In post-Soviet Russian politics, Boris Nemtsov is one of the most tragic figuresand not only because he was shot dead, at the age of 56, in close vicinity to the Kremlin, the locus of Russias power. The transparency of evil in this specific case was shocking: Nemtsovs murder was filmed by a surveillance camera. The video tape confirms the demonstrative and insolent character of the assassination. His death illuminated a core feature of the current regime that tolerates, if not incites, extra-legal actions against those it considers to be foes, traitors, or members of the Fifth Column. In this volume Boris Nemtsov is commemorated from different perspectives. In addition to academic papers, it includes personal notes and reflections. The articles represent a range of assessments of Nemtsovs personality by people for whom he was one of the leading figures in post-Soviet politics and a major protagonist in Russias transformation. Some authors had direct experiences of either living in, or travelling to, Nizhny Novgorod when Nemtsov was governor there. The plurality of opinions collected in this volume matches the diversity and multiplicity of Nemtsovs political legacy. The volumes contributors include: David J. Kramer, Senior Director at the McCain Institute for International Leadership in Washington, DC; Miguel Vázquez Liñán, Associate Professor at Seville University; Yulia Kurnyshova, Research Fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv; Ekaterina Smagly, Director of the Kennan Institute in Kyiv; Henry E. Hale, Professor at The George Washington University in Washington, DC; Howard J. Wiarda (ᶧ2015), Professor at the University of Georgia; Sharon Werning Rivera, Associate Professor at Hamilton College; Tomila Lankina, Associate Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Andre Mommen (ᶧ2017), Professor at the University of Amsterdam; Stefan Meister, Director at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin; Vladimir Gelman, Professor at the University of Helsinki; Vladimir V. Kara-Murza, coordinator of the Open Russia movement and deputy leader of the Peoples Freedom Party of Russia.
Andrey Makarychev is guest professor at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Science at the University of Tartu. His areas of expertise include EURussia studies, the EURussia common neighborhood, and regionalism in the post-Soviet space. He is co-author (with Alexandra Yatsyk) of Celebrating Borderlands in a Wider Europe. Nations and Identities in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia (Nomos, 2016) and Lotmans Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). His articles appeared in Russian Politics, Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Ethnopolitics, Geopolitics, Slavic Review, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, and other academic outlets.
Dr. Alexandra Yatsyk is a Researcher at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. She studied sociology at Kazan State University and was as visiting fellow or lecturer at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, University of Tartu, University of Tampere, George Washington University in Washington, DC, as well as at the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe in Lviv. Her articles have appeared in, among other outlets, Demokratizatsiya, Problems of Post-Communism, International Spectator, European Urban and Regional Studies, Sport in Society, Nationalities Papers.
My father did not enjoy praise or even constructive analysis of his work during his lifetime especially in his last years but at least he gets it now. I would like to thank all of the authors who contributed their essays to this book and hope that their works will provide deeper insight both into my fathers political legacy and into Russia as a whole.Zhanna Nemtsova
