Plus ça change: getting real about the evolution of Russian studies after 1991

ABSTRACT

The contributions to this special issue interrogate and revise how social scientists, and in particular political scientists, study the Russian Federation and the independent states that emerged in the collapse of the Soviet empire. They are right to do so. Russia’s escalation of war shined a spotlight on critical research gaps and inaccurate assumptions. Yet, as the field discovered in the 1990s, a dramatic shift in research approaches and strategies does not imply tabula rasa. My contribution highlights the field's capacity to evolve and identify gaps, recognize dead ends, and adjust. Relying on insights from colleagues and lessons of the past 30 years, I argue that in opening our field and questioning its foundations we should take care to expand our discussions and research approaches rather than replace them, and to recognize lessons learned from existing research platforms and models of collaboration.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• Russian studies
• kremlinology
• authoritarian institutionalism
• research methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For an interesting discussion of these methods and potential complementarity, see the Symposium in the recent APSA Comparative Politics Newsletter, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, Spring 2022. Available at: https://www.comparativepoliticsnewsletter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/APSA-CP_Newsletter_June_2022.pdf.

2. The Oxus Society has hosted an online discussion that is available here: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1LyxBooMVwEKN?s=20.

3. In a recent issue of Perspectives on Politics, Frye (2022) and Crowley (2022) review each other’s work and then respond to the reviews, creating the kind of lively exchange across approaches that can enrich the field.

4. https://newlinesinstitute.org/russia/the-threat-of-social-strife-to-the-putin-regime/.

5. Morris responded to a Central Asian scholar who noted “extractivist” and colonial relations with Western researchers. See Morris’s (2023) contribution to this special issue and https://twitter.com/russophiliac/status/1545022579483738112.