Rival Power, page 35
Yugoslavia’s violent disintegration in the 1990s gave birth to an impressive body of academic work. A recap of the often polarized discussions is contained in Sabrina Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Norman M. Naimark and Holly Case, Yugoslavia and its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s (Stanford University Press, 2003). The international efforts to contain the violence are analyzed critically by James Gow, The Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (Columbia University Press, 1997), and Josip Glaurdić, The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia (Yale University Press, 2011), amongst many other books. Russia is invariably part of the narrative. Laura Silber and Allan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (Penguin, 1997), which accompanies the BBC documentary of the same name, is notable because it draws on extensive interviews with the main actors involved in the wars. The Kosovo conflict of 1998–99 is tackled in Tim Judah’s Kosovo: War and Revenge (Yale University Press, 2002). Peter Siani-Davies (ed.), International Intervention in the Balkans since 1995 (Routledge, 2003), and Jacques Rupnik (ed.), The Western Balkans and the EU: “The Hour of Europe” (EU Institute for Security Studies, 2011), should be consulted as well.
The best and most comprehensive account by far of Russia’s involvement in the Yugoslav wars is James Headley, Russia in the Balkans: Foreign Policy from Yeltsin to Putin (Hurst, 2008). Headley has done an excellent job in meticulously charting the evolution of Moscow’s policies, marshaling diverse sources. His particular strength is the Yeltsin period and the interplay between domestic forces in Russia and international factors. Vsevolod Samokhvalov, Russian–European Relations in the Balkans and Black Sea Region: Great Power Identity and the Idea of Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), taking its cues from the academic discipline of International Relations (IR), is a welcome addition to the debate. The chapters on Russia included in Richard H. Ullman (ed.), The World and Yugoslavia’s Wars (Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), and Alex Danchev and Thomas Halverston (eds), International Perspectives on the Yugoslav Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), provide valuable insight into the war in Bosnia as well.
The conflict in Kosovo is, unsurprisingly, the most popular subject in the literature on Russia’s Balkan policy. John Norris, Collision Course: NATO, Russia and Kosovo (Praeger, 2005), is a lively journalistic account of the politics surrounding the air campaign against former Yugoslavia in March–June 1999. For a more scholarly interpretation, see the respective chapter on Kosovo in Roy Allison, Russia, the West and Military Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2013). A handful of journal articles written at the time have not lost their relevance, including Oleg Levitin, “Inside Moscow’s Kosovo Muddle,” Survival, vol. 42, no. 1, 2000, and Oksana Antonenko, “Russia, NATO and European security after Kosovo,” Survival vol. 41, no. 4, 1999, and Predrag Simić, “Russia and the Conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia,” Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, 2001. Highly recommended also are the memoirs produced by decision makers involved in the crisis: e.g. Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (Random House, 2002), and Evgenii Primakov, Vosem’ mesiatsev plius (Mysl’, 2001).
Yugoslavia has been the subject of many academic publications in Russian. Elena Gus’kova, a senior researcher with the Russian Academy of Sciences’ (RAN) Institute for Slavic Studies, has from early on become a leading voice on the issue. Her Istoria Iugoslavskogo krizisa: 1990–2000 (A. Solov’ev, 2001) is written from a distinctly nationalist perspective and paints a positive image of the wartime Republika Srpska and of Slobodan Milošević, laying the blame squarely at the West’s doorstep. A more balanced account of the war is contained in Sergei Romanenko’s monographs Iugoslaviia, Rossia i “slavianskaia ideia”: vtoraia polovina XIX–nachalo XXI veka (Institut prava i publichnoi politiki, 2002) and Rossiisko-iugoslavskie otnosheniia v kontekste ėtnopoliticheskikh konfliktov v Srednei Evrope, nachalo XX veka–1991 god (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011). One should also note Konstantin Nikiforov, director of RAN’s Institute for Slavic Studies who served as President Yeltsin’s speechwriter between 1992 and 1998. His main works include Mezhdu Kremlem i Respublikoi Serbskoi (Bosniiskiii krizis: zavershcaiuschii etap) (RAN, 1999) and Iugoslavia v 20 veke: ocherki politicheskoi istorii (co-author, Indrik, 2011). Lastly, Carnegie Moscow has a collection of essays reflecting the Russian debates following NATO’s Operation Allied Force: Ekaterina Stepanova (ed.), Kosovo: Mezhdunarodnye aspekty krizisa (Carnegie Moscow, 1999).
The role of Russia in former Yugoslavia since the early 1990s has been for the most part a topic of interest of policy analysts: e.g. David Clark and Andrew Foxall, “Russia’s Role in the Balkans – Cause for Concern?” Henry Jackson Society, June 2014, and Marta Szpala, “Russia in Serbia – Soft Power and Hard Interests,” Center for Eastern Studies (OSW), Warsaw, 29 October 2014. There are, however, scholarly publications of note too, such as Aleksandar Fatić, “A Strategy Based on Doubt: Russia Courts Southeast Europe,” Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 31, no. 3, 2010, or Andrew Konitzer, “Serbia between East and West,” Russian History, vol. 38, no. 1, 2011. Konitzer, in particular, goes a long way towards deconstructing parts of the mythology related to the Russian–Serbian brotherhood and the perception of Moscow’s expanding footprint in the economy. A special mention is due to James Ker-Lindsay’s book Kosovo: The Path to Contested Statehood in the Balkans (I. B. Tauris, 2009), as it chronicles the (re)emergence of the diplomatic alliance between Moscow and Belgrade in the mid-2000s. More on the same subject in Žarko Petrović, Russia–Serbia Relations at the Beginning of XXI Century (ISAC Fund, 2007). Russia’s penetration of Balkan economies and domestic politics is discussed in Janusz Bugajski, Dismantling the West: Russia’s Atlantic Agenda (Potomac Books, 2009) as well as in a recent book he has co-authored with Margarita Assenova, Eurasian Disunion: Russia’s Vulnerable Flanks (Jamestown Foundation, 2016).
Bulgaria and Romania have been unjustly overshadowed by former Yugoslavia and have caught on only in the past several years, thanks to the Ukrainian crisis. Of course, there is outstanding historical work on those countries’ relations with Russia: Barbara Jelavich, Russia and the Formation of the Romanian National State, 1821–1878 (Cambridge University Press, 1984); Duncan Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 1870–1895 (Duke University Press, 1993), along with countless monographs and articles in local languages on the period before 1914. When it comes to the twentieth century, one could learn a great deal from books such as Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture (Hoover Institution Press, 1999), Richard J. Crampton, Bulgaria (Oxford University Press, 2007), or Vladimir Tismeneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (University of California, 2003).
There is also a growing literature on Russian influence on the present-day politics and economies of EU members in Southeast Europe. Think-tank reports such as Heather Conley et al., The Kremlin’s Playbook: Understanding Russian Influence in Central and Eastern Europe (CSIS, 2016), and Dimitar Bechev, Russia’s Influence in Bulgaria (New Direction Foundation, 2015), assess Moscow’s impact on the economy, domestic politics, and media. Chapters on Bulgaria, Romania, Greece/Cyprus, and Slovenia are included in Maxine David, Jackie Gower, and Hiski Haukkala (eds), National Perspectives on Russia (Routledge, 2013). Boyko Marinkov and Biser Banchev (eds), Ukrainskata kriza i Balkanite [The Ukraine Crisis and the Balkans] (Paradigma, 2017), is a comprehensive effort to map out responses in the entire region, from Albania to Romania and Croatia to Turkey. It is hoped that the collective volume by the Balkan Studies Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences will find its way to the English-language reader. There is a literature in English concerning Greece and Cyprus, often seen as the EU member states most sympathetic to Russia. Costas Melakopides, Russia–Cyprus Relations: A Pragmatic Idealist Perspective (Palgrave, 2016), looks at Moscow’s role in the divided island, but is written for the most part in an uncritical, pro-Kremlin key. On Russian influence over the Greek far right, Péter Krekó et al., “Natural Allies”: The Kremlin Connections of the Greek Far Right, Political Capital, 2015. For an overview of Russian–Greek relations, stressing the role of strategic interests, Aristotle Tziampiris, “Greek Foreign Policy and Russia: Political Realignment, Civilizational Aspects, and Realism,” Mediterranean Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2, 2010. See also the chapters by Konstantin Filis and Nikos Tsafos in Spiridon N. Litsas and Aristotle Tziampiris (eds), Foreign Policy Under Austerity: Greece’s Return to Normality? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). For Russian perspectives on EU members in Southeast Europe: Natalia Kulikova et al. (eds), Rossia i strany Tsentral’noi i Iugo-Vostochnoĭ Evropy: vzaimootnosheniia v nachale XXI veka (RAN, 2012); Azhdar Kurtov (ed.), Rumyniia: istoki i sovremennoe sostoianie vneshnepoliticheskogo pozitsionirovaniia gosudarstva (Rossiiskii institut strategicheskikh izsledovanii, 2013).
Russia’s rich if turbulent relationship with the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey spanning centuries is the subject of scores of monographs and articles. Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals (Yale University Press, 2000), contains some fascinating and erudite passages juxtaposing and comparing the Tsarist and Ottoman state. Imperial Rule, edited by Alexei Miller and Alfred J. Rieber (CEU Press, 2005), is another exercise in the comparative study of European and Eurasian empires in the era of nationalism. The volume features an insightful chapter co-written by Norman Stone, a renowned scholar and polemicist who has contributed to the study of both Russia and Turkey. Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), studies the last chapter of the relationship and, for the most part, concentrates on the two empires’ rivalry in the Caucasus. Victor Taki, Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire (I. B. Tauris, 2016), explores the “discovery” of the Ottoman state and the role of the Orientalist imagination in the formation of Russia’s own identity. The wars of the early nineteenth century as well as the Tsar’s patronage and support for the preservation of the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s are covered in Alexander Bitis, Russia and the Eastern Question: Army, Government, and Society: 1815–1833 (Oxford University Press, 2006). Charles King’s Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul (W. W. Norton, 2014) narrates with elegance and depth the story of another, oft-forgotten encounter between (White) Russians and Turks, taking place in the cosmopolitan milieu of the early 1920s. King is also the author of the captivating Black Sea: A History (Oxford University Press, 2005). For a Russian perspective on the Ottomans and their relations with Russia, Svetlana Oreshkova (ed.), Osmanskaia imperiia: problemy vneshnei politiki i otnosheniia s Rossiei (Institute for Oriental Studies, RAN, 1996).
Turkish–Soviet relations in the interwar decades and during the Cold War is another vast area of scholarly enquiry, but a good overview is to be found in Bülent Gökay, Soviet Eastern Policy and Turkey, 1920–1991 (Routledge, 2006), which is a source for the origin and development of the Turkish left as well. Turkey is also covered in Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War Two to Gorbachev (Cambridge University Press, 1990). Last but not least, Baskın Oran, Atay Akdevelioğlu, and Mustafa Akşin, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1919–2006: Facts and Analyses with Documents (University of Utah Press, 2010), a monumental volume of nearly 1,000 pages originally published in Turkish, deserves special praise.
Turkey’s economic and security ties with the Russian Federation and the countries of post-Soviet Eurasia is explored in-depth in Philip Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy Since the Cold War (Hurst, 2003). Another highly recommended text is Turkish Foreign Policy since 1774 (Routledge, third edition, 2012) by William Hale, the doyen of the study of Turkish politics in Great Britain. Turkologists in Russia and scholars of Russia and Eastern Europe in Turkey have also produced plenty of studies: for instance, Natalia Ul’chenko (ed.), Rossiisko-turetskie otnoshenia: istoria, sovremennoe sostoianie i perspektvy (RAN, 2003); Oleg Kolobov, Aleksandr Kornilov, and Fatih Özbay, Sovremennye turetsko-rossiiskie otnosheniia: problem sotrudnichestva i perspektivy razvitiia (Nizhnii Novgorod University, 2004); Gülten Kazgan, Dünden bugüne Türkiye ve Rusya: politik, ekonomik ve kültürel ilişkiler (Bilgi University Press, 2003). The story of the Russian intervention in Syria since September 2015 and Turkey’s response is yet to be retold in a book, whether written by an academic or a journalist.
Finally, one should acknowledge the remarkable work done on Russia and the former Soviet Union at several research centers in Turkey: Bilkent University, the Middle East Technical University, the USAK think tank in Ankara (sadly, closed by an executive decree following the coup attempt on 15 July 2016), and Kadir Has University in Istanbul. They have been doing the job that RAN’s Oriental Studies Institute is doing on the Russian side in studying bilateral ties. Samples include Habibe Özdal et al., Turkey–Russia Relations in the Post-Cold War Era: Current Dynamics, Future Prospects (USAK, 2013), Gencer Özcan et al., Kuşku ile Komşuluk: Türkiye ve Rusya İlişkilerinde Değişen Dinamikler (Iletişim, 2017), and Mustafa Aydın, Europe’s Next Shore: The Black Sea Region after EU Enlargement (EU Institute for Security Studies, 2004). Aydın has assembled an impressive team of scholars working on the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and wider Eurasia at Kadir Has. His most recent edited volume is Kafkasya’da Değişim Dönüşüm – Avrasya Üçlemesi (Nobel, 2012).
INDEX
Abkhazia and South Ossetia (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
Abramovich, Roman (i)
Abramtsumov, Evgenii (i)
Achalov, Vladislav (i)
active measures (aktivnye meropriatiia) (i), (ii)
Aegean Sea (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
Aeroflot (air carrier, Russia) (i)
AES see Rosatom
Agrokor (i)
Ahtisaari, Martti (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Air power (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
AKEL (political party, Cyprus) (i)
Akıncı, Mustafa (i)
Akkuyu, nuclear power plant at (i), (ii)
AKP (political party, Turkey) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
Aksakov, Ivan (i)
al-Bab (Syria) (i)
Albania
energy sector (i), (ii)
foreign policy (i), (ii), (iii)
history (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
relations with Russia (i), (ii), (iii)
Albanians (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
Alekperov, Vagit (i), (ii)
Aleksii II, Patriarch (i)
Aleppo (i)
Alexander II, Emperor (1855–81) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Alexander III, Emperor (1881–94) (i), (ii)
Alfa TV (Bulgaria) (i)
Aliyev, Heydar (i)
Al Jazeera Balkans (i)
Anastasiades, Nikos (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
ANAP (political party, Turkey) (i)
ANB (Montenegrin security service) (i)
ANEL (political party, Greece) (i), (ii), (iii)
Andropov, Iurii (i)
Annan, Kofi (i), (ii)
Antalya (Turkey) (i)
anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) (i)
Aralov, Semen (i)
Arınç, Bülent (i)
Armenia (i), (ii), (iii)
Armenian Genocide (i)
Arms sales (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Asparuhov, Brigo (i)
Astrakhan, Khanate of (i)
Athos, Mount (i)
Ashton, Catherine (i), (ii)
al-Assad, Bashar (i)
Ataka (political party, Bulgaria) (i), (ii), (iii)
Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal (i), (ii)
Kemalism (i), (ii), (iii)
Austria (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
Austria-Hungary see Habsburg Monarchy
Azerbaijan (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
Azimov, Anvar (i)
Badinter Commission (i)
Bajatović, Dušan (i), (ii)
Baker, James (i)
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Pipeline (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) Gas Pipeline (i), (ii), (iii)
Bakunin, Mikhail (i)
Baltic countries (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
Banatski Dvor (gas storage facility, Serbia) (i), (ii)
Bandić, Milan (i)
Băsescu, Traian (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
BASF (i)
Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, Byzantine Emperor (i)
Baumgarten (Austria) (i)
Bavaria (i)
Bazoğlu Sezer, Duygu (i)
Belarus (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Belavezha Accords (1991) (i)
Belene, nuclear power plant at (i), (ii), (iii)
Belgrade (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx)
Beopetrol (i)
Berlin, Treaty of (1878) (i)
Berlusconi, Silvio (i), (ii), (iii)
Bessarabia (i), (ii)
BIA (Security and Information Service, Serbia) (i)
Bihać (Bosnia) (i)
Biden, Joe (i)
Bismarck, Otto von (i)
Black Sea (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi)
Black Sea Fleet (Russia) (i), (ii)
BLACKSEAFOR (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Black Sea Economic Co-operation (BSEC) (i), (ii), (iii)
Bled (Slovenia) (i), (ii)
Blue Stream Gas Pipeline (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
