The activities of NUPI’s Department of Russian and Eurasian Studies can be divided into four core areas:
- Russian security and foreign policy – including Russian hegemonic ambitions in the post-Soviet area, together with Russia’s relation to EU and NATO. Studies of bilateral relations between Russia and Norway have been important as well.
- Within the field of regime studies, the focus has been on various aspects of the Russian political system, policy models, and institutional development and institution building.
- The third focal area involves research on the development of centre–periphery relations within the Russian Federation. Today this is an important field of study: in addition to the obvious need for expertise on conflict areas like Chechnya, for the first time the regions, and thereby centre–periphery relations, have emerged as a power factor in the Russian context.
- The Department of Russian an Eurasian Studies has also focused on the Russian Nordic Areas in general and the Norwegian neighbouring territory in particular, as well as on various aid-related projects. Research in the department includes all the post-Soviet areas except the Baltic countries.
Current research [More]
Coming into the Cold: Asia’s Arctic interests
This project will examine the increasing Arctic interests of four key Asian states (China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea) and illustrate how Arctic states (US, Norway, Russia) are meeting this growing interest. The aim is to analyze the consequences the increased involvement of Asian states may have for Arctic governance and geopolitics. More
Dialogue and learning across the North Caucasian/Russian divide
The project creates an arena for dialogue and cooperation between MA and PhD students from the Northern Caucasus and Russia. More
Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbours: Spoilers or catalysts of regional stability?
Completed projects [More]
The Shifting Geopolitics of the Black Sea Region: Actors, Drivers and Challenges
The Black Sea Region stands out as a region where realpolitik once more has come to the fore. This project maps drivers that currently affect the shifting geopolitics of the Black Sea region. More
Competence building and research support for the Chechen State University
The project is a cooperation project between the Chechen State University in Grozny and NUPI. More
Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) and implications for post-conflict economic recovery
The project is about disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (so-called DDR processes) and the pursuit of these aims when societies go from war to peace. More
Publications
- Overland, Indra , Jakub M. Godzimirski, Lars Petter Lunden, Daniel Fjærtoft (2013). Rosneft's offshore partnerships: the re-opening of the Russian petroleum frontier?, .Cambridge University Press.p. 140-153.This article analyses and compares the contents and contexts of major cooperation agreements between the Russian and state owned Rosneft and international companies. The goal is to ascertain what the agreements have to tell about access for international companies to Russia's offshore petroleum resources and the influence of competing Russian political actors over the country's petroleum sector. [url]
- Wilson Rowe, Elana
(2013). Arctic hierarchies? Norway, status and the high north,
in Polar Record
.Cambridge University Press.This article focuses on one potential motivation for a state’s behaviour in international affairs, namely status-seeking, in order to shed light on Norway’s Arctic politics and to discuss the role of hierarchies in Arctic politics more generally. [url] - Moen-Larsen, Natalia (2013). Kollektivet og individet, .Oslo,Universitetsforlaget.p. 3-5.Leder i Nordisk Østforum [url]
- Gjerde, Kristian Lundby (2013). Bruken av historie i Putins Russland: Kremls søken etter konsensus 2000–2010, .p. 31-56.I denne artikkelen argumenterer forfatteren for at russiske myndigheter har forsøkt å befeste et nytt narrativ for sovjetisk historie, og at dette har blitt gjort for å skape konsensus i befolkningen og konsolidere samfunnet etter 1990. Forfatteren finner imidlertid at det nye narrativet er problematisk da det forsøker å forene gjensidig utelukkende verdier. [url]
- Godzimirski, Jakub M., Elana Wilson Rowe, Helge Blakkisrud (2012). The Arctic: What does Russia see? What does Russia want?. Oslo, The Finnish Ministry of Defence. 17 pages. This Briefing Paper, written for the Finnish Ministry of Defence, aims to provide a better understanding of Russian policy towards the Arctic. The authors analyze how the Arctic is presented in Russian strategic documents as well as how these documents relate to Russia’s Arctic political practices - how Russian Arctic statements have been translated into political action.
- Fjæstad, Kristin
(2012). Demokratiske ideer og udemokratisk praksis: ,
i Nordisk Østforum, vol 26, no 3-4
.Oslo,Universitetsforlaget.p. 263-286.Artikkelen ser på det internasjonale samfunnets innsats for å styrke det kirgisiske parlamentet etter 2010. [url] - Blakkisrud, Helge , Pål Kolstø
(2012). Die Gesellschaft der PMR,
in Klaus Bochmann, Vasile Dumbrava, Dietmar Müller & Victoria Reinhardt (eds.) Die Republik Moldova: Ein Handbuch.
.Leipzig,Leipziger Univärsitetsverlag.p. 571-582.The republic of Moldova is getting more visible in European politics and economy. This book chapter provides an overview over Moldovan civil society actors and the media landscape.The authors compare social life in Transnistria with that of the rest of Moldova. This article examines the politics and social development in the breakaway republic of Transnistria from 1991 until today. [url] - Overland, Indra , Mikkel Berg-Nordlie (2012). Bridging divides. , Berghahn Books. 162 pages. This book tells the story of what happened to the Russian Sami population in the two decades that followed the end of the Cold War. They attempted a linguistic revival, sought to mend the Cold War scars across Sapmi, and established their own independent ethno-political organizations.
- Wilson Rowe, Elana (2012). A dangerous space? , .Taylor & Francis.This article illustrates how the Arctic is represented as a zone of potential conflict in the media. Rowe argues that these different ‘framings’ of Arctic politics have significance for the kind of politics that can be pursued in the region, and discusses how a certain kind of geopolitical reasoning contributes to seeing the Arctic as a latent space of danger and conflict. [url]
- Wilson Rowe, Elana
(2012). International science, domestic politics,
in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, volume 30.
.Pion.p. 711-726.This paper seeks to examine how changes in Russian policy makers’ publicly communicated understandings of climate science have been brought about by analyzing the reception of international scientific assessments of climate change in Russian domestic debate. [url]