The Iranian Electric Power Industry after the Islamic Revolution: Nuclear Developments and Current Conditions

Iran’s nuclear activities are prominent in today’s media reports. But few reports focus on the relationship between nuclear power and Iran’s energy needs. The Iranian government claims that nuclear technologies are vital for the national electric power industry and therefore for the country’s economy as a whole. It is common knowledge that the electric power industry is one of the main pillars of every country’s economy, directly influencing both state viability and national security. A state’s ability to provide and maintain the necessary amount of electricity production is vitally important. So, does Iran really, to such an extent, need nuclear power? My research shows that at the moment, and in the next ten years at least, the production of electricity using nuclear energy will secure an insignificant place in the energy basket of Iran

Individuals, Institutions and Discourses: Knowledge and Power in Russia's Iranian Studies of the Late Imperial, Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods

The scholarship on late Imperial Russia's Oriental studies is divided by a disagreement over the applicability of Edward Said's Orientalism to the Russian case. Moreover, in a broader sense, since the mid 1990s, Western scholarship has not been unanimous on the applicability of the underlying Foucauldian notions to late Imperial and Soviet Russia. While presenting a systematic study of Soviet and post-Soviet scholarship (mostly unfamiliar to Western readership), this article offers an assessment of the institutional and individual practices adopted within Russia's Oriental studies from the late nineteenth century to the present. The article aims to provide an analysis that goes far beyond the Saidian restrictive East-West dichotomy and his concept of two-vector relations between knowledge and state power. It offers a new reading, based on the deconstruction of the interplay of the manifold multi-vector power/knowledge relations that is clearly identifiable in Russia's long twentieth-century Iranian studies

Persian Studies and the Military in Late Imperial Russia (1863-1917): State Power in the Service of Knowledge?

This article pursues the goal of going beyond Saidian notions of Orientalism and Said's assumption of the “complicity of knowledge with power” to reach back to Foucault's initial postulations on the role of institutions and the intellectual in the interplay of power/knowledge relations. The article concentrates on the role of Russian military Oriental studies institutions and Orientologists in the context of discourses (the promotion of Russkoe Delo, the juxtaposition of Russia with the West and the Orient, etc.) that existed in late Imperial Russia and influenced the accumulation and development of scholarly knowledge on the Orient. Therefore, the significant contribution of the military domain to Russian Oriental studies on both the institutional and individual levels are examined from the angle of intra-Russian discourses in the period from the establishment of the Asiatic Section of the General Staff in 1863 up to 1917.</jats:p

Rupture or Continuity? The organisational set-up of Russian/Soviet Oriental Studies before and after 1917:Special Issue

The article presents a systematic appraisal of the essential Russian- and English-language scholarship on Russian Oriental studies and particularly on Russia's Iranology. However, the main target of this article is to trace the discursive continuities and epistemological shifts which have existed in late imperial, Soviet and, partially, post-Soviet Russia's Oriental studies since the end of the nineteenth century. Drawing on the sources of the main Russian political, military and academic archives, the article offers an assessment of the question of rupture or continuity, which is based on a synthesis of the above-mentioned scholarship from an entirely new angle. Dealing with the seemingly overwhelming watershed of 1917, an analysis is provided that transcends the unhelpful continuity/change dichotomy, putting forward a new interpretation, which is informed by the Foucauldian conceptualization of the productive nature of the power/knowledge nexus

Russians Growing Appetite for Change

In the past two years, the Russian public's appetite for change has increased considerably. A small but growing group of Russians blame President Vladimir Putin for the country's problems, and his capacity to deliver change is now being questioned. Yet the demands for change are taking very different forms, not only in open protests but also through latent discontent, and the public has not identified a specific alternative leader as a potential agent of change.In July 2019, the Carnegie Moscow Center and the Levada Center, Russia's main independent polling agency, conducted a third poll in two years asking 1,600 Russians about their readiness for change. The results show some striking new trends. A total of 59 percent of respondents—17 percent more than two years before—said that the country needed "decisive comprehensive change" (see Figure 1). The Russian publication of this research in November 2019 attracted a lot of attention from the media and political class. An answer came in January 2020 in a form of constitutional changes and the resignation of the government. In his annual address on January 15, Vladimir Putin said: "Our society is clearly calling for change. People want development. . . . The pace of change must be expedited every year and produce tangible results in attaining worthy living standards that would be clearly perceived by the people. And, I repeat, they must be actively involved in this process.

Lähtekoodi failikogu analüüsimise, struktureerimise ja otsingu infosüsteemi loomine

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5148701*es

Russians and Americans Sense a New Cold War

The current conflict in Ukraine is described by some as an inflection point in world history, and perhaps the end of the post-Cold War era. Russian President Vladimir Putin increasingly seems to make foreign policy decisions designed to upend the US-European security order and dominate the countries he considers to be in Russia's orbit. At the same time, US President Joe Biden has pitted the NATO struggle with Russia as well as the US competition with China as contests between democracies and autocracies. A recent public opinion survey from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Levada Center in Moscow shows that Russians and Americans view global divisions along Cold War lines. And in what may be the most alarming throwback to those days, large majorities in both countries fear an escalation to nuclear war