post-Soviet Russia Research Articles

Дискуссия о тоталитаризме: новое прочтение

In the 90s, immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a wide discussion on the topic of totalitarianism took place in the scientific community. Over the past three decades, aspects of totalitarianism have been discussed repeatedly in academic journals and public platforms. Structural, ideological, semiotic and other aspects of the totalitarian state and totalitarian consciousness were analyzed. Without exaggeration, the discussion about totalitarianism can be considered significant for post-Soviet Russia. One of its most important aspects is political. Significant volumes of material have been accumulated. However, the political science discussion develops one-sidedly and does not cover several significant aspects of modern life. Over the past twenty years, especially in connection with the massive spread of broadband Internet, totalitarian practices have begun to be applied not only by states, but also by corporations. This article analyzes what the totalitarian trends of our time are.

Local self-government in the Russian Federation: the trajectory of conceptual development

The article is devoted to the changes in the conceptual understanding of the institution of local self-government that has been taking place in the last three decades. The submission to the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the Draft Federal Law «On the general principles of the organization of local self-government in the unified system of public authority», which took place at the end of 2021, allows analyzing the trajectory of the development of the institute of local self-government in post-Soviet Russia from the point of view of a more global time and conceptual perspective. The purpose of this work is to identify the trajectory of the development of the conception of local self-government in RF. Research attention is focused on identifying the conception of local self-government formulated in official documents, a gradual change in the conceptual interpretation of this institution. It is shown that the main shiftin the conceptual understanding of local self-government occurs along the axis of institutional independence / institutional dependence of local self-government on state authorities. The development of the conceptual understanding of local self-government in post-Soviet Russia proceeds along the trajectory from a public concept (local self-government as an independent activity) to a state one (local self-government as a form of exercising power) and to a hyperstate one (local self-government as a link in a unified system of exercising authority).

After Space Utopia: Post-Soviet Russia and Futures in Space

Roman Privalovs After Space Utopia: Post-Soviet Russia and Futures in Space er en kreativ, utfordrende og grundig doktoravhandling om rollen fremtidsforestillinger om verdensrommet spiller i dagens Russland. Roman Privalov’s After Space Utopia: Post-Soviet Russia and Futures in Space is a creative, challenging, and comprehensive doctoral dissertation about conceptions of futures in outer space in Russia today.

‘Dreiser’s way:’ A modern take on the writer’s legacy

The review argues that the coauthored monograph addresses a major gap in modern studies of American literature. I. Morozova managed to bring together an international team of scholars, including specialists in Dreiser’s oeuvre. The book features several modern schools of thought. Dreiser’s image as a critic of American society is revised to highlight his portrayal of racial domination, segregation, and the ‘black’ and ‘white’ essence in his novels. The poetics of Dreiser’s prose is analyzed from the viewpoints of feminist criticism and urbanist poetics. The comparative approach allows for an accurate depiction of the uniquely American version of dandyism and helps to explain how the plot and imagery of An American Tragedy transcend various media. A study of the history of Dreiser’s publications in the USSR and a post-Soviet Russia shows the creation and subsequent dismantling of the Soviet ‘Dreiser’s canon.’ The book closes with two new translations.

Reducing poverty levels as a driver of Russian economic growth

The article examines the impact of poverty on human development in post-Soviet Russia. At the same time, it is poverty that is considered as the main limiting factor in the transformation of human potential into human capital — a specialized source of income for its owner, which can ensure economic growth and social progress at the present stage of development of civilization. In addition, the study substantiates the conclusion that the low level of total individual income of the Russian population reduces domestic consumption (total final demand), which also narrows the possibilities for expanded reproduction of the country's economy. The proposed econometric model of multiple linear correlation proves the inverse dependence of economic growth on the share of the employed population with incomes below the subsistence level and the direct relationship between economic growth (GDP per capita at purchasing power parity) and the size of the population belonging to the middle class. The authors substantiate the need for further improvement of existing statistical methods used in the Russian Federation to determine the level of poverty of the population. An attempt has been made to develop our own indicator for assessing the share of the middle class of the population, which will significantly simplify the existing methods for determining the level of well-being of society. The study outlines proposals for adjusting government policy to overcome social inequality and promote poverty reduction, with the goal of achieving the greatest social welfare in modern Russia and ensuring high-quality economic growth for a long period. The proposed recommendations may be useful in developing a draft national Program to increase incomes, reduce poverty and inequality.

“New Ballet Criticism” (1993–2003) About “Soviet” Ballet: Forms of Cultural Recycling

In post-Soviet Russia ballet criticism, similar to opera criticism, has an almost 30-year-old history, but the period perceived as the brightest and most significant is the first period, spanning the 1990s and the early part of the first decade of the 21st century. For this New Ballet Criticism (as it has been labelled by Vadim Gaevsky), as a part of New Russian Music Criticism (as defined by Olga Manulkina and Pavel Gershenzon), a number of features have become normative: provocative styles and titles, a demythologization of works and of choreographers, the use of comparisons with mass culture in narratives, and ironic subtext. Similar to opera, political discourse has become important in ballet receptions of that time. Reviews of Soviet-era ballet productions (as well as other types of performance) often refer to the main elements of Soviet mass art — Soviet films, as well as symbols of the totalitarian culture, such as sculpture and ideological materials. The styles and headlines exploit numerous Sovietisms that are familiar and recognizable by the audience. Just like in opera reviews, the recent “Soviet” element in ballet receptions is synthesized with Soviet mass culture and fashionable trends in the country via the cult of Western cinema and the influence of domestic and foreign literary, scholarly and epistolary texts. But unlike opera criticism, ballet narratives clearly record the diversity of genres of “Soviet” ballet (ranking Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich among them); ballets since 1961 have been interpreted as a transformation of the “Soviet” element under the influence of George Balanchine’s choreography; the concept of “Soviet choreography” also implies the unreachable, for example, in the embodiment of heroic moods and the creation of mass scenes. Four forms of cultural recycling in ballet receptions are identified: recycling, recycling à la ballet, double recycling and quasi-recycling.

Использование культурно-исторической теории для анализа образовательного неравенства: потенциал, барьеры, перспективы

<p>The cultural-historical theory, which is basic for Soviet and post-Soviet Russian psychological science, is based on the idea of "specifically human" higher mental functions. The key concepts for the theory of "social situation of development", "zone of proximal development" include as a central element the cooperation of the child with other people. The article shows that in the works of followers of cultural-historical theory psychology in the USSR and modern Russia, very little attention was paid to the problems of development and learning related to differences in the characteristics of the sociocultural environment and interaction with teachers and peers. Explanations of this phenomenon are offered. The examples of the development of L.S.Vygotsky's ideas in the studies of educational inequality in foreign sociology are analyzed, the importance for Russian science of using cultural-historical theory to understand the mechanisms of the relationship between the peculiarities of social circumstances and the dynamics of child development, the analysis of pedagogical discourse is substantiated.</p>

Filmmaking as Cultural Aggression


 
 
 The article discusses cinematic depopulation, the strategy of appropriation of the colonized by the colonizer widely used in the Soviet and post-Soviet cinema made in Ukraine and Russia and, until now, never analyzed in academic literature. The cinematic depopulation is a mode of filmic representation whereby a given ethnoscape (Ukraine) is cleansed of its national community (Ukrainians) and instead is populated by the colonizer (Russians) as if it were an integral part of his historical territory. As a form of cultural imperialism, this strategy has, until quite recently, been widely used in both Soviet and post-Soviet Russian and Ukrainian filmmaking to promote the idea of Ukraine conceivable outside of and without the Ukrainian language, culture, and other attributes of Ukrainian identity.
 
 

The Weimar/Russia Comparison Revisited

Abstract Just over a quarter-century ago, the authors published a widely read essay comparing Weimar Germany and Post-Soviet Russia in historical perspective. After Russia’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine, comparisons of Vladimir Putin’s regime with Nazi Germany are once again tragically relevant. Reexamining our arguments from 1997 shows the continuing relevance of the variables we emphasized in that essay: the burdensome legacies of the past imperial regime, intense international pressure to marketize post-Soviet Russia’s statist economy, and Russia’s weak party system. Three main issues in our earlier article, in retrospect, required greater development: pinpointing the time span needed to assess regime change, distinguishing mobilizational and patrimonial forms of ‘anti-liberal statism,’ and exploring more fully the foreign policy options for would-be defenders of the liberal global order facing powerful revanchist challenges. We conclude that this sort of ‘replication’ of earlier research should be encouraged more often among political scientists adopting the comparative-historical approach.

Проблема разработки теории бюрократии: случай России

The article raises the problem of using transformations in Russia over the past three hundred years as a material for creating a theory of bureaucracy that differs from Weber's concept. This problem is solved on the basis of the application of concepts developed at the Rostov School of Political Sciences of the Southern Federal University (Russia). A conceptual apparatus is being developed that allows studying Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet bureaucracy in connection with the process of forming an opposition in Russia, which is free from stereotypes of bureaucratic activity, behavior and thinking. Such an opposition could not arise either in monarchical, Soviet, or post-Soviet Russia. The reasons are explained in the theory of bureaucracy, which contains a reconstruction of Marx's definition of bureaucracy as a social parasite organism, a reflection of many social contradictions and the embodiment of political alienation. The cognitive situation in modern Russia is discussed; ways for the researcher to circumvent the choice imposed on him by the post-Soviet government, the specifics of the genesis and structure of the police society in the country.

A systemic crisis: political consequences of the 1989 Tiananmen square events

The article attempts to revise the understanding of the nature of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis and its consequences in the context of comparison with Soviet/Russian history of 1980-1990s. Several dozens of studies and op-ed pieces focused on the problem earlier (especially in Russian-language literature) but these papers lacked Chinese sources, intended to liken the Tiananmen Square crisis to the Russian agenda, and simplified complicated cause-effects relations of the Chinese historical process. As a result, the conclusions are limited to the question of the necessity of a decisive crackdown on any turmoil or political manifestation as a sole tool to protect one nation’s stability and prosperity. China’s stability and prosperity after the Tiananmen Square Crisis should not be seen as a result of crackdowns. Paradoxically, despite the conservatives’ victory in 1989, China got back to the path of reforms several years after the Tiananmen Square events. It can be attributed to the complex set of internal and external factors, and the freezing of China’s political reforms was just one of them. Moreover, the process was facilitated not only by overcoming its political crisis but also by observing the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe. Faced with the threat of being ousted from power, China’s elites consolidated – a factor that became crucial for the implementation of systemic market reforms in the 1990s. The author concludes that a similar situation was observed in post-Soviet Russia in 1998-2000: the Russian financial crisis and several events including Second Chechnya Campaign became the ‘backbone crisis’ of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.

Vocational Guidance in Schools as a Factor of Social Stratification: New Practices in the Russian Education System

The world of work is undergoing changes, necessitating a new approach to guiding school students in their career choices by the government, society, and businesses. In recent years, numerous initiatives have been implemented to expand young people's exposure to various professions. However, there is still no clear nationwide plan for establishing partnerships between schools and representatives of the real economy in terms of vocational guidance. Today's youth require organised career guidance support because relying solely on the experience of parents and previous generations when choosing a profession is no longer sufficient. During the Soviet era, the state played a more significant role in ensuring the welfare and social protection of workers, while industrialisation provided universal career trajectories and clear guidelines on preferred professions and education. Today, individual human capital has become a crucial resource for social mobility and high-paying jobs, and the growth of the service sector and technological progress have elevated the demand for highly skilled labor rather than specific professions in certain economic sectors. The first part of the article focuses on reviewing important questions that need to be addressed when considering this issue. Is there a need for centralised efforts by society and the state to organise vocational guidance activities and assist teenagers in choosing a profession today? What is the transformation of the discourse on school vocational guidance in post-Soviet Russia? In the second part of the article, based on the results of a pilot study on the opinions of young men and women in Moscow, the embodiment of educational priorities in actual practice is analysed. The author concludes that the problem persists in the sense that school vocational guidance experiences are still unequal and strongly tied to pre-professional training, initially built on disparities in opportunities to explore professions, particularly in STEM fields.

Participation of Russian Neo-Pagans in the Activities of Russian Political Parties (1990–2017)

The paper investigates the participation of neo-pagans in the political life of post-Soviet Russia. Until now, such studies have mostly focused on the rituals and mythology of neo-pagan practices and the study of their sacred books and artifacts. According to the author, contrary to stereotypes about the escapism of neopagans, the analysis shows that neo-pagan organizations are very active. Neo-pagan organizations are characterized by their focus on infi ltration into the parties and organizations, either leftist (the Russian Communist Workers’ Party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Russky Lad, created in 2012 within this party) nationalist (the National Power Party of Russia (NDPR), the Russian All-People’s Union (ROS), the National Democratic Party of Russia), ultra-liberal (PARNAS, Navalny Headquarters) or ecological (Union of Greens of Russia). There are a number of cases when the leaders of regional branches of political parties simultaneously performed the functions of priests of pagan cults. For example, the head of the Russian Bloc – Saratov movement Pavel Galaktionov or the secretary of the Kirov district Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in Saratov Vladimir Maslov, who in 2014–2017 lobbied for the construction of a neo-pagan temple in the center of Saratov. In 2002, the same claim was addressed by the capital’s neo-pagans to the Moscow authorities under the slogan, “Let there be a shrine on Poklonnaya Hill!” In addition, the paper reveals the infl uence of neo-pagan fi gures on the right-wing youth, provides extensive evidence on this subject, and examines the attitude of neo-pagans (both ideologists and their ordinary followers) to Christianity.

<i>Otherness</i> as Basis of Artistic Chronotope: Script vs. Film

The article describes the existential category of the Other and the Otherness in V. Sorokin's screenplay for the film called 4, which was directed by I. Hrzhanovsky in 2004. The Otherness helped V. Sorokin to realize his artistic idea of post-Soviet Russia. According to Jean Paul Sartre, the Other conveys a feeling of the last days: without a single scene of physical violence, the reader develops a feeling of nausea. The essence of the Other is based on the principles of rejection, fear, and inevitability; the Other is the only verifier of one’s existence. In 4, the frightening atmosphere of the Other World is created by such artistic means as coding, dying, masking, and deconstruction of symmetry. They highlight the artistic intent to portray the chaotic nature of being and the absence of time, where human fate is meaningless, and people are reduced to functions in the game of life. The Otherness of the chronotype gives the script and the film a new code: the loss of the holy number four desacralizes existence, thus condemning the world and people in it to a life of hopeless dismay.

From nonhuman to postsecular: transformation of the difficult heritage of Soviet repressions in post-Soviet Russia

ABSTRACT Transforming social perceptions of those repressed by the Soviet regime in the late eighties, prompted urgent action to deal with difficult Soviet heritage, especially with landscapes of the dead buried in mass graves. However, human engagement in transforming these traumaspaces revealed that these landscapes had already been transformed by non-human actants - plants and trees – often as witnesses to the crimes themselves. Therefore, in planning their commemorations, human memory activists had to negotiate the landscape with non-human actants and often attribute some human significance to the memory work they performed. This article discusses how Soviet traumaspaces were slowly transformed from non-human commemorations to commemorations meticulously planned by humans. From the very beginning, these human commemorations used both religious and secular languages. However, when the state actively engaged in the commemoration of the victims of Soviet repressions after 2015, a new constellation of power relations between civil society, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the state emerged, which, over time, led to the appearance of post-secular commemorations.

Современный российский парламент: специфика формирования и элитарный состав

The article analyzes the formation and development of the institution of parliamentarism in modern Russia. The process and results of parliamentary elections in post-Soviet Russia, qualitative and quantitative composition of the deputy corps are considered. It is revealed that the Russian ruling elite was formed in difficult conditions, despite this, there is a consistent strengthening of the vertical of power in modern Russia.

A. S. Makarenko and the fate of his legacy in nowadays Russia

Introduction. The problem of educating the younger generation is one of the most important in modern Russian pedagogy. Russian scientists and teachers are carefully studying the legacy of their outstanding predecessors, the teachers of the past. Anton Semyonovich Makarenko (1888-1939) is one of such scientists who have left a unique mark in pedagogical science and practice. The article was written in connection with the 135th anniversary of his birth. The purpose of the article is to show the importance of Makarenko's personality in the development of Russian education. As tasks, the author highlights the characterization and evaluation of his achievements in practical work and pedagogical theory, the presentation of previously unknown biographical data of the teacher, his colleagues and relatives. Materials and methods. In the process of working on the article, the author used the following research methods: analysis of historical and pedagogical, memoir and fiction literature on the topic of the work, biographical, historical and comparative methods, as well as axiological (value) approach to the study of pedagogical innovations by A. S. Makarenko. Results. Up to the present time, Makarenko's personality, his practical activities and literary works cause heated debates among Russian practical teachers and theoretical teachers. The author characterizes Makarenko's achievements as a teacher, manifested in a factually reliable and accurate disclosure of the events of the biography of an outstanding teacher and his selfless efforts in the re-education of pupils and the pedagogization of their social environment. Makarenko is shown as a prominent writer and teacher. In fact, he is the founder of Russian artistic and pedagogical literature ("Pedagogical poem", "Flags on towers", "Book for parents"). Conclusion. The Soviet education had developed itself for decades in the main stream of the pedagogy of Makarenko. But the post-Soviet Russian education seems to avoid the Makarenko’s legacy. A. S. Makarenko is one of the most important teachers in the history of Russian education. His personality and pedagogical heritage need further study by historians of pedagogy.

Silences and Omissions in Reporting Epidemics in Russian and Soviet Prisons, 1890-2021.

Penitentiary systems serve as breeding grounds for all kinds of diseases. Drawing upon new archival materials, this article examines the history of the management and reporting of epidemics in the Russian prison system from the late Imperial period to the present day. We use the case studies of cholera (1892-1893), typhus (1932-1933), and pulmonary tuberculosis (the 1990s) to examine how the general political and social conjuncture at different times affected the response of prison authorities to epidemics to show that, notwithstanding major shifts in society and polity, there was continuity in the management of epidemics by prison authorities in the long twentieth century. However, there were fundamental discrepancies in the way late Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russia reported epidemiological emergencies in prisons. We argue that Russia's tumultuous past has reinforced the tendency among the Russian penal administration towards a lack of transparency that has persisted to the present day, in relation to the latest, COVID-19, epidemic.

A Turkish Mayor Goes to Moscow: Vedat Dalokay and Development Politics in the 1970s

In 1975, the mayor of Ankara requested Soviet assistance to build a public transportation system and affordable housing in the Turkish capital. This article uses Vedat Dalokay's appeal as a window into international development politics during a transformative decade. The 1970s saw growing leftism in Turkey, and Dalokay hoped that progressive urban planning would solidify voting trends among rural-to-urban migrants. He sought to introduce a new ideological element into Soviet–Turkish exchange, but politicians and academics in Moscow dismissed Dalokay's class-oriented projects. Instead, they increased their investments in the steel mills and electricity plants that were hallmarks of Soviet economic exchanges with the Third World. Whereas Dalokay's aspirations emerged from a Turkish intellectual climate that was being reshaped by dependency theory and by disillusionment in the possibilities for growth within boundaries defined by the political borders of nation-states, Soviet economists and bureaucrats remained wedded to the idea of development defined in terms of the territorial economy. The Ankara municipality eventually turned to Western Europe, but the Turkish government continued to negotiate gas pipelines and nuclear power plants with the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian governments. This article explores the ideological assumptions that have shaped economic exchange across the Black Sea.

“What a Splendid World We Ruined”: the Precarious Presents and Posthuman Futures of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033

“What a Splendid World We Ruined”: the Precarious Presents and Posthuman Futures of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033