Nume: POPA Cosmin

Tema: Istoria Mării Negre

Partener: Institutul de Istorie Nicolae Iorga

Proiect: In quest of a new Empire - the Russia’s Energy Policy in the wider Blcak Sea Region (1992-2010)

Date de contact
ppcsmn@yahoo.com

Curriculum Vitae

Address(es)
BUCHAREST, STUPILOR Street 10, no 10, BL EF 22, SC 4, AP 43, SECT 4
BUCHAREST, MINIS Street 4, no 10, BL X6, SC 1, AP 41, SECT 3 (CORRESPONDECE ADRESS)

Nationality
Romanian

Date of birth
04.08.1974

Desired employment / Occupational field
"Nicolae Iorga" History Institute / research

Work Experience

  • 1997-present - Researcher III-rd grade - Research of USSR’s history, history of Central and South-Est Europe Writing and editind features and documentaries, managing and administration
  • 1997-2002 - Analyst research, editor, Head of Department, executive director - Setting the agenda, editing, coordinating the reporters of International Affairs Department
  • 2004-2009 - General director - Management, administration of the editorial, technical and commercial activity

Name and address of employer

  • "Nicolae Iorga" History Institute, Bucharest, Aviatorilor Ave. no.1, ZIP Code 011851
  • Mediafax News Agency, Tudor Arghezi street no 3B, Bucharest 2, ZIP Code 020941
  • Adevărul SA, romanian newspaper with more than 150.000 copies per edition, Bucharest, Piata Presei Libere 1, corp D1,ZIP Code 013701
  • NewsIn, news agency, Bucharest, Piata presei Libere 1, Corp A3, ZIP Code 013743

Education and training

  • 1992-1997 - University of Bucharest, Faculty of History, five years of studies
  • 1994-1997 - Moscow State Pedagogical University
  • 1999-2007 - University of Bucharest/Faculty of History

Title of qualification awarded

  • Diploma in history
  • Ph D in history

Principal subjects/occupational skills covered

  • History/ universal contemporary history/ romanian contemporary history/ history of communism
  • Russian contemporary history/history of communism/internationla relations Contemporary history of USSR/ history of foreign affairs/ history of communism in Central and South-Eastern Europe, dissertation’s title "Soviet Union’s Policy in Eastern Europe 1945-1953, Soviet Mechanisms of Crisis Management"

Level in national or international classification

  • Bachelor in Science, History
  • Philosophiae doctor

In quest of a new Empire - the Russia’s Energy Policy in the wider Blcak Sea Region (1992-2010) - project summary

The Black Sea area lends itself to some steps to define different things. Invariably, those that prevailed were the perspectives of the Great Powers, interested to control the commercial routes, to control the Narrows, to control the riverain countries, and in contemporaneity to control the energetic routes. In a larger sense, as defined today by EU and USA, the Black Sea is a part of the Extended Middle East, political space due to structure in a political system not just the countries in the Black Sea Hollow, but also the riverain countries to the Caspian Sea and those in the Central Asia. Russia, the power that lost control in the region after the Fall of Soviet Union, and also after huge petroleum and natural gas deposits were found in Central Asia and Caspian Sea, prefers to define the Black Sea area in a stricter sense, connecting it to the notion of “close neighborhood”, regarding CSI states and Balkan states, both in the areas in which the Russian influence manifested in a constant manner, from a historical perspective.

The proposed project is built on a few premises which plead for the idea of a “Renaissance Age” for the Black Sea Region. For the first time in the last four centuries, the Black Sea Region would go back to the nodal point status of the world economic processes, being a part of the solution, in a medium perspective, of the energetic sources problem.

Russian Federation’s diplomacy regarding a wider area of the Black Sea is a first rate political offer, as well as a generator for pushing the area into turmoil. The collapse of Soviet Union drew after it a dramatic change, and the Black Sea stopped being a “soviet lake”. The current establishment in Moscow consider the fall of USSR as “the greatest geo-political catastrophe” of the 20th century, for the Black Sea Region instead this event would be considered “the great liberation”.

The project intends to depict the attempt of the Russian Federation to keep under control the Black Sea area since the collapse of the Soviet Union till nowadays, and the reply of the Russian diplomacy at the USA and NATO, as well as UE strategies to set a balance power in the region. The project endeavor is focused not on the energetic perspective only, but intends to reveal the ideological component also, as well as the political philosophy of this processes in development. The meaning of the Great Powers’s involvment (national and multinational) in the Black Sea Region seems to be limited not just to reach out a specific energetic project, but implies a promotion of a certain type of establishment, economy, society and values for the states that own the petroleum and natural gas deposits. In this regard, Russia is not an exception.

The resources of fossil fuel are the main vector to modernize the states in the area, under the conditions that none of the great actors has the absolute control on them. As an extended sense is used for the Black Sea area, the author pleads for an extended sense of the energetic politics. The over-national entities, organizations and companies which initiate and finance these projects intend to submit the states holding resources and those on which vital section cross through as part of a larger political project, which assume the ideological harmonization, the choice of a similar economic model which confers the initiator actor a major lever of influence in the national government act.

The project assumes an integrated vision on the Russian Federation strategies in the Black Sea Hollow. The approach sets in the core of the project the energetic politics, as bearers of the development models, the paradigm in which Russia acts in a close connection to its internal situation. Does Russia look for a balanced arrangement, which offers the possibility to express itself politically and economically or it has the intention to create a new imperial space, feeding the initial failure of the CSI states as independent states?

Relevant publications

  • Nasterea Imperiului, lucrare apărută cu sprijinul Ministerului Culturii, Editura Fundaţiile Pro, 2002 (Birth of the Empire, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Publishing House Fundaţiile Pro, 2002, Awarded by Writers’ Guild of Romania for History, “Copy RO” in 2002;
  • Informational Office of the communist parties: a Soviet attempt to organize post-war Oriental Europe, "Revista Istorică", 1-2/1999;
  • Stalin at 70 years old, Climax of absurd, "Revista Istorică", 5-6/2002
  • Rumania under Communist Rule 1948-1989 and Romania between 1990 and 2004 or Transition with National Specific, of the collective work History of Romania, Ed by Ioan-Aurel Pop, Ioan Bolovan, Editura Institutului Cultural Roman, Bucharest, 2005;
  • George F. Kennan and Nikolai V. Novikov, A Cold War Mirror Image, "Studii şi Materiale de Istorie Contemporană", IX, 2010.