E1: Sovereignty Exercises at post-Soviet Borderlands: (Re)defining the Centre, (Re)connecting the Periphery

Description

The starting point of this study is a paradox between the longing for ‘effective sovereignty’ – the mythical total control over the territory of a state – expressed by the newly independent post-Soviet states and their limited ability to assert and maintain it. An embodiment of this paradox are sovereignty exercises – one-off, recurrent or everyday actions that take the form of images, practices or events aimed at the general public, both domestic and international, to (re)assure it of the (imagined) full territorial sovereignty of the state. Sovereignty exercises vary considerably in their content, style, scope, grandiosity and tools used. Although they could be performed anywhere, they often gravitate to border areas as places of special symbolic value. Some exercises in sovereignty take the form of folk festivals (e.g. the Slavic Unity Festival on the borders shared by Ukraine, Belarus and Russia) and use the language of cooperation; others manifest themselves in claims to exclusive access to certain resources and through strategies of confrontation (e.g. the so-called ‘war of TV transmitters’ in eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2018). Some sovereignty exercises reinforce age-old Soviet ties while others create new ones; some cement post-Sovietness while others attempt to unlearn post-Soviet ways of being; some act as a peacebuilding tool in a conflict-prone environment, while others foment old and new ethnic grievances, religious competitions and territorial disputes. By examining and conceptualising the repertoire of sovereignty exercises in selected post-Soviet states, this study aims to identify the role such aspirations to sovereignty play in conflict and post-conflict settings for cross-border cooperation and centre-periphery relations.

Key questions

What does state sovereignty mean for national elites and for residents of border regions?
What types of symbolic events, everyday or recurrent practices celebrating/imposing sovereignty can be identified at post-Soviet borderlands?
What social groups play the most active role in sovereignty exercises? What are their motives?
When do post-Soviet states rely on the language of cooperation to maintain their sovereignty and when do they choose confrontation?
Under what circumstances do sovereignty exercises take a violent form – towards their own citizens or towards those on the other side of the border?

Methodology and sources

The project uses a comparative case study approach with two cases, each demonstrating a different degree of conflict intensity and pertaining to a different region of the post-Soviet space: Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and possibly Turkmenistan) and the post-Soviet ‘Slavic’ borderlands (Ukraine, Belarus and Russia).

Including the following methods:

Qualitative interviews with key stakeholders and borderlanders
Critical discourse analysis of mass media coverage of selected events
Document analysis
Cartographic analysis

Project team

Ekaterina Mikhailova is a Political Geographer working at the crossroads of Post-Soviet Area Studies, Border Studies and Governance.

Ekaterina studied Public Administration at Lomonosov Moscow State University and holds a doctorate in Human Geography from the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences. Before joining IOS, Ekaterina worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Eastern Finland (Finland, 2018-2019), University of Geneva and Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (both in Switzerland, 2020-2022).

As a Postdoctoral Researcher at the IOS Regensburg, Ekaterina examines comparatively how post-Soviet borders in selected countries – Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and Ukraine, Belarus and Russia – have been oscillating between conflict and cooperation in practice, border-related narratives and imaginaries produced by elites and borderlanders.

In addition to her research project, Ekaterina coordinates the KonKoop junior research group and plays a central role in creating a database of knowledge-production centres for Peace and Conflict Studies in Eastern Europe.

Cindy Wittke-Hohlfeld is head of the Political Science Research Group at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg. She joined IOS in 2017.

Her research spans the intersections of international law, international politics, socio-legal studies, and area studies. Her work is informed by her interdisciplinary background: She earned a Magistra Artium (MA) in East European Studies and a PhD in Law (summa cum laude) from the Faculty of Law of the Freie Universität Berlin. From 2019 till 2022 she was principal investigator of the project “Between Conflict and Cooperation: The Politics of International Law in the post-Soviet Space,” funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, 01UC1901 (PolVR)). Before holding her current position Cindy Wittke was a senior researcher and lecturer with the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz, Germany (2014-2017). Wittke-Hohlfeld’s work is based on previous positions and affiliation with several interdisciplinary research centers. These include Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood (SFB 700) at the Freie Universität Berlin (2006—2010); the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in Cambridge (2009, 2010); the Leibniz Institute for History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO, 2011–2013), and the Center for Law, Society, and Culture at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, Bloomington/IN (2013—2014).

Ekaterina Mikhailova is a Political Geographer working at the crossroads of Post-Soviet Area Studies, Border Studies and Governance.

Cindy Wittke-Hohlfeld is head of the Political Science Research Group at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg. She joined IOS in 2017.