Author: m11p2714

Seminar March 16: Silent Dissent: Transforming Russia from within: Illiberal legislation and silovik coalition-building in the Russian State Duma, 2011-202

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🎓Welcome to our online seminar!

Seminar March 16: Silent Dissent: Transforming Russia from within: Illiberal legislation and silovik coalition-building in the Russian State Duma, 2011-2021

🎤Daniella Slabinski, PhD Candidate, Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo
📅March 16, 10:15-12:00
🏢Zoom: https://lnkd.in/e86W-CKi

Abstract: For the last decade, the Russian State Duma has arguably become a site where production of illiberal ideology and rent seeking intersect which has resulted in severe consequences for domestic and global politics. Nevertheless, knowledge of the lawmakers and the various power coalitions that they form to achieve their goals is limited. In this paper I address this lacuna by focusing on the role of the siloviki – individuals with career experience in the military, intelligence and law enforcement apparatus – in the State Duma and ask: what coalitions do silovik representatives form when passing illiberal legislation? Drawing on a unique set of illiberal bills sponsored by silovik-MPs during the 6th (2011 – 2016) and 7th (2016 – 2021) convocations, I use social network analysis to test for Brian D. Taylor’s typology of silovik formations (clan, corporate and cohort) on a unique dataset of illiberal legislation passed by silovik-MPs during the 6th (2011 – 2016) and 7th (2016 – 2021) Duma convocations. The data illustrates that neither ideology nor institutional belonging (corporate and party affiliation) among silovik-MPs are decisive factors during coalition-building when passing illiberal bills. Instead, there is a distinctively growing trend in favor of grouping into informal networks in which silovik-MPs act as legislative patrons.

Seminar March 3: Russian informational co-aggression? Ukraine-related disinformation in Belarusian pro-government Telegram channels

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Seminar March 3: Silent Dissent: Russian informational co-aggression? Ukraine-related disinformation in Belarusian pro-government Telegram

🎤Alesia Rudnik, PhD, Postdoctoral researcher at Södetrörn University and Maastricht University
📅March 3, 15.15-17.00
🏢Zoom: https://lnkd.in/exWc55gs

Abstract: Based on a qualitative content analysis of 2024 posts from leading pro-government Telegram channels in Belarus, this article examines how these sources spread disinformation about Ukraine. The authors show that such posts were relatively infrequent in 2024, and that their themes shifted in response to developments on the battlefield and changes in the broader international context of the conflict. However, certain false claims and allegations consistently received substantial attention. These include public dissatisfaction with conscription into Ukraine’s armed forces, deceptive and coercive methods of recruitment, declining morale among Ukrainian soldiers, corruption related to the war effort, and allegations of ‘neo-Nazism’ within Ukraine and its military. Although the Belarusian regime is often regarded as a co-aggressor in the Russo–Ukrainian war, little is known about whether and how it actively promotes pro-Kremlin narratives online. This article represents a first attempt to address this gap.

Speaker:

Alesia Rudnik, PhD in political science, defended her thesis “Machinery of Dissent: People and Technology in Protests in Autocracies” in 2025. Now she is a postdoctoral researcher at Södetrörn University and Maastricht University. 
Rudnik’s current research project “Negotiating Digital Power: Big Tech, States & Citizens in Democratic versus Autocratic Contexts” is supported by the Swedish Research Council. 
Rudnik is also a former director and an acting board member of an independent Belarusian think tank in exile Center for new ideas. Previously, Rudnik led the organization of the Belarusian diaspora in Sweden. She is also a recipient of the Swedish award “European of the Year 2022”. 
Currently, she is also a member of the editorial board of Belarus Voices (Ibidem.) and Belarus Analytical Digest.

Seminar February 3 with Irina Olimpieva, Silent Dissent: Exploring Russian Civic Activism as a Form of Opposition to the War in Ukraine

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Silent Dissent: Exploring Russian Civic Activism as a Form of Opposition to the War in Ukraine

🎤Irina Olimpieva, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Independent Social Research, Inc. (CISR USA)
📅February 3, 15.15-17.00
🏢Zoom: https://lnkd.in/eJCkhJVw

Abstract:  Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the apparent absence of mass antiwar protests inside Russia has often been interpreted as evidence of popular indifference or support for the war. Survey data seem to reinforce this conclusion, while street-level mobilization has remained limited even during moments of heightened political tension, such as the announcement of “partial” mobilization. This talk challenges such interpretations by shifting attention away from visible protest toward less conspicuous but socially meaningful forms of opposition that emerge under conditions of repression.
Drawing on a research project conducted since August 2022, I explore humanitarian volunteerism as a form of silent resistance. The analysis focuses on a case study of an informal volunteer network based in St. Petersburg that assists Ukrainian families who fled the war, found themselves on Russian territory, and are seeking asylum in Europe. Operating primarily through Telegram, volunteers meet refugees arriving in the city, arrange temporary accommodation, provide food, medicine, clothing, and financial assistance, and coordinate transportation to the border.

 

Seminar December 2: Disciplining Labour: Authoritarian Neoliberalism in Georgia

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RUCARR Seminar with Konstantine Eristavi, Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford

When? December 2, 15:15-17:00

Where? Seminar room, 9th floor, Niagara or on Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66397767365

Abstract:

Most accounts interpret recent developments in Georgia as “democratic backsliding” and a qualitative break from an earlier phase of democratisation. I contend instead that Georgia’s trajectory is better understood as the ongoing consolidation of an authoritarian neoliberal model. In contrast to prevailing approaches that separate the analysis of authoritarianism in former Soviet states from questions of political economy, this presentation argues that authoritarian governance in Georgia is constitutive of its development model and inseparable from strategies pursued by capitalist elites. In particular, the talk traces (dis)continuities in the configuration of state power since independence and discusses mechanisms through which successive governments have disciplined working and poor classes and depoliticised social conflict in order to entrench the neoliberal regime of capital accumulation.  

Seminar November 18: The EU-Russia Competition, Multi-Modal Contestation and Governance in a Shared Sphere of Influence

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RUCARR Seminar with Bidzina Lebanidze, PhD, Senior Analyst at the Georgian Institute of Politics (GIP) and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Slavic Languages and Caucasus Studies at Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Time: November 18th, 15:15-17:00

Place: Seminar room, 9th floor, Niagara, or on Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68198560054

Abstract:

In an era of resurgent multipolar competition, a fundamental update to our understanding of the reemerging concept of Spheres of Influence (SOIs) is needed. This analysis introduces the “Multi-Modal Sphere of Influence” (MMSOI) as a new analytical framework, positing that contemporary great powers project influence not just via coercion, but through a dynamic interplay of five modalities: military, economic, institutional, normative, and digital. This framework is used to deconstruct the intractable EU-Russia conflict in their “shared neighborhood” by bridging macro-, meso-, and case-level findings. At the macro-level, the core of the conflict is defined by different modalities of competition; this is not a symmetrical power struggle, but a structural clash between incompatible toolkits: the EU’s dominant normative, institutional, and economic modalities colliding with Russia’s reliance on its coercive-military and energy-based toolkit. This overlapping, multi-modal contestation creates, at the meso-level, a paradoxical environment for “in-between” states, granting them new avenues for hedging and agency while simultaneously exposing them to acute risks of coercion and conflict. Finally, the analysis unpacks the EU’s paradoxical role as an “antithetical actor.” While normatively rejecting SOIs, the EU’s institutional and regulatory expansion functions as a powerful, sui generis SOI-building tool, making it an unintentional geopolitical player. This synthesized approach explains the EU-Russia competition not merely as a regional dispute, but as a microcosm of 21st-century multi-modal, multipolar contestation.

 

Seminar November 11: Negotiating actorness and legitimacy: The Wagner Group and the Russian state

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RUCARR Seminar with Karen Philippa Larsen, Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)

Time: November 11th, 15:15-17:00

Place: Seminar room, 9th floor, Niagara, or on Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66706523090

Abstract:

Do you remember the Wagner Group? – The semi-private Russian military group that marched on Moscow one Saturday in June 2023, briefly making all of us wonder whether Putin’s grip on the Russian “throne” was as firm as we had thought.

The Wagner Group played a central role in advancing Russia’s interests internationally, in Russia’s early military operations in Ukraine, and in the full-scale war that Russia launched against Ukraine in 2022. Despite its significance, the group operated mostly in the shadows since its founding in 2014. Even after its financier, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, stepped forward and claimed leadership of the Wagner Group, it continued to operate in a nexus between practices hidden in the shadows and choreographed ‘grand’ performances, shared primarily on social media.

Karen Philippa Larsen’s presentation focuses on the Wagner Group’s actorness and examines the Wagner Group from multiple perspectives, highlighting the group’s ability to play several different roles simultaneously – both on behalf of the Russian state and in pursuit of its own interests. The presentation engages with concepts of non-state and state actors, legitimacy and agency, and opens for a discussion of how audiovisuality, which is central to our time, might influence them.

 

 

Seminar November 4: Unlocking the EU’s, Russia´s and the US´ Actorness in the Karabakh Peace Process by Azerbaijan

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RUCARR Seminar with Lamiya Panahova, Doctoral Researcher at Charles University in Prague

Time: November 4, 15.15-17.00 CET

Place: Seminar room, 9th floor (Niagara) or via Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/61212519285

Abstract:

The 44-day war in 2020 marked a turning point in the long-standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, fought over the territory that once formed the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within Soviet Azerbaijan. By retaking the surrounding districts and parts of the region during that war, Azerbaijan gained the upper hand, adopted a more assertive stance in subsequent peace talks, and ultimately used force to bring the entire area under its control in 2023. This talk covers, in comparative perspective, the roles of Russia, the European Union, and the United States in the negotiations from 2020 to 2025. It analyzes the factors behind their successes and failures, drawing on the actorness framework and prior scholarship to measure how these actors’ actorness shifted after 2020 and how those shifts affected their recognition by the parties to the conflict. The presentation will also discuss the recent US-brokered peace deal between the parties in August this year, talking about its future implications.

Seminar October 7: MAKING SENSE OF RUSSIAN STRATEGIC NARRATIVES – AFFECT AND RECEPTION AMONG YOUNG RUSSIAN SPEAKERS IN LATVIA

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RUCARR Seminar with Emma Rönngren, Örebro University

Time: October 7, 15.15-17.00 CET

Place: NI:C0319 (Niagara) or via Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/69615481801

Abstract:

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, attention has increasingly focused on how Russian strategic narratives are projected and received. In this seminar, Dr. Emma Rönngren presents findings from her doctoral dissertation on how Russian-speaking youth in Latvia make sense of, negotiate, and sometimes resist such narratives, with particular attention to emotions, media, and identity.

Drawing on focus groups and interviews with 69 participants, the study shows how young people navigate a contested media landscape where narratives of history, freedom of speech and language circulate. Using Carolyn Michelle’s reception model, Rönngren demonstrates how participants interpret these narratives on both denotative and connotative levels of meaning. Affect emerges as a key factor, shaping whether narratives gain persuasive force or trigger critical distance.

By foregrounding youth perspectives, the study not only contributes to debates on narrative power, resistance, and the affective dimensions of media reception, but also challenges simplified views of Russian-speaking minorities as either loyal or disloyal. It highlights the complexity of everyday meaning-making and the implications this has for democratic and civil actors in the Baltic Sea region.

Bio:

Dr. Emma Rönngren is a media and communication scholar specializing in strategic narratives, affect and information influence in the Baltic Sea region. She is a senior lecturer at Örebro University, affiliated researcher at IRES, Uppsala University and serves as the Student and Early Career Representative for the ICA Public Diplomacy Interest Group. Her current work includes forthcoming articles and book chapters on narrative persuasion, civil society resilience, and the role of media in geopolitics.

 

Seminar September 23: Russians go home: Exile, Empire, and Everyday Tensions: Russian Migration to Georgia after 2022

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 RUCARR seminar with Dr. Sofia Gavrilova (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig) and Olga Bronnikova (University of Bordeaux-Bretagne).

Time: September 23, 15.15-17.00 CET

Place: NI:B0314 (Niagara) or via Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/65586314867

Abstract:

Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Tbilisi has become a key destination for Russian emigrants, including political activists, journalists, and NGOs. Their presence has sparked both solidarity initiatives—particularly in support of Ukrainian refugees—and deep social tensions, with accusations of “neo-imperialism” shaping public debates. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and collaborative research with colleagues, this talk examines how Russian “civil society in exile” coexists with Georgian civil society, and why their practices often clash. By contrasting Russian traditions of “small deeds” activism with Georgia’s more visible protest-oriented political grammar, Dr. Gavrilova explores how histories of empire, Soviet legacies, and ongoing occupation inform mutual perceptions. The presentation introduces the concepts of conditional neo-imperialism and embodied imperialism to explain how everyday practices of Russian émigrés are interpreted in Georgia’s anti-colonial framework, highlighting the fragile balance between cooperation, invisibility, and confrontation in Tbilisi’s contested civic space.

 

Dr. Sofia Gavrilova 

 

Seminar September 9: Military-Patriotic Education in Russia: Legitimation, Gender and Power Relations

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 RUCARR seminar with Jonna Alava

Jonna Alava is a PhD Candidate within the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change at Helsinki University.

Time: September 9th, 15.15-17.00

Place: NI:C0315 (Niagara) or via Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66035667644

Abstract: 

The military-patriotic education of children and young people in Russia began during Vladimir Putin’s first presidential term in 2000. After the onset of the war against Ukraine, the education underwent a significant shift, expanding to encompass virtually every citizen. Today, it is one of the Kremlin’s top priorities, extending from kindergartens to universities. Propagandistic school curricula and numerous patriotic youth organizations aim to raise “warrior-citizens” loyal to the Kremlin, who perceive war as part of everyday life and are prepared to sacrifice themselves. Drawing on my doctoral dissertation, this lecture examines the legitimation, content, implementation, successes, failures, and resistance surrounding military-patriotic education, as well as the gender roles it constructs.