Governing the Locals: Local Self-Government and Ethnic Mobilization in Russia

This is a paperbound reprint of a 2004 book. In researching the activities of ethnic social movements in post-Soviet Russia, Lankina (senior researcher, Institute for the Social Sciences, Humboldt U., Germany) came to the conclusion that the local state organs (the municipalities) played a central role in almost every instance of social or ethnic protest, a role that served to stifle an active and free society amongst the "non-titular" nationalist groups. In this work, he comparatively studies the nationalist movements in the republics of Adygya, Bashkortostan, and North Osstetiya in order to seek out the broad similarities in levels of mobilization in these "most different" cases, and attributing those similarities to the shared local institutional framework. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Tomila V. Lankina is an associate at the World Resources Institute and a faculty fellow at American University.