Transformation of Geopolitical Order in Post-Soviet Space

Religious Culture: Faith in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

Learning to Use ‘Public Space’: Urban Space in Post-Soviet St. Petersburg

The article discusses the post-socialist developments of urban public space in St. Petersburg, Russia. The city with a historic center protected by the UNESCO World Heritage status in combination with the Soviet legacy of lack of public participation is facing the problem of public space development. There are two controversial concepts of urban space represented in the public discourse that ar...

Ex ante and ex post institutional convergence: Case of the post-Soviet space

The paper discusses the interaction of ex ante and ex post institutional convergence in the post-Soviet world, i.e. 12 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. It starts with analysing empirical evidence for institutional convergence in the CIS, and then considers two channels of convergence: institutional competition for mobile capital and ex ante harmonization via interaction in pol...

New Realities: Libraries in Post-Soviet Russia

The transition away from communism toward a more democratic society and the move to a market economy had profound effects on Russian libraries. Using the main public library in Bryansk, the Bryansk Region Scientific Library, as a case study, this article examines the changes in library service, including information access and the opening of previously closed collections, funding issues, the li...

Political economy of the Soviet elite and its post-communist transformation

A characteristic feature of Russian post-communist transformation is a high rate of elite continuity that invites an explanation of the demise of the Soviet Union as the result of a rational choice made by its ruling elite. This paper proposes a political-economic model where predatory ruling elite uses costly coercion to raise revenue from the working population, while resistance of the popula...