Translation into Russian of Russian Modernization: A New Paradigm

Application summary

The funding is for the translation into the Russian language of our recent book Russian Modernization: A New Paradigm (Kivinen and Humphreys editors). The book, published in 2021 by Routledge is a very ambitious and far-reaching piece of scholarship. The book carries a foreword by President Tarja Halonen, and has been praised by renowned internationals scholars such as Emeritus Professor Göran Therborn: "A beacon of cool, perceptive empirical analyses and open-ended theorization… Illuminating." Professor Richard Sakwa assessed the book thus: “Containing a wealth of theoretical insight and empirical analysis by an impressive range of specialists, this pioneering volume applies the concept of modernisation while modernising the concept itself." The book was the final volume of an eight-year Center of Excellence project that was funded by the Finnish Academy. The director of the CoE was Professor Kivinen. The project was extraordinarily productive, with over 40 books, numerous special editions, refereed articles, and large social impact through teaching, expert consultation, and media dissemination. This book was a culmination of the research project. Written by both Russian and Western scholars, many of them highly distinguished specialists, it is a multi-sided, major contribution to Russian studies, a book that twill be of great benefit to both scholars and decision-makers. Russia’s relations with its neighbors have been deteriorating, its internal circumstances worsening in terms of transparency of governance, and independence of the media, and academic freedom. This book addresses many of these aspects but also helps illuminate the inner tensions and antinomies within Russian society, politics, and economy. We feel this book needs to be read in Russia as urgently as in the West. There is no other single volume in either Russia or the West that covers all major challenges of contemporary Russia.