№ 46, 2024. On the birthday of Yaderny Kontrol – the Rhino Day – PIR Center is pleased to announce the release of the Anthology “PIR Center. Selected Works. 1994-2024”

MOSCOW. NOVEMBER 15, 2024. PIR PRESS. “In compiling this Anthology, we aimed not only to uphold the principles of work quality and lasting relevance but also to adhere to the principles of authorial and editorial diversity. What do I mean by this? The principle of authorial diversity means that, out of respect for our regular contributors, we endeavored to limit each author’s representation in the Anthology to no more than one, or in rare cases, two pieces. Meanwhile, the principle of editorial diversity required us to select articles, book chapters, and report excerpts not merely from one or two core PIR Center publications (we could have easily limited ourselves to Yaderny Kontrol and Security Index) but from the entire body of our publications, spanning the 30 years of PIR Center’s activity,” – from the Foreword by Dr. Vladimir Orlov, Founding Director of PIR Center, to the Anthology “PIR Center. Selected Works. 1994-2024.”

On November 15, 1994, 30 years ago, the first issue of the Yaderny Kontrol (in Russian) journal was published. Yaderny Kontrol was the predecessor of the Security Index, published as a journal from 2007 to 2016, and, since 2019, in the format of an Occasional Paper Series and the e-journal Yaderny Kontrol (in Russian). The Yaderny Kontrol journal has been recognized by the Russian and international establishment and the expert community as a source of exclusive analytical information on global security issues.

A rhinoceros from an engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer Rhinoceros (1515) became the journal’s symbol. Despite their apparent invulnerability, three out of five rhino species are on the verge of extinction, embodying a security paradox.

PIR Center’s publishing activities are inextricably linked with educational projects on nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, disarmament, and global and regional security. Therefore, in 2024, to commemorate the birthday of the Yaderny Kontrol journal – the Rhino Day – PIR Center is pleased to announce the release of the Anthology “PIR Center. Selected Works. 1994-2024.” The book has been published in partnership with the “Ves’ Mir” publishing house and with the support of the Presidential Grants Foundation. The digital version of the book is available here (in Russian).

The Anthology features selected articles, analytical materials, and expert interviews published over the past 30 years under the auspices of PIR Center. These works reflect the evolution of perspectives on nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, and global security issues. Readers will find scholarly and practical works addressing challenges and threats to the NPT, as well as efforts to strengthen it; the provision of nuclear security; prospects for developing nuclear energy in Russia and worldwide; and a range of other pressing issues in global and regional security.

A substantial section of the materials in the Anthology is dedicated to military-political issues: maintaining strategic stability, countering the threat of terrorism (including the use of weapons of mass destruction), challenges to European security, the development of combat drones and robotics, military-technical cooperation, conventional arms regulation, and more. The Anthology’s authors also closely examine the shaping of a new world order and the significance of these processes for Russian foreign and defense policy. Readers may be surprised by how accurately relevant articles written ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago remain today.

This publication is intended for specialists, students, and graduate students in fields such as international relations, international security, Russian diplomacy, foreign policy, and the history of international relations, as well as for a broader audience – anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of the evolution of global and regional processes during the era of significant geopolitical shifts from the 1990s to the 2020s and to see how leading Russian scholars and practitioners have assessed this evolution.

Key words: Anthology; Global Security

PLS

F4/SOR – 24/11/15