OUR MISSION
The Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia) is a network of over 125 academics, mainly from North America and post-Soviet Eurasia, advancing new approaches to research on security, politics, economics, and society in Russia and Eurasia. Its core missions are to connect scholarship to policy on and in Russia and Eurasia and to foster a community, especially of mid-career and rising scholars, committed to developing policy-relevant and collaborative research.
Policy memos
RECOMMENDED
Relevant Past PONARS Eurasia Policy Memos on Kazakhstan
Central Asian Responses to COVID-19: Regime Legitimacy and [De]Securitization of the Health Crisis By Mariya Omelicheva and Lawrence P. Markowitz | March 1, 2021 Despite a history of using discourses of danger to define other transnational challenges (e.g., Islamic radicalism), Central Asia’s governments have not framed the coronavirus pandemic in security terms. Using examples…
Riots in Kazakhstan
(PONARS Eurasia Commentary) Dinissa Duvanova, Pauline Jones, Eric McGlinchey, Yulia Nikitina, and Mariya Omelicheva provide insight into the recent, disconcerting events in Kazakhstan. GazMaidan, Crimea #2, or End of the Old Man’s Clan? Dinissa Duvanova, Associate Professor, Lehigh University On January 5, bitcoin dropped by 13 percent in a single day. One of the big players in…
Black Earth, White Bread: A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food
(UW Press) How agrotechnology served—and undermined—Soviet and Russian political projects. Like all facets of daily life, the food that Russian farms produced and citizens ate—or, in some years, didn’t eat—underwent radical shifts in the century between the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Putin’s presidency. The modernization of agriculture during this time is usually understood in terms…
Capital Cities of Russia | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy
What are capital cities and what role do they play in political history? If we take the encyclopedia definition, it is where the seat of government is located. But then we can say its role is negligible, as government buildings can be moved from one city to another. Capital cities are much more than this. They are a symbol of the state, a reflection of its political system. Authored by…
Engaging with Muslim Civil Society in Central Asia: Components, Approaches, and Opportunities
(USIP) Summary: Muslim civil society organizations (MCSOs) in Central Asia are highly diverse in terms of views, activities, and structures. In most cases, however, they are politically moderate, supportive of democracy, and open to working with global development actors that respect the local Islamic social and cultural context. The authors of this report facilitated interviews with…
Russian Strategy in Greater Eurasia: Between the EU and China
(PONARS Eurasia Commentary) For over two centuries, experts, politicians, and famous writers such as Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky have observed the Europe-Russia-China triangle and confronted the infamous Russian policy dilemma: To the East or to the West? Toward Europe or Asia? The predicament endures, but it has sharp new relevance in a new global context due to the economic clout…
Russia in Central Asia | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy
In the latest Online Academy video, Mariya Omelicheva, professor of National Security Strategy at the National Defense University, explores Russia’s roles in Central Asia from counterrevolutionary offensives and soft power actions to relations with China and collective security organizations. The video is accompanied by a list of additional sources, providing a foundation for those…
De Facto States and Land-for-Peace Agreements: Territory and Recognition at Odds?
(Routledge Studies in Intervention and Statebuilding) This book presents an analytical framework which assesses how ‘land-for-peace’ agreements can be achieved in the context of territorial conflicts between de facto states and their respective parent states. The volume examines geographic solutions to resolving ongoing conflicts that stand between the principle of…
Online Academy
PONARS Eurasia Online Academy: educational videos authored by members and designed to provide succinct overviews of policy-relevant research and scholarship on Russia and Eurasia. Each video is accompanied by a list of additional sources, providing a foundation for those who would like to learn more about the topics addressed.
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Listen to our podcast
- In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with social scientist Andrey Shcherbak about the quality of the data collected in the recent population census and the goals of Vladimir Putin's government's nationalities policy
- In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Alexander Verkhovsky about the Kremlin's ever expanding toolkit against political and civic activists, journalists, and other dissidents.
- In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Tanya Lokot and Nikolay Petrov about the results of Russia’s legislative elections and about what comes next.
- In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Ben Noble and Nikolay Petrov about Russia’s September 17-19 legislative elections, repressive measures against electoral challengers, and whether to expect anything other than preordained results.
