Category: Russia

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 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.

Russia Reverts to Muscovy: What if We Drop “Russia” from the Discourse? – RUCARR seminar with Prof. Stefan Hedlund

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Stefan Hedlund: “Russia Reverts to Muscovy: What if We Drop “Russia” from the Discourse?”

Time: 18th March, 15.15 – 17.00

Place: NI:C0315 or online: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66754621955

Abstract

The presentation expands on three of the main themes of the book Russia Reverts to Muscovy: What if We drop “Russia” from the Discourse?, all of which converge in an argument that we should stop talking about “Russia” and revert to the old name for northeastern Rus, which is “Muscovy.” The first is that so much of the territory of the former Russian Empire has now been lost that it is only logical to refer to the remnants as Muscovy. The second is that the present-day Russian Federation has reverted almost fully to the institutional order that marked old Muscovy, thus adding to the relevance of using that name, and the third is that continued use of the name “Russia” implies acceptance of the Muscovite claim to a sphere of interest that includes Ukraine.

If the present-day Muscovites want to call themselves “Russians” then that is of course their prerogative, much as others have a right to refer to themselves as Ukrainians or Belarusians. Where it goes unacceptably wrong is when it is claimed that all Eastern Slavs are “Russians,” and that those “Russians” must not only accept this distinction but also submit to being ruled from Moscow.

Stefan Hedlund is Professor Emeritus of Soviet and East European Studies at IRES, Uppsala University. He has published more than two dozen books, mainly but not exclusively on themes relating to Russian developments, and he has published more than a hundred articles on similar themes, in various forms and shapes. His works have been published in Russian and Chinese, and he has been a frequent commentator in various media across a number of countries. His most recent book, Russia Reverts to Muscovy: What if We drop “Russia” from the Discourse? (Routledge, 2025), is the latest instalment in a series of books on institutional developments in Russia and Ukraine, the previous volume being Ukraine, Russia and The West: When Value Promotion met Hard Power (Routledge, 2023).

 

Book launch with Isabell Burmester, Understanding EU and Russian Hegemony in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, March 11

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Understanding EU and Russian Hegemony in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus 

When? March 11st, 15:15-17:00

Where? Niagara, NI:A0311 or online: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68505534320

What drives the European Union’s and Russia’s influence in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus? How do their strategies compare, and what does this tell us about the broader regional dynamics that ultimately culminated in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine? The talk will present the main findings of the forthcoming book EU and Russian Hegemony in the ‘Shared Neighbourhood’: Between Coercion, Prescription, and Co-optation. It will explore how the EU and Russia exert power in their shared neighborhood, using the concept of hegemony to make sense of their competing approaches. By examining the mechanisms of coercion, prescription, and co-optation, this study provides a comparative analysis of how both actors have shaped the political and economic trajectories of Moldova and Armenia since the early 2000s. Bringing together insights from EU neighborhood policy, Russian foreign policy, and international relations scholarship, the book presents an innovative framework for understanding regional power struggles. By making EU and Russian strategies analytically comparable, it sheds light on how these interactions have evolved—and what they reveal about the ongoing shifts in regional order.

 

The book will be out open access in March: https://link.springer.com/book/9783031754876

Dr. Isabell Burmester is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris.

Seminar with Leila Wilmers – Interpreting the Discourse of a Multi-Ethnic Russian Nation in Kazan, May 6

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Diversity or Unity: Interpreting the Discourse of a Multi-Ethnic Russian Nation in Kazan

Dr. Leila Wilmers is a Regional Scholar at Cornell University’s Einaudi Center for International Studies and teaches in Cornell’s Department of Sociology. She has a background in peacebuilding work in the non-profit sector and holds a PhD in human geography from Loughborough University, UK. Her research concerns nationalism in the contemporary world, and particularly experiences of nationhood and the processes and conditions of bottom-up engagement with nationalist ideology and politics. Her research and teaching crosses the disciplines of sociology and human geography and her regional expertise is in the post-Soviet space. Her work has been published in the journals Europe-Asia Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Nationalities Papers, and Ethnicities.

Time: 6th May, 15:15 – 17:00 (rescheduled from February 18)

Place: Seminar room 9th floor, Niagara or online: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/64838117167

 Abstract

This talk explores bottom-up responses to the Kremlin’s approach to nation-building in a multi-ethnic state. How do residents of ethnically mixed cities navigate conflicting themes of unity and diversity in the federal discourse of Russia as a multi-ethnic nation (mnogonatsional’nyi narod)? This discourse runs counter to assimilative policies and a concurrent vision of Russia as a civilisation rooted in Slavic culture. In the diverse city of Kazan, the discourse is shown to be easily adopted by residents in narrating belonging, while being a problematic basis for nation-building. The talk highlights the importance of regional and ethnic subject positions in bottom-up engagement with nation-building in Russia.

Welcome!

Yana Kirey-Sitnikova: “Transgender Russia: the rise and fall of trans-rights in an autocracy”

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“Transgender Russia: the rise and fall of trans-rights in an autocracy”

When? Tuesday 28th January, 15.15 – 17.00

Where? Seminar room floor 9 or online: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/69268165545

Description: As many as 71% of the world population in 2023 lived under authoritarian rule, and yet a search with keywords “authoritarianism” and “transgender” in scientific databases yields very few articles. One reason for that is the overwhelming focus of transgender studies on North America. Another is conflation of trans issues with LGBT. In her lecture, Yana Kirey-Sitnikova will argue that trans rights have their own dynamics, which should be juxtaposed to the trends in democratization or autocratization. The first part will be devoted to Yana’s recent article “‘You should care by prohibiting all this obscenity’: a public policy analysis of the Russian law banning medical and legal transition for transgender people” (Post-Soviet Affairs) describing the 2023 Russian law banning “the change of sex in humans” and its prehistory. While the original article uses the Authoritarian Gender Equality Policy Making framework, in the lecture, Yana will apply the Advocacy Coalitions Framework and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to the same data to show that the process included many semi-democratic elements, which goes against the common sense that the members of the Russian State Duma have little agency compared to the executive branch. In the second part of the lecture, Yana will present preliminary findings on the Soviet period, which form the core of her upcoming book “Transgender Russia: the rise and fall of trans rights in an autocracy”. The data being scarce on what we now call “trans”, we are obliged to deduce the situation of Soviet transvestites and transsexuals mostly from publications devoted to intersex individuals and homosexuals. While intersex people had access to legal gender recognition and medical care even in the darkest years of Soviet totalitarianism, male homosexuals were persecuted, and trans people probably balanced somewhere in-between. Extremely interesting in this regard is the case of a “transvestite with homosexual inclinations” K.K.D., whose female gender identity was recognized by the authorities in Kazan and Moscow. While more archival work needs to be done on this case, it probably dates to the 1940s, i.e. Stalin’s rule, thus demonstrating something different from what we may now think about the lived circumstances under totalitarianism.

Welcome!

RUCARR Thesis Award 2024 awarded to Johan Richter

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The RUCARR Thesis Award 2024 has been awarded to Johan Richter for his MA thesis entitled “Milbloggers, Telegram, and the Russo-Ukraine War: The Role of Non-State Actors in Shaping Strategic Narratives during Global Conflict”- 

The Thesis Award was presented to Johan Richter by Prof. Mona Lilja, Head of Department, Global Political Studies, on October 22, 2024.

Excerpts from the statement by the jury:

Johan Richter’s thesis is an innovative study of Russian military bloggers  

and their role in influencing and amplifying the Russian regime’s discourse on the war in Ukraine.  The research design is elegant and sophisticated without being over-complicated. The amount of data he has used for this thesis, and the manner in which he handles the analysis and keeps the reader’s interest is impressive.

This is a thesis that contains high-quality original research and uses a systematic research framework. It is innovative and points the way forward to new possible lines of research in the study of authoritarian information spheres.