The aim of this study is to show how liberal thinkers have responded to the problems liberalism as an ideology faces in Russia, and to the challenges which Russia is encountering as a country in transition. I will argue that liberals are constantly aware both of their marginalisation (which is seen as being cultural, historical and political) when they react to other ideologies and to those who hold political power, and also of the difficulty of shaping Russia's future along liberal lines. The liberal response to nationalism, therefore, provides a useful model in showing how liberals have reacted to ideologies which are typically regarded as being outside the liberal movement in Russia and also how they have sought to respond to many of the central questions relating to transition. I will show in this study that the response of liberals towards nationalism demonstrates a huge increase in the diversity of the liberal movement from the mid 1990's onwards, as the internal divides amongst liberals have become apparent under the impact of transition. Secondly, liberals have been torn between the possible strategic benefits of combining liberalism with non-liberal elements, weighed against the ideological problems these combinations cause. These dilemmas have left Russian liberalism as an essentially stagnant ideology which remains incapable of forming a united and coherent response both to its own marginalisation and to the challenges faced by Russia.

This thesis focuses on trafficking in human beings, particularly in women, to Turkey after the dissolution of Soviet Union. The study analyses legal responses and their reflections on Turkey's policy making mechanism to find a comprehensive and victim-oriented anti-trafficking strategy at two levels, international and national. The research is structured into eight chapters, proceeding from the general background of human trafficking, particularly female trafficking, to the development of the framework of anti-trafficking measures in Turkey's domestic structure. From the literature review it is found that human trafficking is a multi-faceted problem, which needs a more comprehensive approach to tackle it. Despite the recognition of all forms of human trafficking, trafficking for sexual exploitation in Turkey of female victims from former Soviet republics is the focus of this study. While doing so, the study analyses and compares the legal, political, and administrative differences between two specific periods: from the dissolution of the Soviet Union to 2002; and from 2002 to 2016. In the first period, the study focuses on the political and sociological transformations' effects on trafficking in women as push factors in source countries, and the domestic responses of Turkey in prevention, prosecution, and protection. After these analyses, the study examines how the political, regional, and international aspirations of the AKP governments affect the transformation of legal measures on human trafficking in the Turkish legal system. In addition to these analyses and criticisms, the study utilizes the relevant parts of the US Department of State Trafficking Reports and EU Regular and Progress Reports to highlight the positive and negative sides of the domestic transformation of Turkey's anti-trafficking strategy. Concerning the development of Turkey's anti-trafficking measures, this study explores what could be changed for a comprehensive anti-trafficking model for Turkey as the future of their anti-trafficking strategy. The study critically analyses previous and current legal, political, and social mistakes against victims in the processes from identification to protection, to build up a preventative and victim-oriented strategy by means of legal instruments and their effects on political measures. The study highlights the weaknesses, problems, and deficiencies to demonstrate the current situation, and also evaluates the influences of international instruments on Turkey's domestic legal and political structures.

This thesis investigates the dual transnationalism of ancestral return migrants, that is to say people “returning” to the territory where their ancestors had once migrated from. Dispersed from their homeland in the second half of the 19th century, the Adyge-Abkhaz diaspora has been involved in a variety of transnational practices in relation to their homeland in the Caucasus; and some, with considerable effort, have been settling there especially in the last two decades. The transnational involvement of this diaspora, most of whom live today in Turkey, is motivated by their search for belonging. Many who go back and forth between Turkey and the Caucasus are involved in transnational diaspora associations and take an active role in the formation of a transnational ethno-political-cultural environment for new generations growing up in the diaspora. The majority of those who have “return migrated” to their homeland in the Caucasus, in this study to two republics, Adygeya (an autonomous republic under the Russian Federation) and Abkhazia (a republic with contested independence), develop new transnational links to their diaspora communities in Turkey. This thesis is the product of a multi-sited, multi-method research project that combines theories related to transnationalism, diaspora and return, as well as migrant adaptation. Using life-history interviews, semi-structured interviews and participant observation, fieldwork for the research took place in rural diaspora settlements and urban diaspora organisations in Turkey as well as in the Caucasus, thereby enabling the researcher to study both ends of the migration route. Existing studies on ancestral return migration focus on pull and push factors, which hitherto have focused on sending and receiving countries separately. This thesis argues that their dual transnationalism, both in the diaspora (in Turkey) looking back towards the diasporic homeland, and after return looking back towards the diaspora, turns them into the “diaspora of their diaspora”.

Crusading and the military orders have, at their roots, a strong focus on place, namely the Holy Land and the shrines associated with the life of Christ on Earth. Both concepts spread to other frontiers in Europe (notably Spain and the Baltic) in a very quick fashion. Therefore, this thesis investigates the ways that this focus on place and landscape changed over time, when crusading and the military orders emerged in the Baltic region, a land with no Christian holy places. Taking this fact as a point of departure, the following thesis focuses on the crusades to the Baltic Sea Region during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It considers the role of the military orders in the region (primarily the Order of the Teutonic Knights), and how their participation in the conversion-led crusading missions there helped to shape a distinct perception of the Baltic region as a new sacred (i.e. Christian) landscape. Structured around four chapters, the thesis discusses the emergence of a new sacred landscape thematically. Following an overview of the military orders and the role of sacred landscpaes in their ideology, and an overview of the historiographical debates on the Baltic crusades, it addresses the paganism of the landscape in the written sources predating the crusades, in addition to the narrative, legal, and visual evidence of the crusade period (Chapter 1). It then proceeds to a chapter-by-chapter analysis considering specific sacralising elements expressed in the sources, which structure the definition of sacred landscape used in this thesis (outlined in the Introduction). Chapter 2 considers the role martyrdom in sacralising the landscape, followed by a discussion of the role played by relics (Chapter 3), ritualization, and sacred space (Chapter 4). By incorporating Geographical Information Systems (GIS) into the analysis of the texts, a new spatial map of the Baltic campaigns emerges from the present study, providing a fresh approach to studying contemporary views of holy war in a region with no holy (i.e. Christian) shrines.

The thesis examines the Communist Party in Moscow between 1925 and 1932. Its structure, role and membership are studied, together with its relationship with the population of Moscow. A study is also made of politics in the period, with special reference to the oppositions of the 1920's. Four broad problems are discussed. The first is the relationship between the central Party leadership and the Moscow Committee. Second is the role of the grassroots activist in political life. Thirdly, the failure of the oppositions is studied in detail. Finally, popular influence over the Party is examined with a view to discussing how far the revolution had been 'betrayed' in this period. It is found that the Moscow Committee was less autonomous than other regional organs, but that grassroots initiative played an important part in political life. In general, people were reluctant to engage in formal opposition. This largely explains the defeat of the Left and Right oppositions, who failed to attract significant support. The majority of Muscovites remained apathetic or hostile to the Party, but a core of committed activists within it was responsible for many of the period's achievements. To the extent that they supported and even initiated policy, Stalin's 'great turn' included an element of 'revolution from below'.

This thesis focuses on the emergence and development of two youth opposition campaigns, Kmara in Georgia and Pora in Ukraine, campaigns which were part of the “coloured revolutions” which took place in Eastern Europe in 2003 and 2004. The thesis identifies, analyzes and compares the influence and the role of youth activism in post-communist countries, and attributes a new role to the Kmara and Pora campaigns as vanguards of oppositional protest and transmitters of public grievances in the under-researched context of semi-authoritarian regimes. Two sets of questions are answered in this study, which relate to how and why youth opposition campaigns occurred and developed in Georgia and Ukraine. These questions are addressed through a comparative analysis of the political and social contexts in which narratives on Kmara and Pora are placed. Based on the combination of four main approaches to the study of social movements – viz. political opportunities, resource mobilization, framing processes, and diffusion – the analysis enabled deep insight into various aspects of the emergence and development of Kmara and Pora's campaigns and exposed commonalities and differences between them. The study confirms that the fixed and volatile features that decided on the nature of Georgian and Ukrainian regime provide a key tool for understanding the outburst of youth political activism in a hybrid form of a political system.

Following the devastating riots that took place there in June 2010, the city of Osh (Kyrgyzstan) has been the subject of a number of post-conflict reconstruction projects aimed at rebuilding its damaged urban fabric. As well as being varied in form and approach, these interventions have had a significant impact on the ways that Osh's citizens experience the city. Whilst some residents have welcomed the changes that have been brought about in Osh, others are concerned about what these might mean for their continued wellbeing in the city. By interrogating the shifting relationships between place, identity and collective memory, this thesis explores post-conflict reconstruction in Osh between 2010 and 2013. It seeks to build a clearer picture of urban change in the city over this period, and to unpack the diverse motivations that underpinned the reconstruction projects that were pursued or proposed at that time. Above all, it asks what these changes have meant for Osh residents, many of whom were still reeling from the violence that ripped the city apart in 2010.

The aim of this thesis is to define factors that are influential in the ethnic identification process of Crimean Tatars, Russians and Ukrainians in Crimea. To better understand the current ethnic situation in Crimea, Soviet nationality policy as well as Soviet ethnos theory are reviewed. The divergence of the definitions in Soviet and Western traditions is shown. Crucial historical events that took place in Crimea are examined from the viewpoints of Russian, Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar, Soviet and Western historiographies. The influence of the historical myths on shaping ethnic boundaries of these ethnic groups in Crimea is shown. Main factors such as the cultural, political, economic, and global ones which are shaping the ethnic self-consciousness of Crimean Tatars, Russians and Ukrainians in Crimea are studied. Therefore the thesis helps us to understand the meaning of being a Russian, an Ukrainian and a Crimean Tatar in Crimea.

This thesis examines how Soviet psychiatry took the particular form that it did and how it had a historically specific relationship to the state. Psychiatry in the USSR was used by the state against those who opposed the regime. In particular it was used after the death of Stalin against a dissident intelligentsia. Chapter One examines the position of the Soviet psychiatric patient with relation to the political economy of the USSR. The legal position of the psychiatric patient was a precarious one because the absence of private property meant there was no basis for law. It was possible to co-opt doctors as repressive agents of the state because they were dependent on it in a way which their counterparts in the West were not. Chapter Two examines the historical development of Russian and Soviet psychiatry and assesses the importance of its development under tsarism. The point at which Soviet psychiatry became differentiated from world psychiatry is located in the Stalin period. Chapter Three examines the role played by Soviet psychology and the supposed influence of Marxism-Leninism in shaping psychiatry in the USSR. It is argued that Soviet psychology owed nothing to Marxism but that it was distorted in a similar way to other branches of science. Chapter Four discusses the defective nature of Soviet psychiatry and shows how Soviet political economy led to archaic practice in psychiatry. All Soviet medicine was similarly defective and this had serious consequences for the Soviet population as a whole. Chapter Five examines the role that psychiatry played in repressing the dissident movement in the 1960s and 70s. Psychiatry was used as an ameliorated form of the labour camp at a time when mass killings and labour camps were less useful to the elite. Psychiatry played this role from about 1953 until 1988 and was used mostly against the intelligentsia.

In March, 1877, the radical worker Pëtr Alekseev gave his speech at the ‘Trial of Fifty,’ contributing to the social-revolutionary movement one of the founding documents in Russia’s fledgling, working-class history. In the decades that followed, many others of the workers’ circles of the 1870s would compose and contribute their own stories to this revolutionary, ‘workers’ history.’ It was understood that, for workers to ‘speak for themselves’ was one step towards a workers’ revolution, carried out by and for the working people. The ‘workers’ voice’ had been borne by Alekseev in 1877, and was shared by worker-memoirists and other worker-writers through the early twentieth century. Individual workers were called represent, embody, testify to and speak for the mass, or the working-class as a whole. Thus, the notion of the ‘workers’ voice’ tied together the propaganda, the historiography, and the philosophy of the Russian social-revolutionary movement. A study of the ‘workers’ voice’ in history and historiography reveals the connections between these areas of revolutionary thought and practice, and provides a better understanding of the role of individual workers - as activists and as writers - in the Russian socialist movement. Revolutionary historiography developed alongside and in concert with political theories of the social revolution, mass action, social law and social determination, individuality, and consciousness. For a small number of radical democrats-turned-‘rebels,’ anarchists, and social-revolutionaries – most, if not all, born into the educated elite, a few to the families of the high, landed nobility - adherence to the narodnik tenet that ‘the emancipation of the working class should be conquered by workers’ themselves’ made their own, committed or conscious choice of the ‘cause’ over the existing system of things marginal to the historical and social forces driving Russia towards revolution. The ‘going to the people’ movement was aimed at bringing ‘workers themselves’ into their movement. By developing certain working people into carriers of the socialist message, the movement hitherto limited to students, publicists, and the wayward sons and daughters of state officials, merchants and clergymen would become the ‘a working-class matter.’ Thus, a special place was allotted to the ‘self-educated’ or ‘self-developed’ workers who, like the self-styled ‘intelligentsia,’ were consciously committed, synthesising ‘consciousness’ with their own class experience and the social necessity behind it. The political and historical valorisation of the ‘workers’ voice’ extended this idea into the documentation and the history of the popular and workers’ movements. Just as the workers would have to ‘emancipate themselves,’ so too would they speak for themselves and write their own history. This history, it was thought, would eventually belong to the workers by right. Thus, historical writing and the documentation of a workers’ history, informed by judgments regarding individuality, society, class, history, and their relationships, became politically significant for the revolutionary movement as working people began to enter it and ‘speak for themselves.’ Late in the nineteenth century, the worker-revolutionaries of the 1870s began to write their own memoirs of events. Entering the documentary record as individuals, it was their task to testify to working-class experience. Thus, at the point where working people became ‘individuals’ for history and for future historians, marking themselves as different from the mass by leaving their own writings, and stories, and memoirs, they were also tied inextricably to a political viewpoint that identified every and any worker as practically identical. As political figures, ‘conscious’ radicals who had taken responsibility for their own actions, their lives were historically definite; as ‘working men,’ sharing in a victimhood that was common to millions, their lives were indefinite, unhistorical, alienated. In the attempt to explain one part of their lives by the other, in the juxtaposition of class experience with political experience, in the light of a political function that had workers become witnesses rather than writers, the worker-revolutionaries reproduced in their political and historical writings the class categories that their radicalism had contradicted. The awkward position of worker-intelligent – in one half unique, conscious, definite, historical, active, by the other: plural, instinctive, indefinite, and passive – was stamped into ‘workers’ writings.