Vladimir Putin’s power position has long been sustained by the successful communication of major political myths and his acclaimed role in them. This chapter discusses such myths to assess whether they are still useful for the regime as tools of legitimation after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, and Russia’s lack of success on the battlefield thereafter. I introduce the distinction between overarching master myths and more supplementary myths, arguing that the master myths about Russia’s pre-determined great power status, Russia as a phoenix rising from the rubbles of another Time of Troubles, and Russia as a bulwark against the evil West retain their relevance and are ruthlessly exploited by the regime. Several supplementary myths have most likely had their credibility reduced. However, unless the master myths are affected, the regime is not likely to face a major loss of legitimacy among the population at large.

Fallacies and wishful thinking: on Russia studies, Putin, and the lead-up to the warWhen President Putin over the years repeatedly raged and ranted about how Russia had been deceived by the West over NATO’s eastward expansion, how Ukraine’s rightful president allegedly had been illegally overthrown in a coup instigated by the West, and how these actions had the hidden purpose of bringing destruction and devastation to Russia, few were inclined to believe that he was not just repeat-ing a mantra, but actually believed in what he said and prescribed a program of action. This essay provides a background to the steady growth of the authoritar-ian essence of the Putin regime and its growing ambitions beyond Russia’s borders and discusses what academic area studies specialists in the West and other Russia pundits generally should have been able to foresee about Russia’s aggressiveness and its upcoming assault on Ukraine. Perhaps the current situation could have been avoided, had there been a greater inclination to bring together the clues that were there and take preventive action to meet the danger

As was the case with other federal states, Russia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was decentralized and devolved responsibility toregional governors. Contrary to the common highly centralized governance in Russia, this approach is thought to have helped insulate the government from criticism. Using local research and analysis based on a national representative survey carried out at the height of the pandemic during the summer of 2021, the article charts the public response to the pandemic across Russia. It examines the regionalization of the response, with an in-depth focus on two of the Russian cities with the highest infection rates but differing responses to the pandemic: St. Petersburg and Petrozavodsk. There are two main findings: at one level, the diffusion of responsibility meant little distinction was made between the different levels of government by the population; at another level, approval of the pandemic measures was tied strongly to trust levels in central and regional government.

What makes individuals willing to defend their (adopted) homeland as their own? This is an essential question for all diverse societies. We turn to the case of Estonia, which inherited a sizable Russian-speaking population after the fall of the Soviet Union. Using recent polling data, we test demographic and attitudinal predictors of defense willingness among the first generation of males that have been raised in the republic since the restoration of independence. The results enable us to unpack differences between Estonian-speakers and Russian-speakers, as well as disagreements among the latter, which shed light on the state of social cohesion in Estonia’s national fabric.

The paper addresses the work of the Swedish writer, missionary and women’s rights advocate  Maria Elisabeth Anholm (1851–1946). She visited the Caucasus and Georgia in 1893, which resulted in the publication of the book “I Gogs och Magogs land. Skildringar och studier från en resa i Kaukasien [In the land of Gog and Magog. Accounts and Studies from a journey in the Caucasus]” (1895).  Maria Anholm gives a personal account of her travels and stay in Georgia and Armenia. She has a special interest in portaying the different ethnic groups of the Caucasus, and writes extensively about the Georgians and Armenians, and also about the Circassians. Ossetians, Kists, Svanetians, Yezids, Tatars, Germans and others. 

The study is a comparison of Basque and the Kartvelian languages with a focus on verbal morphology and transitive vs intransitive constructions. Basque and Kartvelian languages both attract attention as showing ergative clause structure.

This study (in Georgian) is a description of central features of Basque grammar. Throughout the book comparisons are given of Basque and the Kartvelian languages Georgian and Megrelian. Tte study provides a rich material of parallel examples in the three languages.

The tradition of Caucasus Studies conducting studies of the Caucasus as a region or area have long roots. This paper addresses the question when the understanding of the Caucasus as a region (in addition to being a mountain range) began to emerge in Europe. A closely related issue is what is referred to with the regional concept “Caucasus” and how this concept has changed over time in different historical and political contexts. The study is based on two corpuses; one corpus of Swedish newspapers from the 18th and 19th centuries and one corpus of old European maps of the region (16-19th centuries). 

Who are the guardians of separatism in Abkhazia and South Ossetia? These de facto states can be seen as self-determination movements or as outgrowths of Russian imperialism. We arbitrate between these competing scripts using a dataset that profiles officials in charge of high politics decision-making inside Georgia’s separatist entities from 1992 through 2020 (N=608). We find that most are sons of the soil, though Abkhazia’s guardians are more multicultural than South Ossetia’s. Russian emissaries seized influential posts inside the self-declared republics after 2003 and, since then, sit in on Security Council meetings, thus rendering them incapable of autonomous decision-making.

How did ethnic Azeris in the Marneuli, Bolnisi and Dmanisi districts, located inside Georgia but bordering Azerbaijan, react to the reorganisation of political space along national lines after the Soviet Union’s dissolution? ‘Beached’ in foreign states bent on nationalising their domains, minorities throughout Eurasia sometimes rejected and sometimes accepted their alien rulers. This essay examines reactions to this predicament among Georgia’s Azeris. Drawing on elite interviews and data from a matched-guise experiment, it concludes that locals have come to accept their host state after its state-building nationalism took an inclusive turn and the distinction between aliens and natives faded.

Putin’s fourth term as president (2018–2024) has involved new challenges for Russia’s hybrid regime. COVID-19 hit the Kremlin at a sensitive time, when the old institutional forces had been demounted and new arrangements, including extensive constitutional changes, had yet to become cemented. There is an emerging gulf between state rhetoric, PR events, and patriotic performances, on the one hand, and economic chaos, social disorder and dysfunctional state capacity, on the other, which is likely to reduce system legitimacy and cause increased reliance on repressive methods. This article examines Kremlin legitimation efforts across Beetham’s three dimensions: rules, beliefs, and actions. We argue that the regime’s legitimation efforts in 2020–21 have failed to reverse emerging cleavages in public opinion since 2018. Increased reliance on repression and manipulation in this period, combined with the contrast between regime promises and observable realities on the ground, speak not of strength, but of the Kremlin’s increased weakness and embattlement

In the anthology “We witnessed the break-up” a group of Swedish and Danish researchers recount their experiences in the Caucasus region during the final years of the Soviet Union and the period shortly after. The Caucasus, like the Baltic region, was on the outskirts of the Soviet Union, but these two regions were to play an important role in the reform process that Gorbachev initiated in 1985 and that six years later led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

In their contributions the authors write about the new movements for independence in the Caucasus and increasing tensions with Moscow, how the Soviet structures at different levels were breaking down and the national cultures became increasingly important. They describe how premodern traditions still play a role, despite Soviet modernization, account for specific cultural features and similarities and also witness deepening ethnic antagonism.

The authors are political scientist Ib Faurby, cultural geographer Lars Funch Hansen, researcher on minority issues Helen Krag, slavicist Märta-Lisa Magnusson, historian and Iranologist Søren Theisen and general linguist Karina Vamling.

Using the Russian president’s major public addresses as the main source, Bo Petersson analyzes the legitimization strategies employed during Vladimir Putin’s third and fourth terms in office. The argument is that these strategies have rested on Putin’s highly personalized blend of strongmanimage projection and presentation as the embodiment of Russia’s great power myth. Putin appears as the only credible guarantor against renewed weakness, political chaos, and interference from abroad—in particular from the US.

After a first deep crisis of legitimacy manifested itself by the massive protests in 2011–2012, the annexation of Crimea led to a lengthy boost in Putin’s popularity figures. The book discusses how the Crimea effect is, by 2021, trailing off and Putin’s charismatic authority is increasingly questioned by opposition from Alexei Navalny, the effects of unpopular reforms, and poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, Russia is bound to head for a succession crisis as the legitimacy of the political system continues to be built on Putin’s projected personal characteristics and—now apparently waning— charisma, and since no potential heir apparent has been allowed on center stage. The constitutional reform of summer 2020 made it possible in theory for Putin to continue as president until 2036. Yet, this change did not address the Russian political system’s fundamental future leadership dilemma.

The objective of this chapter is to provide a Swedish perspective on the 30th anniversary of the fall of Communism in eastern Europe. The most evident contrast when comparing Sweden in 1990 and 2020, was that the country was now a committed, even if also somewhat disillusioned, member of the European Union. Little remained of the so-called policy of neutrality that had been so cherished during the times of the Cold War. The euphoria of the early 1990s, those brief years when everything seemed possible, was clearly gone. The years when Sweden had been a relentless champion promoting enlargements of the European Union as the standard recipe for ensuring peace and democracy in Europe had come and then waned considerably. The European Partnership had largely brought disappointing results. Whereas optimism about general developments used to be almost unbridled in official Sweden by the end of the Cold War, disillusionment seemed to reign ever since the mid-2010s, when moves toward illiberal democracy, populism and Russian violations of international law defined much of the order of the day in Europe. Grey and somber realities characterized for the most part the everyday, and it was left to the Swedish government to deal with this in its practical policies.

As the USSR fell apart and independent countries took its place, minorities across Eurasia found themselves stranded in nationalizing states. This article focuses on one of these “beached diasporas”: Georgia’s Armenians. Through a mixed-methods approach, consisting of interviews with activists and a sociolinguistic experiment administered to adolescents (N = 529), we uncover differences among Armenians in their reactions to Georgia’s nationalization policies. Armenians from the borderland of Javakheti mobilized in defence of the in-group but their co-ethnics from the capital of Tbilisi opted for acculturation. These intragroup differences demonstrate that members of the same ethnic group can react to the same nationalization policies along disparate lines, thus adding nuance to the literature on beached diasporas in the post-Soviet space.

This book brings together a strong and international team of linguists, historians, and social and political scientists renowned for their expertise on North and South Caucasus. Their contributions paint a compelling picture of the region’s contested past and highlight some of the enduring challenges still confronting it. Taken together, the ten chapters of the book enhance our understanding of the region’s ancient languages, shed light on historical events of crucial significance, and uncover mechanisms behind political conflict and cooperation in the tinderbox that is the Caucasus.

Using enemy images and securitization as theoretical points of departure the paper discusses and analyzes the landscape of Swedish security threats as made up of traditional, militarily defined threat perceptions and the looming specter of an invasive migrant Other. The paper uses a two-fold analytical focus. Firstly, the last decade or so has seen a notable return of hard security thinking to the Swedish political debate, particularly in relation to a resurgent Russia. To illustrate this, the paper analyzes political discussions surrounding the establishment of the Gotland Regiment, situated on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The regiment became operational by January 1, 2018, following a political near-consensus that the Swedish preparedness for military defense against Russia needed to be strengthened, not least in the wake of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The old regiment on Gotland was dismantled in 2004, and the decision about its reestablishment had significant symbolic value. Secondly, the old-school hard security threat perceptions coexist with less traditional threat perceptions, notably those connected to migration, particularly so in the wake of the so-called migration crisis of 2015 when Sweden in short time received an all-time high number of asylum-seekers and refugees. The Sweden Democrats, nowadays the third largest political party in the Swedish Parliament, has managed to capitalize on widespread perceptions that migrants pose threats to the physical security, economic well-being and moral and cultural values of the Swedish majority population, and has, through its success at the polls reshaped the Swedish political landscape.  

This chapter focuses on the final stage of the history of the Soviet Union, from 1985 to 1991, when the last Communist Party and Soviet state leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform his country by making economic life more effective, widen the scope of political participation, open up history and culture for debate, and introduce a new, peaceful thinking in international affairs. Gorbachev wanted to save the Soviet system but ended up destroying it. His initially successful strategy of taking a middle-of-the road position to gain support worked well during the first years of reform, but the mid-position became successively narrower until it finally dissolved. Gorbachev’s increasingly desperate attempts to negotiate a new and revised union treaty led in 1991 to the failed August coup which, in turn, dealt the final death blow to the Soviet Union. By way of conclusion, political mistakes are often difficult to distinguish from failures caused by structural problems. As is illustrated by the case of Gorbachev and the Soviet Union, this is particularly salient in societies in which statist power and cultural patterns have traditionally played decisive roles in historical developments.

In this chapter contemporary Russian nationalism is treated as sentiments of national identity diffused throughout Russian society and demonstrated in policies led by the incumbent president, Vladimir Putin. The chapter deals with the shapes nationalism has taken under Putin’s authoritarian leadership and discusses what explains his apparent popularity at home. To provide context for the analysis, the historical background is briefly accounted for. What sentiments have been used to pave the way for Putin’s ascent to power and what were the means used to bring him to this position?  The central argument is that Vladimir Putin’s popular appeal lies in the fact that he has managed to get across that he is uniquely suited to safeguard Russia’s status as a great power –  a core value of Russian national identity –, to preserve order and stability at home, and hold Russia’s own against an outside world often depicted as hostile.

Länderna i Sydkaukasien – Armenien, Azerbajdzjan och Georgien – går sedan länge en svår säkerhetspolitisk balansgång. Respektive land måste utöver sin komplicerade relation till varandra navigera mellan konkurrerande grannar som Ryssland och EU. Den förra ser på regionen som sitt »nära utland» och den senare ser på den som sitt »östliga partnerskap». Situationen väcker ett antal angelägna frågor. Kommer Ryssland att kunna behålla sin regionala hegemoni? Kan EU lära sig att hantera den geopolitiska tvekamp som unionen dragits in i? Och hur navigerar den politiska eliten i Sydkaukasien mellan sina grannar? Dessa frågor angrips inom ramen för detta temanummer som inkluderar originella bidrag från Jakob Hedenskog (FOI Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut), Michel Anderlini (Malmö universitet), Per Ekman (Uppsala universitet) och Li Bennich-Björkman (Uppsala universitet).

Despite significant institutional changes and refinements since its creation in 2004, the ENP(European Neighborhood Policy) remains a major tool available to the EU for providing incentivesfor reform and stability in non-member states through the diffusion of its norms and rules.Earlier studies, drawing on the Europeanization conceptual framework, have been mostly concernedabout how and by which mechanisms compliance with EU rules takes place, rather thanfocusing on whether and to what extent it occurs. By contrast, this article assesses the actorness ofthe EU in three countries of the South Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), viewingactorness as composed of three dimensions – capability, opportunity, and presence – enabling andconstraining the aspirations of the EU to be an international actor in the South Caucasus.

The 2011 and 2015 reviews of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) has put a stronger focus on the target countries´ selective compliance as regards to EU norms. In existing literature on Europeanization, selective compliance has often been clarified by looking further into target countries´ domestic factors, such as the mismatch between domestic policies and EU norms, their geopolitical context or the nature of their political regimes, thus overshadowing the impact of EU´s complex institutional structure on rule transfer processes. Role theory has underlined role conflicts within the EU´s institutional structure but has, nonetheless, neglected to account for how the EU´s international role(s) has been contested between EU institutions, from within. This article argues that role theory needs to re-shift its focus on the political settings in which international organizations are embedded, by better integrating the bureaucratic politics´ theoretical framework. This article maintains that the case of intra-role conflicts between the EU´s Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia and other EU bureaucratic agencies, and their effects on Georgia´s selective compliance, is a promising research avenue for providing a better understanding on how rule transfer processes work.

States with the ability to use a combination of sensors and long-range missiles to prevent adversaries from operating in an exclusion zone, or "bubble", adjacent to their territory are said to possess anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. This study examines Russia's A2/AD systems and their implications for the Baltic Sea region. Much has in recent years been made of Russia's new capabilities and the impact they might have on the ability of NATO member states to reinforce or defend the vulnerable Baltic states in case of crisis or war. On closer inspection, however, Russia's capabilities are not quite as daunting, especially if potential countermeasures are factored in. In particular, surface-to-air missile systems currently create much smaller A2/AD bubbles than is often assumed and a number of countermeasures are possible. Experiences from Syria also raise questions about the actual capabilities of such systems in combat, relative to their nominal capabilities. Anti-ship and anti-land systems pose a greater threat but, here too, countermeasures are available. The dynamics of this strategic vortex affect Sweden directly and indirectly. This is one of the reasons why Sweden's security is increasingly interlocked with that of its neighbours and of the transatlantic alliance.

This paper deals with two recent initiatives within diachronic linguistics, where earlier seminal work by Academician Prof. Tamaz Gamkrelidze and his colleagues (Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1984, Gamkrelidze, Ivanov and Winter 1995) have been of fundamental importance: the database project Diachronic Atlas of Comparative Linguistics (DiACL) and the Mouton Atlas of Languages and Cultures (Carling, 2019). The scope of the DiACL database and the Mouton Atlas is languages and cultures in Eurasia, with a focus on the Indo-European languages and cultures. DiACL covers data from 500 languages (in Eurasia, South America, Austronesia) and the Mouton Atlas deals with almost 200 languages (all in Eurasia). Both the DiACL database and the Mouton Atlas have been developed at the Centre for Languages and Literature at Lund University with Dr. Gerd Carling as principal investigator and project leader. The DiACL database and the Atlas include a substantial amount of material from the languages of the Caucasus. Apart from Kartvelian, Nakho-Dagestanian and Northwest Caucasian data, Turkic (Azerbaijani, Balkar-Karachai), Armenian and Iranian (Ossetic, Tat, Talysh) materials have been included. The empirical data in this part of the DiACL database and the Atlas rely primarily on a close cooperation with specialists at academic centres in the Caucasus, in particular with professors Merab Chukhua, Teimuraz Gvantseladze, Madzhid Khallilov and Acherdan Abregov (all contributors cannot be mentioned here, but are credited in the publications). Work on the Caucasian data has been coordinated by myself and Revaz Tchantouria at the Section for Caucasus Studies at Malmö University (Sweden) together with visiting researchers Elnur Aliyev, Maka Tetradze and Tamuna Lomadze during the years 2013-2018. The current work is a study spanning grammatical, lexical and cultural data, and “follows in the footsteps of a much older tradition: historical-comparative handbooks on the aspects and consequences of language reconstruction” (2019, 1), referring to (Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1984) and a few other publications. However, a marked difference in approaches between such earlier studies and the current work is the reliance on quantitative methods and computerized statistical analyses of DiACL and the Mouton Atlas. For instance, the grammatical and typological information is analyzed in terms of absence versus presence of distinct grammatical features. GIS-technique (Geographic Information Systems) is widely used throughout the database and the atlas to represent and visualize spatio-geographic patterning of grammatical and typological as well as lexical data. Approaching the question of Eurasian prehistory, Carling (2019, 180) supports the position that “[t]he unrelatedness of Eurasian isolates such as Basque, Caucasian families, Etruscan, Sumerian, or Hattian, provide a strong argument in favor of a high diversity predating the large, migrating families, i.e. Indo-European, Uralic and Turkic.” She notes that previous (substrate) linguistic material potentially could occur in the data and that “[w]e are also attracted by the theory of ancient convergence areas (Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1984), where lexemes and concepts may have been distributed, borrowed, and migrated over language boundaries in prehistory.” (Carling 2019, 180). Literature Carling, Gerd (ed.). 2019. The Mouton Atlas of Languages and Cultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DiACL. Diachronic Atlas of Comparative Linguistics. 2013-2019. https://diacl.ht.lu.se/ Gamkrelidze, Tamaz V. and Vjačeslav V., Ivanov. 1984. Indoevropejskij jazyk i indoevropejcy: rekonstrukcija i istoriko-tipologičeskij analiz prajazyka i protokultury. Tbilisi: Izd. Tbilisskogo Univ. Gamkrelidze, Tamaz, Vjačeslav Ivanov and Werner Winter. 1995. Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: a reconstruction and historical analysis of a proto-language and proto-culture. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and monographs. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

The article addresses the topic of complementation in the Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe) languages in the North Caucasus. This study of complementation focuses on various relations between main clauses and main predicates with a clause-like complement, as well as types of main predicates and complements in these complex constructions.

On professor M.A. Kumakhov's work and research abroad (in Russian) Professor Mukhadin A. Kumakhov and the author collaborated in the area of Northwest Caucasian languages under a period from 1991 to 2008. The fruitful collaboration at Lund and Malmö universities resulted in three joint monographs and a number of articles, which is outlined in the article. Mukhadin A. Kumakhov became Honorary Doctor of the Philosophical Faculty of Lund University in 1998.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's party system has suffered a difficult and turbulent infancy. Moscow based parties have had only very limited territorial penetration, and fragmentation has been one of its most significant features. Based on extensive fieldwork in three Russian regions, this book examines the development of the country's party system and the role played by parties in regional politics. Using a comparative approach, it scrutinises the internal structures and activities of the parties, looks at their decision-making processes, their everyday party life, the activities of party members, and the role of regional party organisations in federal and local election campaigns.

After a background discussion of the dilemmas raised by the eastern enlargement of the European Union in 2004, the issue of a common identity for the EU and where this might reside is addressed. The argument is that the existence of a common identity based on shared values is critical to trust within the Union, as well as to its influence and standing in the world. The discussion then turns to the challenges nowadays being directed at the shared fundamental values of the EU: from the “illiberal democracies” of Hungary and Poland; from authoritarian states outside the EU, such as Russia and Turkey; and from populist currents across the entire EU and outside it. The chapter ends with a summation and recommended action to safeguard shared values, common identity and trust within the Union.

Efter en kortfattad bakgrundsdiskussion om östutvidgningens dilemman behandlas frågan om en gemensam identitet för EU och vari denna kan tänkas bestå. Argumentet är att förekomsten av en gemensam identitet byggd på gemensamma värden är nödvändig för tilliten inom unionen, liksom för dess inflytande och anseende i världen. Därefter diskuteras de utmaningar som nu riktas mot EU:s gemensamma värdegrund: från de illiberala demokratierna Ungern och Polen, från auktoritära stater utanför EU som Ryssland och Turkiet samt från populistiska strömningar över hela EU-området. Kapitlet avslutas med en summering och några handlingsrekommendationer för hur en gemensam värdegrund, identitet och tillit kan värnas inom unionen.

Georgian Portraits chronicles everyday life in the Republic of Georgia in the decade that followed the Rose Revolution of 2003. Recent anthropological developments argue for the use of “afterlives” as an analytical notion through which to understand processes of socio-political change. Based on a series of portraits, Martin Demant Frederiksen and Katrine Bendtsen Gotfredsen employ the theory of social afterlives to examine the role of revolution in the formation of a modern Georgia. The book contributes to a deeper understanding of life in the aftermath of political reform, depicting the hopefulness of the Georgian population, but also the subsequent return to political disillusionment which lead them to a revolution in the first place.

As a nuclear power, UN Security Council member, emerging Arctic hegemon and the largest state in the world, Russia — and its stability — is of extreme importance in global politics. In the most comprehensive long-term study to date, Derek Hutcheson argues that Russia's legislature, the Federal Assembly, forms an integral part of the country's political system and machinery of governance. Having previously formed a counterweight to presidential power under Boris Yeltsin, the legislative agenda has become more centralised under Vladimir Putin. Successive changes to the electoral and party systems have resulted in the dominance of a four-party 'cartel', with the pro-presidential United Russia party at its centre. A perception that Russian elections are predictable, controlled and pointless to examine has grown, but Hutcheson reminds us that real voters cast real ballots. This book tells the story of how the electoral system has evolved, how campaign strategies have developed and how voting behaviour has changed. Hutcheson has utilised a combination of official data and new primary material to set 25 years of Russian parliamentary elections into context. Putting forward an in-depth analysis of post-Soviet politics, he looks forward to the next stage in Russia's political evolution.

Migration-related events have received overwhelming attention in mainstream media coverage within Europe in recent years. This study investigates the metaphorical framing of migration issues by comparing dominant discursive patterns from two national and two regional daily newspapers in Sweden and Germany. Applying a corpus-based critical metaphor analysis, the spotlight falls on metaphors prevalent in media articles published during the EU Valletta Summit on migration held in November 2015. The article is inspired by Lakoff and Johnson’s classic work, Metaphors We Live By, according to which metaphors are components of everyday language with a pervasive influence on thoughts and actions. Adhering to this logic, metaphors become most powerful when taken for granted (»naturalized«) and therefore evade readers’ attention. Apart from tracing naturalized metaphorical framings in mainstream Swedish and German media coverage, this study discusses how the discursive connotations conveyed by dominant metaphors are likely to influence readers’ interpretation of migration-related issues and policies.

Bok review: Boundaries of Displacement: Belonging and Return among Forcibly Displaced Young Georgians from Abkhazia Minna Lundgren Östersund: Mittuniversitetet 2016, 168 sider. ISBN 9789188025807

An overview is given of the 2016 Russian State Duma election, and its significance for the current Russian regime. As the first in a series of five articles in this edition of Russian Politics, it sets the 2016 State Duma election into context. It begins by discussing the role of the Duma in Russian politics, and reviews political developments between the protests that followed the 2011 parliamentary election, and the successful conclusion of the 2016 one. It then examines how institutional and political changes came together in the 2016 campaign. The resultant supermajority for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party is analyzed, before the remaining articles in this issue – which examine the issues of turnout, voting behavior, electoral manipulation and the future of the regime – are introduced.

For decades now, President Vladimir Putin has consistently enjoyed markedly high approval rates and seemingly benefitted from charismatic legitimacy, whereas systemic legal-rational legitimacy has remained on a low level. This article discusses how, through the successful communication of political myth, legitimacy has become ever more personalized in Putin’s Russia, and considers some of the dilemmas inherent in non-democratic settings where legitimacy builds on grounds that are not legal-rational in the Weberian sense.

Because of the predicable outcomes of recent Russian elections, voters are often characterized as passive actors in the electoral process. However, as we show in this article, political and social factors still underpin the motivations for people’s voting behavior. The article analyzes voting behavior in the 2016 State Duma election, using a post-election, nationally representative survey to assess the differences between the four parliamentary parties’ support bases. It finds that voting decisions in the 2016 election were strongly related to voters’ attitudes to the national president, Vladimir Putin, as well as to their attitudes to corruption and the economic situation. Voters who were more positive to the president and viewed the economic crisis more benignly were more likely to vote for the ‘party of power’, United Russia. Moreover, the four parties’ electorates had distinctive social profiles that were consistent with long-term patterns established in previous State Duma elections.

This is a review of a highly topical volume on alternative history writing in contemporary Russia.