Helena Rytövuori-Apunen - Power and Conflict in Russia’s Borderlands: The Post-Soviet Geopolitics of Dispute Resolution

Power and Conflict in Russias Borderlands

The present book was started in the context of the research project Proactive Conflict Management at Post-Soviet Deep Borders, funded by the Academy of Finland at the University of Tampere (201216). This financial support has enabled the long-term focus required by the subject at hand. I deeply appreciate the institutional support of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tampere and thank the Facultys service staff and my colleagues at the Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) for providing an excellent environment for my work. I owe my gratitude to colleagues whose work contributed to this research project: Vadim Romashov, Helle Palu and Andrei Roumiantsev at the University of Tampere for their assistance over many years, and Michael Roush, Diia Gvazava, Marikki Rieppola and Joshua Rose at the same university for their assistance in gathering data during the various phases of my research, as well as Ilkka Janatuinen for the digital illustrations. Steven Parham did the language-editing, and his critical eye was invaluable in finalizing the different chapters. I am also thankful for the support and constructive criticism of Tomasz Hoskins and Tom Stottor at I.B. Tauris, and I am honoured to have this opportunity to contribute to this publishers tradition of promoting the study of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Nayiri Kendirs kind assistance and the concluding steps with David Campbell further contributed to the pleasure of working with I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury. I also owe my gratitude to two anonymous external reviewers for their comments and advice in processing the manuscript. Besides the students at my home university, the University of Tampere, I am thankful for the immediate resonance provided by students at the Moldova State University and the Yerevan State University in regard to my work. My family, the entire generational lineage from my parents Irene and Matti Juhani to my daughter Natalia and son-in-law Tapio, has made me aware of how fortunate I am to have a home that supports my explorations. I dedicate this book to my husband Osmo, whose knowledge and understanding of the historical subtleties of FinnishRussian relations have so often inspired my reflections about the borders discussed in this book. This work has been written for all those who wish to learn about the complexities of world politics and the processes that underlie post-Soviet conflicts and the efforts to resolve them.

This book makes extensive use of Russian-language sources. In transliterating the Cyrillic to the Latin script it uses common journalistic practice for well-known names of persons and places, but otherwise follows the Library of Congress system without diacritical signs other than the Russian-language soft and hard signs, which are marked, respectively, with and .