Browsing by Subject "Russia"

This research explores the way in which the Russian-speaking community of Narva, Estonia perceives their identity and sense of belongingness in relation to Estonia and Russia through self-reflection. Sixteen interviews with residents of Narva reveal perceptions of discrimination and integration and the surrounding discourses on inclusion and exclusion which define and influence how Russian-speaking Estonians balance their relationship with Russian and Estonian societies. The theoretical framework is composed of psychological and sociological theories which examine the individual and social aspects involved in the relationships the interviewees describe. The research underlines the value in having a deeper understanding of minority populations along critical borders to develop appropriate and effective national-level policies which affect the community, country of residence and country of origin of the minority community. This research aims to add to the existing literature focused on the study of minority communities along critical borders in general and Russian-speaking communities spread across the Post-Soviet Space in particular as well as describe the factors that influence their mobilization and transnationalism.

This thesis studies the discussion over the Estonian citizenship issue in the United Nations (UN) and in Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 1993 to 1997. The citizenship question refers to a case, where Estonia, according to its state-continuum paradigm, restored its pre-Soviet citizenship legislation. As a consequence, all people residing in its territory, besides people eligible for citizenship according to the pre-Soviet law, became stateless. The case of Estonian citizenship is part of the bigger paradigm change in minority questions in post-Cold War world. The thesis’ primary sources are gathered from public online archives of the aforementioned organisations. The sources consist of correspondences and other relevant documents related to the topic. The sources are analysed by small-state realism and strategic culture theories, which help to analyse the internal factors, i.e., the long-term ambition of politically allying with the West and the trauma of Soviet occupation, that had an effect Estonia’s use of language in diplomatic arenas. This framework is then combined with speech-act theory and new rhetoric’s audience centricity, which reveal the external factors that determined the factors that had to be considered in manifesting the national-strategy. Comparing the speech-acts from two separate forums reveals how a big state affects the use of language of a small-state. In the UN, Estonia mainly defends its citizenship policy against Russia’s torrent of human rights accusations related to mainly Russian speaking non-citizens in Estonia – even though the UN found no signs of arbitrary deprivation of citizenship nor human rights infringements. In the OSCE the lack of contestation results in mutually cooperative relationship aiming to integrate non-citizens via the framework provided by Estonia. In the end, Estonia is able to defend its citizenship policy on both fronts.

This thesis investigates strategy formation and its use in the Saint Petersburg contemporary dance community. In Russia the 1920s was the golden era of contemporary dance, however, this period only lasted for a few years. As the development of the industries, modern and contemporary forms were hindered by political and societal changes. During these ambiguous times, only classical ballet and folk dance were widely accepted in the country. Still today, there is inequality in the Russian dance field between different genres since classical ballet as well as folk dance are provided government support both financially and through educational opportunities. As a result, restrictive policies and uncertainty appear in the everyday life of contemporary dance practitioners and they are part of a somewhat divided community. The main research question of this thesis is ‘How do actors in the Saint Petersburg contemporary dance industry understand their mission and what kind of strategies do they have in their use to pursue this?’. This study aims to understand their strategic planning processes; to identify the community’s current engagements in strategic management and how the actors utilize operational tools such as SWOT analysis or the inspection of goals and mission statements within the organizations. In addition, the study analyzes how these objectives can be transformed for the benefit of the industry. This research is a qualitative case study and its primary data are five semi-structured interviews conducted in Saint Petersburg in July 2019 with local contemporary dance practitioners and professionals. The materials are analyzed using applied thematic analysis and grounded theory. This study contributes to the theoretical discussions of strategic management in arts organizations and oversees how the power of a mission statement is understood and operational planning tools are used. There is still a need for actions in building sustainable infrastructure in order to ensure the continuation of financial support for contemporary dance. The main results of this research suggest that the organizations have become aware of the tools they need to use to influence and ensure the future of contemporary dance in Russia. An objective of the dance community is to increase individual engagement of contemporary dance in order to elevate this visibility of the discipline amongst decision-makers and new audiences. By not focusing on internal competition, the actors in Saint Petersburg can turn their skills into resources for the whole industry. This thesis will help to demonstrate the attempts of these professionals and the whole community and lastly, bring new topics of advocacy into discussion among the actors in the Saint Petersburg contemporary dance community, institutions and the whole cultural and creative sector in Russia.

The contemporary crisis between Russia and the EU, reflects, among other things, in the identity construction in both European and Russian domestic discourses. In view of the current conflict between Russia and Europe, it is crucial to comprehend how both actors perceive each other and the reality(ies) of the current status of their bilateral relations. According to the post-structuralists, foreign policies are dependent on the representations of “us” and “them”, articulated in national discourses. Such constructs are often represented through mass media, and given the growing adaptation of IT technologies, social media specifically become a suitable platform for the distribution of the images of “us” and “them” for both domestic and foreign audiences. The study seeks to identify which images of the EU are framed by Russian officials in social media and whether such frames correlate with some aspects of Russian domestic and foreign agendas. The thesis focuses on the images of the EU framed by Russian officials in the period between March 2019 and December 2019, a drastic period of EU-Russia relations, triggered by the Ukrainian crisis. Social media posts of 10 Russian officials on matters related to the EU are examined with post-structuralist discourse approach. The adopted methodology allows to explore, identify and explain images of the EU framed by Russian officials in online dimension. In addition, the method sheds light not only on the way Russian officials perceive the EU but also on the way they construct Russia itself, as a political, social and values antithesis of Europe, through the framing of the EU. The identified images, framed by Russian officials, constitute mainly negative framing of the EU, albeit seldom neutral and positive framings appear as well. The analysis determines the central aspects of the EU’s domestic and foreign policies, reflected by the officials. Besides, the results of the study demonstrate how Russian officials implicitly perceive the political and social situation in Russia as well as Russia’s foreign policy status, by comparing these aspects with Europe. The framing, which Russian officials discursively construct in social media, exhibits a comprehensive political and normative split between Russia and the EU. This process had been gradually evolving until 2014, and then sharply accelerated. At this point, the current situation appears to be the lowest point for bilateral relations between Moscow and Brussels. Even though Russian officials regularly appeal to Moscow’s determination to cooperate with the EU and the West in general, such a peacekeeping message had no considerable effect on EU-Russia relations.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and reveal the impact of epistemic communities on the formation of international space policy in the United States and Soviet Union following the end of the Apollo era in 1969. It argues that despite the dominant narrative of Cold War space history asserting that the space race and the developments that followed were based upon competitive/realist thinking, there were numerous actors in both countries operating transnationally to transform space policy to embrace cooperation. Furthermore, this cooperation had always been a part of space history, however, various turning points in the structure of the Cold War allowed cooperation to flourish in the 1970s and 1990s, but also attempted to prevent it in the 1980s. The thesis then analyzes the effects of the Soviet collapse on this process of shaping international manned spaceflight policy and its effects on the creation of the International Space Station and use of spaceflight as a means of accomplishing foreign policy goals of the United States in the post-Cold War era. This thesis primarily employs Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration to describe the process by which agents transformed international space policy from 1972-1992. This theory argues that agents, be they individuals or groups, can enact change to a system or structure by their ability to “act otherwise” meaning “being able to intervene in the world, or to refrain from such intervention, with the effect of influencing a specific process or state of affairs.” This thesis identifies these actors as epistemic communities as described by Peter M. Haas, who defines them as are those which focus on collaboration between groups of scientists or technicians based on a scientific context and can result in the acquiescence of national decision-makers to epistemic communities in the cooperative policy process. Therefore, the primary body of research materials comes from personal correspondence, formal agreements and memoirs generated by the engineers, administrators and other agents involved in the space policy advisement process. The thesis concludes that the historical development of manned spaceflight during the Cold War was not exclusively characterized by competition, but rather cooperation had been an essential component from the beginning. However, while competition and gaining supremacy in space was the dominant approach taken by the United States and Soviet Union, scientists, engineers and actors constituting an epistemic community took it largely upon themselves to allow cooperative projects in manned spaceflight to take place. This process often ran counter to the expressed foreign policy goals of national leaders, but ultimately succeeded thanks to continuous persuasion from the bottom up. This incremental shift towards cooperation finally overcame competition once the Soviet Union collapsed and the physical manifestations of cooperation throughout, in the form of the Mir and Freedom space stations, became the basis on which post-Cold War manned spaceflight was built.

This Master's thesis examines the language manipulations used by Russian online media to create enemy images that are essential for justifying armed aggression. The study explores the issues emerging in the discourse on information warfare and mass-manipulation in the context of the conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The purpose of this research is to explore how and why Russian state-funded media used the rhetorics to influence the audience's attitudes towards Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a nation, and to evaluate if such manipulation can be recognized as propaganda. This study addresses the gap in current knowledge on a rhetorical angle of enemy creation in Russian online media. This research is the first to apply the theoretical concepts of enemy images and propaganda devices to the process model of framing research developed by Dietram A. Scheufele. This theoretical approach allowed to address the framing of enemy images by state propaganda. The empirical data of this research consists of sixteen online publications from two state-funded media organizations in Russia: international network RT and the information agency Rossiya Segodnia, which includes subsidiaries RIA Novosti and Sputnik. Rhetorical frame analysis was applied in this research. The in-depth critical nature allowed to identify the key elements and techniques of enmity framing in the analyzed publications. The findings of this study confirm the hypothesis that the Russian state-funded online media indeed do work as a body of state propaganda. As earlier research suggests, they did play a crucial role in the info-warfare campaigns preceding and during Russian military operations in Crimea and Donbas by manipulating and distorting information to frame Kremlin's agenda, creating and reinforcing enemy images, spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories that resonated with the state's position. This research contributes to the pool of investigations that expose a strong Kremlin's commitment to information warfare on many fronts. It confirms that the creation of enemy images is vital for the justification of military aggression. Lastly, it proves that even though modern state propaganda is a highly sophisticated, data-driven powerhouse, on a rhetorical level, it still uses the same techniques as 100 years ago.

“The Nordic Model is dead” the Finnish Prime Minister Esko Aho said in 1997. The Nordic identity which originated during the Cold War experienced an ontological crisis with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar world order. In the 1990’s discourses of Europeanisation emerged and the Nordic identity was by many deemed a Cold War construct. Since the middle of the 2000s Nordic cooperation gained a stronghold where it previously had not existed: within security cooperation. The overall re-emergence of Nordic cooperation took place in parallel with the growing Russian superpower ambitions. Since 2009 there have been more notable advances in Nordic security cooperation through the establishment of the Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO) and the signing of the Nordic Declaration of Solidarity. These advances are remarkable because security has previously been a non-issue in the construction of the Nordic identity. The inclusion of security and defence cooperation in the Nordic identity can be labelled paradigmatic. The theoretical approach is one of poststructuralist discourse analysis, which advocates a reality completely constructed in discourse and rejects any pre-existent identities. The premise is that the self is constructed in discourse through the articulation of a number of others. This Thesis is concerned with how Russia is constructed in Nordic security discourses and how it contributes to a Nordic identity. The primary sources consist of four reports published in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark respectively. The foreign, security and defence policy reports are either written or commissioned by the respective governments. Similar reports from before the Russian annexation are used to support the primary data and allows for a deeper understanding about how discourses about Russia have shifted. The study shows that Russia has replaced economic benefits as the primary incentive for Nordic cooperation. The focus of Nordic cooperation has shifted its focus from the global to the regional and the Baltic Sea Region is increasingly important. The discourses clearly reject the Cold War identity of the “Third Way” between the two poles of the bipolar system. Rather the Nordic identity is integrated in the Western security and value community. It is also notable that despite this, the Nordic countries’ views on Russia, the world and the near vicinity differ. History, geopolitics and membership in NATO and/or EU play a big role in shaping the respective national understanding of security. The differing understandings of security represent the biggest obstacle for Nordic security and defence cooperation. The Thesis also discusses the role of hybrid warfare, NATO and norms and values in the othering of Russia in Nordic identity construction.

The aim of this thesis was to discover the similarities and differences between the Finnish and northwest Russian timber industry. The second goal was to find characteristics from the operational environment of the closely situated countries, in order to, increase cultural understanding when comparing the timber industry of these countries. Data collection was conducted via theme interviews by using two separate frameworks, which were Pestel and Core Competence. The Pestel framework focuses on the macro level of the operational environment, and the Core Competence framework on the micro level of the particular company. Research was also conducted on how the companies differentiate from each other, when the raw material is the same for the whole industry. How to produce added value and at the same time develop long-term and lasting customer relationships? The theme interviews were supplemented by using secondary sources and the Pestel framework. This approach was adopted to bring depth to the results, in order to increase the reliability of the data. According to the results, the main differences had to do with the culture, and what action is taken in specific situations. Furthermore, the conditions of the forest and timber industry in the two countries are completely different. For example, in Finland private forest owners own most of the forests, whereas, in Russia the government owns all the forests. This affects in multiple ways in how the forests are renewed, and the future quality of the timber. Differences regarding, for example, technology and corruption were discovered in the interviews and the secondary sources of data.