Analysis

This listing contains all the analytical materials posted on the Russia Matters website. These include: RM Exclusives, commissioned by Russia Matters exclusively for this website; Recommended Reads, deemed particularly noteworthy by our editorial team; Partner Posts, originally published by our partners elsewhere; and Future Policy Leaders, pieces by promising young scholars and policy thinkers. Content can be filtered by genre and subject-specific criteria and is updated often. Gradually we will be adding older Recommended Reads and Partner Posts dating back as far as 2011.
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Why Does Congress Not Care About Normalizing Relations With Russia?

Daniel Shapiro and Arthur Martirosyan February 26, 2020 RM Exclusives
There are several major reasons why, whether under the Clinton, Bush, Obama or Trump administrations, Capitol Hill has been reluctant to normalize relations with Russia and even at times hit the brakes on reset attempts.
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A Roadmap for US-Russia Relations

Edited by Andrey Kortunov and Olga Oliker August 01, 2017 Partner Posts
This report by the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program and the Russian International Affairs Council looks at the troubled state of the U.S.-Russia relationship and recommends areas of potential cooperation.
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The Soviet Collapse and Its Lessons for Modern Russia: Gaidar Revisited

Simon Saradzhyan December 22, 2016 RM Exclusives
Twenty-five years ago the USSR fell apart. One of Soviet Russia’s first market reformers analyzed why. His findings point to big challenges ahead for today’s Russia.
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Islamic State and the Bolsheviks: Plenty in Common and Lessons to Heed

Simon Saradzhyan and Monica Duffy Toft December 16, 2016 RM Exclusives
Some scholars say if IS is recognized or contained its “state” will “normalize” like the Bolsheviks’. But IS will not abandon its expansionist agenda or stop mass killings unless it is defeated outright.
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The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model

Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews July 11, 2016 Partner Posts
The contemporary Russian propaganda model is high-volume, multichannel, rapid, continuous and repetitive. The very factors that make this model successful also make it difficult to counter. While traditional counterpropaganda approaches are likely to be inadequate, more effective solutions can be found in the same psychology literature that explains the surprising success of this phenomenon.
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Russia's Medium-Term Economic Prospects

Keith Crane, Shanthi Nataraj, Patrick B. Johnston and Gursel Rafig oglu Aliyev June 22, 2016 Partner Posts
Without major policy changes, the Russian economy will grow slowly in the medium term, even if world market prices for oil rebound sharply by the end of the decade. However, there is much that the Russian government could do internally to accelerate growth.
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The U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment of Nuclear Terrorism

Matthew Bunn, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Simon Saradzhyan, William H. Tobey, Yuri Morozov, Viktor I. Yesin, Pavel S. Zolotarev June 06, 2011 Recommended Reads
As it is entirely feasible for terror groups to produce a weapon of mass destruction given enough nuclear material, countries must take stronger steps towards prevention and security.