More on Sochi at Russian Military Reform

Volume 61 Number 1 / January-February 2014 of Problems of Post-Communism is now available on the mesharpe.metapress.com web site.

This is a special issue focusing on various aspects of the Sochi Olympics. The introduction, by Richard Arnold and Andrew Foxall, is freely available to all readers.

The other articles are written by some of the foremost experts on Russian politics from Russia, the United States, and Europe and address in greater detail some of the issues outlined in the introduction. Sufian Zhemukhov and Robert W. Orttung examine how Russia has orchestrated its security preparations prior to the beginning of the Games. Their insightful article recalls the 1972 Olympics, in which Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage. They address security preparations at the federal level and the decision in 2010 to carve off the North Caucasus federal district from the Southern federal district. Realizing the impossibility of pacifying the entire region before the Olympics, Moscow assigned the most dangerous areas to the North Caucasus federal district and Krasnodar and Sochi to the Southern federal district. This move created its own set of problems, however, as nationalists in Stavropol krai tried to have their region redistricted out of the North Caucasus.

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