McMillan Chair of Russian Studies, Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (EURUS), Carleton University
Project Director, Russian Media Observation and Reporting (RuMOR)
Editor-in-Chief, Communist and Post-Communist Studies
🚨 New for 2024: Communist and Post-Communist Studies now allows Open Access publishing! 🚨
This is perhaps the single most requested publishing option and we are pleased to make it available for the journal's current and future authors. This is BIG NEWS for anyone with funding that requires OA publishing. Many thanks to University of California Press for making it happen!
For details: https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/pages/open_access
Working on your Spring syllabus, article, lit review, or seminar paper?
We've got you covered with the Communist and Post-Communist Studies Reading Lists, updated for January 2024!
With links to special issues and key articles from the last decade, categorized by region and subject:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KVF2TVIxEKaKL4tIpEro6Z5zUpeFxpva/view?usp=sharing
Thrilled to see that my article with David Stroup, "On the Outside Looking In: Ethnography and Authoritarianism," is now officially published in Perspectives on Politics--and as the lead article in a fantastic themed section on "Methods, Ethics, Motivations: Connecting the How and Why of Political Science"!
It's open access so read away:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592722004182
The December issue of Communist and Post-Communist Studies is online! Featuring a themed section on Political Participation in Post-Communist Europe During the COVID-19 Pandemic, guest edited by Sergiu Gherghina, Joakim Ekman, and Olena Podolian.
Before Oct 7, Russian TV struggled to talk about war in Ukraine while keeping viewers disengaged. The Israel-Hamas war gives it a chance to talk about war and liberation and to give viewers a comforting moral vantage point...while Ukraine smoulders off camera.
More to come!
8/
Note the drop in mentions of nationalist enemies in the previous slide?
Or the sudden rise in mentions of refugees and liberation since October, while mentions of the SMO and patriotism remain relatively unchanged?
Yeah, that's not about Ukraine.
It's about Israel-Hamas.
7/
Mentions of schemes against Russia and mentions of occupied territories have plummeted, though mentions of the SMO remain relatively stable.
At first glance, it appears to be a return to the geopolitical narratives that Russia peddled in advance of the war. BUT...
6/
War was mentioned on and off in 2022 until becoming a permanent fixture by mid-January.
Nationalists were mentioned throughout 2022-2023 until October.
If we zoom in on depictions of Russia's enemies, the shift is pretty stark: these days, it's all America, all of the time.
5/
So, what topics are consistently mentioned more often than the weather?
🔵 Year 1: Nationalists, Putin, Security, Special Military Operation, Ukraine, USA
🔵 Year 2: Putin, Security, Special Military Operation, Ukraine, USA, War
Did you spot the difference?
4/
To avoid artificially depressing the relative measures, we've dropped several narratives from our tracking:
✅Genocide & info warfare ceased to be salient just 2 wks into the war;
✅Denazification & demilitarization, official justifications for war, also faded quickly;
✅Remember threats of chemical-biological weapons and rumors of biolabs? Both ceased to be salient after about 1 mo.;
✅Humanitarian corridors & human shields faded in June 2022, shortly after the occupation of Mariupol.
3/
The decline in mentions of the war since mid-September is easier to see, here.
All mentions are tracked using Integrum's broadcast TV transcripts. Then they are calculated relative to mentions of the weather: below zero = less salient, above zero = more salient.
2/
🚨November RuMOR update! 🚨
The war continued to slide off Russian TV in Sep-Oct, interrupted only by the anniversary of Russia's annexations. And the Israel-Hamas war has done Russia a favor in domestic propaganda.
But first, the obligatory spaghetti chart!
Wonderful to have the incomparable Marlene Laruelle share her insights about “Russia at war” with us at EURUS. A fantastic talk, and robust turnout despite the rain and long weekend for Canadian Thanksgiving!
That feeling when you finally hit "submit" after crunching for the last couple of weeks to finish a grant proposal involving partners in four countries?
I'd like to think it's relief. It might be dread. Probably it's just numbness.
30 years ago, Russia's elected president and parliament both attempted to seize power. Yeltsin rolled out the tanks. A super-presidential constitution followed in December. Democrats abandoned Yeltsin, who turned to oligarchs for support and put #Russia on the path to #autocracy.
Working on a grant application on Russian propaganda and suddenly a grant-related email arrives under the name "Z-fellowships."
Thanks, SSHRC_CRSH for the momentary freak out. I was getting a little drowsy.
The political failure, here, is the performative honoring of #Ukraine 's past without bothering to understand it. Better to own it than to apologize, imho.
And yeah, Russian #propaganda is going to blame Canada for coddling Nazis, but honestly it was going to do that regardless.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/anthony-rota-ukrainian-veteran-1.6977384
CPCS Editor's Report 2023 highlights:
🔸Impact factor ⬆️0.9 (from 0.65)
🔸Immediacy index ⬆️ 1.0 (from 0.115)
🔸Submissions ⬆️ 45%
🔸2023 Outcomes (through August): Accept 17%, R&R 16%, Reject 7%, Desk Reject 34%
🔸Avg time from submission to decision: 57 days
Download the report here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iPrKut0_h5_rRp0CmlKrdAnyIltBgJAu/view?usp=sharing
APSA bingo, senior scholar edition:
"Do we really need another term for this?"
"Nice to see you, and good luck on the market."
"Are you going to the dinner tonight? Oh, I guess you weren't invited."