, apart from the editors: Margarita M. Balmaceda (Seton Hall University), Oksana Barshynova (Ukrainian National Arts Museum), Tymofii Brik (Kyiv School of Economics), José Casanova (Georgetown University), Diana Dutsyk (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), Marta Dyczok (University of Western Ontario), Hennadii Korzhov (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute), Serhiy Kudelia (Baylor University), Pavlo Kutuev (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute), Olena Martynyuk (Columbia University), Oksana Mikheieva (Ukrainian Catholic University), Tymofii Mylovanov (University of Pittsburgh), Andrian Prokip (Ukrainian Institute for the Future), Oxana Shevel (Tufts University), Ilona Sologoub (Kyiv School of Economics), Maksym Yenin (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute), and Yuliya Yurchenko (University of Greenwich).

This volume identifies and analyzes risk issues arising from the radical-right phenomenon in many forms, including the personal safety and security of individual citizens, ethno-religious minorities, and other minorities and vulnerable groups, as well as threats to organizations, public order and national security, to democratic governance, and to international security. As chapters reveal, the cross-flow of ideological, organizational, and ‘dark money’ support emanating primarily from US corporate foundations, lubricates the fusion of corporate and radical-right interests nationally, transnationally, and globally.

This volume gathers contributions from leading academic authors and provides a detailed examination of the fusion of mutual interests between, on the one hand, powerful corporate leaders, executives, and wealthy oligarchs and, on the other, radical-right political leaders, parties and intermediary organizations promoting radical-right causes. The two worlds feed off, enable, and strengthen each other. Of particular relevance to the third decade of the 21st century is an examination of the corporate/radical-right stance on the COVID-19 pandemic and the phenomenon of wild allegations and grand conspiracy theories disseminated by the radical-right against their enemies.

The biannual, peer-reviewed Journal of Romanian Studies, jointly developed by The Society for Romanian Studies and ibidem Press, examines critical issues in Romanian studies, linking work in that field to wider theoretical debates and issues of current relevance, and serving as a forum for junior and senior scholars. The journal also presents articles that connect Romania and Moldova comparatively with other states and their ethnic majorities and minorities, and with other groups by investigating the challenges of migration and globalization and the impact of the European Union.

Issue No. 5 contains:

Vintila Mihailescu: “Rationalism or the agency of culture in Romanian modern social thinking”
Roland Clark: “The Shape of Interwar Romanian History”
Lucian Turcescu and Lavinia Stan: “The Romanian Orthodox Church and its Financial Dealings in Post-Communism”
Philippe Henri Blasen: “Between Poles and Slovaks: National Oscillation in Poiana-Micului (1936–1942)”
Radu Parvulescu: “The Romanian Judicial Professions Database: An Open-Source Tool for Researching the Romanian Legal System”

People are often surprised to learn that although the current global levels of food production are sufficient to feed all of humanity, the problems of undernourishment increase year by year in many countries. Economic growth, while important, is not a guarantee for reducing hunger. The intensification of income concentration worldwide, in the face of the persistence of millions of hungry families, demonstrates that economic interest is not guided by the needs of humanity. Moreover, the problem of food no longer refers to the lack of food alone. Many people are still unaware that our diets are not simply choices of taste and tradition but the result of international dynamics driven by geopolitical factors, the trajectory of capitalism, and other ulterior forces.

The authors deepen the link between international relations and food security by exploring the humanitarian and ethical importance of a solution to the problem of hunger; the role of the state as a strategically relevant actor in achieving food security; and the nature of the problem of food security in a world in which the rationale guiding food production and distribution is a capitalist one.

This anthology draws attention to the Ukrainian dissident movement and offers detailed insights into this phenomenon among Western readers. The stories of ideas and personal undertakings are unfolding before the reader in a vivid pulsation of texts that testify for themselves. The collection gathers texts from different genres: from poetry, public speeches, and samvydav (self-published, uncensored) texts to court speeches, texts on being held in jails, special psychiatric hospitals for those not accepting the official ideology, and prison camps, and finally to self-reflection on personal experiences of opposing the totali¬ta¬rian system.

The variety of texts creates a multidimensional and meaningful picture of the Ukrainian dis¬sident movement—a generation of Ukrainian public and cultural figures who, one way or the other, insisted on their freedom of speech and made history by daring to challenge the official ideology and culture.

The book is compiled by Oleksii Sinchenko, Dmytro Stus, and Leonid Finberg. Scholarly re¬viewing of the book by Myroslav Marynovych.

This book provides a new understanding of fictocriticism—a genre stemming from metafiction, écriture feminine, and postmodernism—via original creative and experimental writing devoted to the issue of the contemporary self, offering a reinvigoration of fictocriticism as a writing strategy.

Cholewa explores questions surrounding what fictocriticism is and what it can do, and the essential paradox between theories surrounding fictocriticism suggesting how ‘freeform’ it is, yet how non-freeform and chameleonic it still seems to be due to its lack of theoretical ‘rules’. Evaluating fictocriticism as both an art form and as a vehicle for higher theory and criticism, he offers and proposes further academic attention across a plethora of sociocultural, artistic, scientific, educational, political, and historical fields.

Propelled by the work(s) of Roland Barthes, the ‘godfather of fictocriticism’, the ultimate goal of this research and text is to provide new and expanded reading tools that both explain the subjectivity and context of fictocritical writings and simultaneously innovate on the form.

Learning foreign languages is a process of acquiring authentic contents in cultural contexts. In this respect, bilingual programs provide an effective connection between content-based studies and linguistic activities. The European umbrella term CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) not only comprises the aims and objectives of a sustainable format of teaching foreign languages but also the priority of content over language, in other words: language follows content, as in the Bauhaus precept form follows function. But in order to effectively integrate content and language, a comprehensive pedagogical approach is needed that goes beyond existing curricula and guidebooks.
Bernd Klewitz aims at establishing the CLIL methodology by linking content requirements of subject areas, especially those in the social sciences, with linguistic building blocks and tools. The integrative methodology of bilingual programs extends to the study of literature, traditionally a domain of language tuition, but thought to be a seminal part of CLIL as well.

The building blocks and language tools presented in this volume focus on learning foreign languages in cultural contexts, aims, and objectives of CLIL, parameters of an integrated bilingual teaching strategy, dimensions of bilingual learning, elements of a CLIL concept, Literary CLIL, CLIL tools and strategies, modules with worked examples, challenges, and desiderata, and a comprehensive glossary. Each section is completed with an interactive part of review, reflection, and practice.

During the 1950s, Michael Randle helped pioneer a new form of direct action against nuclear war, based on the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. At the forefront of the British campaign, he worked closely with Peace News editor Hugh Brock (1914–1985) and other distinguished ‘anti-nuclear pacifists’ such as Pat Arrowsmith, April Carter, and Ian Dixon, serving as chairman of the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War (1958-1961) and secretary of the Committee of 100 (1960-1961).

In 1966, he helped ‘spring’ the Russian spy George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Thereafter, he campaigned vigorously on behalf of the Greek democratic opposition, conscientious objectors, and Soviet dissidents. He has always been a man of rare candor and singular energy and principles, even enduring imprisonment for his beliefs.

Nowadays, Michael lives in Shipley near Bradford, where he continues to write as a respected expert on ‘people power’. Martin Levy’s interviews with Michael Randle introduce the reader to a tumultuous life that is nothing short of extraordinary.

The Kremlin has sought to establish an exclusive Russian sphere of influence in the nations lying between Russia and the EU, from Georgia in 2008 to Ukraine in 2014 and Belarus in 2020. It has extended its control by means of military intervention, territorial annexation, economic pressure and covert activities. Moscow seeks to justify this behavior by referring to an alleged threat from NATO and the Alliance’s eastward enlargement. In the rhetoric of the Kremlin, NATO expansion is the main source for Moscow’s stand-off with the West.

This collection of essays, interviews, and analyses by prominent politicians, diplomats, and scholars from the US, Russia, and Europe provides personal perspectives on the sources of the Russian-Western estrangement. They shed new light on the nature of the confrontation between the West and Russia, and indicate possible steps towards a reconciliation.

The volume touches upon alleged and real security guarantees for the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, experience with diplomatic efforts to solve the thorny issues of post-communist European geopolitics, as well as past and current deficits in the Western strategy for dealing with an increasingly hostile Russia. Thus, it contributes to the ongoing Western debate on which policies towards Russia can help to overcome the deep current divisions and to best meet Europe’s future challenges.

Michal Bogin Feinberg presents a new way of perceiving children’s drawings. In a language suitable for everyone, she exposes the reader to the secret of the fixed order of the development of children's drawing, of all its steps and meanings. Understanding the stages of the motor and emotional development of children's drawings and unraveling the encounter as well as the connection between them generates a new way to look at observing children's drawings and provides one with the tools to better understand their emotional world.

This book is an essential tool for every therapist, educator, or parent.

This special section deals with Russia’s post-Maidan foreign policy towards the so-called “near abroad,” or the former Soviet states. This is an important and timely topic, as Russia’s policy perspectives have changed dramatically since 2013/2014, as have those of its neighbors. The Kremlin today is paradoxically following an aggressive “realist” agenda that seeks to clearly delineate its sphere of influence in Europe and Eurasia while simultaneously attempting to promote “soft-power” and a historical-civilizational justification for its recent actions in Ukraine (and elsewhere). The result is an often perplexing amalgam of policy positions that are difficult to disentangle. The contributors to this special issue are all regional specialists based either in Europe or the United States.

This issue also features a special section on Russia’s Annexation of the Crimea.

JSPPS’s second special section on Russia’s annexation of Crimea is less focused on Moscow’s 2014 land grab per se. Instead it discusses how to interpret and contextualize some salient judicial, historical and political issues concerning the annexation. The section’s papers document how these issues have been interpreted and contextualized by various relevant public actors including politicians, journalists and scholars, in Ukraine, Russia and the West. Natalya Belitser’s “The Status of the Crimean Tatars in Ukrainian and International Law” shines new light on the long legal and political fight of the Crimean Tatars to acquire the special status of indigenous people. Alina Cherviatsova’s “The 1954 Transfer of Crimea: Debunking the Myth of a ‘Royal Gift’ to Ukraine” focuses on select Soviet legal and historical issues related to Moscow’s various apologetic discourses since 2014. Maryna Rabinovych’s “How the Federal Republic Reacted to Russia’s Annexation of Crimea: Berlin’s Diplomatic Response and German Media Representations in 2014-2020” portrays today’s Germany as caught in the middle of two of its fundamental competing foreign affairs principles, multilateralism and Ostpolitik, in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donets Basin (Donbas). The three papers add new observations, comparisons, and interpretations to the growing body of academic literature, on Russia’s annexation of Crimea. They provide insights into hitherto insufficiently highlighted aspects of this consequential event in current European history.