RESEARCH | Vera Smirnova

I. POSTSOCIALIST LAND ENCLOSURE &

GEOPOLITICS OF LAND GRABS

While the economic and social impacts of land grabs are well documented, their geopolitical implications—particularly regarding state territorial integrity—remain insufficiently studied. And as land becomes increasingly scarce, land grabbing not only leads to displacement but also establishes new forms of exclusive territorial control. This project focuses on post-Soviet states to explore how land grabbing enables both formal and informal territorial acquisition. We argue that such processes do more than shift land control; they can effectively strip states of sovereign authority, weakening their territorial governance. By connecting agrarian studies with geopolitics, this research highlights how land governance is deeply intertwined with national security, especially in territorially contested regions.

II. TERRITORY IN RUSSIAN GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT

This work problematizes traditional political-geographic perspectives by re-reading the concept of "territory" from a Russian standpoint. The history of Russian political and geographic thought borrowed from modern Western paradigms, yet offered new political technologies for controlling the land and securing the population, and hence proposed new categories of geographic analysis to legitimize such relations. In the Russian context, territory as a spatial practice of power-making takes complex political forms, operates on multiple spatial scales, and presupposes different political projects that diverge from modern Eurocentric interpretations. This project maps the "more-than-state ontologies of territory" in Russian political geography and draws connections between theoretical trends and current events in Russia's geopolitical space.

III. AUTHORITARIAN URBANISM &

NATIONAL PRIORITY PROJECTS

This project examines the political effects and regional outcomes of the recent state-led urban renewal and territorial planning initiatives in Russian cities. It develops an understanding of the influences of Russia's authoritarian governance on its regions' urban policies, which are often seen as exacerbating structural inequalities, systematic underdevelopment, and predatory center-periphery relations. Drawing on a number of different cases, ranging from the recent housing renovation initiative in Moscow and its national replications, to the local case of the National Priority Project in a provincial city in the Russian North, this project taps into broader debates about authoritarian urbanism and its pervasive modes of coloniality.