From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolutions

Reform and Revolution after Socialism

Edited by Vicken Cheterian

A Hurst Publication

Comparative study of the reforms and revolutions that have swept through the former USSR and Balkan states in the past 25 years
Examines the struggle to modernise the economies and political systems of the former Soviet states and Eastern Europe
Specifically focuses on the mostly nonviolent Color Revolutions that began in Serbia in 2000 and spread to Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan

From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolutions

Reform and Revolution after Socialism

Edited by Vicken Cheterian

A Hurst Publication

Description

Twenty-five years after Gorbachev came to power and two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the questions that were behind the reform efforts at the start of Perestroika are still relevant: how to modernise the economy, and how to recreate a basis for political legitimacy? The wave of 'Color Revolutions' that precipitated regime change in Eastern Europe, starting in Serbia, and later in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, were carried out in the name of democratic legitimacy, and in order to fight corruption. The current debate in Moscow under the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev revolves around the same idea: what is the way forward for Russia's modernisation, economically and politically?

This volume brings together six experts on East Europe and the former Soviet Union to compare and evaluate the evolution of ideas behind Gorbachev's reforms, Yeltsin's transition, and the more recent wave of the Color Revolutions. It does not propose a coherent regard to these historic events, but rather dispersed discussion from various perspectives tracing the contradictory development of ideas of reform, the transformation of the notion of revolution, on the role of civil society, and individual chapters from the four cases of Color Revolutions.

From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolutions

Reform and Revolution after Socialism

Edited by Vicken Cheterian

A Hurst Publication

Foreword
Contributors
Abbreviations and Acronyms
1. Perestroika, Transition, Color Revolutions Vicken Cheterian
2. Revisiting 1989's Ambiguous Revolutions Catherine Samary
3. Serbia: The Broken Promises of October Jean-Arnault Dérens
4. The Record of the Rose Revolution: Mixed but Still Impressive
Ghia Nodia
5. Ukraine Since the Orange Revolution: Democracy and the
Unrule of Law Dominique Arel
6. Kyrgyzstan Between Revolutions Anara Tabyshalieva
7. Revolution and Civil Society, Testimonies from the Field
Vicken Cheterian
Notes
Index

From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolutions

Reform and Revolution after Socialism

Edited by Vicken Cheterian

A Hurst Publication

Author Information

Vicken Cheterian is director of CIMERA in Geneva and author of War and Peace in the Caucasus.

Contributors:

CONTRIBUTORS
Dominique Arel is Associate Professor at the School of Political Studies
and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa. His research
focuses on the political memory of mass violence in Ukraine in the 1930s
and 1940s, the categorization of identities by states, language politics, and
regime transition in Ukraine since the Orange Revolution. He has coedited
Le gouvernement des langues: Russes et Soviétiques face au multilinguisme
(Éditions CNRS, 2010), Rebounding Identities: The Politics of
Identity in Russia and Ukraine (Johns Hopkins, 2006) and Census and
Identity (Cambridge, 2002). His articles have recently appeared in Critique
Internationale, Population, Post-Soviet Affairs, and Survival. He has served
as President of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) since
2004 and hosted, as Chair, the international Danyliw Seminar on Contemporary
Ukraine since 2005.

Vicken Cheterian is Professor of International Communication at Webster
University in Geneva, and Research Associate at the Department of Development
Studies, SOAS. His research interests include developments in the
Middle East and post-Soviet republics, violent conflicts, transition, media
and democratization, environment degradation, climate change and conflict.
He started his career in Beirut, reporting on Middle East conflicts, and
later worked on the collapse of the Soviet Union, reporting on the conflicts
that emerged in the Caucasus and Central Asia. He is the founder of the
Caucasus Media Institute (Yerevan, Armenia) which he directed from 2002
to 2005. He is the author of War and Peace in the Caucasus, Russia's Troubled
Frontier (Hurst and Columbia University Press, 2008).

Jean-Arnault Dérens is a historian and journalist. He is the editor-in-chief
of Courrier des Balkans, and a regular contributor to numerous French
publications. He has several books in French on contemporary Balkans,
including Comprendre les Balkans. Histoire, sociétés, perspectives (Paris, 2007)
and Le piège du Kosovo (Paris, 2008).

Ghia Nodia is the professor of politics and director of the International
School of Caucasus Studies at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. He
is also a founder of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development
(CIPDD), an independent public policy think tank in Tbilisi,
which he headed in 1992-2008 and has headed again since August 2009.
He has published extensively on two sets of topics: regional security, statebuilding
and democratization in the Caucasus, and theories of nationalism
and democratic transition in the post-Cold-War context. He has been
involved in pro-democracy advocacy efforts in Georgia and internationally,
and has been a frequent participant in international congresses and conferences
on the related topics. In February-December 2008, he served as
Georgia's Minister of Education and Science.

Catherine Samary is an economist and a specialist in the Balkans and Eastern
Europe. She teaches at the Université Paris-Dauphine and at the Institut
d'Etudes Européennes (Université Paris 8), and is involved as researcher at
the IRISSO (Inter-disciplinary Institute of Research in Social Sciences). She
is also a member of the scientific board of the French association ATTAC,
and a frequent contributor to Le Monde Diplomatique. She has published
several books on the Balkans, including Yugoslavia Dismembered (trans.
Peter Drucker, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1995). Her most recent
book is Yougoslavie: de la décomposition aux enjeux européens (Paris, Editions
du Cygne, 2008). Her personal website is at http://csamary.free.fr.

Anara Tabyshalieva is a research fellow at the Institute for Regional Studies
of Kyrgyzstan. She has worked on Central Asian issues for more than twenty
years. Born and raised in the Kyrgyz Republic, Anara received her MA and
PhD from the Kyrgyz National University and a second Master's degree
from Johns Hopkins University. Between 1994 and 2001, she served as
Director of the Institute for Regional Studies in Kyrgyzstan. She was a senior
fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and a Fulbright scholar at Johns
Hopkins University. Anara was invited to work in residence at the United
Nations University in Japan and the Centre of Study of Islam and
Christian Relations at Selly Oak, UK. The UNESCO Hirayama Silk Road
Program (France), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
United States Institute of Peace, the United Nations Development Program
and other organizations have supported her projects in Kyrgyzstan
and Central Asia. In addition to a number of publications, she co-edited the
UNESCO volume on the history of civilizations of Central Asia.

From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolutions

Reform and Revolution after Socialism

Edited by Vicken Cheterian

A Hurst Publication

Reviews and Awards

"In this engaging volume, an international team of experts skillfully dissects the achievements and failures of the colored revolutions a series of popular uprisings that swept through post-socialist societies from 2000 to 2005. In doing so, they raise deeper questions about the conditions under which revolutionary change translates into revolutionary results."--Mark R. Beissinger, Professor of Politics, Princeton University, and author of Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State

"This is not the first book about the colored revolutions , but this sets a new standard. The analysis is considered, the country chapters are by acknowledged experts, the focus is on the actors themselves and the process of change in which they engaged. I will be bringing this study to the attention of my students and all specialists on the contemporary politics of the post-Soviet world would do well to read it."--Stephen White, Professor of Politics, Glasgow University and author of Understanding Russian Politics