Hierarchy in Moldova-Russia Relations: the Transnistrian Effect

Hierarchy in Moldova-Russia Relations: the Transnistrian Effect

Author(s): Matthew Crandall / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: Moldova; Transnistria; Russia; Westphalian sovereignty; hierarchical sovereignty

This article examines the effect of the Transnistrian area on Moldova-Russia relations. David Lake’s concept of hierarchy will be used as the theoretical framework. The article examines why Russia’s mechanisms of influence should not be seen as a reflection of a hierarchical relationship between Russia and Moldova. The article begins by explaining why this work has chosen a hierarchical framework and a brief introduction of Transnistria. This is followed by two sections of analysis: security and economy. These two sections will also contain subsections on events that highlight the hierarchical nature of the Moldova-Russia relationship. This article shows that Russia clearly has a hierarchical relationship with Moldova. David Lake’s theory proves to be a useful tool in understanding Moldovan-Russian relations.

Book Review Comprehensive Study of Interethnic Relations in the Baltics

Book Review Comprehensive Study of Interethnic Relations in the Baltics

Author(s): Jüri Ruus / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2012

A Cat’s Lick: Democratization and Minority Communities in the Post-Soviet Baltic by Timofei Agarin, 2010, Amsterdam, N.Y: Rodopi

The Impact of Formal Adult Education on the Likelihood of Being Employed: a Comparative Overview

The Impact of Formal Adult Education on the Likelihood of Being Employed: a Comparative Overview

Author(s): Daniela Vono-de-Vilhena,Anders Stenberg,Hans-Peter Blossfeld,Elina Kilpi-Jakonen,Yuliya Kosyakova / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: adult education; social inequalities; employment; Europe; formal education

This article aims to map formal adult education in terms of the determinants of educational upgrading later in life, relating these back to social inequalities from a comparative perspective, and to labour market outcomes following participation, particularly the probability of being employed. It relies on a longitudinal analysis of data from the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden and Russia. Results show that educational upgrading at mature ages has the potential for reducing social inequalities in all the countries analysed. Upgraders tend to come from a medium to low education background in Russia and the UK but from the tertiary educated in Spain and Sweden. Labour market marginalisation increases the chance of upgrading particularly in Sweden. Upgrading tends to increase employment opportunities, though these are in some cases conditional on being employed whilst studying. This is specifically the case for Russia and for men in the UK. We also found important country-specific gender differences in the effect of upgrading on employment opportunities, according to which women benefit more than men in the UK and Sweden. We conclude with some suggestions about the institutional effects that produce differences between countries.

Educational Systems and Inequalities in Educational Attainment in Central and Eastern European Countries

Educational Systems and Inequalities in Educational Attainment in Central and Eastern European Countries

Author(s): Clemens Noelke,Irena Kogan,Michael Gebel / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: social inequality; educational attainment; Central and Eastern Europe; comparative research; educational systems

Before exploring the selectivity of educational attainment in detail, this article extensively describes the contours of educational systems in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. These countries provide an interesting setting in view of their post-secondary education expansion and differentiation, as well as their variation in the degree of vocational orientation at the secondary level. Drawing on high quality, national micro data, we find that students from disadvantaged family backgrounds who manage to enter post-secondary education are ʽdivertedʼ to second-tier post-secondary institutions, while long-term university programs are more likely to be dominated by students whose parents have an academic background. At the secondary level, we confirm the patterns of negative selection among students from lower social backgrounds into lower vocational programs. This diversion effect at the secondary level is especially pronounced in CEE countries that inherited a strong secondary vocational system and reinstalled early tracking.

World War I: Controversies, Paradoxes, Revisions – On the Book of Lucian Boia

World War I: Controversies, Paradoxes, Revisions – On the Book of Lucian Boia

Author(s): Ambrus Miskolczy / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

World War I is a topic of currency these days, owing to its one hundredth anniversary and also prevailing global current affairs. The two go a long way to explaining the less than enthusiastic reception in Germany given to Niall Ferguson’s book, in which the author suggests that Britain made a mistake by entering the war, and that all sides stood to gain from a quick German victory. By contrast, Christopher Clark, in his best-selling monograph Sleepwalkers, argues that leading European politicians were dragged into the war against their will and despite their sense of foreboding, and that they deceived themselves by predicting that the war would be a short one. The fingerpointing at who was to blame began immediately after the cataclysm. Although as early as the 1920s the Soviet historian Yevgeny Tarle maintained that the concept of “moral sin” was unscientific and regarded both sides at war as equally liable, Fritz Fischer’s thesis about Germany’s exclusive culpability, advanced in the 1970s and 1980s, became almost as popular as Clark’s recent analysis, foreshadowing the eventual demise of the blame-game in historiography. Yet in our corner of the world – that is to say, on the fringes – the debate continues to unfold today in terms of national gains and advantages.

The Bridge Connecting Science, Public Affairs and National Image

The Bridge Connecting Science, Public Affairs and National Image

Author(s): Éva Eszter Szabó,E. Sylvester Vizi / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

E. SYLVESTER VIZI in interview with ÉVA ESZTER SZABÓ

Bibles for Communist Europe – A Cold War Story – Part I

Bibles for Communist Europe – A Cold War Story – Part I

Author(s): Francis D. Raška / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

Communist ideology and religion were strong adversaries. The severity of governmental oppression and discrimination against believers, however, varied in the different communist countries. One of the instruments of ideological repression utilised by the communist authorities was limiting the availability of religious materials, especially Bibles. Thus, the smuggling of Bibles into communist countries became a widespread activity that involved private groups from around the world, yet its story remains mostly unknown. Many missions lacked personnel and linguistic skills and thus disappeared. Most information about these organisations originates from memoirs of the actors themselves or their admirers. Very few historical studies exist. This is most likely due to “the lack of scholarly interest, which seems to come down to an implicit dismissal of its significance and impact and the paucity of available and reliable archival sources”. Bible smuggling was an example of transnational anti-communist cooperation. It was aimed at denouncing the violation of religious rights in communist countries, it organised an exchange of information among opponents of communism, and it facilitated the coordination of their activities.

A Thousand-Year-Old Brotherhood and Its Present

A Thousand-Year-Old Brotherhood and Its Present

Author(s): Norbert Haklik / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

Friendship. Seemingly a simple matter. After all, it does not require more than two people. Hence friendship is “as simple as ABC”, one would think.

A Pact That Started World War II

A Pact That Started World War II

Author(s): George Gömöri / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

Historians investigating the causes of World War II seldom return to the treaty that made the beginning of hostilities possible: to the German–Soviet pact of 23 August 1939. This so-called “non-aggression” agreement sometimes referred to as the “Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact” was sprung upon the Western powers as an unpleasant surprise; it also rocked all communist parties outside the USSR the propaganda of which had earlier been uncompromisingly anti-Fascist. While the shock might have been partly forgotten after Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, one thing remains certain: Hitler would not have dared to attack Poland and start World War II had its Eastern flank not been secured by the agreement with Stalin.

Arts and Artists in World War I – Exhibition at the Vaszary Villa, Balatonfüred

Arts and Artists in World War I – Exhibition at the Vaszary Villa, Balatonfüred

Author(s): Mária Illyés / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

Arts and Artists in World War I: the title alone of the exhibition, held at the Vaszary Villa in the town of Balatonfüred between October 2014 and January 2015, was intended to convey the scope and variety of the works on display in terms of genre, underlying motivation, and even of aesthetic standards. Paintings, scale models of memorials, memorial medals, tablets, works on paper, photographs and posters all shared space here, if not directly back to back, but scattered across a number of exhibition rooms loosely communicating with one another inside the same building.

How an Improbable Source Clinched Allied Victory in 1944

How an Improbable Source Clinched Allied Victory in 1944

Author(s): Charles Fenyvesi / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

The critical information that sealed the fate of Nazi Germany came from a team of fewer than six young civilians crowded in a small room in a ramshackle government building a few blocks from the White House. The youngest who called himself a mathematician had just finished high school; another was a graduate student in love with the Japanese language but had never visited Japan. Together they cracked the Japanese diplomatic code and deciphered the daily reports of Japan’s ambassador in Berlin sent to Tokyo. A committed Nazi and a retired general, Baron Hiroshi Oshima was a darling of German leaders, probably the only foreigner Adolf Hitler trusted. Oshima spent several days visiting the fortifications the Germans built to block an Allied invasion. Apparently, the Germans withheld nothing from him and he reported everything to his government.

The Kremlin’s “Civilisational” Alternative?

The Kremlin’s “Civilisational” Alternative?

Author(s): James Sherr / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

Russia is a threat to European stability because it has mounted a frontal assault on the treaties, agreements and principles that ended the Cold War and defined Europe as we have come to know it.

The Day the Russians Came

The Day the Russians Came

Author(s): Bill Martin / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

I was not yet six years old when the Russians came to our provincial town in the northwest of Hungary. I don’t know the date but it was early spring, in 1945. There wasn’t any serious fighting in the immediate vicinity that I know of, although there were three burned-out Russian tanks two or three kilometres east of the town on the main road, pointing toward us, so there must have been some action prior to the arrival of the Red Army.

An Unsentimental Look at the Geopolitics of Central Europe – Part II

An Unsentimental Look at the Geopolitics of Central Europe – Part II

Author(s): Tamás Magyarics / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

The American approach to Europe in general, and to Central Europe in particular is more ambiguous than meets the eye. Europe was obviously downgraded in American foreign and security policy after the collapse of the communist regimes. The new challenges were located elsewhere, especially in the greater Middle East, Central Asia and the Far East. Moreover, the US very soon started to lose its hyperpuissance status (if in reality it ever had it), and a redistribution of power, especially in the economic and political fields, commencing with the rise of countries like China, India or Brazil highlighted the limits of American global power. Though the increasingly vast literature on American declinism seems to be partly unfounded, it is nevertheless true that Washington nowadays has to be more circumspect to cast its weight around in the world. The extension of the zone of democracy and the creation of a Europe “whole, free and democratic” ended with the admission of most of the East and Central European states in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the American-imposed armistice and peace in the Balkans in 1999. The new century then heralded a period of benevolent neglect in US–Central European relations, while under President Obama the region gradually became a “third-order” concern, though Ukraine has put Central Europe back onto the mental map of Washington policymakers again.

The Internal Contradictions of Feminism

The Internal Contradictions of Feminism

Author(s): Belinda Brown / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

One of the most striking things about feminism is the extent to which a body of beliefs based on notions of equality has produced new inequalities without hardly anyone seeming to notice. I particularly have in mind the inequalities between a rich, privileged female elite and the majority of other women as well as the growing inequalities between men. These are partly the consequence of changes in the employment market produced by a growing pool of female labour prepared to work for a lower wage because their priorities lie elsewhere.

Recent Writings on 1914–18

Recent Writings on 1914–18

Author(s): Norman Stone / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2015

In London, at the beginning of each November, people wear a red poppy in their lapel, and nowadays this has to be explained to foreigners. On the part of France where the British fought in the First World War, the area between the two front lines was studded with poppies, and these became the symbol of the war. On the anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting, 11 November, there is a ceremony in London, to remember the dead of all modern British wars, but the First World War remains the great catastrophe: a million dead, as against the 250,000 of the Second World War. But 1914 marks more than that. Up until that date, there had been a long peace, and the Pax Britannica stood for a world of stable progress. The British could imagine themselves heir to Rome, and though their empire did not really last for long, it has indeed left behind a language and a legal system that spread throughout the world. Especially in the troubles of the 1930s, people looked back on 1914 as if through a golden glow – the king on his throne, the empire at peace, passportless travel with a bag of gold sovereigns, and “sleek reviews financed by coolie labour”, as Orwell called them.

The Future of the EU’s Eastern Partnership: Russia as an Informal Veto Player

The Future of the EU’s Eastern Partnership: Russia as an Informal Veto Player

Author(s): Linas Kojala,Laurynas Kasčiūnas,Vytautas Keršanskas / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2014

‘Reordering the order’ of European security architecture best describes Russian intentions in the post-Soviet space, which have been highlighted during the crisis in Ukraine. The Eastern partners stand in the crossfire of this geopolitical rivalry, between two rival integration areas: the European Union and the newly formed Eurasian Union. However, it is worth asking whether both of these integration areas are playing in this geopolitical game. Five years of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) have produced only limited progress in EaP countries and the main incentive for transformation – the possibility of membership – is still not evident. Furthermore, some EU countries still search for a form of ‘engagement’ with Russia, while others are bargaining for a stricter policy of ‘containment’. Hence, Russia is moving towards becoming an informal ‘veto’ player in EU-EaP relations, in that it may be able to control the geopolitical path of the countries in the ‘shared neighbourhood’.

An Analysis of Romania’s Foreign Policy Relations in the Context of Ukraine’s European Integration

An Analysis of Romania’s Foreign Policy Relations in the Context of Ukraine’s European Integration

Author(s): Victor Bocharnikov,Sergey Sveshnikov,Viktor Pavlenko / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2014

After mass protests in January-February 2014 and the replacement of its central authority, Ukraine reverted to its intention to sign the agreement on association with the EU. The success of the agreement’s practical implementation relies on Ukraine’s friendly relations with all EU member states. However, among all European states, Ukraine’s relations with Romania are the most complex and contradictory. This article attempts to designate direction for making mutually advantageous decisions on existing contradictions. It is based on research into Ukraine’s relations with Romania and considers Romania’s relations with other states.

Conceptual Factors Behind the Poor Performance of the European Neighbourhood Policy

Conceptual Factors Behind the Poor Performance of the European Neighbourhood Policy

Author(s): Viljar Veebel,Liina Kulu,Annika Tartes / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2014

In recent years, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has once again become a politically prominent issue in the European Union’s (EU’s) external-action agenda. This is mainly because of growing conflicts in neighbouring countries from Libya to Ukraine and the EU’s inability to contribute to sufficiently improving security in these states. There has also been a significant rise in criticism in discourse on the ENP, to some extent even giving the impression that the policy as a whole has failed. This study pinpoints and analyses the main factors behind the poor performance of the ENP in terms of guaranteeing security in countries neighbouring the EU. The key issue is whether and to what extent the policy’s failure has been caused by controversies rooted in differing expectations, interests and goals of EU member states and ENP target countries, or by the controversial conceptual approach that underlies the policy. Issues relating to the upcoming ENP reforms are also of particular importance for Baltic countries, both in supporting political and economic reforms in former Soviet republics (including nations such as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova) and determining the direction of EU relations with Russia.

The High Road: Europe and Italy’s Role in the World

The High Road: Europe and Italy’s Role in the World

Author(s): Giorgio Napolitano,Federico Rampini / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2014

My conversation with Federico Rampini and my answers to his questions and promptings reflect my seven-years (2006-2013) as President of the Italian Republic, an intense and intensive experience, both domestically and in the international sphere. Under the Italian Constitution, drafted between June 1946 and December 1947 in a country newly liberated from fascism, the Head of State is a “non-executive” President. This principle was confirmed in later decades through the analysis and interpretation of the Constitution, by political practice and in the decisions of the courts – all of which have shown Italy’s founding charter to be a live constitutional instrument proof against every challenge and test.