Oxana Shevel | Tufts University (original) (raw)

Books by Oxana Shevel

Книжка «Нариси новітньої історії України» — це спроба міжнародної групи на- уковців, зібраних Інс... more Книжка «Нариси новітньої історії України» — це спроба міжнародної групи на- уковців, зібраних Інститутом Кеннана при Міжнародну науковому центрі імені Вудро Вільсона (Вашингтон, США), описати та проаналізувати колективний до- свід сучасних українців, якого вони набули за останні тридцять років. У дев’яти розділах книги автори — вчені з українських, американських, британських, єв- ропейських і канадських університетів досліджують, як поставала незалежна дер- жава, виникали й розв’язувалися політичні кризи, формувався приватний сектор та енергетика, перевинаходилися багатство й бідність, розвивалися вільні ЗМІ та сучасне мистецтво, виникав новий релігійний досвід, а також еволюціонували на- ціональна ідентичність і демократичний лад в Україні. Написана з різних дослід- ницьких та ідеологічних позицій, ця історія дозволяє побачити багатство й трагіч- ність розмаїтого досвіду сучасної України.

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Why do similar postcommunist states respond differently to refugees, with some being more recepti... more Why do similar postcommunist states respond differently to refugees, with some being more receptive than others? Why do some states privilege certain refugee groups, while other states do not? This book presents a theory to account for this puzzle, and it centers on the role of the politics of nation-building and of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). A key finding of the book is that when the boundaries of a nation are contested (and thus there is no consensus on which group should receive preferential treatment in state policies), a political space for a receptive and nondiscriminatory refugee policy opens up. The book speaks to the broader questions of how nationalism matters after communism, and under what conditions and through what mechanisms international actors can influence domestic polices. The analysis is based on extensive primary research the author conducted in four languages in the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine.

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Articles by Oxana Shevel

Current History, 2023

The Euromaidan revolution was the start of a process of profound change in Ukrainian identity. Ru... more The Euromaidan revolution was the start of a process of profound change in Ukrainian identity. Russian aggression has completed this turn to a pro-Western, anti-Russian orientation.

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Geopolitics, 2018

How do people form beliefs about the factual content of major events when established geopolitica... more How do people form beliefs about the factual content of major events when established geopolitical orders are violently challenged? Here, we address the tragic events of 2 May 2014, in Odesa, Ukraine. There, Euromaidan protest movement supporters and opponents clashed following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the onset of the Donbas conflict, culminating in the worst civilian death toll the city had seen since World War II. Shortly after, we surveyed Ukraine’s population about who they thought had actually perpetrated the killings and relate people’s answers to alternative narratives (frames) that an original content analysis finds were available to Ukrainian citizens through different media. We find evidence, consistent with theories of hot cognition and motivated reasoning, that the Odesa violence triggered emotional responses linked to ethnic, regional, and partisan identity, which then activated attitudes associated with these identities that, in turn, led people to adopt very different (sometimes highly improbable) beliefs about who carried out the killings. Ethnic identity in particular is found to have strongly moderated the effects of television, with Ukrainian television greatly influencing Ukrainians but backfiring among Russians, and Russian television mainly impacting non-Ukrainians. Education and local information are found to reduce susceptibility to televised factual narratives.

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Current History, Oct 2016

The fundamental dilemma in Ukraine’s decommunization process is how to undo the legal, institutio... more The fundamental dilemma in Ukraine’s decommunization process is how to undo the legal, institutional, and historical legacy of the Soviet era without repeating the Soviet approach of mandating one ‘correct’ interpretation of the past.

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Journal of Ukrainian Politics and Society, vol. 1, no. 1 (2015), pp. 23-32., Apr 24, 2015

The objective of this essay is to compare key characteristics, pathways of development, and chall... more The objective of this essay is to compare key characteristics, pathways of development, and challenges facing the discipline of political science in the West (primarily in the US) and in Ukraine, to consider the causes of these differences, and to reflect on what it would take for political science in Ukraine to overcome the challenges it has faced in the post-Soviet period.

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Electoral Studies (in press), 2015

The October 2014 legislative elections can be regarded as a watershed event in the political hist... more The October 2014 legislative elections can be regarded as a watershed event in the political history of post-Soviet Ukraine. Held after the ousting of former President Viktor Yanukovych as a result of Euromaidan protests, the elections produced the first ever pro-western constitutional majority in the Ukrainian legislature. The article addresses the causes and possible future implications of this and several other important outcomes of the elections.

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Great Decisions, Jan 2015

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Foreign Policy, Mar 12, 2014

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Post-Soviet Affairs, v. 28, no. 1, Mar 2012

Russian citizenship policy has evolved in puzzling ways from the 1990s, when all former Soviet ci... more Russian citizenship policy has evolved in puzzling ways from the 1990s, when all former Soviet citizens were entitled to simplified access to Russian citizenship, to the 2002 citizenship law, which put an abrupt end to this policy, giving few but those born on the territory of Russia the right to citizenship. Since 2002, the right to Russian citizenship has been extended to some additional categories of former Soviet citizens, but without a return to the expansive policy of the 1990s. Drawing on legal and governmental sources and the scholarly literature, this article looks at elite debates over citizenship rules to analyze Russian citizenship politics and policies, focusing on citizenship rules affecting former Soviet citizens. These are examined to uncover the causes of legislative zigzags and ascertain the applicability of existing citizenship theories to Russian realities.

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This article surveys nation-building efforts in post-Soviet Russia. There have been five main nat... more This article surveys nation-building efforts in post-Soviet Russia. There have been five main nation-building projects reflecting the dominant ways of imagining the ‘true’ Russian nation but each has been fraught with contradictions and therefore have been unable to easily guide state policies. At the same time, a solution to the Russian nation-building dilemma may be emerging. This solution does not resolve the contradictions associated with each of the nation-building agendas but instead legalises the ambiguous definition of the nation's boundaries in the 1999 law on compatriots and the 2010 amendments to it. The fuzzy definition of compatriots in the law allows Russia to pursue a variety of objectives and to target a variety of groups without solving the contradictions of existing nation-building discourses.

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Through a comparison of post-Franco Spain and post-Soviet Ukraine, Oxana Shevel examines state re... more Through a comparison of post-Franco Spain and post-Soviet Ukraine, Oxana Shevel examines state responses to the challenge of dealing with divided historical memory. Both countries embarked on the transition from authoritarian rule divided by the memory of the recent past, but each dealt with this similar challenge very differently. This article discusses Spain’s “democratization of memory” policy centered on the state’s refusal to define a common historical memory for the society as a whole and on the official recognition of the multiplicity of “personal and family” memories and examines why no comparable policy has emerged in Ukraine so far. Shevel considers the potential applicability of the Spanish solution to Ukraine in light of both social realities and theories of nation building, in particular the debate over whether national unity necessitates a cultural nation and shared collective memory, or whether unity in a democracy can be built on other foundations.

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In the 1990s, a number of post-Communist states adopted diaspora laws that defined the target gro... more In the 1990s, a number of post-Communist states adopted diaspora laws that defined the target group ethno-culturally, thus seemingly confirming the continued relevance of Hans Kohn’s distinction between ethnic Eastern and civic Western nationalism. This article, however, posits that while Kohn’s dichotomy may be valid, its related implications are often not. The ethnic content of the diaspora laws, and the content of ethnic nationalism behind them, is much more nuanced, and not all ethnically tinted diaspora polices are discriminatory or otherwise contrary to international standards. Using the case of the 2001 Hungarian Status Law and the European organizations’ reaction to it, the first part of the article draws attention to the often neglected fact that international standards do not ban ethnically based policies altogether but allow for some distinctions in treatment based on ethno-cultural criteria. The second part of the article focuses on the case of Ukraine and further challenges the accuracy of the civic-ethnic dichotomy by showing how the politics of the Ukrainian diaspora law was driven not by a clash between civic and ethnic nationalism but by a more complex tension between different variants of ethnic nationalism, a neo-Soviet imperial vision, strategic bargaining, and changes in electoral fortunes for unrelated reasons. The Ukrainian case also shows how, in addition to international norm diffusion, another—and rather counterintuitive—path towards internationally compliant diaspora legislation may be the presence of substantial domestic divisions on the national issue, which forces the elites to compromise on a less ethnic law.

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The politics of national identity influences citizenship rules in new states, but not in the way ... more The politics of national identity influences citizenship rules in new states, but not in the way that existing theories would predict. Existing theories attribute ethnic or civic citizenship laws to dominant ethnic or civic national identity conceptions, but in many new states there is no dominant national identity conception. In the post-Soviet region all civic citizenship laws emerge without the civic national identity conception. The case of Ukraine shows how civic citizenship law may be an unintended side effect of contested identity politics. The post-Soviet experience suggests that the politics of citizenship policy in new and older states is different: national identity is a major source of citizenship policies in new states, but its impact may be different from what existing theories posit.

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Although the fall of empires gives rise to states, it need not create nations. The collapse of th... more Although the fall of empires gives rise to states, it need not create nations. The collapse of the Soviet Union 10 years ago did not instantly transform citizens of its successor states into members of nations. As in other postimperial settings, in post-Soviet Ukraine the modern nation is built, or not. The question of Ukrainian nationbuilding deserves the attention it draws from social scientists.

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Crimean Studies 1 (7), 2001

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Current History, 2023

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Geopolitics, 2018

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Current History, Oct 2016

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Journal of Ukrainian Politics and Society, vol. 1, no. 1 (2015), pp. 23-32., Apr 24, 2015

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Electoral Studies (in press), 2015

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Great Decisions, Jan 2015

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Foreign Policy, Mar 12, 2014

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Post-Soviet Affairs, v. 28, no. 1, Mar 2012

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Crimean Studies 1 (7), 2001

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This paper analyzes the effects of international organizations on Ukrainian citizenship policies ... more This paper analyzes the effects of international organizations on Ukrainian citizenship policies in the post-1991 period. As over 250,000 Crimean Tatars repatriated to Ukraine in the late 1980s and early 1990s after being forcefully deported in 1944, some 100,000 of them found themselves without Ukrainian citizenship, of which some 25,000 were stateless. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other international organizations have been working with the Ukrainian government to facilitate access to Ukrainian citizenship for these formerly deported people (FDPs). The paper provides an overview of UNHCR’s and other international organizations’ (IOs’) activities aimed at bringing about changes in Ukrainian citizenship policy and facilitating access of FDPs to Ukrainian citizenship. In examining IOs’ effectiveness, the paper distinguishes among three types of IOs’ effects: their effect on domestic policy formation regarding different elements of citizenship policy; ...

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Ukraine, although home to over 100 national minorities, has managed to avoid large-scale ethnic t... more Ukraine, although home to over 100 national minorities, has managed to avoid large-scale ethnic tensions. Thus nationality policies are often cited as one of the most notable accomplishments of Ukraine's nine-year independence. However, the potential for ethnic conflict remains present in Ukraine. The most dangerous" hot spot" is Crimea, where relations between the Russian and Russified Ukrainian majority and the Crimean Tatar minority are peaceful but volatile.

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From “the Ukraine” to Ukraine A Contemporary History, 1991–2021, edited by Edited by Matthew Rojansky, Georgiy Kasianov and Mykhailo Minakov , 2021

Analysis of changes in national identities in Ukraine from the late perestroika period until pres... more Analysis of changes in national identities in Ukraine from the late perestroika period until present times, with particular focus on identities during times of conflict (the Euromaidan and the war in Donbas).

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Henry Hale and Robert Orttung, eds., "Beyond the Euromaidan: Comparative Lessons of Reform for Ukraine" (Stanford University Press)., 2016

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The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, 2017

This chapter analyzes the national citizenship regimes adopted by newly independent states— that ... more This chapter analyzes the national citizenship regimes adopted by newly independent states— that is, states first appearing on the world political map during the era of popular sovereignty— and factors that influence the content of these regimes. The chapter examines how the goal of attaining state sovereignty, different visions of and debates over the boundaries of the national community in whose name the new state
is constituted, perceived implications of citizenship rules for political and economic power of different groups, and external actors, including other states in the region and international organizations, inform the content of citizenship regimes in new states. The chapter will highlight challenges, issues, and dynamics characteristic of new transition states more broadly, though most of the empirical illustration will come from the context of the fifteen successor states of the former Soviet Union. It
contends that the politics of citizenship policymaking (meaning, a set of issues that impact the formation of citizenship rules, and groups whose status is at the center of domestic debates over citizenship rules) differ in the new states in important and systematic ways from the politics of citizenship policymaking in established ‘older’ states. Three particularly important differences will be highlighted and analyzed in the three sub- sections of this chapter.

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Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik, eds., "Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration" (Oxford University Press), pp. 146-167., 2014

While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years h... more While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more complicated view of its legacy. In post-communist Eastern Europe, the way people remember state socialism is closely intertwined with the manner in which they envision historical justice. Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated (or not commemorated) by major political actors across the region.

The book is built on three premises. The first is that political actors always strive to come to terms with the history of their communities in order to generate a sense of order in their personal and collective lives. Second, new leaders sometimes find it advantageous to mete out justice on the politicians of abolished regimes, and whether and how they do so depends heavily on their interpretation and assessment of the collective past. Finally, remembering the past, particularly collectively, is always a political process, thus the politics of memory and commemoration needs to be studied as an integral part of the establishment of new collective identities and new principles of political legitimacy. Each chapter takes a detailed look at the commemorative ceremony of a different country of the former Soviet Bloc. Collectively the book looks at patterns of extrication from state socialism, patterns of ethnic and class conflict, the strategies of communist successor parties, and the cultural traditions of a given country that influence the way official collective memory is constructed.

Twenty Years After Communism develops a new analytical and explanatory framework that helps readers to understand the utility of historical memory as an important and understudied part of democratization.

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Ingmar Bredies and Andreas Umland, eds., Aspects of the Orange Revolution IV: Foreign Assistance and Civil Action in the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections (Ibidem), 2007

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Dominique Arel and Blair Ruble, eds., "Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine" (Johns Hopkins University Press), pp. 208-240, 2006

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Canadian-American Slavic Studies. Vol. 49, issue 2-3, pp. 401-404., 2015

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Political Science Quarterly, 2003

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Just Security, 2022

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Journal of Democracy, 2022

Ukraine's reforms before the war have been more extensive than many acknowledge, and wartime reve... more Ukraine's reforms before the war have been more extensive than many acknowledge, and wartime reveled strong resilience of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian democracy. After the war ends further progress can be expected in Ukraine. Additionally, the EU stands to gain from Ukraine's membership in the alliance.

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Just Security, 2022

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Los Angeles Times, 2022

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Foreign Affairs, 2022

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Journal Of Democracy, 2022

Forcing Ukraine to accept the Minsk agreements on Russia's terms will reward Putin's aggression a... more Forcing Ukraine to accept the Minsk agreements on Russia's terms will reward Putin's aggression against Ukraine, enable Russia to curtain Ukraine's sovereignty and its pro-Western ambitions from within, and will destabilize the Ukrainian government and provide a pretext for invasion that Russia now lacks.

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PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 587, 2019

The post-World War II era, and especially the post-Cold War era, has seen the global spread of du... more The post-World War II era, and especially the post-Cold War era, has seen the global spread of dual citizenship. Situating post-Soviet states in this global pattern reveals some similarities and important differences in the rationale behind allowing or forbidding dual citizenship. Three distinct trends in the politics of dual citizenship in the post-communist region are evident. First, to a greater extent than in Western states, concerns for safeguarding state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and associated fears of possibly subversive actions by other states, particularly neighboring states, by means of dual citizenship and dual citizens are a key factor behind opposition to dual citizenship. Second, the extension of dual citizenship to co-ethnics is not a uniform reality. Instead, the right of ethnic diasporas to dual citizenship has been a highly contested issue, and fears of diaspora influences on domestic affairs have often stood in the way. Finally, the ruling elites’ drive for power maximization can also makes dual citizenship rules a tool for punishing and weakening political opposition.

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Krytyka, 2018

Contribution to Krytyka forum "Ukraine and Donbas: Can We Be Together Again?"

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Post-Soviet Affairs, 2018

Review essay of articles on identity in Ukraine published in this issue of the Post-Soviet Affairs.

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PONARS Eurasia policy memo 411, Jan 2016

Ukraine’s infamous decommunization legislation, enacted in May 2015, may be less divisive than it... more Ukraine’s infamous decommunization legislation, enacted in May 2015, may be less divisive than it initially appeared. The laws ban positive public expression toward the Soviet past and mandate the renaming of thousands of localities with Soviet-era names. Critics have said that the laws will prohibit open discussion of Ukraine’s complex history and may deepen societal divisions. Thus far, however, the process has not led to any sizeable protests, and parties that vocally opposed the laws have not been able to convert their stance into any actual mobilization. At the same time, there is no evidence of widespread support for decommunization within society, with the reasoning being more economic than ideological. In the end, Ukraine’s decommunization efforts may turn out to have a modest yet significant effect: the successful shedding of the Soviet symbolic legacy.

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VoxUkraine; Українська правда, May 7, 2015

Three of the four Ukrainian laws (on totalitarian regimes, on the fighters for independence, and,... more Three of the four Ukrainian laws (on totalitarian regimes, on the fighters for independence, and, to a lesser extent, on the victor of Nazism) fall short in two respects. First, they do not move Ukraine away from the the highly politicized approach to history of the Soviet era, when the government mandated one correct interpretation of history, designated heroes and villains, and reduced historical complexities to the black and white picture of ideologically correct good “ours” versus ideological enemy “other.” Second, the laws do not reflect European standards of memorialization policies where honoring civilian victims of political violence holds center stage, and murder and brutalization of civilian population are condemned, regardless of the goals for which they were carried out.

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EUDO Citizenship News, May 4, 2015

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EUDO Citizenship News, Dec 3, 2014

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Washington Post, Oct 29, 2014

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EUDO Citizenship News, Aug 18, 2014

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Washington Post, Jul 18, 2014

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EUDO Citizenship News, Apr 11, 2014

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Washington Post, Mar 12, 2014

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NECN, Mar 3, 2015

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Голос Америки, Oct 31, 2014

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NECN, Jul 23, 2014

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BNN News, May 30, 2014

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NECN, Apr 1, 2014

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Голос Америки - Вікно в Америку, Mar 21, 2014

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Radio Islam, Chicago, Mar 19, 2014

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NECN, Mar 11, 2014

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Tufts Now, Mar 4, 2014

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The Kojo Nnamdi Show, NPR, Feb 24, 2014

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Two Guys Discussing Russia over Pastries, Feb 20, 2014

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Голос Америки, Jan 29, 2014

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Krytyka Polityczna, Dec 6, 2013

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Undergraduate course.

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Seminar syllabus.

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