Researcher
Matthew Blackburn
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Summary
Matthew Blackburn is a Senior Researcher in NUPI's Research Group on Russia, Asia and International Trade. His main research agenda addresses politics in Russia and Eurasia, including both domestic politics and interstate relations. He has researched political legitimation and popular responses to state discourses, with a particular focus on how regimes mobilise on the ideational level and cope with the challenges of nationalist and populist opposition. He also researches subnational variation in Russian society and regional politics, and studies how contemporary political systems evolve, alternating between periods of stabilisation, normalisation and mobilisation.
He is currently developing project proposals on comparative politics, and new competition for influence among the former-Soviet states in light of the war in Ukraine.
He is also an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University.
Expertise
Education
2018 PhD, (Russian and East European Studies Programme) University of Glasgow.
2013 International Masters in Russian and Eastern European Studies and International Relations, Glasgow University and KIMEP University (Almaty
Work Experience
2023- Senior Researcher, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)
2021-2023 Ulam Research Fellow, University of Warsaw
2018-2021 Postdoctoral researcher, Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University
Aktivitet
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Clear all filtersEscaping the Long Shadow of Homo Sovieticus: Reassessing Stalin’s Popularity and Communist Legacies in Post-Soviet Russia
It is often asserted that the values and attitudes of Homo Sovieticus, marked in the rising “popularity” of Stalin, live on in contemporary Russia, acting as a negative factor in social and political development. This article critiques the argument that attitudes to Stalin reflect unreformed Soviet values and explain Russia’s authoritarian regression and failed modernization. Our critique of this legacy argument has three parts. First, after examining the problematic elements of the Levada Center approach, we offer alternative explanations for understanding quantitative data on Stalin and the repressions. Second, we examine interview data showing that, for those with a pro-Stalin position, “defending Stalin” is only a small part of a broader worldview that is not obviously part of a “Soviet legacy.” Third, we consider survey data from the trudnaia-pamiat’ project and find common reluctance to discuss much of the Stalinist past, which we argue represents an agonistic stance. Thus, we interpret attitudes to Stalin within a broader context of complex social and cultural transformation where the anomie of the 1990s has been replaced with dynamics toward a more positive identity construct. On the one hand, the antagonistic mode of memory is visible in statist and patriotic discourses, which do not seriously revolve around Stalin but do resist strong criticism of him. On the other hand, we find many more in Russia avoid the Stalin question and adopt an agonistic mode, avoiding conflict through a “de- politicized” version of history.
The dangers of Europe’s blindness to a long war in Ukraine
While Western leaders still talk of total victory against Russia, they risk ignoring a grim reality with no end in sight.
Research group for Russia, Asia and International Trade
Research group for Russia, Asia and International Trade