This thesis' central aim is the application of a Wendtian-constructivist expansion of Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) on a specific case study: the South Caucasus. To that effect, three concepts of RSCT – amity/enmity, state incoherence, and great power penetration – are expanded and developed within the broader above-mentioned ontological-epistemological framework. Amity-enmity is elaborated into an integrated spectrum founded on varying ideational patterns of securitisation alongside objective characteristics, and encompassing conflict formations, security regimes and security communities. States are conceptualised as ideational-institutional-material "providers of security"; their incoherence is characterised over three tiers and two dimensions, leading to a distinction between vertical and horizontal inherent weakness, ostensible instability and failure. Great power penetration is dissected into its objective, subjective and intersubjective elements, resulting in a 1+3+1 typology of its recurring patterns: unipolar, multipolar-cooperative and multipolar-competitive, bounded by hegemony and disengagement. After the specification of a methodology incorporating both objective macro- and interpretive micro-perspectives, two working hypotheses are specified. Firstly, that state incoherence engenders high levels of regional enmity, and, secondly, that patterns of great power penetration primarily affect transitions of regional amity/enmity between conflict formations and security regimes. The framework is subsequently used to triangulate these hypotheses through an application of the theoretical framework on the post-Soviet Southern Caucasus. An initial macro-overview is subsequently provided of the Southern Caucasus as a regional security complex; the three expanded concepts are consequently investigated, in turn, from the discursive micro-perspective. The South Caucasus is categorised into a "revisionist conflict formation", the nature of its states' incoherence is characterised, and existing patterns of great power penetration are identified as competitive-multipolar. In the final chapter, the hypotheses are largely confirmed, and various scenarios as to the possible emergence of a regional security regime are investigated.

The development of a robust small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector has been widely seen as important to Russia’s socio-economic transformation. This has been clear from state policies and rhetoric that claim to support the development of entrepreneurship and publicly advocate its importance. Significantly however, this official support for the SME sector has been out of line with the patterns of entrepreneurial development on the ground. Entrepreneurs continue to face a host of obstacles in the spheres of legislation, tax, accessing credit, as well as administrative barriers; all of which have complicated the development of small and medium sized businesses. Given the direct role that individual entrepreneurs play in shaping the SME sector, an understanding of entrepreneurs themselves – their experiences, attitudes, values and beliefs – is required in order to understand the patterns and problems of entrepreneurial development. Yet notably, much of the existing literature has not attached a high degree of importance to the experiences of entrepreneurs in processes of development. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the patterns and problems of entrepreneurial development from the perspective of entrepreneurs themselves. It asks the question: how have behaviour, attitudes, values and socio-cultural context impacted on the development of entrepreneurship? Qualitative ethnographic research methods were used to explore the experiences of entrepreneurs and their responses to the challenges of the Russian business environment in four regions of Russia: Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Tver’ and Kaluga. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with entrepreneurs as well as state officials and leaders of business associations. Involving a variety of individuals who have played a role in shaping the entrepreneurial process provided insight into the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and values towards entrepreneurship. This thesis found that the relationships that entrepreneurs form with other entrepreneurs, as well as with state officials and leaders of business associations are instrumental to understanding the patterns of behaviour of entrepreneurs and how these, in turn, shape entrepreneurial processes. It also finds that informal practices such as blat and personal networks are integral strategies used by entrepreneurs to navigate the challenges of doing business in Russia. At the same time, this thesis concludes that these behaviours of entrepreneurs, which often occur in collusion with state officials and leaders of business associations, have subverted the integrity of the formal system and have contributed to a pattern of entrepreneurial development which has suffocated the potential and prosperity of the SME sector. The entrepreneurial process in Russia has thus been a complex mixture of successes and frustrations and the experiences of entrepreneurs are key to understanding this process.

This thesis considers the development of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), from its foundation in 1993 to the Presidential election of 2008. The study begins with a discussion of the context of change for the CPRF in the post-Soviet world from the perspective of political transitions of other communist parties and their development in the post-Soviet world. The final years of the party’s predecessor, and that predecessor’s collapse contribute a sense of perspective to the party’s development and this is followed by a consideration of the need for ideological change in order to transform the party, the electorate’s support for the CPRF in recent parliamentary elections and the political views of members of a branch of the party with particular emphasis on the opinions of younger members: those who may be guiding the party’s development in the future. How does the transformation of the CPRF compare with that of other communist parties in the region? Organisational change, including the inheritance of political control and resources by former communist parties in some countries where they were in power, has greatly aided some parties in their return to government while the lack of such advantages has hindered others. The ban on the party in Russia adversely affected the unification of communists in Russia from 1991 to 1993 while the CPRF’s counterparts in other countries faced no such difficulties. The electoral successes of other communist and former-communist parties serve to highlight the increased problems the CPRF faces after the splits the party has undergone in recent years. Ideological change across the post-communist world has been very varied in terms of moves towards social democracy, towards nationalism or the retention of a more orthodox communism depending on the local circumstances in individual countries. How has the legacy of the CPSU influenced the formation and development of the successor party? The origins of the CPRF can be seen in the divisions that formed in the CPSU in its final years. The scale of ideological change in the final years of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union can be seen in the radical differences between the 1986 Party Programme and 1991 draft Programme. Documents from the era reveal a failure to understand the depth of the reaction against communism in Eastern Europe and what it could mean for the Soviet Union as well as concern about the effects of glasnost’ on support for the regime and the thinking behind attempts to use electoral change to increase the party’s legitimacy. These changes did not have the anticipated effect for the CPSU and resulted in the loss of party control over those elected and over electors with the formation of platforms in the CPSU and parties outside the CPSU leading the way to the demise of the party. When the ideology a party represents appears to have been comprehensively rejected, how does that party reposition itself in the political landscape in order to survive? With the election of a new leader prepared to lead the party in a new direction, the CPRF has recast itself as a nationalist party that sees communism as a Russian tradition. Zyuganov’s repositioning of the party has been characterised by the acceptance of democracy, which has arguably kept the CPRF in the public eye as the party has been represented in every Duma since 1993, and the search for means of uniting various political groups under a broad ‘patriotic’ banner in order to return the party to power at the head of a coalition. Zyuganov’s reworking of communist theory includes a heavy reliance on geopolitics to argue for the re-establishment of the Soviet Union and support for the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian culture as cornerstones of the patriotic cause. Which members of the Russian electorate now define themselves as communist? The party’s relationship with the electorate is examined through the results of public opinion surveys conducted just after the 1999 and 2003 Duma elections to see what views communist voters hold in common and whether it is possible to determine what political opinions can be said to predict a vote for the CPRF. A CPRF supporter could be predicted to be older and with more strongly held political views than the average Russian citizen. As many previous studies have found, age is clearly one of the most significant factors in predicting support for the CPRF but this factor is outweighed in these surveys by party identification and ideological conviction. If a voter identified with a political party and an ideology, there was a greater probability that that voter supported the CPRF than any other political party. Are members of the party able and willing to defend the change in direction of the party leadership? Interviews with members of the St Petersburg branch of the CPRF indicated that members were willing to accept the nationalist stance of the party as a temporary necessity to extend electoral support for the party. In view of the fact that party membership has fallen drastically in recent years, members were asked what was drawing them to join the CPRF or remain in the party when others had left. With an ageing and falling membership, the Komsomol is playing an important role by recruiting young people to the party. Members were asked for their views on the possibility of the party changing course and their attitudes to Zyuganov’s leadership. However, with support for the party from the electorate in decline, party members were divided about what they felt needed to change. This thesis concludes that the party remains popular with a minority of voters who were impoverished by the transition and that the current strategies of democratic participation and a nationalist stance have been accepted by the membership as the achievement of communism is seen as a very distant prospect. The party, however, still believes that communism is inevitable.

In the last three decades of the 19th century small groups composed of primarily skilled, male workers in Petersburg factories developed and refined a specific form of worker identity, that of the worker-intelligent. This identity was the product of a combination of an ideal conceptualisation of proletarian man derived from readings of western socialist literature and ideas introduced into the workers’ environment by members of the radical intelligenty alongside their material experience of work in the rapidly developing industries of the capital. Seeking to appropriate the ‘intelligence’ of their radical intelligentsia mentors to create ‘Russian Bebels’, from the early 1870s small groups of workers aspired to develop their own worker organisations to give voice to the specific needs, demands and assumed aspirations of the emerging working-class within an autocratic society that maintained the fiction that a specific industrial working-class did not exist. Whilst workers enthusiastically welcomed the intelligentsia as bearers of the knowledge essential to construct their own specific identity, the process of identity creation frequently led to power struggles with the intelligentsia over the latter’s role and control of knowledge. It is in the often contested relationships between workers and intelligentsia that vital clues emerge as to how workers perceived themselves and others within the worker-class. Within this contested arena the radical worker-intelligenty frequently articulated their independence from the intelligentsia who they frequently regarded as a temporary ally, essential to satisfy their initial thirst for knowledge and to fulfil certain technical tasks, but who eventually should be subordinate to the workers’ movement that workers alone were capable of leading. Although workers eagerly embraced the revolutionary ideals received from the intelligenty, these were processed and reconstructed in terms of a worker-hegemony in the revolutionary process, taking entirely literally the dictum that ‘the liberation of the workers must be a cause for the workers themselves.’ This represented the essence of the worker-intelligenty belief system and, when taken in conjunction with their conviction that the mass of workers remained ‘backward,’ incapable of effecting their own liberation, produced a strongly held belief that it was incumbent on enlightened workers to act as advocates of the whole class, irrespective of the degree to which the mass of workers conformed to their vision of the ideal revolutionary worker. These early Petersburg workers’ organisations are of historical importance as from their inception they articulated a specific ‘worker’ ideology opposed to both the political regime and emerging Russian industrial capitalism, an opposition that would subsequently be transformed in Soviet Russia into an historical narrative that presented them as a vanguard for the working-class and the precursors of the Soviet ‘new man.’ In the process of fusing of the mind of the intelligenty within the body of a worker, the first generations of worker- intelligenty consistently sought to demonstrate in practice their own revolutionary primacy. Painfully aware of the disparity between their ideal proletarian man and the reality of the ‘backwardness’ of the mass of their fellow workers, the early worker-intelligenty developed and nurtured their own particular institution - the workers’ circle, kruzhok, an institution which simultaneously reinforced their own sense of identity and worth whilst providing a space in which they could receive their necessary enlightenment from the radical intelligentsia. Rather than viewing workers as passive objects, the Petersburg worker-intelligenty was instrumental in its own creation, throughout the period under discussion acting as a revolutionary subject in its own right, to a significant extent determining the nature and content of study involving the intelligenty, establishing clear organisational frameworks to govern relationships with intelligenty groups, and, critically, seeking opportune moments to enter the public sphere and declare their presence as workers, revealing themselves as a social force to be recognised. In the historiography of the revolutionary working-class in Russia these worker-led organisations have been largely ignored or subsumed under the rubric of the name of a leading member of the radical intelligenty associated with workers’ circles, as for example in the so-called Brusnev organisation. For a long period Soviet and western historians privileged the role of the radical intelligentsia, reflecting competing ideological biases that in the case of the Soviet interpretation viewed workers as a dependent category requiring enlightenment from an external Marxist party, whilst much western research focused on ideological debates amongst intelligenty ‘leaders’ and/or incipient reformist and non- revolutionary tendencies amongst worker activists. Although in more recent time a number of historians have explored the autonomous nature of worker activism in 1905 and 1917, whilst others have explored the cultural attitudes and beliefs of workers, the first specifically worker-led organisations created by worker-intelligenty have been largely ignored. What remains missing is a study that addresses the actual historical practice of the worker-intelligenty during its formative years and how it sought to give form to its self- realisation and express its received knowledge as the advanced representative of its class. The discourse of class not only gave life to the worker-intelligenty but critically guided its first at times uncertain footsteps towards fulfilling what it had come to believe was its ‘historic’ role.

The Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 was a direct consequence of the ideological objectives pursued by the belligerents. Ideology shaped the political agenda and the diametrically opposed war aims of both states, and was implemented through the foreign policy, diplomatic negotiation and military engagements pursued. This proved to be the principal obstacle to the establishment of cordial relations. As western democracy and Russian Marxism battled it out, war was inevitable. Externally, the Paris Peace Conference provided the necessary conditions for the resumption of traditional Russian-Polish hostilities, whilst the Allied States consistently demonstrated their absolute inability to directly influence either the development, or outcome, of the conflict. Redressing the balance of historiography, this thesis includes a greater examination of the conflict from the perspective of the Soviet regime. This firmly controlled the Russian decision-making process. By charting the war, it becomes clear that both states deliberately pursued a dual offensive: traditional diplomatic negotiation and military campaign as conditions dictated. However, in addition, Soviet Russia developed a unique and innovative, revolutionary, agit-prop, diplomatic medium. This enabled adept Soviet diplomats to win the majority of diplomatic battles during the conflict, although often negotiating from a militarily weak position. Nevertheless, the regime ultimately failed in its objective: to ignite socialist revolution in western Europe. The mistaken Soviet decision in July 1920 to cross the ethnographic border to forcefully sovietise Poland, in opposition to Marxist doctrine, irreversibly altered the complexion of the war and proved its pivotal turning point. This culminated politically with the short-lived establishment of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee in Białystok, and militarily, with the decisive defeat of the Red Army at the Battle of Warsaw. It is now certain that the Red Army offensive into Poland in July 1920 aimed not only at the sovietisation of Poland, but at spreading the socialist revolution to Western Europe and overthrowing the Versailles settlement. The European revolutionary upsurge had largely extinguished during the previous year and in August 1920, Communist ideology ultimately failed to inspire the vast majority of the Polish population. Thus, by utilising the Soviet military to secure its war aims, Lenin and the Politburo inadvertently signed the death-warrant of socialist revolution in Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Across East Central Europe, postcommunist transformation is being effected through the discourses of gender. It is in this context that debate around abortion has surfaced repeatedly in Poland. This is an empirical case study of Polish postcommunist transformation centred on gender and in particular, on abortion debate. It focuses on the connection between discourses of Polish nationhood, democracy and gender, contributing to the fields of gender and postcommunism, gender and nation, and comparative reproductive politics. Using a discourse analysis methodology, this thesis analyses Polish abortion debate centred around the 1996 liberalisation of abortion amendment, a ‘moment’ previously neglected in scholarly research. It considers three sites at which abortion debate surfaces, Parliament, press reportage and opinion polls, and analyses how each constructs its role as mechanism and instrument of democracy through its participation in abortion debate. Abortion is a symbolic issue used to create, sustain and contest political identities, a site through which nationalist pasts and futures are imagined, and through which democratic political projects are articulated. Thus abortion is a key symbolic stand-in issue that represents competing democratic and nation-building projects, a site where politics is ‘made’: abortion thus comes to emblematise psotcommunist Polish transformation. Through their participation in Polish abortion debate, Sejm, media and opinion polls legitimate their claims to be primary definers of the ‘new’ Poland, claiming key rolls as mediators between ‘politics’ and the ‘people’. Gender is crucial to the nation-building projects constructed through abortion at all three sites, however this dimension is often suppressed. The thesis further argues that there are grounds for a limited and partial feminist recuperation of the liberalisation ‘moment’. However, it concludes, whilst abortion is fundamentally about women’s equal citizenship rights, having very real and material consequences for Polish women, debate around the liberalisation amendment does not principally revolve around gender.

The primary objective of this thesis is to contribute to the debate on the reasons behind Russia's poor economic performance in its first decade after the fall of communism, by examining the role of IMF economic programs in the reform process.In particular, we are interested in the failure of neo-classical models of the market economy, upon which economic reform programs were based, to predict the outcomes in Russia. The purpose of the work is to offer a number of theoretical models which incorporate certain characteristics, such as political and economic motivations of both the IMF and Russian government, large-scale public sector corruption, a substantial underground economy, and a weak tax base, and which are capable predicting the resulting failings in the IMF-Russia economic reform program. In chapter 2, we present a theory of conditionality in which the recipient, aware that the lender faces political and economic motivations in the conditional development lending process, undertakes a game with the lender in which the recipient attempts to undertake the least amount of compliance that guarantees it future loans. There is an exogenous conflict between economics and politics within the lending agency that determines its degree of tolerance for policy (non-) compliance. We then analyse how the donor, in an attempt to regulate its internal conflict, may adopt "rules of thumb" in the lending process which pre-define the actions it will take in response to the lender's level of compliance. The recipient's strategy depends on the payoffs it obtains from the actions available to the lender under each "rule of thumb". We examine how the IMF-Russia relationship from 1992-2002 has elements of the games we model. In chapter 3, we model corruption a proportional tax on labour income in a three-sector economy with a corrupt bureaucracy, a legitimate private sector, and a shadow economy, and examine how tighter fiscal policies may result in a rise in corruption. The rise in corruption negatively affects legitimate private sector employment and output. We suggest that the Russian economy has a similar three sector structure and analyse the impact of reduced spending and increased taxation on corruption and employment. In chapter 4, we modify Alesina and Tabellini's (1987) model of time inconsistency to allow for a weak tax base and then apply it to post-communist Russia. In particular we examine two non-consecutive time periods in which, for different reasons, public debt could not be used to finance the government's budget deficit: 1992-94 and post August 17 1998. We suggest that Russia did in fact move from one sub-optimal position to another, and we raise questions about the optimality of Russia's current monetary policies. In chapter 5, we examine the optimality of monetary policy in the presence of bureaucratic corruption. We model corruption as a proportional tax on firm revenue and a positive function of the official tax rate. The higher the official tax, the higher the corruption tax levied by public bureaucrats in order to supplement their decreasing official net wage, and the lower is output. We find that under both discretion and commitment, inflation is higher, and output and taxation are lower, than when there is no corruption.

This thesis addresses the question of how and why the function of regional organisations varies in different areas of the world. It contributes with insights from the post-Soviet space. A theoretically informed empirical study examines how two former Soviet republics conceptualise the function of two regional organisations: the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Organisation for Democracy and Economic Development – GUAM (GUAM). The literature agrees that the two like other organisations in the post-Soviet space do not produce integration or other forms of regional governance. Nevertheless, the member states continue to actively participate in these organisations. The thesis inquires to which end the states continue their membership. The analytical perspective examines how the member states’ conceptualisations of an organisation’s function depend on the domestic political regimes. The thesis considers two members of the CIS and GUAM. One, Azerbaijan, has a hybrid regime with an authoritarian shape. The other, Ukraine, has a hybrid regime with stronger affinity towards democracy. It is argued that policy-makers conceptualise the function of a regional organisation according to the patterns of rule in their domestic political regimes. The ruling elite’s conceptualisation may diverge from the stated function of the organisation, if the stated function is not compatible with the domestic political regime.

Structure, organisation, an idea of esprit de corps, and hierarchy characterised the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Throughout the history of the Soviet Union only the Soviet Armed Forces had the potential to rival the CPSU in those qualities and were able to be an organised locus for potential opposition. A sense of professionalism was instilled in the Soviet Armed Forces, not only from those ‘Red Commanders’ of the Revolution and Civil War, but also from those junior, noncommissioned officers who were holdovers from the tsarist regime. The primary focus of this study is on the immediate post-Stalinist era while Nikita Khrushchev was First Secretary of the CPSU. Bridled by Stalin’s hold over strategic and armed forces policy, after his death, the Soviet Armed Forces became an institution that illustrated a strong sense of military professionalism, while at the same time serving the Soviet regime. With a focus on five case studies that occurred during the Khrushchev era 1953-1964, this thesis argues that the military attempted to remain apolitical throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Previous studies of Soviet civil-military relations have focused on the levels of cooperation or competition between the CPSU and the Soviet armed forces. This study argues however, that the ebb and flow of that relationship can be explained by the selection of personalities, or agents, by Khrushchev to posts of military command. Officers were promoted based on several factors. However, Khrushchev increasingly promoted officers to positions of command who he deemed were more personally loyal to him and were willing to put that loyalty above their duty to the Soviet armed forces. Khrushchev chose personal loyalty over an officer’s military professionalism and expertise when appointing them to posts at the Ministry of Defence, the Soviet General Staff, and to the command posts in the branches of the Soviet military and key military districts around the Soviet Union.

In January 1912, the Bolsheviks became a separate Party, as opposed to being merely a faction of the RSDLP. Lenin's initial problem was to convince both the leaders of the Second International and his own middle echelon leaders inside Russia that Bolshevism was distinct from Menshevism. This proved difficult before August 1914. The War made the distinction clearer, but also gave rise to an international tendency, with support inside the Bolshevik Party, to the Left even of Lenin. Inside Russia too, joint work with SR Maximalists fostered a kind of Left Populist Bolshevism among some of the Party rank and file. After the February Revolution, the Right Bolsheviks were pushing for a reunification with the Mensheviks, the Left Populist Bolsheviks began to organise nationally and, as the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee lacked authority, the Party was on the verge of a split. Lenin was urgently recalled from abroad. His intervention in the faction fight marked the end of one period of Party history and the beginning of the next. For the first time, the Party leadership was on the spot, and this contact with the rank and file enabled Lenin to clarify and develop ideas he had been formulating in his disputes abroad. The result was a new policy for the Party, quite unmistakeably distinct from Menshevism.