My Interest in the South Caucasus and the EPRC
By: Fsi Student Programs
Tags: Stanford, Fsi Students, Russia, Internships

About the author: Justin Tomczyk ’20 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with the Economic Policy Research Center. He is currently an a Master’s student in Russian, East European, Eurasian Studies, at Stanford University.

I have long had a deep interest in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. My initial exposure to the region came from hearing my mother’s stories of life in Poland, which ranged from her experiences growing up in a small village to witnessing martial law and the start of Solidarity in the 1980s. I decided to start studying Russian language in the winter of 2013. Inspired by the Sochi Olympics and what seemed to be a high point in American-Russian relations, I thought that learning Russian would be an interesting hobby. Within weeks of starting to study the language, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in Euromaidan which lead to the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the outbreak of fighting in Eastern Ukraine. Learning Russian quickly shifted from a hobby to the center of my studies and would take me to Ukraine, Washington D.C, and the US Embassy in Lithuania.

Years later I received a FLAS grant to study Russian abroad for a full academic year. While I remained interested in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, I found myself increasingly drawn to the South Caucasus. In addition to appreciating the region’s deep, rich history and breathtaking nature, I found the South Caucasus to be a dynamic and often misunderstood area of the world. Although all three countries of the South Caucasus were constituent republics of the USSR, outside observers often smother the individual and unique elements of each state with a single “post-Soviet” label. The ongoing conflicts in the region (Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia) were often interpreted entirely through the lens of confrontation between Russia and the western world. Not only is this inaccurate and not reflective of the instigating factors of the conflicts, but this also removes agency from the decision makers and communities most affected by these conflicts. Of the three South Caucasus states, I chose to move to Armenia in the summer of 2017 and to study Russian language at the Russian-Armenian Slavonic University. Through a year of classes, a revolution, countless adventures, and an additional year of working as a researcher covering political violence in Russia and the former Soviet Union, my initial interest and appreciation of the region would have grown into my focus of my academic and professional life.

As I entered Stanford, I decided that my bulk of my research would cover the activities of the European Union in the South Caucasus. Specifically, I am interested in understanding what role that instruments like the Eastern Partnership and the bilateral treaties between the EU and Armenia and Georgia have on economic development. Having personally seen the capabilities of the EU in fostering sustainable, innovative economic growth and the potential in the digital economy, I felt that this would be a fascinating area to study. I found the activities of the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC) particularly relevant to this area of study. As an intern with the EPRC my work is largely focused on Georgia’s growing economic ties to the European Union. Specifically, this is focused on Georgia’s role in the “EU-Asia Connectivity Strategy”, a set of policy initiatives designed to better connect the European Union to the emerging economies of Asia. In examining Georgia’s role in this strategy, I am investigating two main questions — what is Georgia’s role in Transcaspian infrastructure projects, and what is the role of the EU in the development of Georgia’s digital economy? The first area of focus mostly relates to the physical construction of infrastructure along Georgia’s Black Sea coast, including terrestrial connections to neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan. Ideally in this strategy Georgia would become a cornerstone of the west-east flow of trade from Europe to Asia. The second area of focus mostly relates to the development of the Georgian digital economy and its relationship to the European Union’s Single Digital Market. This could include the physical construction of infrastructure such as 5G Towers and fiber optic networks but is also grounded in the improvement of legal compatibility between Georgian and European standards for data protection and storage. I hope to compile this information into a potential white paper that may be published following the summer.