Can classical political theories of mixed constitution from Polybius to Cicero help us shed new light on Russian politics? In order to so, this article first considers political structures of such non-parliamentary republics as medieval Novgorod and Venice, while choosing Constantinople as a basis for their comparison. Second, using Anthony Kaldellis's recent book that has reinterpreted Byzantium in terms of the classical theory of res publica, it analyzes the question of auctoritas in ancient republican Rome and then imperial Constantinople. Third, the author employs Giorgio Agamben's book on the state of exception, in order to see how mechanisms of power and authority that the Roman emperors had employed might help us interpret anew the phenomenon of tsardom, given that Ivan the Terrible was the first in Russia to be crowned as tsar, that is, Ceasar. This might have a lasting significance even for present day politics.

The essay considers a twofold question: Why, until recently, has our field remained so reluctant to engage with racial epistemology, and what higher form of understanding does “race” offer to students of Eurasia? The answer to the first part of the question is located in the divergence between the “imperial” and “modernity” paradigms in Eurasian studies. With regard to the second part of the question, the essay suggests viewing “race” as one of the languages of self-reflection and modernization in the imperial space. It concludes that the discovery of “race” becomes tantamount to the rediscovery of Eurasia as an imperial space—irregularly hierarchical and heterogeneous, characterized by entangled exceptionalism and a constant renegotiation of differences, as well as the realignment of principles of belonging, subjectivities, and networks of solidarity.

An argument can perhaps be made that all monarchies, no matter how absolute or authoritarian, cannot function without the consent of their subjects, whether tacit or active; proclaim that they act for the welfare (however defined) of their subjects; agree to abide by rules or laws that reflect social norms (whether they actually do abide by them or not); and are vulnerable to popular dissatisfaction. I was aware of the potential for such a general argument when I wrote Byzantine Republic and so deliberately set a specific threshold for “republican monarchies” in the Roman tradition, a threshold defined by the following four criteria: (a) a robust conception of the public interest and public property to which the monarch is subordinated in normative texts issued both by the monarchy itself and its elites; (b) a conception of a legally- or ethnically-defined populace whose material wellbeing forms the sole legitimating factor for the operation of government, even if that populace lacks formal institutions by which to take direct political action itself; (c) historical instances of popular intervention in the sphere of politics that were accepted by elites as legitimate, indeed often as constitutive of their own power and positions; and (d) documented continuity between that polity and the ancient Roman res publica, coupled with awareness of that continuity.

Research on how faculty have attempted to subvert the casualization of academic labor, that is, the conversion of stable and well-paying jobs into temporary ones, has been going on for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis have cast academic contingency in new light. Given the prevalence of contingency in Slavic and REEES, and the threat of budget cuts in the humanities, REEES faculty have a particular stake in undertaking anti-contingency efforts to protect their colleagues, institutions, and scholarship. This article will assess the conclusions of some recent studies, opinion pieces, debates, and policy recommendations with a view to their potential to address contingency in REEES and Slavic Studies.

The revolution of 2020 in Belarus has often been described as a new 1989 and there is no doubt that the emancipatory appeal of the Belarusian protests is similar to the one that sustained the 1989 revolutions. But will building the democratic system—the major aspiration of the Belarusian protesters—follow the scripts of liberalization and westernization in evidence in other eastern and central European countries? Will self-determination in post-Lukashenka Belarus follow a scenario modelled on the patterns adopted by other east European and post-Soviet states, where ethnocentric national identities and the memory of victims of communism became distinctive markers of east European post-communism? Examining the symbolic dimension of the protest repertoire, this article demonstrates how the protests re-arranged the system of historical and cultural references that shaped the foundation of Belarusian collective memory and identity discourses since 1994. It reveals how a broad variety of actors engaged in contention activated a process of re-signification of cultural and political symbols and ideas and led to the formation of a blended socio-cultural imaginary, which integrates previously disconnected and competing projects and ideologies.

This contribution examines the creative energy behind the ongoing protests in Belarus, with a focus on poetry and music. Belarus is traditionally a “versocentric” society, where poetry and music have historically played important roles in consolidating national culture. In the 2020 protest movement, fast and widespread distribution through social media has made poetry and music a crucial instrument for cementing a sense of collective identity among protestors, establishing transnational solidarity, and affecting the emotional regime of Belarusian society.

Our aim in this article is to foreground the specific role that graduate students play in academia today and some structural issues that are connected with it. As both workers and students, graduate students occupy a unique position within the larger academic system. They work at what for the majority is the beginning of a continuum of casualization, precarity, and adjunctification. Meanwhile, graduate students are educated following an older, apprenticeship-based model proper to a time when a PhD was a more likely bridge to secure employment. To articulate a REEES graduate student perspective, we interviewed eighteen REEES graduate students and recent grads from across the US focusing on these structural problems. At a moment when almost 75% of contemporary academic labor is carried out by graduate students and non-tenure track faculty, we hope to open up a conversation about contingent labor in REEES and to spotlight potential for practical changes.

Race and racial formations and categories define global systems of power and are not bound by history or culture. Nevertheless, with few noted exceptions, race as a category of analysis has largely been rejected and rendered inapplicable within Slavic, east European, and Eurasian Studies. This unwillingness to expand categories of critical analysis has created a void in our area and field of study, shaping a false sense of racelessness. Without the inclusion of race critical theories into our classrooms and scholarship, our students are left with minimal tools to address difference and social exclusion. In this article, we turn to critical perspectives to highlight some ways that race is being meaningfully incorporated into scholarship about the region. We illustrate why engagement with race and racialization is helpful for analysis, urgent, and necessary. Finally, we also address how our field can better prepare students as they engage these subjects.

A response to Oleg Khakhorin's stimulating application of Anthony Kadellis' “The Byzantine Republic” to Russian history, this article explores the fundamental features of Muscovite political culture.