Mikhail Minakov

Mikhail Minakov’s research project aims at an analysis of how the political cultures and systems of eastern European and northern Eurasian societies changed between 1989 and 2022. Specifically, Minakov examines how political institutions and practices have developed in such a way as to culminate in the war, democratic decline, and autocratic growth we see in 2022. This project seeks to demonstrate how former Soviet peoples were trying to reinvent democracy, capitalism and national statehood while experiencing revolutions in their public and private spheres, and trying to integrate into larger international structures. Minakov tests the hypothesis that the “post-Soviet experiments” have led to an in-built systemic contradiction, where political freedom has undermined socioeconomic well-being, yet autocracies have provided households with better income for the price of de-emancipation––until the moment at which these inner and international contradictions led to military conflict.