Vol. 2 (2016): Sotchi 2014 : La Russie à l'épreuve de ses jeux, les jeux à l'épreuve du Caucase

Introduction to this issue

This article expounds the different stakes that Russia had in organizing the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. The author reviews the numerous challenges of that Russia had to face, including security and economic dimensions, and the legacy and the management of multi-ethnicity in a region fraught with historical traumas and numerous recent conflicts. The article underlines the complexity of these challenges and the ability of the Russian state to manage them, at least partially, in an international tense context. While supporting his argument with elucidations on the link between internal mechanisms of power and investment strategies, the author establishes ample outlooks on regional economic development.

This article discusses the role of the new media in the creation of informational discourses of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. The Sochi Olympic Games are represented as a “media-event” or a global sport event with the images formed by the mass-media rooted in the digital technologies. The article focuses on the official and unofficial discourse on the Olympic Games in Sochi by analyzing the new media representations including the contents of the Russian internet web-sites and social networks (such as VKontakte). The analysis also covers the data taken from the survey of Russian citizens’ perceptions of the Sochi Olympics during the pre-Olympic period (January-February 2014). It demonstrates the formation of cleavages in the Russian public opinion around the organizational issues of the Sochi Olympics and construction of national identity and shows how convergence and clusterization of the new media restrict their access and put them under control.

This article aims at analyzing the expropriation problem in Sochi, host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Based on the critical paradigm theory, it attempts to analyze the distribution of benefits, as well as the economic and social costs to the residents of Sochi, whose property was requisitioned in favor of the Olympic project. Among them, we can identify the “winners”, who received compensation for their requisitioned property, and the “losers” who did not receive any compensation. The article aims at answering the following research question : in a context of state control, and in the absence of legal property rights, how were certain residents of the Imeretinskaïa Bay able to legalize their property rights and receive financial compensation or compensation in kind for the requisition of their real estate property? Based on the results of field studies in Sochi in 2010, 2011 and 2013, the article exposes five sets of explanatory factors: the international visibility of the Olympics; the mobilization and organization of a protest by the inhabitants of Sochi ; a model of ultra-centralized state control ; legal uncertainties which are characteristic of the transient property regimes in post-Soviet states ; and the legitimacy of informal property rights to the community and local political elites.

This article focuses on the context of the elaboration and the implementation of public policy in view of large sports events in Russia. This subject is analysed through the specific prism of the implementation of stray dogs’ eradication policies in Kazan and Sochi before the 2013 Universiade and the 2014 Winter Olympic Games respectively. The article underlines subtle interactions between local actors, as well as neo- patrimonial logics that characterise public policies of urban renewal. This brings the author to develop a “engine of neo-patrimonial growth” model, specific to the post- Soviet context.

This article traces the trajectories of Russia’s projection of its external power in its neighbourhood through the analysis of its bordering and de-bordering practices. It looks specifically at what happened in Abkhazia between 1993 and 2013, focusing on its role in managing the international border along the Psou River and on its impact on the Georgian-Abkhaz ceasefire line along the Inguri River. It argues that, while the appreciation of borders is often limited to symbols of sovereignty, Russia aptly employed bordering and de-bordering practices as policy tools to expand its clout much further than its national external borders. It also illustrates the importance of the implementation component of border regimes. By looking at macro- and micro- dynamics, as well as underlining the gap between official discourse and practice, this article explicates some of the mechanisms underpinning Russia’s cycles of retreat and expansion in the Caucasus.

This article centres on the tensions shaping the Cherkess renewal in the context of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. The localisation of the Olympic Games intensifies identity-based mobilisations and drives Cherkess elites to question and evaluate the foundations of the identity that they promote. Two different tendencies are at work in this renewal. On the one hand, part of the elites considers the customary and pre-Islamic components paramount, giving way to a reestablishment of “habzism”, deriving from the “Adyghe Habze” custom codes. On the other hand, a number of identity entrepreneurs invoke Islam and try to place it at the centre of what they consider the foundations of Cherkess identity. The author explores how different groups position themselves vis-à-vis these two narratives, using data gathered between 2004 and 2012 by interviewing representatives of the Cherkess elites in numerous republics of the North Caucasus.