post-Soviet Decade Research Articles

Efficiency of tax mechanisms of introducing feasible techniques in oil and gas industry

The need to solve strategic problems related to the ESG agenda and the technological independence of the Russian economy, the key mechanism to tackle which is the introduction of the best available technologies, have updated the need for this study of the effectiveness of an integrated approach to stimulate their implementation in the production processes of oil and gas companies. The integrated approach to the introduction of the best available technologies in the Russian practice and the effectiveness of existing financial and tax incentive mechanisms were analyzed. Empirical and economic-statistical methods were used. The results of the study show that financial and tax benefits (such as fines for excessive combustion of associated petroleum gas, subsidizing the cost recovery on loans and coupon income from the federal budget on issued bonds in order to implement projects with the introduction of the best available technologies increasing the coefficient to the depreciation rate for purchased equipment, investment tax deduction) have a positive effect. They form a complex interconnected system of state influence on economic entities in accordance with national interests and strategic objectives, which is based on the carrot and stick principle. The current system of financial and tax incentives is an indirect trigger for mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry and its further oligopolization, since it has a differentiated character conditioned by the advantage of large companies in the possibility of using preferences due to the established conditions for their application. Therefore, further adjustment is necessary taking into account the possibility of application for small and medium-sized independent oil and gas companies. The provisions of tax legislation were adopted under the influence of strategic objectives taking into account two main factors: the utilization of production capacities after the downtime of the post-Soviet decade and the solution of problems resulted from the ratification of international agreements, in particular the Kyoto Protocol of 1996, which did not put the country’s technological independence as an absolute priority. Currently, the Russian economy should be precisely based on technological independency as the basis for sustainable long-term socio-economic development and the need to achieve tougher global international imperatives in terms of environmental protection under sanctions pressure. As a result, there is a need to review the existing preferences in order to adjust them and strengthen their interconnection taking into account the results of further research in terms of the cumulative effect of the implemented organizational and economic mechanisms that contribute to achieving carbon neutrality.

Russia’s State Policy on the Development of Science at Universities: Lessons from the 90s

The article discusses the influence of state programs on research development in Russian universities in the first post-Soviet decade. After the USSR collapse the conditions for doing research in Russia worsened significantly due to a sharp reduction in budget funding with unessential other sources of support. Research conducted in higher education institutions was a small fraction of the entire system, and involvement in science was not among the primary activities of universities, except for a small number of leading universities. At the same time, mostly higher education institutions were responsible for training of highly qualified personnel. This discrepancy posed a threat for the science system. At the state level, a number of separate targeted programs was initiated, with an emphasis on fundamental research in universities. The aim of the article is to identify and systematize, in the framework of these state programs, the main factors affected the development of science in higher education institutions. The research methods include literature review, analysis of statistical data, and interpretations of surveys conducted in the 90s. It is shown that the programs’ results were modest and did not change the scale of university science in the country. The hampering factors were associated with regulatory and legal restrictions, sub-optimal choice of areas for support, underfunding and dispersion of financial support, and insufficient consideration of the former research specialization of universities. At the same time, these programs gave impetus to the discussion of the concepts of research universities, which later were implemented.

The Heritage of Tsarist Russia’s Military Forts as an Object of Postcolonial Revision: Case of the Kaunas School of Art Building 1922–1923

The aim of the article is to rethink which objects in contemporary Lithuania are worth being European cultural heritage and which are not — as many of them are now being used by the neighboured aggressive country as examples (politicised arguments) for today’s Russia’s imperial historical narratives. Results of the research demonstrate that the discussion on mitigations of Tsarist Russia’s military forts heritage is a new topic, as the recent decades in Lithuania have shown that the heritage of military forts’ architecture in the post-soviet decades is being protected even more than in Soviet Russia’s occupation period. So, this trend in Lithuanian cultural Heritage research emerges as an object worth deeper postcolonial revision. Significant is building the future from the past. Within this frame of thinking, the article invites us to remember the national history and select well-known cases from the country’s past as most valuable for national and cultural identity. The example of the famous 100-year-old Art School building in Kaunas city (which in the interwar period 1918–1940 was the temporary capital of the Republic of Lithuania) was chosen as the article’s main case study. After 100 years, there are no longer any doubts or debates as to how much the area of the 9th battery in Kaunas Oaks Hill (Ąžuolų kalnas) has “suffered” due to the fact that the complex of buildings of the Lithuanian national Art School was built in a Tsarist Russia military fortress plot. This is evidenced by the other mentioned cases — today outstanding national cultural heritage objects were built a century ago replacing Tsarist Russia’s military architecture, meanwhile, according to the laws in force today — these buildings should be protected. Conclusions. Russia’s war against Ukraine, it’s the right time to reassess countries’ critical heritage: in which situations it is worth, how much it is worth, and in which it is no longer worth protecting the architectural heritage of military power formed by Tsarist Russia, especially when it is ruined and too difficult to adapt it to the needs of modern people.

Prestige of a University Teacher in Russia: Historical Retrospective and Current State

The article studies the historical retrospective of the professional prestige of a university teacher in Russia and the criteria for assessing its current state. The study aims at finding out the «components» of the prestige of the profession in previous historical eras and at identifying modern teachers’ attitude to their profession in terms of their ideas about the evolution of the degree of its prestige. Within this interdisciplinary research, the historical aspect is represented by a narrative, which reflects a retrospective of the university history of the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods. The sociological aspect implies the method of semi-formalized expert interviews with 120 scientific and pedagogical workers of six Russian universities (2019–2021). The informants are divided into age groups: younger (35 and less years old), mature (36–50 years old), and older generation (51 and more years old). The authors come to the conclusion that the profession of a university teacher in the imperial and Soviet periods was of high prestige. The study of the works of Russian and foreign scholars shows that today there prevails the opinion about the crisis of this profession. The crisis of the 1990s caused the greatest damage to the professional prestige of higher education in Russia. The informants of different age groups compare the state of professional prestige in the first post-Soviet decade and now not in favor of the latter. When characterizing the social status of a teacher, the representatives of the older generation indicate the higher prestige of this profession in the past. The younger generation of teachers tends to take modern professional realities for granted. Two-thirds of the respondents, admitting the weaknesses in a university teacher’s social status, highly assess the respectability of the profession in general. According to the informants’ opinion, the prestige of being a university professor is decreasing because of the teacher’s individual characteristics, his/her financial state (and the level of financing in this sphere), in-class overwork, lacking time for full involvement in scientific research, and the students’ consumer attitude to the educational process. At the same time, there was noted the informants’ somewhat idealized perception of a teacher’s image in foreign universities.The results of our investigation might be applied by the authorities in order to take specific measures aimed at increasing the prestige of a university teacher. The research might be also of use for the universities’ implementation of personnel policy.

Examining US Strategic Interests in South Asia: A Decade-Long Study of Triangular Relations (US-Pakistan-India) in the Post-Cold War Era

This study is devoted primarily to the security priorities of the US towards South Asia in the post-Soviet decade of the 1990s. Indeed, the world witnessed the end of Cold war with the demise of Communist USSR. The United States, therefore, nourished more enthusiastically its inherent desire of a ‘New World Order’. For this purpose, South Asia again became a ‘land of desire’ for Washington to consolidate its preponderance in the strategically vital region of Asia. The research, therefore, delves into a decade long post-cold war security environment of South Asia by analyzing the US policies towards India and Pakistan. The study uses a qualitative methodology that includes a systematic review of existing literature and primary sources, including official documents and statements to identify the important factors that have influenced US strategic partnerships in South Asia and concludes that contemporary Indo-US strategic partnership has its roots since the end of cold war.

THE NEWEST HISTORIOGRAPHY OF YEKATERINBURG-SVERDLOVSK: TO THE 300TH ANNIVERSARY OF ITS FOUNDATION

The article summarizes the results of the study in the literature of the XXI century of the history of Yekaterinburg-Sverdlovsk, celebrating its 300th anniversary in 2023. It is concluded that the modern period of studying the history of the city is qualitatively different from the previous historiographical tradition. The main difference is that in Soviet times and in the first post-Soviet decade, history was studied within the framework of a single dominant ideology.As a result of the emergence of new theoretical paradigms in the 21st century, the history of Yekaterinburg-Sverdlovsk is studied from the positions of various theoretical approaches. Following various scientific paradigms affects the problems of scientific research on the history of the city. The modern period of the study of history is distinguished by a variety of genres of research. There are scientific and popular studies designed for various categories of readers. Among the scientific research there are generalizing works on the history of the city; works devoted to various stages of its history; problem studies. The study of the history of the city is conducted in an interdisciplinary manner, historians, political scientists, cultural scientists, philologists, specialists in the field of urban studies make a great contribution to scientific study.

Three Republics of Armenia: The Soviet Past and the Politics of Memory in Post-Soviet Armenia (1991–2018)

Abstract Deciding how to relate to the Soviet past is a key question in the politics of memory for the societies and political elites of the post-Soviet countries. Throughout the post-Soviet decades Armenian political and intellectual elites tried to form a complex attitude to the Soviet past, neither rejecting, nor appropriating the Soviet legacy completely, but assimilating it within the paradigm of national history. Within this paradigm Soviet Armenia is viewed as a stage in the development of Armenian nationhood, as “the second republic”, which links the first “attempt” at building a nation-state, “the first republic” of 1918–1920, to the “3rd republic”, i.e. the post-Soviet state of Armenia. This paradigm, in which the Soviet past is neither completely rejected, or accepted, but certain elements of it are integrated into the national history narrative, is optimal for post-Soviet Armenia, given both the peculiarity of Armenia’s historical experience (particularly the role played by Russia/USSR in the context of Armenian-Turkish relations), as well as the current geopolitical setting, in which Armenia and Russia are formal allies. This attitude, which can be described as “mnemonic ambiguity”, allows the assertion of an independent and sovereign Armenian state as legitimate, while at the same time avoiding a confrontation with an ally in the realm of memory politics.

Ethnic heterogeneity of Russian regions: Dynamics by decades in the post-soviet period

Many Russian researchers note that the most important feature of ethnodemographic processes in Russia in the post-Soviet period was the increase in the overwhelming majority of republics in the share of titular peoples. To conduct a comparative characterization of the complexity of the national composition of the population of the country's regions, as well as to compare changes in the level of ethnic heterogeneity over a certain period, the ethnic mosaic index is most often used. The purpose of this work is to identify general trends and features of changes in the ethnic heterogeneity of Russian regions in each of the three post-Soviet decades using the cartographic research method. The novelty of the proposed methodology is associated with the simultaneous display on the cartographic chart of two indicators: the dynamics of the index of ethnic mosaic and the proportion of the Russian population. In the first post-Soviet decade, the tendency to increase the mono-ethnicity of the country's regions began to manifest itself more and more, which covered more than half of the subjects, both “Russian” and national. The processes taking place in this decade allow us to speak about the initial stages of regional ethnic polarization, which replaced the predominant growth of ethnic heterogeneity in the country's regions during the Soviet period. In the second post-Soviet decade, the general trend towards regional ethnic polarization has already fully manifested itself, when the overwhelming number of “Russian” regions and most of the national subjects followed the path of mono-ethnization. In the third post-Soviet decade, there was a slight slowdown in the processes occurring in the first two post-Soviet decades, and even a partial return to the dynamics characteristic of the Soviet period. Nevertheless, the noted trends have not yet changed the general trend of the post-Soviet period, which can be characterized as an increase in regional ethnic polarization in the country due to the increase in mono-ethnicity of both “Russians” and the majority of national subjects of the Russian Federation.

ПРИГРАНИЧНЫЙ РЕГИОН В КОНТЕКСТЕ ЕВРАЗИЙСКОГО СОТРУДНИЧЕСТВА (ПРИМЕР ОРЕНБУРЖЬЯ)

The article considers integration processes in the Eurasian space, in particular – the development of economic, environmental, cultural, scientific and educational relations between the border regions of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan on the example of the Orenburg oblast of Russia. It is noted that cooperation with transboundary neighbours is based on the agreements between the border regions on trade, economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation concluded in the first post-Soviet decades. There is a description of a number of joint projects being implemented by the border regions. The author analyzes activities of educational and scientific institutions and public organizations in enhancing humanitarian cooperation between the regions of the two countries. Particular attention is paid to the Orenburg State University and the autonomous non-profit organization “Commonwealth of Eurasian Nations”. In addition, the article highlights educational migration to the Orenburg region, including factors contributing to its increase (opportunities for free education, social guarantees, etc.). The article discusses positive practices of cooperation between higher education institutions in the region and higher education institutions in neighbouring regions on the preservation of historical memory, as well as the prospects of cooperation between scholars of the two countries in the study of common history. New practices in work with young people are described (organization of International Russian-Kazakh Schools of Young Historians, Archaeologists and Ethnologists).

Alternative Book Publishing: The Terminology Evolution

The article aims to clarify the content of the concept of “alternative book publishing” taking into account the historical retrospective, as well as to consider the formation of the terminology used in studying the development of this phenomenon in Russia. An analysis of scientific literature shows that the definition of “alternative” began to be used by Russian scientists in relation to printed works and publishing activities in the post-Soviet period against the background of the cardinal socio-political transformations taking place in the country. The term “alternative press” came into scientific usage to define the late 1980s—1990s press that was not controlled by the state, was in opposition and expressed public dissent. The researchers who introduced this term into the scientific community described it as a phenomenon of the transition period. In the first post-Soviet decade, the concept of “alternative book publishing” appeared and became widely used to refer to non-state, independent book publishing of the new stage of Russian history. However, according to the author, this term is also applicable to earlier historical periods, since publishing activities, alternative to the state book publishing, have a deep tradition in Russia. This paper offers an interpretation of the concept of “alternative book publishing” in relation to different stages of national history. The author traces the formation of the terms that characterize this phenomenon and reveals their content in different historical periods.

Financing of the medical sector of Ukraine in the period of social changes of the 1990s - early 2000

The aim of the work is to consider the process of organizing the financing of the medical sector through the prism of macro-social historical processes in the period of social transformations of the 1990s – early 2000s. The research methodology is based on the principles of science, historicism, interdisciplinarity, application of general scientific (analysis, synthesis and generalization) and special scientific (historical-genetic, comparative-historical, typological) methods. Scientific novelty of the work. This issue is considered for the first time in the domestic historical science. Conclusions. It is identified that in the first post-Soviet decade in Ukraine the predominantly Soviet approach to the financing of health care sector was maintained. Residual principles of public funding, combined with the irrational use of resources, testified to the secondary nature of this sector in the system of state priorities. In the 1990s, most medical institutions, according to the Soviet tradition, remained budget-funded entities. The reduction in financial resources in the 1990s affected the budget in the form of long-term deficits, which resulted in reduced government spending on health care sector, which affected the material and technical equipment, infrastructure and staffing. That led to an increase in the share of private household funds in the financing structure of the sector. Attempts to expand funding sources through health insurance funds and charitable foundations did not have the desired effect; as such a mechanism was not fully standardized. Most of the public funds were used to finance human capital and infrastructure payments, and traditionally the cost of quality and volume of medical care was not taken into the account. As a result, medical staff had one of the lowest wages in the sector of the economy, and the medical sector lagged behind in terms of material and technical equipme.

Этнокультура ингушей в русскоязычном творчестве Бориса Харсиева

The purpose of the research is to shed light on the range of issues associated with the ethnocultural features of Boris Kharsiev’s creative work. Special attention is paid to the historical discourse that defined the paradigm of the author’s ideological and thematic searches. The paper presents the results of analysing the author’s novellas, short stories and poems, in which the defining concepts are loyalty to the homeland and devotion to ancestral memories. The research is original in that it is the first to reveal the connection between the persona and the author. The research findings have shown the relevance of the ideas contained in B. Kharsiev’s creative work, their significance for understanding processes taking place in society in the post-Soviet decades.

Sinology in Russia during the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods: Research and Politics

AbstractThis paper follows the developments in Chinese studies in Moscow and Leningrad–Saint Petersburg during the Soviet and post-Soviet decades. It provides an overview of institutions and key currents in research conducted in these two cities, while also contextualizing the general political conditions under which Sinology existed. The paper examines the ways researchers responded to the ideological requirements placed upon them in the early Soviet period, then outlines the main trends in Chinese studies after the establishment of the PRC and during the Sino-Soviet split, and, finally, traces the continuities and changes of the late Soviet and post-Soviet years. This article provides some information on existing bibliographical publications, conferences, and journals as an aid for following China-related research conducted in Russia. It also demonstrates that, while many problems continue to hamper the development of Sinology in Russia, this field has sound foundations and many promising tendencies.

Între nostalgia restauratoare şi muzeul fantomelor utopiei. Practici nostalgice în spaţiul cultural (post)sovietic

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the highly polarized Russian society revealed two main forms of remembering and coping with recent past. This past was either idealized as a time of imperial glory, national pride, and relative welfare, even if it also included periods of anomie (the late Stalin era) or stagnation (the Brejnev era), either treated as a period of significant traumas that necessitated persistent recognition and working through. As for the official memory regimes, if the first post-Soviet decade was dominated by the totalitarian anticommunist (and antinostalgic) paradigm, the 2000s brought a radical turn, with the rise of victimhood nationalism and “redemptive” authoritarianism of the Putin era. The new mnemonic regime is shaped by an official, “patriotic” restorative nostalgia that is also placed in the centre of the presidential cultural programe designed to legitimize the authoritarian system and to support the restoration of a great, mythical Russia. Against this background, new forms of counter-memory and counter-nostalgia began to manifest within both the social and cultural field. One of the most remarkable exemples is offered within the “new realities” created by the young photographer Danila Tkachenko, who’s compositions marked by a “second-hand nostalgia” challenge both the Soviet utopia and its official nostalgic-populist recostructions. By means of a special nostalgic technique based on reframing the remnants and the “trukhliashechkas” of the Soviet past – (re)interpreted as the symbols of “the perfect technocratic future that never came” –, the young artist also deconstruct the imagined “sovietness” embedded in the cultural-political products shaped by the statist patriotic nostalgia. His representations of the post-Soviet landscape are those of “a ghost of utopia”, a land of ruins, of abandoned cities, of ecological disasters, and of millions unburied deads of the GULAG.

A Review of Alan D. Roe, Into Russian Nature. Tourism, Environmental Protection, and National Parks in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, 344 pp.

The book by Alan Roe, visiting assistant professor of history at Loyola University, discusses the role of tourism for the Soviet and post-Soviet nature protection movement, particularly for the creation of national parks. The first part of the book is devoted to the problem at the “state” level, within the borders of the Russian Federation. The second part examines the role of tourism in the history of individual national parks in different regions—from Karelia to Chukotka. The final part discusses the ambitious projects of creating special protected areas and the difficulties encountered while implementing these projects, as well as in preserving already established parks during the post-Soviet decades. The monograph is based on a wide range of sources, including regional archives, personal archives of influential figures of the Soviet nature protection movement and interviews with them. The author of the review highly appreciates the work of Alan Ro as a study that fills a significant gap in Russian historiography.

Dissent, its Persecutors, and the New Russia

The post-Soviet decades have brought about significant changes of the Russian social landscape. A countless number of civic initiatives engaged in charitable operation, legal assistance, education, environment, arts and culture, etc. have emerged across Russia. Self-help communities and effective crowd-funding for all kinds of purposes are evidence of public solidarity inconceivable in the Soviet state. The second half of the 2010s were marked by a rise in investigative reporting based on state-of-the-art data journalism and the rapid progress in social media. Apparently, the impressive rise in civil society has become a matter of growing concern for the Russian government, and in the past year, the Kremlin has stepped up persecutions of political activists and investigative media. This repressive surge is reminiscent of the events some four decades ago when the Soviet government undertook to radically eliminate the dissident movement. The activists of today may be different from the Soviet dissidents, but for now, they are just as defenseless vis-à-vis the state as the dissidents were.

“Silencing” or “Magnifying” Memories? Stalin’s Repressions and the 1990s in Russian Museums

ABSTRACT Collective memories of different events often interact. There are multiple possible modes of such interaction. This article explores the interrelation of two memories in the Russian memory landscape: memories of Stalin’s repressions and the first post-Soviet decade, the 1990s. It shows that in museum exhibitions about the repressions, the 1990s are invoked in different modes. The interaction of the two memories has varying outcomes, including “silencing” through cacophonous commemoration and a “magnifying” effect of multidirectional memories. The article aims to open up the discussion of the complexity of the interrelation of the two memories.

Религиозный туризм как составляющая брендинга Архангельской области.

By the example of the Arkhangelsk region, the process of religious tourism development on the northern Russian subjects territory in the dynamics of the post-Soviet decades, is analyzed. The northern regions of the country are far from its main economic centers, which is not only a limiting factor, but also a competitive advantage for the development of niche types of tourism, which is determined by the creation and implementation of variety of tourist products that are competitive and generate stable demand. In modern conditions, a competent and consistent tourist brand development of the territory is necessary for the successful recreational services promotion on the market. The main purpose of the submitted research is to identify the religious tourism role in the tourist branding of the Arkhangelsk region.The Arkhangelsk region is a region of ancient development and settlement, characterized by a large number of Orthodox religious infrastructure objects. To identify the degree of its placement uniformity, calculations of territorial concentration coefficient were made. By results, the conclusion is justified that Orthodox chapels, temples and monasteries are dispersed and, accordingly, several administrative districts of the region are allocated, acting as the core of the development of Orthodox religious tourism. The list and structure analysis results of the already approved and announced routes of religious tourism in the Arkhangelsk region allow us to assert that the designated sub-sector of recreational economy contributes to the development of local folk crafts, individual entrepreneurship, the preservation and historical and cultural heritage objects revival, as well as the preservation of settlements remote from large centers. The arguments are given in favor of the fact that religious tourism occupies an essential place in the tourist branding of the Russian Federation studied subject. This is confirmed by the results of a survey specially developed and conducted by the authors, which was carried out in order to identify the importance of Orthodox religious infrastructure objects in the Arkhangelsk region perception system among the population of the Russian Federation. The main effective conclusion based on the article results is that the role of religious tourism in the tourist branding of the Russian Federation studied subject is undeniably high, and the further development and improvement of the Arkhangelsk region tourist brand can be largely associated with religious tourism in the organization of a systematic approach to the use of marketing tools.

SCIENTIST'S PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY: FACTORS AND PATTERNS OF TRANSFORMATION

The article is devoted to the analysis of factors and patterns of transformation the professional identity of scientists on the example of modern Russian science. The analysis was carried out on the basis of both secondary and primary sociological data. As the primary sociological data were used the materials of quantitative and qualitative research carried out in scientific centers of the SB RAS in the period from the end of the 1990s to the end of the 2010s. It is concluded that the leading factor for the transformation of the professional identity of Russian scientists was, first of all, a sharp change in the attitude towards science on the part of society and the state. We can say about the crisis in these relations is evident, which was reflected in a sharp drop of economic and social status of science. In addition, we are also talking about the weakening of the science’s cognitive role in culture. Three post-Soviet decades have shown that science, as a rule, found ways to successfully adapt to a constantly changing situation, primarily a change in the course of state scientific policy.

Демографический потенциал Красноярского края в контексте социальных трансформаций в постсоветские десятилетия

Демографический потенциал Красноярского края в контексте социальных трансформаций в постсоветские десятилетия