Self-Respect in the Life Course Narratives of the Soviet Silent Generation: An Analytical Scheme

In 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved, ending over seven decades of existence. Although scholars have conducted numerous postmortems on the Soviet state, most have neglected the role of symbolic discourse in explaining the dramatic Soviet collapse. Under perestroika, the opening of public space permitted the emergence of heterodox reconstructions of the Soviet past that challenged the legitimacy of the Soviet regime and state. These insurgent narratives nurtured a powerful if loosely aligned opposition that undermined the Soviet Union from within and without, strongly contributing to its demise.

Another parallel between Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia is the experience of post-imperial pain. In Russia, even more than in Weimar Germany, the loss of territories took place in a post-imperial context. Living in a country that suddenly has lost large parts of its territory, generates feelings of malaise, anger, and frustration in its inhabitants. According to David Landes, “when one’s country becomes smaller, one’s self becomes smaller. When one has known and enjoyed the greatness of Great Britain, ebb tide is hard to take.”1 What Landes wrote about the feelings of the British people after the loss of empire is, of course, equally true for the Russians after the demise of the Soviet Union. This frustration will still be exacerbated if the territorial losses are accompanied by negative consequences for people’s personal lives. And this was both the case in Weimar Germany and in post-Soviet Russia. Weimar Germany was first confronted with hyperinflation and some years later with an economic breakdown in the wake of the world economic crisis. In postSoviet Russia, there was an immediate steep fall in GDP. The emergence of new national borders led to problems in railroad connections and transport systems. Trade relations were interrupted and the state bureaucracy could not cope with the institutional chaos. Salaries and pensions were not paid, and so on, not to mention the thousands of victims of local civil wars in the post-Soviet space. It will be difficult for the population of a former imperial state to accept the new situation, especially when the loss of empire is sudden and unexpected.2

This review explores Russian academic debates around migration, highlighting theoretical, empirical and policy issues which are specific to the Former Soviet Union (FSU). In global terms, FSU migration volumes are high: the Ukraine-Russia migration corridors are second only to those straddling the border between Mexico and the United States. Russia’s wealthiest regions are the primary destinations of both internal and FSU migrants. In line with global trends, the response by host countries’ populations and authorities is one of hostility informed by media-fuelled xenophobia. The chaotic and disruptive nature of post-socialist transformations has buffered the effects and lessened the perception of the multiple crises which have enveloped the European Union in the last decade. Eurasian integration and the rift with the West have produced different economic and political conjunctures, whose defining moments are the Ukrainian conflict, Western sanctions and worsening terms of trade for key exports. In Russia, migration debates have focused on FSU-specific emergencies including demographic unbalances, the repatriation of the Russian diaspora and the prospects of large scale Central Asian migration. Migration processes, their subjective understanding as well as Russian policies directed at them, have been informed by the long history of mobility across the Eurasian space. FSU migrants who make up the vast majority of Russia’s migrant population still view the latter as ‘a common house’, a transnational space open to all FSU citizens irrespective of current nationality.

393 Ab Imperio, 4/2007 Marina PEUNOVA Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 182 pp. Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 0-521-82463-7 (hardcover edition). The scholarly analysis of postcommunist Russia during the 1990s особенно важно, так как прак- тически все статьи Виноградова по “русской проблеме” носили публицистический характер, были написаны, что называется, “на злобу дня” и не могут рассматри- ваться отвлеченно, а тем более из них не создашь коллаж с помощью “ножниц и клея”. has been characterized by intellectual battles between “particularists” and “universalists” that produced clashing avalanches of literature ranging from multidisciplinary area studies-style accounts of post-Soviet transformation to theory-based “transitological” works that viewed Russia from a comparative perspective as a case study of the transition to democracy and capitalism.1 A decade later, these deliberations largely resulted in the triumph of the comparative approach. In bitter criticism of area studies and the miscalculations of Sovietology, the majority of prominent scholars, most notably, political scientists, moved away from historical, cultural, and social explanations and into the world of abstract theories.2 Kathryn Stoner-Weiss is a wellrecognized figure of the “transition to democracy” – comparative and universalistic – paradigmatic landscape . Currently at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, 1 For a debate on transitology, see: Philippe Schmitter, Terry Karl. The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go? // Slavic Review. 1994. Vol. 53. Pp. 173-185; Valery Bunce. Should Transitologists be Grounded? // Slavic Review. 1995. Vol. 54. Pp. 109-127; Philippe Schmitter, Terry Karl. From an Iron Curtain to a Paper Curtain: Grounding Transitologists or Students of Postcommunism? // Ibid. Pp. 965-978; Valery Bunce. Paper Curtains and Paper Tigers // Ibid. Pp. 979-987. 2 This is not to say that “transitology” does not inspire a bitter criticism of its own, especially among Russian scholars. See Boris Kapustin. Modernity’s Failure/Postmodernity ’s Predicament: The Case of Russia // Critical Horizons. 2003. Vol. 4. Pp. 99-145; Andrei Mellville. Russia in the 1990s: Democratization, Postcommunism, or Something Else? // Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization. 1999. Vol. 7. Pp. 165-187. 394 Рецензии/Reviews points out the necessity to evaluate “not just the kind of government in any particular state (democratic or authoritarian)… but the degree of government and the state’s actual capacity to govern” (P. 12).5 The Soviet state was hyper-centralized and governed effectively, contends the author. In contrast, the author notes that post-1991 Russia has endured “rapid decentralization” (Pp. 45, 96), and suffers from a “weak state syndrome” that exemplifies a broader pattern of ineffective governance in young and still-imperfect democracies (P. 12). With skepticism consistent with the discipline of political science, Stoner-Weiss disregards ethnicity, culture, and nationalism as plausible causes of the center-periphery conflict that plagues post-Soviet Russia.6 She focuses instead on politico-economic factors, more specifically, on the “business-government nexus” (Pp. 98, 155), and argues that regional Stoner-Weiss previously taught at Princeton, Columbia and McGill Universities, and held fellowships at Harvard University (where she received her Ph.D. in Government) and the Kennan Institute. Among her numerous publications is an important volume After the Collapse of Communism (2004),3 which Stoner-Weiss co-edited with the maharishi of democratization discourse, Michael McFaul. Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia, Stoner-Weiss’ second single -authored volume, is a “transitological ” work that addresses Russian regionalism.4 The Russian case, argues the author, provides a wealth of lessons learned that reiterate how imperative politicoeconomic institution-building is for good governance (P. 155). Since state power is contingent upon the state’s ability to govern successfully across its territory, Stoner-Weiss 3 Michael McFaul, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition. Cambridge, 2004. 4 For a bibliography of works dealing with Russian regionalism in the 1990s, see: John Löwenhardt, Stephen White. Beyond the Garden Ring: A Bibliography. Glasgow, 1999. For Russian sources, see: Vladimir Gel’man, Sergei Ryzhenkov. Politicheskaia regionalistika Rossii: istoriia i sovremennnoe razvitie // Iu. Pivovarov (Ed.). Politicheskaia nauka sovremennoi Rossii: tendentsii razvitiia. Moscow, 1999. Pp. 173-255; A. Makarychev. Vliianie zarubezhnykh kontseptsii na razvitie rossiiskogo regionalizma: vozmozhnosti i predely zaimstvovaniia // A. Makarychev (Ed.). Sravnitel’nyi regionalism: Rossiia – SNG – Zapad. Nizhnii Novgorod, 1997. Pp. 9-129. 5 See Michael Mann. The Autonomous Power of...

This article explores the formation of post–Soviet Russian national identity through a study of political struggles over key Soviet–era monuments and memorials in Moscow during the “critical juncture” in Russian history from 1991 through 1999. We draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Pierre Nora to explain how competition among political elites for control over the sites guided their transformation from symbols of the Soviet Union into symbols of Russia. By co–opting, contesting, ignoring, or removing certain types of monuments through both physical transformations and “commemorative maintenance,” Russian political elites engaged in a symbolic dialogue with each other and with the public in an attempt to gain prestige, legitimacy, and influence. We make this argument through case studies of four monument sites in Moscow: Victory Park (Park Pobedy), the Lenin Mausoleum, the former Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy (VDNKh), and the Park of Arts (Park Isskustv). In the article, we first discuss the role of symbolic capital in the transformation of national identity. Following an examination of the political struggles over places of memory in Moscow, we analyze the interplay between elite and popular uses of the monuments, exploring the extent to which popular “reading” of the sites limits the ability of elites to manipulate their meaning. We conclude by looking at the Russian case in comparative perspective and exploring the reasons behind the dearth of civic monuments in post–Soviet Russia.

Abstract: This paper analyzes the construction and transformation of Georgia and Ukraine's post-Soviet security strategy in the context of post-Soviet Russian foreign policy in the abroad, or what is often termed the legitimate of Russian influence. After the Rose of Georgia and the Orange of Ukraine the independent/pro-Western orientation of these two countries became the main issue securitized by the Russian Federation. Therefore, maintaining territorial integrity became the top security priority for Georgia (since the early 1990s) and most likely will become the main issue for Ukraine after the Russian Federation's occupation of Crimea (March 2014) and the subsequent developments in Eastern Ukraine. The changes in the internal politics of these countries were transposed into the international competition between Russia and the EU/US, expressed through the clash of sovereign and Color Revolution paradigms for the future of post-Soviet states. In essence, these are the maintenance tools of Russian influence on the one hand, and on the other hand an exercise in Western power values across the Former Soviet Union (FSU), supported with the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership (EP) projects. The military actions of Russia in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014) were a response to the soft power applied by the West and aimed at creating buffer zones in the shape of frozen conflicts. These could be used as indirect leverage in the hands of the Russian Federation to block Western aspirations in Georgia and Ukraine.IntroductionThis paper aims to analyze the construction and transformation of the post-Soviet security perspectives of Georgia and Ukraine in the context of the post-Soviet Russian foreign policy in the abroad, quite often termed the legitimate of Russian influence by high-ranking Russian officials. This inquiry covers the panorama of the foreign policy in post-Soviet Russia across the FSU, from the early 1990s through to the present, where Georgia and Ukraine's independent and pro-Western orientation are the main issues securitized for the Russian Federation. Accordingly, the maintenance of territorial integrity has become a security priority for Georgia since the early 1990s and will most likely be Ukraine's top concern after the Crimean occupation by the Russian Federation in March 2014 and the subsequent developments in Eastern Ukraine. Therefore, it could be claimed that post-Soviet Russian and Georgian/Ukraiman security strategy (following peaceful revolutions) represent a zero-sum game.The article will explore the main topics of Russian foreign policy since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On the one hand based on orthodox geopolitics, as a legitimizing narrative for its sphere of influence across the FSU area, and on the other, the narrative of victimization of Russia and Russians by the West after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I will show Russia is fighting against its status as a second rate country, and the evident clash of Western liberal democracy and Russian orthodoxy in the Russian Federation's foreign policy drive. The Rose and Orange revolutions of Georgia and Ukraine are considered to be major security problems by the Russian Federation, which in turn gives Georgia and Ukraine reason to leave the Russian geo-political axis.The paper will reflect on Russia's reactions to emerging changes in the near abroad since the early 1990s through the peaceful revolutions until the crises of 2008 and 2014. The second part of the study will contextualize the main transformation strategies of Russian foreign policy towards the near abroad in the process of Georgia's and Ukraine's aspirations towards EU and NATO membership. In this respect the paper will point to the main tools Russia used to successfully block this process. And last, but not least, the paper will place Russian-Georgian and Russian-Ukraiman conflicts within the wider prism of the post-Soviet contradiction between Russia and the West. …

In this richly detailed and comprehensive account of environmental organizations in post-Soviet Russia, Laura A. Henry delivers an insightful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the many green groups to emerge during the post-Soviet era and the challenges they face in sustaining a vibrant movement. Red to Green delivers an important contribution to the field of contemporary Russian politics by utilizing the environmental movement to illustrate the growth of civil society and the strategies used by civic organizations to overcome the institutional and normative barriers created by the legacy of Soviet rule. Given the deplorable state of the Russian Federation's environment, a strong environmental movement would seem a logical outcome of the internationally desired democratization and participation in civil society among the Russian citizenry. Yet as Henry is careful to point out, participation in social movement organizations is not always a natural consequence of environmental grievances, and in order for green groups to survive, they must make use of preexisting norms, institutions, and social networks that both enable and constrain their efforts to advocate for a safe and healthy environment.

The aim of this paper is to bridge the gaps in existing accounts of the evolution of intergenerational social mobility in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The study makes a potentially valuable contribution to the literature by extending the spectrum of institutional and historical contexts, in which (in)equality of opportunity has been considered so far, and a chance to re-examine existing evidence by using alternative datasets and a slightly different methodology. Following the conventions in the social mobility literature in this study I approach social destinations and social origins in terms of educational and occupational attainments of children and their parents respectively. For empirical part I utilize data from four representative cross-national surveys conducted in Russia in 1994, 2002, 2006 and 2013. To study historical change in the patterns of social mobility I identify four cohorts whose educational and occupational careers unfolded during four different historical periods (two for the Soviet and two for the post-Soviet period). Being informed by several earlier studies on post-socialist countries including earlier research on Russia, I anticipated (1) a trend towards lesser (rather than greater) openness in the late years of the Soviet era, (2) a temporary discontinuity of mobility patterns during the turbulent 1990s and (3) the ‘tightening up’ of social mobility regime in the more stable years of Russia’s post-Soviet history. If any such trend existed, my findings would rather suggest that it was directed towards decreasing intergenerational transmission of educational advantage in the post-Soviet era, rather than the other way around. Also, surprisingly and quite contrary to earlier findings and theoretical considerations, the changes in the pattern of occupational mobility remained surprisingly invariant to the changes in historical and institutional context. The paper concludes with highlighting some of the remaining puzzles and possible directions for future research.

Abstract: Perestroika was the most dramatic chapter in the political history of the world in the late twentieth century. Yet, it did not fulfill what was arguably its loftiest promise--to lay firm foundations for lasting popular rule in Russia. The failure of democratization in post-Soviet Russia may be traced in part to two fateful shortcomings in perestroika: the tepidity of Gorbachev's economic reforms and Gorbachev's failure to empower popularly elected legislatures. Key words: democracy, democratization, economic reform, liberalization, national legislature, perestroika ********** Perestroika was the most dramatic chapter in the political history of the world in the late twentieth century. For citizens of the USSR, it brought both hope and trauma. For the rest of the world, it provided liberation from the scourge of the cold war's apocalyptic endgame scenario, which had defined international relations for four decades. Despite its momentousness, however, perestroika did not fulfill what was arguably its loftiest promise: to lay firm foundations for lasting popular rule in Russia. Mikhail Gorbachev may not have intended his reforms to lead to democracy, but by the time the Soviet regime unraveled in late 1991, democratization is what perestroika had brought about. At the dawn of the post-Soviet era, the three Baltic states had already forged open polities. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova had experienced significant democratization as well. Yet, in the ensuing decade, Russia, among other post-Soviet countries, underwent a powerful political reversal. In the early and mid-1990s, elections in Russia were raucous affairs. They were never entirely clean, but they were competitive. Political parties operated freely. The media were animated and diverse, and they pummeled the powerful. Today, most elections have become charades, choreographed by officeholders who obtain their desired outcome through falsification, intimidation, and manipulation. Most parties and other organizations have withered under official pressure or been taken over by the state. Independent media have been hushed. Some of the explanation for Russia's return to authoritarianism is found in developments of the post-Soviet period and in structural factors that the architects of perestroika could not possibly have altered. Yet, the failure of democratization in post-Soviet Russia may be traced in part to two fateful shortcomings in perestroika. The first was the tepidity of Gorbachev's economic reforms. The second was Gorbachev's failure to empower popularly elected legislatures, even as he touted the bodies as the vanguard of his reforms. The Economics of Perestroika Economic Reform: Some Changes, but Little Market Creation Gorbachev did undertake initiatives in economic policy that were bold by Soviet standards, but he bequeathed to post-Soviet leaders an economy that lacked even the rudiments of a market system. Gorbachev carried out three major economic reforms. The first was a revocation of the ban on private enterprise. The measure stimulated the emergence of cooperatives, or small-scale private enterprises. Some cooperatives were cottage industries that had previously operated on the black market. Others were new enterprises that emerged in small-scale retail, trade, or production. Still others were pockets of private production established within state enterprises by managers who set aside a portion of the material inputs they received and labor they controlled to produce for profit. The second reform was a new on joint ventures that ended the traditional Soviet ban on foreign investment. The third reform was the law on state enterprises, which provided for what were dubbed self-management and self-financing. Gorbachev unveiled these reforms with fanfare. Yet, he failed to put teeth in the policy changes and, to the extent that he did pursue his reforms, he was unable to overcome the entrenched bureaucratic apparatus that was jealous of his prerogatives. …

SummaryBackgroundPopulation-level data suggest that economic disruptions in the early 1990s increased working-age male mortality in post-Soviet countries. This study uses individual-level data, using an indirect estimation method, to test the hypothesis that fast privatisation increased mortality in Russia.MethodsIn this retrospective cohort study, we surveyed surviving relatives of individuals who lived through the post-communist transition to retrieve demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of their parents, siblings, and male partners. The survey was done within the framework of the European Research Council (ERC) project PrivMort (The Impact of Privatization on the Mortality Crisis in Eastern Europe). We surveyed relatives in 20 mono-industrial towns in the European part of Russia (ie, the landmass to the west of the Urals). We compared ten fast-privatised and ten slow-privatised towns selected using propensity score matching. In the selected towns, population surveys were done in which respondents provided information about vital status, sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics and health-related behaviours of their parents, two eldest siblings (if eligible), and first husbands or long-term partners. We calculated indirect age-standardised mortality rates in fast and slow privatised towns and then, in multivariate analyses, calculated Poisson proportional incidence rate ratios to estimate the effect of rapid privatisation on all-cause mortality risk.FindingsBetween November, 2014, and March, 2015, 21 494 households were identified in 20 towns. Overall, 13 932 valid interviews were done (with information collected for 38 339 relatives [21 634 men and 16 705 women]). Fast privatisation was strongly associated with higher working-age male mortality rates both between 1992 and 1998 (age-standardised mortality ratio in men aged 20–69 years in fast vs slow privatised towns: 1·13, SMR 0·83, 95% CI 0·77–0·88 vs 0·73, 0·69–0·77, respectively) and from 1999 to 2006 (1·15, 0·91, 0·86–0·97 vs 0·79, 0·75–0·84). After adjusting for age, marital status, material deprivation history, smoking, drinking and socioeconomic status, working-age men in fast-privatised towns experienced 13% higher mortality than in slow-privatised towns (95% CI 1–26).InterpretationThe rapid pace of privatisation was a significant factor in the marked increase in working-age male mortality in post-Soviet Russia. By providing compelling evidence in support of the health benefits of a slower pace of privatisation, this study can assist policy makers in making informed decisions about the speed and scope of government interventions.FundingThe European Research Council.

The article shows the interconnection in the development of social and economic institutes of the USSR and post-soviet Russia and that on the post-Soviet space and in the Russian Federation a system of the semi-peripheral oligarchic bureaucratic capitalism has occurred, of which an economic stagnation is typical. The author proposes a review of the statistical data of three post-soviet evolution stages (1992–1998, 1999–2007, from 2008 until now), the causes of the economic decline of the 1990s, with accentuating the degradation of the technological basis and growing social contradictions, negative economic, and demographic consequences. The causes of negative evolution of Russia’s economy and society are shown. The answer is given to the questions: (1) what social forces were behind the reforms in the USSR and what social forces took over the power after the USSR vanished and (2) why Russia became a dependent, semi-peripheral part of the global economic system.

The history of communication as a field and as a discipline in Russia is often viewed as the development of different communication domains. This chapter considers the evolution of public relations education as one of the branches of communication in post-Soviet Russia. The chapter raises the question how the legacy of the Soviet Union and the inclusion of Russia in the global context shape the current state of the public relations industry and public relations education. Due to Soviet ideological patterns and the country’s social-cultural and economic evolution, institutionalization of post-Soviet public relations seems to support the logic of “path-dependence”. The history of Russian public relations education and research is predominantly driven by the influence of the United States and some European countries. Greater convergence with the latter is partly determined by the similarity in the value systems of these countries and the fact that Russia has been a country-participant of the Bologna Process. Therefore, both the historical legacy and global context have had an impact on the institutionalization of public relations as an academic field in post-Soviet Russia. Today, the identity of the Russian public relations department is most clearly manifested in the establishment of an integrated degree program that combines advertising and public relations. The Russian degree’s eclectic nature, the needs of the public relations industry, and historical context are a promising foundation for the development of integrated communications.

IntroductionHow does political upheaval at home affect a state's behavior abroad? The vast domestic political change in Russia in the past twenty years has given political scientists occasion to address this question as it pertains to Moscow's foreign policy. In the 1990s, they sought answers through the lens of regime change, assessing the impact of on the country's international conduct.1 The notion that democracies do not go to war with each other (democratic peace theory) was refashioned for transitional regimes. New theories-most prominently, one that held that democratizing states are likely to behave belligerently in international affairs-were built and tested.2Although the operational assumption of the early studies-that politics, and thus foreign policymaking, in post-Soviet Russia was more than it was during the Soviet period-was relatively uncontroversial, there is disagreement about the democratic trajectory of Russian politics under Putin. There is a consensus that pluralism has declined significantly since 2000, but academic analysis is divided over the impact of Putin's first-term political reforms on the overall democratic quality of the Russian political system. Moreover, the apparent consolidation of a hybrid regime calls into question the utility of the term democratization in the Russian case.3 Focusing on the regime's democratic credentials in a study of the links between domestic politics and foreign policy under Putin could therefore obscure more than it would illuminate.This article addresses the external consequences of domestic political change in Putin's first term while avoiding assessments about the democratic quality (or lack thereof) of his regime. Given the degree of change, it seems likely that Putin's reordering of domestic politics has affected Russia's international behavior. For the most part, however, little work on this question has been conducted.4 This article fills this gap by suggesting a framework for analysis and then investigating the empirical evidence from the political change that took place in Putin's first term.Accounting for Change: A Domestic Politics FrameworkOne aspect of political change in post-Soviet Russia that seems likely to have an impact on foreign policy output is variation in the authority and capacity of the executive branch in domestic politics.5 This analytical lens, which I call executive strength-derived from the political science literature on state strength6-provides for a higher degree of analytic specificity than state-centric approaches. A focus on the executive-in the Russian case, the president, the presidential administration, the government (pravitel'stvo) and the executive ministries-avoids certain assumptions in the state strength literature that have proven problematic in the post-Soviet context.7 This concept is applicable across the post-Soviet states, where the executive has, on the one hand, played a central role in public life and, on the other, varied in strength.The concept of executive strength involves two related considerations: first, the relative power of the executive vis-a-vis other political institutions; and second, the level of fragmentation within the executive. The first aspect refers to the degree of competition between the executive and other institutions in a polity-in other words, the strength of actors in domestic politics outside of the executive. Relevant actors include the legislature, regional governments, the judiciary, and interest groups. All of these groups are centers of possible interference in the executive's policy behavior; they can prevent the executive from translating its preferences into policy outputs.8Whereas direct influence on concrete matters of policy is the most extreme manifestation of this phenomenon, the diffuse effects of criticism, independent behavior, and intense lobbying are also important. When the executive is forced to confront strong political institutions in the formulation of policy, outcomes are likely to be affected even if coercion is not employed. …

Explaining Foreign Policy: International Diplomacy and the Russo-Georgian War. By Mouritzen Hans, Wivel Anders. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2012. 223 pp., $25.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-1-58826-835-8). Russia vs. the EU: The Competition for Influence in Post-Soviet Space. By Tolstrup Jakob. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014. 295 pp., $75.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-1-935049-93-7). Strategic Cooperation: Overcoming the Barriers of Global Anarchy. By Michael O. Slobodchikoff Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. 147 pp., $53.14 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0739178805). Recent prominent events involving Russia, such as the Russian-Georgian war, the launch of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Ukrainian crisis, and the secession of Crimea from Ukraine, clearly illustrate that Russia is repositioning itself in the international arena by forcefully demonstrating that the post-Soviet space is and will continue to be a focus of its foreign policy. A growing number of studies have rightly registered the above trend of post-Soviet Russia's resurgence in international politics under Putin's rule2 yet not reached a consensus over how to best explain it. The lack of commitment to a particular approach in studying Russia's foreign policy is understandable given the previous failure of both International Relations and Soviet studies to predict the radical changes in the late 1980s.3 Nevertheless, the issue of “getting post-Soviet Russia right” is of high importance because, given its geopolitical position, demographic makeup, and power resources, an assertive Russia will have a significant impact on world politics. In this regard, the three books reviewed here provide new data and valuable insights. Although each addresses a different topic and makes its own contribution to the field of its focus, the books deliver an important overarching message about how to understand Russia's external behavior in general. Intentionally or not, the books bring to light the relevance of a geopolitical perspective. Explicitly, as in the case of the book Explaining Foreign Policy , or more implicitly and even unintentionally, as with the other two books, geopolitics emerges as a powerful explanatory paradigm that helps better understand the intricacies of Eurasian international politics. Geopolitical motives appear to govern foreign policymaking in not only Russia but also the European Union and the United States that are often willing to put democracy promotion aside for the sake of balancing against Russia. Both democracies and …

Russian Children's Literature Before and After Perestroika Maria Nikolajeva (bio) Several years ago Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, declared flatly that Russian cultural issues are not a high priority compared to the more urgent question of the Russian economy. Such a statement would be a catastrophe for any civilized nation; but it is especially disturbing that at a time of great changes in post-Soviet Russia, an enormously important field is being totally ignored, namely children's culture. This circumstance is all the more remarkable given that during the seventy years of the Soviet regime, one of the official slogans was "All the best for our children." Children were declared the only privileged class in the classless socialist society.1 During the last ten years, since Mikhail Gorbachov's proclamation of reconstruction ("perestroika") and openness ("glasnost"), one has been able to learn from the Russian media, among many other hideous disclosures, about hundreds of thousands of children in orphanages and at least as many homeless runaways, about children who contract HIV in hospitals, about children damaged in the wake of Chernobyl, about physically and mentally disabled children living under abominable conditions, and most recently about children affected by the war in Chechnya. It is altogether too easy to forget that even children who lead a relatively protected life with both parents, enjoying a fairly decent living standard and regular schooling, are beginning to suffer from rapidly deteriorating cultural facilities. It is impossible to understand the political situation in Russia today without looking back into Soviet as well as earlier Russian history, sometimes as far back as the eighteenth century. It is equally impossible to understand the cultural situation and the drastic changes that perestroika brought to children's culture unless we set them in a broader context. The history of Soviet children's literature is as artificial and misshapen as the Soviet state itself.2 Russian children's literature has always been privileged to number great authors among its practitioners. Indeed, Russia's most famous writers, such as Alexander Pushkin or Leo Tolstoy, have contributed to children's literature, often finding inspiration in folklore.3 In the years immediately preceding 1917, however, children's literature in Russia was dominated by sentimental and moralistic stories and verses, often written by authors of little talent. The views on children and education during that time dictated the norms of writing for children: the world of children's literature was restricted to the nursery, and the characters were sugar-sweet, well-behaved children in starched clothes. Turn-of-the-century writers were far from folk poetry and thus also from the classical heritage. Thus it was not until the 1920s that children's literature in Russia stood on the threshold of renewal. The reason was the general change in artistic norms brought about by the process of building up the new "socialist" culture in the new Soviet state. The primary principle for this transformed society was to repudiate every old, "bourgeois" form in art. The Russian working class was to create its own "socially pure" culture. This is probably one of the most obvious cases in the history of human culture of how artistic norms may be directly guided by social and political circumstances.4 As there were no available models for the new forms in art, the 1920s in Russia became a period of ardent experiments in every creative field. Education and propaganda were the two most important missions. Many Russians were illiterate or semiliterate; it was essential that art should be comprehensible by the masses and therefore primarily visual. As a direct result of this new concept of art, it was during the 1920s that the first Russian picture books were produced. Early Soviet picture books, such as The Ice Cream Man (1925), written by Samuil Marshak and illustrated by Vladimir Lebedev, were strikingly similar to contemporary political posters. Such stylistic resemblances do not occur merely because many poster artists, Lebedev among them, also produced picture books for children. More important still is the general orientation of postrevolutionary art toward the concrete. Because the aim was to increase art's accessibility by making both text and illustration concise and loud...