Russia, the Former Soviet Republics, and Europe Since 1989 : Transformation and Tragedy

This book explores what the concept of "being European" means to people in Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union. Katherine Graney provides a panoramic and historically rooted overview of politics in the post-Soviet world, focusing in particular on how Europe--as both real place and symbol--has structured the political trajectory of this vast region. In sum, Graney provides both a theoretical discussion of contemporary Europeanness, and an empirical examination of how Russia and each of the fourteen former Soviet states are actually attempting to "be European," or not.

Nearly three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, early hopes for the integration of the post-Soviet states into a "Europe whole and free" seem to have been decisively dashed. Europe itself is in the midst of a multifaceted crisis that threatens the considerable gains of the post-war liberal European experiment. In Russia, the Former Soviet Republics, and Europe Since 1989, Katherine Graney provides a panoramic and historically-rooted overview of the process of "Europeanization" in Russia and all fourteen of the former Soviet republics since 1989. Graney argues that deeply rooted ideas about Europe''s cultural-civilizational primacy and concerns about both ideological and institutional alignment with Europe continue to influence both internal politics in contemporary Europe and the processes of Europeanization in the post-Soviet world. By comparing the effect of the phenomenon across Russia and the ex-republics, Graney provides a theoretically grounded and empirically rich window into how we should study politics in the former USSR.