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<h1 class="gmail-post-title">Book by political science professor investigates Russia’s influence in Estonia, Baltic states</h1>
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<article class="entry gmail-post-21802 gmail-post gmail-type-post gmail-status-publish gmail-format-standard gmail-has-post-thumbnail gmail-hentry gmail-category-news gmail-tag-baltics gmail-tag-book gmail-tag-college gmail-tag-duquesne gmail-tag-duquesne-university gmail-tag-estonia gmail-tag-georgia gmail-tag-jennie-schulze gmail-tag-pittsburgh gmail-tag-russia gmail-tag-russian-meddling gmail-tag-russian-military gmail-tag-strategic-frames gmail-tag-the-duquesne-duke gmail-tag-ukraine gmail-tag-university gmail-last_archivepost">
<div id="gmail-attachment_21824" style="width:310px" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-alignleft"><img class="gmail-size-medium gmail-wp-image-21824" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.duqsm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Schulze_photo.jpg?resize=300%2C200" alt="" width="300" height="200"><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Courtesy of Jennie Schulze <br>
Schulze is a political science professor who specializes in Russia and
Eastern Europe. Her new book looks at the impacts of Russian minorities
in the Baltic nations.</p></div>
<p><strong>Kailey Love | Photo Editor</strong></p>
<p><em>02/01/18</em></p>
<p>As talk of an aggressive, meddling Russia swirls in news reports, one
Duquesne professor has taken an in-depth look at the aspects of
Russia’s influence on its neighbors.</p>
<p>Jennie Schulze, an assistant political science professor at Duquesne,
recently published her book Strategic Frames, which focuses on the
effects of Russia and European institutions on minority policies,
particularly those that affect Russian speakers, in Estonia and Latvia.</p>
<p>“I look at three policy areas. I look at citizenship policies,
language policies and electoral policies from the time of independence
from the Soviet Union in 1991 through 2015,” she said.</p>
<p>Schulze, who earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science at
Boston College and her doctorate in Political Science at George
Washington University, said she had always been interested in Russian
history and focused on Russian studies throughout her academic career.</p>
<p>This interest in Russian studies led her to read Identity in
Formation by David Laitin, a current professor of political science at
Stanford University, during her time in graduate school. She cites this
book, which takes a look into the identity crisis of Russian speakers
living in former Soviet states, as the inspiration for her doctoral
thesis and interest in the Baltic states.</p>
<p>“Much of the literature sort of treats Eastern European countries as
if they’re simply kind of targets of these great powerful forces, and it
doesn’t really treat them as agents in their own right,” she said. “My
book is really about giving agency to those European actors and not just
treat them as targets of great power pressure.”</p>
<p>Schulze’s interest in Russian speakers in the country’s ‘near
abroad,’ the now independent former Soviet republics, further developed
after she earned a grant to travel to the Baltic states for research.
She pointed to the Bronze Soldier Crisis, which occurred in Estonia
shortly after she arrived in April 2007, as a turning point for her
research.</p>
<p>Also known as the Bronze Night or the April Unrest, the crisis
surrounded the decision to move a Soviet World War II era statue, known
as the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, from downtown Tallinn to the outskirts
of town. While many viewed the statue as a symbol of former Soviet
occupation, the Russian speakers in Estonia viewed it as the
symbolization of Soviet victory over Nazism, as well as their claim to
equal rights.</p>
<p>“It was really interesting to be there and to see that first hand.
That was really a fundamental changing point in the direction I wanted
my research to go, because it was a real case in point that Russia could
really aggravate interethnic relations in Estonia and that there were
real kin state effects there.”</p>
<p>Schulze defined kin states as “states that monitor the conditions,
assert the rights and protect the interests of their co-nationals living
in other states.”</p>
<p>“Russia uses the 25 million ethnic Russians stranded outside Russia’s
borders after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a pretext for
involvement in its ‘near abroad,’” she said.</p>
<p>Following the Russia-Georgia war in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea
in 2014, she said that much of the world turned to the Baltic states in
fear that they may be next. Though she addresses that “Russia will
always push as far as Russia can push” in its ‘near abroad,’ she does
not believe their tactics are as effective in the Baltic states and that
there is no immediate threat.</p>
<p>“We tend to paint Russian speakers with a really broad stroke when we
speak about them in the West, but they’re really, really different and
we need to keep that in mind … [Russian speakers in the Baltic states
are] not really co-optable in the way that other Russian speakers in the
‘near abroad’ are,” she said. “Russian speakers in the Baltics are
pretty loyal to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania … they don’t want to be
part of Russia in any sort of way.”</p>
<p>Instead, her book argues that this fear of Russian meddling in their
kin states actually helps to shape policies for minorities such as
Russian speakers in these countries, even though the credit for these
“democratizing reforms” often goes to European institutions such as the
EU.</p>
<p>“While Europe institutions are typically credited for democratizing
reforms in these states, my book shows that Russia was also crucial to
passing minority policy reforms and has been the greater influence post
accession,” she said.</p>
<p>“Russia’s actions provided important security frames which allowed
policymakers to reverse decades of exclusionary citizenship policy
toward Russian-speakers in Estonia in favor of more inclusionary
policies. In this way, Russia, not Europe, was a democratizing frame.”</p>
<p>Schulze’s book is available on Amazon, or from University of Pittsburgh Press.</p></article></div></section>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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