Communist and Post-Communist Studies

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Communist and Post-Communist Studies (CPCS) is an international, peer-reviewed scholarly journal featuring comparative research on current and historical developments in the communist and post-communist world.

While contemporary scholarship on post-Soviet informality typically frames informal networks as either adaptive (survival) or parallel (subversive forces undermining formal governance) mechanisms, this ethnographic study demonstrates their dual nature as both. Focusing on Uzbekistan’s transitional context (2020–24), the article reveals how informal business networks construct hybrid governance by actively reshaping formal institutions through the influence of their cultural dispositions (collectively internalized informal ideological frameworks and normative practices). Employing a socio-legal perspective, the research examines the complex interplay between formal and informal institutions to better understand the dual functionality of informal business networks in the post-Soviet context. By combining top-down institutional analysis with a bottom-up ethnographic approach, the study shows how informal Uzbek business networks (categorized in the article as analytical ideal-types, termed Western-style, Islamic-style, and Soviet-style) simultaneously respond to state regulatory frameworks while developing their normative orders through everyday business practices. The study draws on Douglass North’s institutional theory and the theory of legal pluralism to analyze the abovementioned processes. The findings of this article offer new insights into state-society relations in post-communist contexts by redefining the “network state” as a dynamic interplay of formal and informal governance.
This article investigates the role of two state youth group leaders in disseminating patriotic discourses to young Russians on Telegram in the first six months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The authors argue that these leaders use social media influencer (SMI) techniques to “launder” and propagate narratives that align with the Kremlin’s agenda. The methodological approach involved a comprehensive critical discourse analysis of six months of posts from the Telegram accounts of Nikita Nagornyy, leader of Iunarmiia [Youth Army], and Olga Zanko, leader of Volontery Pobedy [Victory Volunteers]. By cataloguing and comparing the thematic and rhetorical elements of these posts, the study identifies key strategies used to disseminate discourses around patriotic behavior and active engagement with state politics. “Good patriots” were deemed to be those who aided other Russians, took part in the perpetuation of memory politics, and engaged in militarized activities. “Good patriots” were able to participate equally in physical or virtual activities. Feed followers were given the impression of choice and active participation in the construction and dissemination of state discourses. Choices were, however, limited to state-approved activities. The findings reveal a coordinated effort to amplify state-approved messages, leveraging the personal appeal and wide reach of these influencers to legitimize and normalize the official stance on the war. This research contributes to the understanding of digital propaganda and the instrumentalization of social media in modern warfare, highlighting the critical role of influencers in the information landscape of conflict.
This article examines the enactment and implications of China’s 2024 Patriotic Education Law (PEL), situating it within the broader political, ideological, and legal transformations under Xi Jinping. It traces the evolution of patriotic education from the post-Mao reform era to the present, highlighting key shifts in content, scope, and institutionalization. Under Xi, patriotism has become increasingly conflated with loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Han-centric cultural nationalism, and ideological conformity, culminating in the legal codification of patriotic education as a comprehensive and compulsory societal obligation. The article argues that the PEL exemplifies the CCP’s strategy of legitimizing authoritarian governance through law while tightening ideological control over youth, religious institutions, families, and the Chinese diaspora. It analyzes the legal provisions of the PEL, its discursive underpinnings, and its broader ideological context. The article also considers how patriotic education is experienced and mediated through education, culture, and media, and explores the tension between top-down ideological control and grassroots nationalist expression. Finally, it reflects on the global trend toward state-led patriotic education and comparatively explores China’s approach with developments in Russia and the United States. The article concludes that China’s patriotic education efforts, legally sanctioned and expansively applied, serve not only to bolster regime legitimacy but also to shape national identity in ways that risk marginalizing diversity and suppressing critical discourse, with broader implications for international engagement and the global contest over values and historical narratives.
The full-scale war in Ukraine has had a wide-ranging impact on the nation’s children as they have been displaced, wounded, and even killed. In the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukrainian children found ways and created spaces that allowed them to express their agency, ranging from narrating their experiences in diaries, poems, and art to engaging in political activities related to war. This study explores the potential of arts-based programs to empower children affected by armed conflict, with a focus on the Behind Blue Eyes initiative, implemented following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By distributing disposable cameras, this program encouraged children affected by war to document their lives through photography, subsequently sharing their visual narratives on the Behind Blue Eyes initiative’s social media account on Instagram. Through thematic and semiotic analyses of these digital stories, this research investigates how children express agency, engage with geopolitical discourses, and navigate their traumatic experiences through their photographs during the Russia-Ukraine war. The study also examines how adults mediate children’s narratives through digital storytelling, revealing the complex dynamics of children’s agency within armed conflict contexts. The research addresses these questions and contributes to the scholarly discourse on children’s experiences in conflicts beyond Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. This research also advances the understanding of how arts-based programs offer a medium for children to express and transform their experiences of war, which also challenges narratives of children as passive actors in contexts of large-scale political violence.
While authoritarian regimes are typically seen as prone to secrecy and restricting access to data, individual autocracies differ greatly from each other—some are better in terms of data accessibility and quality than others. The preference of autocracies for secrecy is likely to depend on a large number of scope conditions. One particularly likely condition is the perception of external and domestic threats, which ought to make the preference for secrecy stronger. From this perspective, we look at how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine affected the data availability preferences of the Russian authoritarian regime. Whereas before the invasion, Russia belonged to autocracies with relatively high data availability, the war led to decreasing data availability and quality. At the same time, even after the full-scale invasion, Russia continues to publish a large number of datasets and allows data collection by independent pollsters. We discuss the implications of this development for Russian studies..
This study examines how media literacy influences the perceptions of young people in Uzbekistan regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. With the media’s pervasive role in shaping public understanding of global events, this research explores the extent to which media literacy, defined as the ability to critically analyze and evaluate media messages, affects the views of Uzbekistani youth on this conflict. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey involving 927 participants under 35 years old. The findings showed that higher levels of media literacy among Uzbekistani youth correlate with more critical perspectives on the war, a greater capacity to identify bias, and a reduced susceptibility to propagandistic narratives. Conversely, lower levels of media literacy indicated a correlation with strong support for one-sided, particularly, Russian-aligned narratives without questioning or minimal critical judgment. These perceptions are further shaped by sociocultural factors, including family opinions, social environments, and educational attainment, as well as the influence of broader geopolitical events, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict. The study also stresses the need for developing comprehensive media literacy programs in Uzbekistan that are specifically designed to reflect the unique sociocultural contexts of the youth. This research contributes to global discussions about media literacy, political awareness, and youth engagement in contested information environments by drawing insights from Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet context.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent “wild 1990s” are increasingly portrayed in Russian public discourse as a traumatic experience. This framing contrasts the perceived chaos and lawlessness of the 1990s with a nostalgic idealization of the Soviet past and the narrative of restored state strength since Putin’s second presidency. This pervasive framing often implicitly imposes a role of disempowered subjects upon individuals who lived through the upheaval. Drawing on biographical interviews conducted in 2018 with 12 former market traders across Russia, this article challenges these instrumental trauma narratives. The analysis explores how people who worked as “shuttle traders” in the 1990s retroactively construct their pasts by asserting their active participation and rejecting externally defined victimhood. Their narratives point to alternative frameworks that reconcile Soviet-era moral economies with emerging neoliberal values, emphasizing resilience, entrepreneurial acumen, material gains, and self-reliance. They assert themselves as capable agents who actively shaped their trajectories and broader social relations amid systemic collapse. Their life stories offer counter-narratives to the streamlining of the memory culture of the 1990s and demonstrate how moral justifications for capitalism are negotiated among ordinary people. Ultimately, these women’s accounts reveal the 1990s as a contested moral terrain encompassing a broad range of experiences that go well beyond a framing of the era solely through trauma and treachery.
This article explores the phenomenon of language activism in Kazakhstan, examining its roots and contemporary manifestations within a decolonial framework. Despite Soviet colonialism not being traditionally classified as typical colonialism, it resulted in significant sociolinguistic inequalities, particularly between the Russian and Kazakh languages. The research highlights how modern Kazakh language activists challenge this imbalance by promoting the use and prestige of Kazakh, addressing issues of linguistic justice and national identity reconstruction. The study emphasizes the impact of nation-building policies and the role of grassroots activism in navigating the complexities of bilingualism and ethnic identity. It argues that the current wave of activism not only reflects decolonial sentiments but also contributes to a broader discourse on linguistic justice in a multiethnic society. The analysis is grounded in the sociopolitical context of (post-)Soviet Kazakhstan, with particular attention to recent geopolitical shifts and their influence on language dynamics.
issue table of contents
Following two terms of Eurosceptic right rule under Law and Justice (PiS), a new coalition government led by the Civic Coalition (KO) emerged in Poland in 2023. This election marked a unique case of a dominant radical-right populist party losing power through democratic means, despite extensive institutional advantages and media capture. This article investigates individual-level factors that played a role in shaping voters’ choices during this election. It first briefly surveys the political stances of the major parties and the programmatic coherence in the two alternative party setups. It then analyzes party electorates through sociodemographic, geographic, and attitudinal lenses. Finally, it employs regression analysis to pinpoint the variables that most inform vote choice. By analyzing individual-level determinants in this context, the study advances voter behavior theory, showing how classic factors—sociodemographic characteristics, religiosity, economic evaluations, and ideological self-placement—interact with context-specific concerns about democratic norms. The findings indicate that in critical elections, voters’ choices are shaped not only by material interests and social structure, but also by deeply held democratic values and perceptions of systemic threats, enriching our understanding of how electoral behavior can respond to the challenges of democratic consolidation.
This article explores how people who engaged in small-scale private enterprise under late socialism and early capitalism in the 1990s retrospectively construct their business activities as legitimate. Based on a set of oral history interviews with Czech small-scale and micro entrepreneurs, the article seeks to understand how the “spirit of capitalism” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2007), recognized by early 1990s policymakers as a new moral system, met the field of (post)socialist small-scale business whose actors were shaped by a range of pre-understandings emerging from the late socialist informal economy. To this end, it adopts a moral economy perspective and analyzes the vernacular means through which informants expressed moral judgment of entrepreneurial activities under socialism and capitalism by focusing on three categories: work ethic, entrepreneurial spirit, and honesty. While the particular character traits, abilities, and virtues invoked by informants remained stable, they acquired new meanings across the break of 1989 dependent on the political context. What characterizes the entrepreneurial field as opposed to other sectors of the labor market is the ubiquity of illicit and unlawful practices that informants either encountered or engaged in themselves, subjecting such practices to moral judgment. The article argues that while the political discourse of the 1990s placed high hopes in entrepreneurs as guarantors of the new moral system, embodying this ideal proved unattainable for many small-scale entrepreneurs, fostering feelings of disillusionment with postsocialist developments among some of the informants.
The research project “Mediated Feminism(s) in Contemporary Russia” (FEMCORUS 2021–25) informs this research note. Our empirical observations highlight the key trends in the dynamics of mediated feminism in Russia, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and, subsequently, up until autumn 2024. This note considers a decade (2013–22) of the popularization of feminist discourses bolstered by social media sites, influencer culture, and celebrity media, which was then utilized for the anti-war activist mobilization of feminism in Russia. This research note brings new perspectives into the existing debate by identifying several, previously overlooked, aspects of Russian feminism(s). With the focus on the mediated discourses and expressions of feminism, and their role in feminist activist mobilization during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, our research carves out a novel interdisciplinary space for feminist research in the Russian context at the junction of transnational feminist studies, media studies, and social movement research.
The “Resist America, Aid Korea” movement was the PRC’s inaugural deployment of sustained anti-foreign propaganda to secure domestic legitimation and drive social transformation. This article, grounded in theories of autocratic legitimation, identity studies, and scholarship on China’s myth of national humiliation, argues that RAAK’s demonization of the American Other—tied to internal adversaries—served to rally public support through patriotic indoctrination and justify repression of regime opponents. These functions proved essential not only for prevailing in the Korean War but also for cementing the nascent PRC regime and propelling its revolutionary agenda. The evidence is drawn from a rich corpus of CCP documents, media, and textual and visual propaganda. Especially from early 1951, as the war reached a stalemate and the Party shifted focus inward, RAAK and domestic campaigns of class struggle and political purges became increasingly intertwined through shared organizational networks and unified messaging. At its core lay a “grand conspiracy” narrative that leveraged the “black sheep effect” in social psychology to frame internal foes as US collaborators, thereby legitimizing their suppression or reeducation. This study underscores the CCP’s deliberate fusion of foreign and domestic enemies to maximize mobilization and control during a pivotal phase of PRC state- and nation-building. It provides critical insight into contemporary CCP rhetoric, which revives this earlier strategy by casting domestic dissidents as agents of “foreign hostile forces.”
In recent years, a body of critical scholarship has emerged that interrogates the impact of influencer culture on feminist activism. This study contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate by examining the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR). FAR is a digitally-enabled social movement founded by a group of Russian feminist “activist-influencers” (Semenzin 2022) after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Utilizing 16 in-depth interviews with FAR activists and digital ethnography, the research delves into the complex collective dynamics within FAR. The study highlights the central role of activist-influencers in launching this project, recruiting activists, and establishing its public communication. However, it also highlights a power imbalance stemming from the ambiguous position of activist-influencers within FAR. Some research participants noted that influencers, possessing greater media visibility and resources, disproportionately impact the movement, which claims horizontality as its core value. This has led to feelings of “confusion” and “unfairness” among some participants, and in some cases, it has complicated the effective functioning of the project. Thus, the study of FAR sheds new light on the scholarly debate about the effect of the emerging influencer culture on collective feminist politics. This research argues that influencers do not necessarily undermine the feminist collective action; rather, they can enhance mobilization and organization. However, the investment of influencers in neoliberal visibility and the attention economy may impede collective dynamics. This study underscores the need for critical engagement with digital platforms and cultures to maintain the collective ethos of feminist activism.
This article explores the phenomenon of language activism in Kazakhstan, examining its roots and contemporary manifestations within a decolonial framework. Despite Soviet colonialism not being traditionally classified as typical colonialism, it resulted in significant sociolinguistic inequalities, particularly between the Russian and Kazakh languages. The research highlights how modern Kazakh language activists challenge this imbalance by promoting the use and prestige of Kazakh, addressing issues of linguistic justice and national identity reconstruction. The study emphasizes the impact of nation-building policies and the role of grassroots activism in navigating the complexities of bilingualism and ethnic identity. It argues that the current wave of activism not only reflects decolonial sentiments but also contributes to a broader discourse on linguistic justice in a multiethnic society. The analysis is grounded in the sociopolitical context of (post-)Soviet Kazakhstan, with particular attention to recent geopolitical shifts and their influence on language dynamics.
How do grassroots feminist movements convert moral shock into sustained resistance under war, repression, and exile? This article examines the diasporic wing of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR/FAS), a transnational network of Russian feminists formed in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Drawing on 56 in-depth interviews with activists in 25 countries, it conceptualizes FAS as an affective infrastructure that joins affect, meaning, and materiality to enable emotional survival and political resistance. Extending Ward’s micromobilization model, the article advances the concept of productive mediation—a feminist process that transforms morally charged emotions into politically meaningful action and sustained participation. FAS’s repertoire—symbolic performances, embodied signals, grief activism, and care-based practices—creates an emotionally resonant, low-threshold path into and back to collective action in diasporic and authoritarian settings. The analysis shows how alignment of ideology, horizontal and decentralized structure, and ritual lowers entry costs, supports withdrawal and return after burnout, and renders dissent durable. The article contributes to three literatures: affect theory and micromobilization; feminist scholarship on exile and forced migration; and research on transnational feminist infrastructures under authoritarianism. It argues that FAS does not treat emotional labor as ancillary to politics but centers it as a generative force. Rather than merely enduring the emotional fallout of war, FAS channels difficult emotions—grief, guilt, and fear—into collective feminist action, making participation emotionally bearable and sustainable over time.
The first power transition in contemporary Kazakhstan started in 2019 after long-term president Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped aside. Top-down rotations of elites are one of the key methods post-Soviet leaders use to manage patronal states. The staffing policy of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Nazarbayev’s successor, is no exception, although the process turned out to be extended over several years, since Tokayev inherited the elite network his predecessor had built over several decades. This research introduces a new dataset focused on elite rotations in Kazakhstan, which could serve as a blueprint for data collection on developing nations experiencing power transitions. The collected data contains sociodemographic and career characteristics of 136 cases of individuals who held the highest political and administrative offices in Kazakhstan during January 2019–April 2023, detailed up to precise durations spent in office. The results show that the high rate of renewal of Kazakhstan’s administrative elite during Tokayev’s first presidential term was achieved even before the controversial Kazakh unrest of 2022. The transition of power in Kazakhstan was completed between late 2022 and April 2023. The results can be compared to a “colorless revolution,” since the renewal of the administrative elite of Kazakhstan under the leadership of Tokayev exceeded 85%.
This article analyzes the activist rhetoric of Put′ Domoi (The Way Home)—a prominent, Russia-based public protest movement consisting primarily of women whose family members were “mobilized” into fighting in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Using a detailed framework that describes Russia’s gender-related ideologies under Putin, we analyze Put′ Domoi’s activist rhetoric focusing primarily on the first six months of their public activism (August 2023–March 2024). We examine how the activists struggled to frame their demands in a way that would afford them some protection from repression while also allowing them to challenge the regime’s open-ended military “mobilization.” We find that this movement employed a gender-compliant framework similar to that of many grassroots wives-and-mothers movements fighting authoritarian violence within and outside of Russia, but with particular Soviet roots. Over time, Put′ Domoi became increasingly frustrated with the regime’s response to their demands and increasingly critical of the war in general. This analysis helps explain why Put′ Domoi did not immediately face repression despite engaging in regular public protests critical of Russia’s war-related policies. Our case study of Put′ Domoi also sheds light on how these kinds of women’s movements navigate the complicated repressive terrain of authoritarian rule through gender-related framing tactics.
This article explores the ethical and practical challenges of conducting long-term ethnographic fieldwork in conflict zones in an era of widespread smartphone and social media use. It argues that digital technology not only transforms methodological approaches but also reshapes the nature of war itself. Drawing on insights from fieldwork in various conflict zones, including Somalia, Ukraine, and South Sudan, it asks: How does rapidly acquired digital connectivity change the way we conceptualize, approach, and conduct fieldwork in conflict zones? When smartphones are both research tools and potential weapons of war (Ford and Hoskins 2022), how can we use them ethically? Reflecting on three online/offline complexities of the author’s fieldwork experiences in Somalia/Somaliland in 2021, the article suggests that participative warfare and digital research methodologies are intertwined, driven by the proliferation of connected devices. Practical, ethical, and security concerns arise from this intersection. First, researchers may become direct participants in war, whether physically present or not. Second, there is limited awareness of the security risks posed by technology, especially given the rise of mis- and disinformation in conflict settings. Finally, since the traditional notion of the “field” has collapsed, making us potentially reachable anywhere and at any time, we need to reconsider how we establish temporal boundaries to ensure safe and sustainable research practices. The article concludes that researchers must navigate a blended field of offline and online phenomena, underscoring the need to safeguard in-person fieldwork while allowing sufficient time to engage with the digital realm.
This article focuses on the opportunities for allowing protests in contemporary Russia despite military censorship and a ban on any public action or criticism of the ongoing war against Ukraine. The research analyzes the tactics of the women’s activism that were used on Red Square in November 2023, demanding the return of their mobilized relatives. The study shows how women activists manage risks, declare demands, and avoid detention while interacting with police and officials of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). Through the analysis of framing perspective, the study examines the demonstration and interactions in the community’s blog. Findings indicate that the actualization of several specific framings in the movement’s action—including appropriation of the KPRF’s rhetoric and self-representation as responsible and patriotic soldiers’ wives with minor support from the KPRF—presents a space for protest in Russia’s closed political system.
The aim of the article is to present the results of research on the different ways in which contemporary communist parties operating in various parts of Europe treat the historical, ideological, and political legacy of communism based on examples of how this legacy is utilized in the political practice of selected communist parties. Through a qualitative analysis of the existing materials (political programs, ideological and political documents, etc.), we attempted to construct the image underpinning the current ideological and political identity of 11 communist parties operating in 11 European Union member states, and to present the use of the communist legacy by both mainstream and marginal communist parties.
This article examines the evolving identities and solidarity among Russia’s anti-war movement, particularly focusing on the convergence between feminist and decolonial activism. Using the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR) and ethnic or decolonial activists as case studies, the research highlights how solidarity influences the activists’ understanding of their objectives, reshapes identities, and introduces new grassroots coalitions. In the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, these interactions challenge traditional boundaries between movements and foster a growing solidarity. The study draws on diverse data sources, including interviews with FAR activists, interviews with ethnic/decolonial activists, and online ethnography, to explore how discursive shifts, particularly regarding ethnic discrimination and intersectionality, redefine activist identity and solidarity. The study provides a comprehensive understanding of the convergence of decolonial activism and feminism in the context of the war against Ukraine. By analyzing these changes, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of how activist identities and alliances evolve under authoritarian conditions, providing insight into the broader dynamics of civil resistance and identity politics.
The Russo-Ukrainian war and the deterioration of the relationship between Russia and the West made the application of traditional social science research methods, such as surveys and fieldwork, difficult for researchers. It is likely that in the foreseeable future students of Russia will have to increasingly rely on the data that can be collected online. Using these data has defined the field of computational social science and has many analytical advantages and some limitations. This article provides a review of the sources of digital trace data for Russia and of the studies that used them for the analysis of political communication and behavior, education, labor markets, discrimination, and the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Despite Russia’s relatively low ranking on gender equality, recent emigrants who left the country after February 2022 exhibit significantly higher levels of gender egalitarianism compared to their counterparts in Russia. This study investigates whether these attitudes are attributable to socio-demographic factors such as education and urban residence, or if deeper ideological and political factors play a role. Using data from the OutRush project on Russian emigration after 2022 and the World Values Survey, we analyze two key questions: Do recent emigrants demonstrate more egalitarian attitudes than socio-demographically similar Russians? Does gender equality of host countries influence emigrants’ attitudes? Our findings suggest that emigrants exhibit higher levels of gender egalitarianism than comparable groups in Russia, even after controlling for socio-demographic predictors. These differences persist after controlling for socioeconomic predictors, reflecting deeply ingrained values that were probably developed by the pre-migration experiences of political opposition actions and social activism. The results challenge theories of rapid acculturation and highlight the role of self-selection as a key factor underlying gender egalitarian attitudes.
The Russian online sphere today is subjected to sophisticated forms of control, including self-censorship, legal repression, and the shutdown of global platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, leaving state-controlled Russian platforms as the primary means of digital communication for the public. In this article, we explore the potential and limitations of using social media data to study cultural processes and societal dynamics within a non-transparent authoritarian context of wartime Russia as the government attempts to censor all explicit forms of political communication. Specifically, we discuss data provided by social media listening (SML) platforms and argue that, despite methodological and organizational challenges, SML in an authoritarian context offers unique opportunities to gauge cultural and social trends, particularly through the identification of micro triggers (signals) and macro patterns of online discourse. The huge volume of data extracted from SML enables scholars to explore deeper layers of information beyond mere text, including metadata from platforms such as author details and engagement metrics, and provides AI-driven analytical tools, such as sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and named entity recognition.
New evidence suggests that the gender protest gap—the difference between male and female participation in protest events—has decreased in Russia prior to February 2022, despite the patriarchal, authoritarian regime. Following the comparative literature, we rely on a survey experiment to show that women strategically participate in activism that have limited risk of state violence or social sanctions. Distinctions between the nature of protests and protest grievances as well as strategic opportunities to choose among protest repertoires and frames allow women to engage in activism without significant costs. There are two important exceptions. First, women are still less likely to participate in overtly politicized actions that challenge the regime. They are also less likely to participate in state-sponsored actions or actions in support of traditional family values voluntarily, although they are often coerced to do so. To explore the mechanisms that support these patterns in women’s activism, we rely on two additional types of evidence: a narrative of recent developments in women’s activism and interviews with Russian women activists in exile. These data illustrate the pathways to activism that underpin the activism against Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine that is reported in the articles in this special issue.
The evolution of Sino-Belarusian relations has acquired considerable geopolitical significance since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013 and the formal establishment of a strategic partnership between the two states. This analysis seeks to demonstrate that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sino-Belarusian relations gained a new momentum, with the global health crisis serving as a catalyst for the convergence of legitimacy claims between the two authoritarian regimes. This convergence is rooted in a shared foundational myth centered on World War II, ideological opposition to the West, personalist leadership structures, and China’s demonstrative performance in global affairs. The impact of these dynamics has persisted beyond the Belarusian political crisis of 2020 and the Russian war in Ukraine. Although Russia’s support is pivotal for ensuring the continuity of the Belarusian regime, this study argues that, unlike the Kremlin—which is perceived as a vestige of Belarusian dependencies and obligations—China provides the Lukashenko regime with a platform for “expansive” legitimacy. The findings contribute to the broader scholarly discourse on the international dimension of authoritarian legitimacy by demonstrating how China strategically expands its political influence over smaller autocratic states, not only reinforcing their legitimacy but also leveraging them as instruments to challenge Western hegemony in global politics.
Our special issue explores the roots, strategies, and frames that shaped women’s activism contesting Russia’s war in Ukraine. This introductory article places gendered anti-war activism in the context of the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods. This approach highlights critical changes that have occurred in Russian politics and society in the past two decades. On the one hand, we observe the rise of a new grassroots feminism and increased women’s activism, as well as the rise of horizontal protest organizations that effectively relied on new media as a tool of mobilization. On the other hand, we observe a profound change in the regimes’ repressive response to all types of wartime activism and growing societal quiescence in the face of state actions against soldiers’ wives and mothers. We conclude with a discussion of the articles included in the special issue, to highlight the debates and contributions that emerged across different approaches and empirical lenses.
Table of contents for the March issue
The “exogenous shock” provoked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has profoundly transformed the subfield of Russian studies, raising significant methodological and epistemological issues. Like many before them, scholars in Russian studies, mainly from Western institutions, are faced with the need to renew their research methods and sources in light of the challenging access to the research field in Russia. Rooted in discussions on the “computational turn” and digitization of area studies, this article proposes to overcome these new challenges by exploring Russia through its digital fieldwork. Over the past decade, open-source investigations have become decisive in the documentation of objects as diverse as organized crime, elite corruption, or contemporary conflicts. Generally referred to as OSINT (Open Source Intelligence), these investigative practices are made possible by the omnipresence of sensors that digitize a growing proportion of human activities and generate digital footprints. Although these sources are widely used by intelligence services, journalists, and activists, the reflections carried out to integrate them into the “toolbox” of the social scientist in Russian studies are still embryonic and deserve to be enriched. As part of this special issue, this article contributes to this effort, by reviewing the existing literature in “digital Russian studies,” highlighting key epistemological and ethical issues associated with digital investigation in authoritarian context, and proposing a draft methodological framework for potential research avenues. The result is the possibility of a fieldwork “augmented” by digital technology, the use of which proves particularly fruitful to study wartime Russian politics.
Weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian-led CSTO forces intervened in Kazakhstan’s January 2022 Qandy Qantar protests at the government’s request. Many observers predicted this intervention would deepen Kazakhstan’s dependence on Russia, leading to support for Moscow’s invasion. Yet Kazakhstan’s subsequent actions defied these expectations. This study examines how the Kazakhstani government strategically framed and managed domestic unrest within a shifting geopolitical context, from initially emphasizing foreign threats to justify CSTO intervention to later reframing reforms as necessary for protecting sovereignty amid global upheaval. Through analysis of evolving state narratives and policy decisions, we demonstrate how great power-centric analysis overlooks the sophisticated ways states navigate asymmetric relationships. This case illustrates the importance of examining how smaller states in asymmetric relationships strategically manage both domestic and international pressures to advance their interests.
The full-scale war in Ukraine has had a wide-ranging impact on the nation’s children as they have been displaced, wounded, and even killed. In the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukrainian children found ways and created spaces that allowed them to express their agency, ranging from narrating their experiences in diaries, poems, and art to engaging in political activities related to war. This study explores the potential of arts-based programs to empower children affected by armed conflict, with a focus on the Behind Blue Eyes initiative, implemented following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By distributing disposable cameras, this program encouraged children affected by war to document their lives through photography, subsequently sharing their visual narratives on the Behind Blue Eyes initiative’s social media account on Instagram. Through thematic and semiotic analyses of these digital stories, this research investigates how children express agency, engage with geopolitical discourses, and navigate their traumatic experiences through their photographs during the Russia-Ukraine war. The study also examines how adults mediate children’s narratives through digital storytelling, revealing the complex dynamics of children’s agency within armed conflict contexts. The research addresses these questions and contributes to the scholarly discourse on children’s experiences in conflicts beyond Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. This research also advances the understanding of how arts-based programs offer a medium for children to express and transform their experiences of war, which also challenges narratives of children as passive actors in contexts of large-scale political violence.
The introduction of a universal, egalitarian social security system was promoted by the USSR in all countries within its sphere of influence during the communist period. However, despite this rather uniform external pressure, communist countries followed different social policy routes in terms of timing and design. Bulgaria was one of the first Eastern European countries to introduce a uniform pension system within a short period of time. In this article, we argue that besides communist ideology and pressure from the USSR, pre-communist social policy legacies, national constellation of influential actors, and country-specific socioeconomic conditions during the communist era are crucial when explaining the concrete design and timing of pension reforms in communist states. Using the method of process tracing and based on archival and document research, we shed light on the two most important pension reforms targeting the rural population in communist Bulgaria. We show that the political and ideological developments in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s in combination with the demographic and economic problems of Bulgarian agriculture can explain the early establishment of a unified pension insurance system in Bulgaria.
This article focuses on the opportunities for allowing protests in contemporary Russia despite military censorship and a ban on any public action or criticism of the ongoing war against Ukraine. The research analyzes the tactics of the women’s activism that were used on Red Square in November 2023, demanding the return of their mobilized relatives. The study shows how women activists manage risks, declare demands, and avoid detention while interacting with police and officials of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). Through the analysis of framing perspective, the study examines the demonstration and interactions in the community’s blog. Findings indicate that the actualization of several specific framings in the movement’s action—including appropriation of the KPRF’s rhetoric and self-representation as responsible and patriotic soldiers’ wives with minor support from the KPRF—presents a space for protest in Russia’s closed political system.
Immediately before and during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian foreign policy experts and high-ranking officials have often employed a historical analogy with the Cuban missile crisis to argue that a “sobering” crisis would allow Russia to renegotiate its relationship with the “West.” As Russia’s war against Ukraine became prolonged, recurrent references to 1962 in Russian public forums have become interwoven into the unusually visible Russian public debate on nuclear coercion. By using the analogy with the Cuban missile crisis, Russian experts and officials have reframed Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine as a conflict between Russia and the USA, while reducing the meaning of Ukraine to the territory of Russia’s red lines (similarly to their meanings attached to Cuba in the 1962 events). Yet, the salience of the Cuban missile crisis analogies in Russia’s public forums underscores their wider significance for nuclear mythmaking in Russia’s strategic culture, particularly for Russia’s evolving approaches to nuclear coercion. This article examines how recurrent historical analogies with the Cuban missile crisis in Russia’s public debate have contributed to reinterpreting the meanings of Russia’s nuclear identity and nuclear coercion, to promoting greater tolerance for nuclear risk-taking by Russian domestic audiences and to blurring the limits of the thinkable in Russia’s approach to nuclear escalation in the eyes of foreign audiences. To answer these questions, the article undertakes narrative analysis of publicly available texts produced by members of Russia’s strategic community in the run-up to and during the invasion.
This article investigates how socialist legacies influence the political attitudes and integration of two post-socialist groups—former East Germans in reunified Germany and North Korean migrants in South Korea—whose experiences underscore broader challenges of transitioning to democratic societies. Drawing on choice-based conjoint experiments and supported by observational data analysis, the study examines individuals’ preferences for hypothetical politicians with varying stances on political rule, economic organization, social welfare, gender, and cultural diversity. By comparing responses between primarily native-born citizens and post-socialist subpopulations, we assess the extent of attitudinal convergence and highlight areas where socialist-era socialization likely remains influential. In Germany, the findings show that attitudes toward diversity (i.e., national identity) diverge between Western Germans—who reject nativism and support multiculturalism—and Eastern Germans and post-GDR citizens, who remain more skeptical despite formal unification. In South Korea, North Korean migrants show less enthusiastic support for democracy than native South Koreans, suggesting that early political socialization under authoritarian socialism leaves lasting imprints on democratic outlooks. This study underscores the enduring quality of formative political experiences, illustrating that effective democratic integration requires more than institutional change. It also considers how deeply held beliefs formed under socialism persist and shape contemporary political preferences—offering valuable lessons for policymakers in divided or transitioning societies.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet bloc countries launched a number of automotive projects in cooperation with Western companies. One such initiative was the Small-Engine Car Factory (FSM) in Bielsko and Tychy, Poland. This article explores the involvement of regional party officials and an interest group formed around provincial party leaders in the implementation of the FSM project in the early 1970s. The analysis focuses on the role of this group in initiating the car factory project, as well as its activities during the decision-making and construction process. An examination of archival documents shows that a coalition of regional party apparatchiks and auto industry representatives played a key role in launching the project and overcoming delays and financial problems during its implementation. As a result, the implementation of FSM was one of the most effective in the Soviet bloc countries.
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is considered a laboratory for both democratization and democratic backsliding, but little is known still about how ordinary citizens perceive and make decisions about whether and how to civically engage. To address this gap, we use focus group interviews to supplement our data from nationally representative surveys in Poland and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Our fieldwork makes three contributions. First, the decisions people in both countries make about whether to engage in civic activism are shaped more by opportunities for action and impact on priority issues than by levels of acceptance of democratic norms. Second, the nature of citizen engagement tends to be through non-institutionalized, grassroots activism in response to a need or threat. Third, people in Poland are more likely to participate around abstract issues like rule of law while people in BiH are more often motivated by everyday problems. These insights suggest the use of focus groups after surveys deepens understanding of civic engagement in CEE.
This contribution examines the relationship between historical monuments and local political identities, by investigating the connection between World War II monuments and the electoral geography of Croatia. Spatial dependence models are used to inspect the link between the presence and condition of World War II monuments and vote shares for different political options. The dataset places more than 1,000 historical monuments into roughly 500 geographical units for a variety of elections and referenda in the last decade. The empirical results point to a strong association between the presence of preserved monuments and electoral results.
This article is dedicated to the ways China’s history is narrated in contemporary Russian world history textbooks. The study relies on the formal structural version of narrative analysis applied to all three series of textbooks included in the federal list of textbooks recommended for teaching world history in Russia’s secondary and high schools and aims at revealing the internal logic of China’s history narrative and its place in the overarching plot of world history narrative. The research findings show China’s history narrative presented in the Russian textbooks to considerably differ from that prevailing in the Chinese historiography and combine a relatively Eurocentric approach with projections of Russia’s own identity-related issues—technological vs. sociopolitical modernization, historical agency, and opportunities vs. risks of openness to the world. These results show how a foreign country’s history can be turned into a usable past not via shared experience or direct analogy but as an initially neutral material for addressing pivotal issues of one’s own country and ambivalent sides of its national identity.
This article analyzes the activist rhetoric of Put′ Domoi (The Way Home)—a prominent, Russia-based public protest movement consisting primarily of women whose family members were “mobilized” into fighting in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Using a detailed framework that describes Russia’s gender-related ideologies under Putin, we analyze Put′ Domoi’s activist rhetoric focusing primarily on the first six months of their public activism (August 2023–March 2024). We examine how the activists struggled to frame their demands in a way that would afford them some protection from repression while also allowing them to challenge the regime’s open-ended military “mobilization.” We find that this movement employed a gender-compliant framework similar to that of many grassroots wives-and-mothers movements fighting authoritarian violence within and outside of Russia, but with particular Soviet roots. Over time, Put′ Domoi became increasingly frustrated with the regime’s response to their demands and increasingly critical of the war in general. This analysis helps explain why Put′ Domoi did not immediately face repression despite engaging in regular public protests critical of Russia’s war-related policies. Our case study of Put′ Domoi also sheds light on how these kinds of women’s movements navigate the complicated repressive terrain of authoritarian rule through gender-related framing tactics.
This article examines the Serbian political leadership—the president and government alike—by addressing the dominant political figures’ narratives. We communicate with the theoretical aspects in the study of populism and conspiracy theories as this nexus enables us to examine the specific nature of the domestic politics in Serbia. In our view, the ruling elite complements its populist discourse with conspiracy theory to ensure its survival in power, by regularly generating fear about the threat posed to Serbian statehood and lack of apprehension for Belgrade’s geopolitical preferences and exploration of foreign policy alternatives. Our analysis fills a major gap in the literature, since there has been only sporadic research on this topic and none of it has focused on the merger of populism and conspiracy theory. The findings we have reached—largely those of the elite’s self-victimization narratives and their dissemination of anti-Western sentiments—provide for a fresh contribution to the debate concerning the power struggle and the state of democracy in Serbia, especially given the fact that the key political stakeholders draw heavily on pro-regime media outlets to readily disseminate their self-serving accounts.
This article examines the reactions of young people and, more specifically, youth activists in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Specifically, we demonstrate how online involvement bleeds into the offline political activity of young people related to the war in complex ways. While Central Asians rely on online activity to discover and interact with news about the war, the war has catalyzed a variety of political activities both online and offline, though the war is but one of many political traumas that have elicited responses from society. Our interviews with young activists reveal common themes across Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In both cases, the war brought about conflicts within the activist community and vibrant discussions in the arenas of language politics and decolonization. This newfound youth activism may not result in increased formal political participation (e.g., voting, protesting), but it could have a lasting impact on the everyday contribution and efficacy of young people in their societies.
This article offers a comparative analysis of post-Soviet leaders’ new year addresses to the nation. As highly prominent, programmatic speeches, such texts provide a unique and valuable basis for examining insights from literatures on authoritarian political communication and regime legitimation. Collecting 152 new year addresses from across the region (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan), we find systematic differences in leaders’ political communication depending on the openness of the regime, both in ordinary times and during global crises such as COVID-19. Autocrats’ acknowledgment of mass unrest, however, is less consistent, which we argue reflects broader uncertainties in the political as seen in our case comparisons of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan. Across all our cases we find leaders increasingly using new year addresses to articulate claims about the identity of the state and the nation, (re)interpreting its history, past achievements, as well as defining a vision of the future. Moreover, these visions coalesce around unitary understandings of the nation, replacing multiethnic narratives of the immediate post-Soviet period. The unique status of the new year as one of the most enduring “invented traditions” of the Soviet Union provides an important lens to assess continuity and change across the region.
Table of Contents for the December 2025 issue of CPCS
This article focusing on the communications of former Czech PM Andrej Babiš is a contribution to the debate on the transformation of the communications of populist actors. Using a content analysis of all Facebook communication in the profiles of Babiš and his ANO movement in the pre-election periods between 2013 and 2023, the text reveals a gradual transformation of communication. While the level of populism in communication remained relatively high throughout the decade (with a notable peak in the run-up to the 2017 parliamentary elections, after four years of government engagement), other (ideological) features accompanying populism transformed significantly. The initial technocratic, expert, and managerial rhetoric putting in contrast “bad ideological/party politicians” and “good experts and managers” was pragmatically abandoned over time and replaced by a nativist rhetoric placing in contrast “good natives” and “bad incomers,” that is, immigrants (and not immediately after the outbreak of the so-called migration crisis). In this respect, the transformation of the communication of ANO and Babiš differs from the communication of a large part of other dominant Central European populist actors.
One big puzzle in China’s market reform is how the government maintained popular support during the rapid socioeconomic transformation. This article argues that while the market transition aggravated economic inequality, the housing privatization reform of the late 1990s, in which public housing was sold at deeply discounted prices, provided a much-needed welfare benefit to the urban residents before a functioning welfare system was established. Using survey data collected in Beijing during the period of housing privatization reform, this study finds that urban residents who purchased public housing reported higher evaluations of China’s market reform and were more satisfied with government performance. The effect was stronger among SOE blue-collar workers, lower-income earners, and those without social insurance. Further analysis shows that the purchase of public housing had a long-lasting effect on shaping pro-market policy preferences among these former proletariats. These findings suggest that housing privatization contributed to a widely dispersed coalition that supported the government’s market-oriented policies, serving as a source of political legitimacy during the period of dramatic changes.
Under authoritarianism, electoral malpractice not only can be manifest in violations prohibited by law, but also occurs under the guise of legality, thereby acquiring an institutionalized character. Multi-day voting in Russia, while portrayed by the authorities as a measure of convenience for the voters, effectively increases the propensity for malpractice by creating permissive environments for electoral fraud and workplace mobilization of voters, which often involves coercion to vote and bribery of electors. The analysis shows that in the 2021 national legislative elections, the pro-government party was indeed the sole beneficiary of multi-day voting in terms of increasing its officially reported vote share. The impact of multi-day voting upon the electoral performance of the permitted opposition parties was uneven, reflecting the differences among the niches occupied by the permitted opposition parties in Russia’s electoral arena.
Authoritarian regimes widely involve non-state actors in social welfare to increase output legitimacy and regime stability. Despite the volume of corporate social investments, the role of private companies in authoritarian welfare is still poorly understood. This study analyzes the functioning of corporate social programs in the Russian authoritarian welfare state by focusing on corporate grant competitions and corporate volunteering as means of engaging both the local population and the companies’ employees in the regions. Drawing on stakeholder theory, it investigates how companies position themselves as welfare providers and how they legitimize their role with regard to key stakeholders, including state officials, employees, and the local population. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with company representatives and key stakeholders in four Russian regions: Kemerovo, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region, Tiumen′, and Volgograd. In addition, corporate social reports from 2018 and information for beneficiaries were evaluated to identify program guidelines, motivations, and stakeholder assessments. The study argues that companies play an important role as welfare providers through the financial support of social organizations and employee initiatives at the regional and the local level. By providing social investments in geographically defined “territories of presence,” Russian companies pursue a double legitimation strategy, both demonstrating their social responsibility and loyalty toward the regime and strengthening authoritarian welfare provision through private social investments. With a detailed analysis of corporate social programs, this study contributes to our understanding of the specific conditions and mechanisms of social policy in authoritarian regimes and the place that companies occupy within it.
This article examines the historical trajectory of the closed-top electric furnace (CTEF), an industrial technology designed to revolutionize metallurgical smelting in Soviet industrial manufacturing. By tracing the CTEF’s evolution from initial proposal through experimental trials to its ultimate resolution through Japanese technology importation, this study illuminates the inherent contradictions within the Soviet system and situates metallurgical innovation within the broader political context of de-Stalinization. The CTEF project emerged during a critical period when Soviet technological priorities were being redefined, offering an illuminating case study of post-Stalinist scientific enterprise. Through analysis of primary source materials, this work reveals how Georgian scientists strategically navigated the institutional landscape of the era, leveraging Soviet policy frameworks while pursuing professional advancement and cultural aspirations. These scientists legitimized their work not only through economic justifications—particularly the potential for waste gas utilization in the chemical industry—but also by deliberately connecting their innovations to Georgia’s ancient metallurgical heritage. The technological solutions they developed exemplified the socialist approach to science while reflecting systemic contradictions that highlighted the persistent gap between ambitious political directives and practical realities. By focusing on this single industrial innovation, the article provides nuanced insights into the complex negotiations between regional scientific communities, industrial priorities, and central state power within the Soviet Union’s pursuit of technological progress and national development.
This article examines the evolving identities and solidarity among Russia’s anti-war movement, particularly focusing on the convergence between feminist and decolonial activism. Using the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR) and ethnic or decolonial activists as case studies, the research highlights how solidarity influences the activists’ understanding of their objectives, reshapes identities, and introduces new grassroots coalitions. In the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, these interactions challenge traditional boundaries between movements and foster a growing solidarity. The study draws on diverse data sources, including interviews with FAR activists, interviews with ethnic/decolonial activists, and online ethnography, to explore how discursive shifts, particularly regarding ethnic discrimination and intersectionality, redefine activist identity and solidarity. The study provides a comprehensive understanding of the convergence of decolonial activism and feminism in the context of the war against Ukraine. By analyzing these changes, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of how activist identities and alliances evolve under authoritarian conditions, providing insight into the broader dynamics of civil resistance and identity politics.
This article focuses on responses to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine among establishment intellectuals in the People’s Republic of China, exploring how shifting geographies of power are reshaping ideas around ethnoracial identity in Eurasia. President Vladimir Putin justified the war, arguing that Ukrainians had no legitimate existence separate from Russians. In China where, despite long-standing opposition to countries “interfering in internal affairs” of others, officialdom has broadly supported Putin, intellectuals have engaged seriously with ideas around Russian and Ukrainian “sameness” as grounds for invasion. These distinctive PRC-based perspectives, sampled over the war’s first year from Aisixiang.com, a repository for intellectual commentary on current events, have significant ramifications for understandings of ethnic difference in the “global order.” From this material emerges a world in which certain “great” states possess the right to project possibly mutually incommensurable ethnicizing paradigms domestically and internationally. Tellingly, in the Sino-Russian context, while Putin condemns Lenin’s historic state-building role in “creating” Ukraine, the PRC party-state’s own Leninist legacy (including its categorization of ethnic groups) is irreconcilable with such views. Amid increasingly heated global debates around geopolitics, ethnicity, and race where PRC-based voices are central, scholars must attend to translingual framings of difference and the actions they justify.
The escalation of Russian aggression against Ukraine—an attack launched throughout almost all of its territory in February 2022—has triggered numerous initiatives aiming at documentation of war experiences through methods of interviewing. The war and refugee crisis in Central and Eastern Europe brings us closer to similar situations in different regions of the world, which also have been documented and researched. Our special section explores various methodologies of emergency response projects and traces how different positionalities are combined and contested during the unfolding conflict. While we focus on the Ukrainian case, our aim is to engage in dialogue with various geographies of the post-communist world, where researchers are (or were) exposed to straightforward challenges in terms of safety and security. We invited scholars who studied their own societies or communities they are related to; therefore, the duality between “insider” and “outsider” as well as the very concept of “field” as something external is challenged in their writing. Assembled articles make visible tensions inherent in the projects that document the present moment: between different roles researchers have, different ethical justifications and academic standards, different audiences and social groups scholars engage with. Following the question that Ghislaine Boulanger posed, “How do we fit our understanding of the individual survivor into the larger picture of a catastrophe without losing sight of individual struggle?”, authors show various possibilities of analytical work with collected materials and ways to conceptualize the experiences of both the interviewers and the interviewees who live through violent conflicts.
Table of Contents for September issue of Communist and Post-Communist Studies