Now for the questions that making me work!
Who do you regard as the lesser of two evils in the current Azerbaijan vs. Iran spat?
I should caution that I am biased in matters pertaining to Azerbaijan, that my interest in the region centers around the South Caucasus, and that I feel more and more disconnected from the imbroglio spanning much of the territory from Iran to the Mediterranean.
Iran has legitimate interests at stake in terms of maintaining its territorial integrity, protecting its regional transit schema, and opposing the growth and empowerment of a pan-Turkic foe with access to powerful weaponry. Nevertheless, Iran has played both sides of the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute and proved itself in its weakened state to be a fairly useless security partner for Yerevan. Moreover, Armenia (such as it is able) appears to be in a state of relative
detente with its Turkic neighbors. I am unsure how Iran's actions might affect that situation, but without further information I would be forced to deem them "unhelpful". Conclusion? Eh, I dunno.
Favorite federal subject in the North Caucasus?
I don't have a lot of knowledge in this area, but I will go with
Kabardino-Balkaria as it is the setting of a book I am reading,
Bourdeiu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus, which functions both as a theoretical and historical text on Soviet development and ethnic violence, and the biography of Musa Shanib, an ex-socialist turned ex-liberal dissident turned nationalist and/or Islamist.
Favorite of the five former Soviet countries in Central Asia?
This has always been a difficult question for me, as (a) I think there are different points of interest in a few different countries, (b) it is an important decision when choosing non-Russian regional languages to study, and Central Asian languages have more resources stateside than anything Armenian and Georgian. I would put Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan in the top three, but I suppose I would ultimately choose
Uzbekistan for sake of practicality--economic and population size, varied geography, role in the region, etc. That said, Kyrgyzstan probably has my heart, and Tajikistan is a lurker owing to its 1990s civil war and border with Afghanistan.
Rank who did the most harm to Georgia: Bidzina Ivanishvili, Eduard Shevardnadze, Mikhail Saakashvili and Sviad Gamzakhurdia.
As guilty as I feel saying it, I can't speak to Ivanishvili's overall legacy, so I will confine myself to the first three (chronologically).
1.
Gamsakhurdia - "Zviad", as his name was spelled in the books I read back in 2017, took power and immediately oversees the fracturing of the Georgian state.
2. Mikheil Saakashvili - Despite his status in Color Revolution mythology, not only did he experience his own turn toward authoritarian practices, but his gamble in 2008 led to further annexation and (based on a seconds-long thought process on my part) has seemingly embedded Georgia permanently between two potential futures: continued occupation disunity and occupation, or a slow return to the Russian fold.
3. Eduard Shevardnadze - While not great by any means, he balanced many factions in the process of a civil war's de-escalation and brought a semblance of stability to the country. "The Silver Fox" could probably be a poster child for successfully playing a weak hand well. Moreover, intentionally or otherwise, Shevardnadze's ~decade in power laid the groundwork for further democratization in the 2000s, and he had the sensibility to leave office when the jig was up.
What are your favourite authors and books on Soviet history and on post-Soviet history?
Probably the most interesting and unique book pertaining to Soviet history that I have read was not written by a Soviet expert at all, but instead by Odd Arne Westad, a China specialist and twice or more historian of the Cold War. In
The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Westad chronicles, among other things, the relationship between Soviet development ideology and its Third World policies, as well as the circumstances and decisions surrounding the USSR's eventual entanglement in Afghanistan. It also presents a rather small-c conservative view of Soviet foreign policy when compared to the popular image of a sinister cabal manning the helm of an attempted world revolution. Westad's later book,
The Cold War: A Global History is similarly fascinating, but less focused on the superpowers.
In terms of the post-Soviet period, a fairly interesting book on Russia is Mikhail Zygar's
All the Kremlin's Men is a fairly interesting look at both Putin's Russia and the men who have helped to shape it. It was the first time I had seen the claim that Putin's accession to the presidency was part of a scheme to avert a Communist victory and prevent re-nationalization. Just as interesting is his portrait of Vladislav Surkov, Kremlin ideologist, and his depiction of the runup to the 2012 Russian presidential election, where it appears some Russian state liberals were hoping for an independent "center-right" Medvedev re-election campaign. I don't treat it as entirely true owing to its reliance on human sources and personal interviews, but it can be a useful resource. I enjoyed Stephen Kropotkin's
Armageddon Averted for a view of late Soviet decrepitude and the mess spanning the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Outside of Russia proper, I enjoyed Lincoln Mitchell's
Uncertain Democracy: US Foreign Policy and Georgia's Rose Revolution, and James Cooley's
Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia. (Together they also make for a funny narrative of the role of US aid in the region)
