Chinese Energy Companies’ Relations with Russia and Kazakhstan

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 673-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Cutler

This article concerns Chinese energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, surveying the foreign direct investment (fdi) behavior of Chinese National Oil Companies (nocs) in Kazakhstan and Russia. The first section provides a schematic overview of the general development of Chinese fdi strategy and behavior from the disintegration of the Soviet Union up until the present day. It systematically explains how that development occurred in three phases and gives some key indicators for distinguishing among the phases and the transition between successive phases. The second section looks more closely at the fdi strategy and behavior of the Chinese nocs specifically regarding Kazakhstan and Russia, periodizing it according to the first two of the three chronological phases distinguished in the first section. The third section of the article examines still more closely the phenomenon regarding Kazakhstan and Russia from the end of the last decade up until the present day, dividing the third above-mentioned phase into three subphases and inspecting the first two, of which the second is still ongoing. The fourth section of the article evaluates the conduct of Chinese nocs with regard to Kazakhstan and Russia from the standpoint of motives of corporate behavior and comparative incentive structures. The fifth section of the article concludes by introducing some caveats on the basis of a glance at recent behavior with respect to another large resource-rich country, Canada, where Chinese nocs have made massive fdi for some years now, but which has a rather different economic and social structure from Kazakhstan and Russia. The last section of the conclusion also includes a few final comments on the prospects for Chinese energy and Chinese nocs during the remainder of the decade and into the 2020s, on the basis of the analytical framework employed to structure the narrative analysis in the body of the article.

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-248
Author(s):  
Aleksei V. Pobedonostsev

Introductions. Oil production is historically an important part of government revenues in many developing countries. The Gulf monarchies are traditionally considered as typical ‘rentier states’, while the Soviet Union is usually not classified as a Petro-state, although the USSR was an important oil producer for the global economy. The Soviet Union created a unique economic model, which was based on the administrative command methods of the national economy operation. Unlike the capitalist countries of the developing world, the Soviet Union did not create giant national oil companies to manage its oil resources, but the absence of such companies did not prevent Soviet oil industry from becoming an important source of revenue for the Soviet state. Methods. The article is organized as a comparative analysis of the Soviet Union, Mexico, and Venezuela, three countries, the governments of which nationalized their oil industries at some points in the 20th century. Results and Discussions. The article shows that oil revenues played an important role in the collapse of the political regimes of all three countries after the dramatic decrease of international oil price in 1986.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Tatsiana Hiarnovich

The paper explores the displace of Polish archives from the Soviet Union that was performed in 1920s according to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 and other international agreements. The aim of the research is to reconstruct the process of displace, based on the archival sources and literature. The object of the research is those documents that were preserved in the archives of Belarus and together with archives from other republics were displaced to Poland. The exploration leads to clarification of the selection of document fonds to be displaced, the actual process of movement and the explanation of the role that the archivists of Belarus performed in the history of cultural relationships between Poland and the Soviet Union. The articles of the Treaty of Riga had been formulated without taking into account the indivisibility of archive fonds that is one of the most important principles of restitution, which caused the failure of the treaty by the Soviet part.


2020 ◽  
pp. 35-41
Author(s):  
A. Mustafabeyli

In many political researches there if a conclusion that the world system which was founded after the Second world war is destroyed of chaos. But the world system couldn`t work while the two opposite systems — socialist and capitalist were in hard confrontation. After collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist community the nature of intergovernmental relations and behavior of the international community did not change. The power always was and still is the main tool of international communication.


Author(s):  
Irina V. Sabennikova ◽  

The historiography of any historically significant phenomenon goes through several stages in its development. At the beginning − it is the reaction of contemporaries to the event they experienced, which is emotional in nature and is expressed in a journalistic form. The next stage can be called a retrospective understanding of the event by its actual participants or witnesses, and only at the third stage there does appear the objective scientific research bringing value-neutral assessments of the phenomenon under study and belonging to subsequent generations of researchers. The history of The Russian Diaspora and most notably of the Russian post-revolutionary emigration passed to the full through all the stages of the issue historiography. The third stage of its studying dates from the late 1980s and is characterized by a scientific, politically unbiased study of the phenomenon of the Russian emigration community, expanding the source base and scientific research methods. During the Soviet period in Russian historiography, owing to ideological reasons, researchers ‘ access to archival documents was limited, which is why scientific study of the history of the Russian Diaspora was not possible. Western researchers also could not fully develop that issue, since they were deprived of important sources kept in Russian archives. Political changes in the perestroika years and especially in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union increased attention to the Russian Diaspora, which was facilitated by a change in scientific paradigms, methodological principles, the opening of archives and, as a result, the expansion of the source base necessary for studying that issue. The historiography of the Russian Diaspora, which has been formed for more than thirty years, needs to be understood. The article provides a brief analysis of the historiography, identifies the main directions of its development, the research problematics, and defines shortcomings and prospects.


1998 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Michael R. Smith

The Soviet Union, including its Republics and Autonomous Regions, although remaining the world's largest oil and gas producer, is seeking the co-operation of the international oil industry to assist in further developing its vast reserves and potential resources. A legislation and taxation system that allows for foreign investment in the Soviet oil industry is being created. Many international oil companies, large and small, are currently evaluating opportunities in the country. Western companies have not been directly involved in Soviet oil operations since 1918. During the intervening years significant diversities of approach, particularly with regard to exploration methods and geological analysis, have emerged between Soviet and western geoscientists. Such differences have caused a myriad of special problems for geologists and geophysicists employed by western oil companies newly evaluating the petroleum potential of the country. These probems must be addressed and overcome before embarking on an expensive exploration or development venture.


1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 708
Author(s):  
Deborah Anne Palmieri ◽  
E. J. Feuchtwanger ◽  
Peter Nailor

Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo

This chapter examines the indicators used by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and two key decision makers in his administration, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, to assess the intentions of the Soviet Union during the period 1977–1980. Using evidence from U.S. archives and interviews with former U.S. decision makers, it compares the predictions of the selective attention thesis, capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. After discussing the U.S. decision makers’ stated beliefs about Soviet intentions, the chapter considers the reasoning they employed to justify their intentions assessments. It then describes the policies that individual decision makers advocated and those that the administration collectively adopted. It also explores whether decision makers advocated policies that were congruent with their stated beliefs about intentions and evaluate sthe impact of beliefs about intentions on U.S. foreign policy at the time.


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