PSCRP-BESA Reports No 132 (June 08, 2025)
by Alexander Shpunt
In the recent issue of monitoring, the reader will find many unexpected things—a study of a fragment of the post-Soviet world integrated into the EU, the Visegrad countries, and the connection between modern conflicts and the economic history of the period of reforms in the USSR, associated with the name of Kosygin. There will also be unusual methodological approaches, and there will be results that researchers admit that they did not expect.
1. “Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program” – a project of the Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center of the American Foreign Policy Council – a monograph Svante E. Cornell titled “Is Central Asia Stable? Conflict Risks and Drivers of Instability” in the highest degrees interesting his methodology.
Director of the Research Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy, as well as Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, summarized the events of one year—2022—and through this lens was able to determine the tendencies and trends of the conflicts. As a rule, researchers either offer an analysis of the current political agenda, the strategic contexts of which have not yet been formed, or study old historical events that have already left the current contexts. Professor Cornell is extremely rare and therefore especially interesting.
The author focuses on four key episodes of 2022: the border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as internal crises in Kazakhstan, the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan, and Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan. From the author’s perspective, hidden factors of instability may have previously been underestimated.
Cornell systematizes the centrifugal forces that contribute to the region’s destabilization. These include systemic economic problems, including high unemployment and social inequality; the insufficient structure of post-Soviet state institutions, especially law enforcement and security agencies; and the growing economic and political stratification among the region’s states.
However, despite these risks, Central Asia has avoided some of the threats characteristic of other post-Soviet spaces, such as full-scale interstate wars, extensive external sponsorship of separatist movements, military coups, and large-scale challenges from radical Islamism. Taking a detailed look at each of the 2022 crises, Cornell offers an in-depth etiological analysis of them.
The Kazakh crisis in January 2022 reflects, in the author’s opinion, the danger of resistance by informal power structures to the institutionalization of state power. The conflict in Gorno-Badakhshan (Tajikistan) is revealed as the result of a deliberate policy of the central government to establish complete control over a region that traditionally enjoyed special autonomy and was populated by Ismailis.
The unrest in Karakalpakstan (Uzbekistan) in July 2022 was caused by an attempt to exclude the republic’s right to secede from the constitution. The September 2022 border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which we recently covered in detail, shows how border disputes inherited from Soviet times, as well as intense competition for limited water resources, lead to regular incidents on the ground, despite the efforts of the authorities.
Cornell’s analysis is the identification of centripetal factors that can counteract instability. The author emphasizes the growth of regional cooperation among Central Asian states and the processes of internal reform. These trends are seen as key elements that contribute to increasing its resilience to external shocks. The condensed format of this monitoring does not allow us to give Cornell’s work the attention it deserves.
2. Prepared by Eurasia Observatory, a project initiated by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime report “Crime and Peace: The Future of Organized Crime Beyond the Russo-Ukrainian War” examines the transformation of organized crime in the context of the ongoing conflict. The authors argue that regardless of the outcome of the conflict (ceasefire, unstable peace, or decisive victory of one of the sides), criminal actors quickly adapt, exploiting new opportunities and vulnerabilities, many of which have been in the making for years.
The central thesis is the dynamic nature of organized crime, capable of rapidly adapting to geopolitical shifts. The report focuses on several key dimensions of this adaptation: human capital (“People”), control over territories and resources (“Control”), specialized skills and knowledge (“Expertise”), material resources (“Hardware”) and financial flows (“Money”).
People area highlights population migration, which creates new vulnerabilities for exploitation, as well as the involvement of former combatants in criminal activities. The Control section examines changes in spheres of influence, the reformatting of logistics routes, and the establishment of criminal control over strategic resources and territories, especially in the context of reconstruction. The Expertise category highlights the increasing role of specialized skills, such as cyberspace, information warfare, and mass psychological processing of the population, which are becoming key assets not only for armies but also for criminal groups. The Hardware aspect analyzes the proliferation of weapons, military technologies, and their integration into illicit markets. Finally, Money reveals the evolution of financial schemes, including the use of cryptocurrencies and complex cross-border transactions for money laundering and financing.
The report finds that the war has significantly accelerated and deepened existing trends, creating unprecedented conditions for the expansion and sophistication of criminal networks. In conclusion, the authors propose to consider future scenarios for the development of organized crime and emphasize the importance of international cooperation to minimize negative consequences in the post-war period.
3. The works of historians of socialist economics are usually less relevant for those, who study contemporary political reality. We shall review “The Shchekino Method: Flexible Production with Socialist Characteristics”—an article by James A. Nealy, an author from the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University, published by Cambridge University Press in Contemporary Magazine of European History .
The author convincingly shows that the Kosygin reform of the USSR period, of which the Shchekino experiment was a part, outlived both the authors of the experiment and the USSR and still has a significant influence on the strategic vision of economic regulation in the space of the former Soviet republics. It has already become a scientific consensus that dirigisme is the main method for adjusting the economy in post-Soviet countries. But it is the work of James A. Nealy shows the doctrinal, if one can call them that, roots of such dirigisme approaches—and why they seem so persuasive to national leaders.
The author challenges the thesis about the inflexibility of the Soviet system’s inability to adapt to the conditions of computerized, “flexible” production by studying the activities of enterprises. It is shown that the CPSU, represented by Premier Kosygin, initiated its own model of flexible production, unintentionally—and this is important—creating the preconditions for the transition from state socialism to a market model. The Shchekino experiment demonstrated positive results: in four years, 1,039 out of 6,800 workers were dismissed at the Shchekino Chemical Plant, labor productivity increased by 226%, and funds were invested in social infrastructure. Combining professions became widespread, and by 1969 the CPSU Central Committee approved the spread of the method to other enterprises. By the mid-1980s, the method had been implemented in more than 11,000 enterprises, covering over 21 million workers, and was called the “Shchekino method.”
The author notes that elements of the Shchekino method survived after the collapse of the USSR, having been transformed to meet the needs of the market system. Unlike its capitalist counterparts, flexible production with “socialist characteristics” guaranteed employment and was used to invest in the public good, which continues to shape its appeal in the eyes of the political leadership of post-Soviet countries. Numerous practices associated with the Shchekino method, including multitasking and changing job boundaries, have become entrenched in the labor legislation of post-Soviet Russia, as well as other former Soviet republics.
4. The western regions of Ukraine are often united into a single ethnocultural space. But this is a primitive generalization – to talk about two Ukraines , eastern and western. The understanding is so primitive that it completely distorts the meaning of the fragmentation of this young state. More careful researchers see five territories within Ukraine – eastern, central, southern, western and Transcarpathia – each of which has its own political and cultural code.
The smallest in area and population, the most remote from the center, separated from the main territory by the Carpathians and therefore almost an enclave territory, Transcarpathia rarely turns out to be the focus of researchers. Due to this, we could not ignore the article by Luca Mórocz “Resilient Roots : The Persistence of Hungarian National Identity in Transcarpathia Amid Conflict and Change” in Journal of International Service (JIS) of the American University of Washington.
Current geopolitical shifts make the preservation of Hungarian ethnic identity in the region a unique phenomenon. The Russian-Ukrainian war has drawn particular attention to the status of ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe, highlighting the potential for internal ethnic tensions to transform into international conflicts. The case of the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia is indicative of Hungary’s ongoing disputes with Ukraine over minority rights.
The stability of Hungarian identity, the authors note, is due to the complex interaction of internal cultural factors (language, traditions) and external structures such as education, media and religious organizations that support national loyalty.
It was significant for us that Luca Mórocz not only presents facts and the historical basis for the survival of the Hungarian minority but also conducts a comparative analysis of two concepts that have developed in the academic community to explain this resistance of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia to external erosion.
The theory of marginality, which suggests that ethnic Hungarians maintain their identity through strategic adaptation to their peripheral position in Ukraine, finds little empirical support. The study shows that Hungarian identity in Transcarpathia is characterized by persistence and resistance rather than rational or calculated choice. The author’s census data from 1850 to 2001 show little change in the composition of the Hungarian population, casting doubt on the idea of a purely situational identity.
In contrast, the primordial approach views identity as stable, emphasizing the importance of cultural “givens” such as language, blood ties, and traditions. The Hungarian language, a member of the Finno-Ugric language family, is unique in the region, reinforcing the idea that Hungarians are inherently distinct from most neighboring ethnic groups. However, the case of the Rusyns in Transcarpathia, who assimilated into the Hungarian nation despite being a distinct ethnic group, challenges the idea of a fixed and unchanging national identity.
So what, according to Luca Mórocz, preserves the identity of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia?
Religion, especially the Reformed Church of Transcarpathia, plays a crucial role in preserving the national language and identity, serving as a vehicle for cultural heritage and cohesion, the author tells us. The Greek Catholic Church also contributed to linguistic and cultural integration, despite its suppression and forced integration into Orthodox institutions during the communist era. Religious institutions continue to function as transnational entities, maintaining cultural ties across national borders.
5. The Visegrad Group countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) can be called part of the “post-Soviet world” with no less right than the countries that formed directly from the fragments of the former Soviet Union. Almost half a century of total ideological control by the CPSU, combined with the “iron curtain”, still serves as the most important configurator of social and ideological processes in the countries of the former Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
Presentation “Social cohesion and the inclination towards conspiracy mentality: comparison between Germany and the Visegrad countries,” published in the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe by a multinational team of authors, is essentially a report on a large interstate sociological study on the relationship between social cohesion and a tendency toward conspiracy thinking. It is especially interesting that the fifth country in the study is Germany, which, no less than the Visegrad countries, carries elements of the post-Soviet space, especially in the eastern regions.
The empirical basis of the study was a representative survey conducted in five countries: Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, as part of the project “Political Culture, Democratic Values and Disinformation: Identifying Democratic Pillars and Weaknesses”. The total number of respondents was 5,342 people ( N > 5,342).
On average, respondents across all countries demonstrated low levels of perceived social cohesion (M = 42.6 out of 100) and a significant tendency toward conspiracy theories (M = 6.6 out of 10) – something that is certainly familiar to researchers of the republics that emerged from parts of the former USSR from their research. This fact clearly shows that, at least in the topic under study, the social behavior of the Visegrad countries, Germany, and the post-Soviet republics is identical. As for the differences between countries, they were, of course, studied by the authors of the report. Hungary (M = 7.2) and Poland (M = 7.1) exhibit the highest levels of conspiracy thinking, while Germany has the lowest (M = 5.5). Germany shows the highest level of perceived social cohesion (M = 45.1), followed by Poland (M = 44.8). Hungary has the lowest level of perceived cohesion (M = 38.9) .
Surprisingly, the strongest correlation between social adaptation and resistance to alienation was found in the Czech Republic (β = -0.43, p < 0.01 ). This indicates the high importance of social integration in the Czech Republic for preventing feelings of detachment and alienation. It was also unexpected for the authors that the psychological drivers of conspiracy beliefs (detached uncertainty) have a stronger influence in Germany (β = 0.42, p < 0.01 ) compared to all Visegrad countries. For Germans, the feeling of lack of influence on social processes has a much stronger impact on their tendency to hold conspiracy beliefs than for residents of the Visegrad countries – the large number of “unrepresented” voters of the Alternative for Germany in power illustrates this thesis.
The brief format of the monitoring does not allow us to dwell in detail on the numerous significant results of the study—we invite the readers to familiarize themselves with the text of the report and move on to the conclusions.
The study demonstrates that social cohesion is a key factor in counteracting the spread of conspiracy beliefs. People who feel socially integrated and trust others and institutions are less susceptible to conspiracy thinking.
Alexander Shpunt is Israeli and Russian researcher and expert in theory and practice of information and analytical work in the field of politics, resides in Haifa. Since 2016 he served as a professor at the National Research University “Moscow Higher School of Economics. In 1999 – 2011 he also served as the Executive director of the “Effective Policy Foundation”, the largest think-tank in the RF at that time, and in 2011 founded and headed the Institute of Political Analysis Tools, specializing in systems for monitoring political behavior.