post-Soviet Studies Research Articles

Studying the Great Patriotic War in the Shadow of the Current Crisis

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has thrown the field of post-Soviet studies into upheaval, as scholars seek to strike a balance between expressing opposition to an aggressive war and maintaining scholarly neutrality and recognition of complexity. Against this backdrop, the study of Russia’s memory of the Great Patriotic War—which has been invoked to justify the invasion of Ukraine—is particularly challenging. In this light, the author reflects on research of one of the most controversial aspects of the Great Patriotic War, the history and memory of the collaborationist “Vlasov Movement,” in the current environment. This exercise reveals some important aspects of the current memory landscape in Russia and the conceptual problems faced by those who study it. In particular, scholars of the war as well as war memory face the difficulty of navigating an information space and scholarship in which history and memory are closely intertwined.

Post-Soviet Studies: Crisis of Concepts, Conventions, and Compromises

Post-Soviet Studies: Crisis of Concepts, Conventions, and Compromises

“Платформа перемен” (часть третья)

The article presents the professional “profiles” of the leading employees of IMEMO, whom Academician Alexander Dynkin considered to be his like-minded people, on whom he relied as the director of the Institute (2006–2016), and who he calls the “IMEMO patriots”. It is referred to the heads of the main centers, departments and sectors of IMEMO. Among those named by academician Dynkin is Nadezhda Arbatova, the Head of the Department of European Political Studies. She has long been widely recognized in the international scientific and expert community as one of the most authoritative experts on the problems of Russia’s relations with the European Union. The well-known Ella Kirichenko has been heading the Center for North American Studies at IMEMO for a long time. Victoria Zhuravleva is a recognized expert on the domestic political life of the United States. She has replaced Ella Kirichenko as the Head of the Center for North American Studies. Lyudmila Khudyakova is the Head of the Department of Global Economic Problems and Foreign Economic Policy. Under her guidance, a number of important projects on the role of financial markets in the development of the world economy with regard to Russia’s economic interests were implemented. Stanislav Zhukov is an authoritative Russian orientalist whose works have received international recognition. He had headed the Center for Energy Research at IMEMO, and later moved to the position of Deputy Director of the Institute. Vitaly Shvydko and Sergey Lukonin are among Russia’s best experts on Japan and China. Both of them are also studying the problems of the Asia-Pacific region. Irina Krobrinskakya is the Director of the IMEMO Center for Situational Analysis. Givi Machavariani is a unique specialist who has made a significant contribution to the development of forecasting research methodology, to the creation of a database and an integral system for the world economy forecasting. Eduard Solov’ev is the Head of the Center for Post-Soviet Studies. His professional interests include the analysis of contemporary parties and ideologies, the political life of Russia and the United States, as well as the theory and practice of international relations. Tatyana Karlova is the Scientific Secretary of IMEMO, the organizer and coordinator of all the current work of the Institute. Nataliya Kirsanova is the Deputy Director of the Institute, who has been regulating the financial activities of IMEMO for many years. Evgeniya Klyueva is the Head of the Department of Information Support for Scientific Research at IMEMO. She manages the work of the Institute’s website, which has become a source of up-to-date information reflecting all aspects of IMEMO’s activities. All these highly qualified specialists continue to play an important role at IMEMO.

Экономическое направление развития евразийской интеграции: препятствия и пути их преодоления

Editorial office publishes the summary of a joint seminar, held by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) and the World Economy and International Relations journal dedicated to economic aspects of Eurasian economic integration. Among the participants were Sergey Afontsev, Deputy Director for Scientific Work, IMEMO, RAS Corresponding Member, Ivan Timofeev, RIAC Director of Programs, Elena Danilova, Deputy Director, Integration Development Department, Eurasian Economic Commission, Alexander Daniltsev, Director, Trade Policy Institute, HSE University, Andrey Tochin, Director, Institute of Integration Processes, Russian Foreign Trade Academy, Elena Kuzmina, Head, Section for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, Center for Post-Soviet Studies, IMEMO, Aza Migranyan, Leading Research Fellow, Section for the Caucasus, Center for Post-Soviet Studies, IMEMO, Alexander Korolev, Deputy Director, Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies, HSE University.

Haunted Dreams: Fantasies of Adolescence in Post‐Soviet Culture By JennyKaminer. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022, xvi + 188 pp. $44.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐6219‐2

Haunted Dreams: Fantasies of Adolescence in Post‐Soviet Culture By JennyKaminer. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022, xvi + 188 pp. $44.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐6219‐2

Altha Stewart, M.D., Honored With Pardes Humanitarian Prize

Altha Stewart, M.D., Honored With Pardes Humanitarian Prize

Political Control, Administrative Simplicity, or Economies of Scale? Four Cases of the Reunification of Nationalized Theatres in Russia, Germany, Austria, and France (1918–45)

In 1917–18, the new republican governments of Russia, Germany, and Austria nationalized their former court property. A monarchic-turned-national heritage of prestigious opera and dramatic theatres weighed heavily on national and regional budgets, prompting first attempts to create centralized forms of theatre governance. In a second wave of theatre reorganization in the mid-1930s, the Soviet government created ‘union theatres’ under a Committee for Arts Affairs; the German and Austrian theatres underwent the Nazi Gleichschaltung (1933–35 and 1938); and France, a ‘democratic outlier’, opted for nationalizing the Opéra and Opéra-Comique under the Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux. These conglomerates have so far been little studied as historically specific forms of theatre management, particularly from a comparative, trans-regime perspective. What balance can be struck between economic, political, and ‘artistic’ costs and benefits? How does ‘Baumol’s law’ of decreasing theatre profitability apply to these very different politico-economic systems, as well as to war economies? Dictatorships reveal an economic seduction power, while this essay argues for confirming a long-term ‘great European convergence’ of state-centred theatre management, internal structure, and accountability, both in peace and war. Here, the stated goals and short-term contingencies yielded to trends originating from the logic of theatre production itself, and the compromises that the state, theatre professionals, and the public accepted in exchange for the capital of prestige. Alexander Golovlev (PhD, European University Institute in Florence, 2017) is a senior research fellow at the HSE Institute for Advanced Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at the University of Moscow. His recent publications include, for New Theatre Quarterly, ‘Theatre Policies of Soviet Stalinism and Italian Fascism Compared, 1920–1940s’ (2019), and ‘Balancing the Books and Staging Operas under Duress: Bolshoi Theatre Management, Wartime Economy, and State Sponsorship in 1941–1945’, Russian History XLVII, No. 4 (2020).

Siberian Exile in Russian Historiography of 1990<sup>s</sup> — 2010<sup>s</sup>

The article is devoted to the analysis of modern Russian historiography of criminal and political exile to Siberia. The authors consistently consider the main directions of development of post-Soviet studies, note, first of all, the great interest of historians in various aspects of the penitentiary policy and practice of the empire in Siberia, the features of the imprisonment of political and criminal prisoners. Further, a sharp drop in the attention of specialists to the history of the exile of the Social Democrats, and above all, the Bolsheviks, is stated, and vice versa — a significant increase in works devoted to the stay in exile of representatives of the Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists. The publications on the history of the exile to Siberia of the Decembrists are analyzed, the content of the discussion about the evolution of their worldview, the role of “noble revolutionaries” in the political his-tory of Russia is conveyed. The authors also briefly analyze the main directions of publications of the Irkutsk collection of scientific articles “Siberian Link”, created back in 1973. It is concluded that the history of criminal and political exile to Siberia as a scientific direction in the post-Soviet period continues to develop successfully, acquiring new facets, replenished with specific studies and authors.

Meanings of Culture and Books. From “Marriage of Convenience” to Signs of “First Love”

The article examines the polygraphic prerequisites for social reflection of the late Soviet and post-Soviet intellectuals and the connection between the autonomy of intellectual work and the autonomy of the publishing cycle. Based on a comparison of changes in publishing technologies and procedures for preparing manuscripts for printing, the change of large paradigms in the perestroika era is reconstructed as derivatives of the cult of reading and the system of institutions that support it. It is argued that although intellectuals upheld the classical canon, the very ways of canonizing works of the past were deformed by changing publishing procedures. The crisis in publishing planning coincided with a new understanding of the intellectual's mission, which meant the establishment of new types of reading as dominant. Thus, the thought of autonomous culture and the simultaneous reconceptualization of world literature contributed to the understanding of publishing procedures as autonomously significant. The disintegration of the disciplinary order of the Soviet publishing sphere and independent scientific book publishing made it possible to complete the project of describing literature as a place of production of norms for the reception of culture that cast doubt on the previous state of literature, thereby approving the program of post-Soviet cultural studies.

Gender Sphere of Concepts in the Postmodern Periodicals for Women and Men in Ukraine

The use of gender in print media is poorly understood both at the level of the post-Soviet (postcolonial in nature) journalism studies and in the general context of social research. A similar situation is observed with regard to the study of the gender sphere of concepts, and at the postmodern stage of development of periodicals. Postmodern convergence of methodology and research objects of the humanities will make it necessary to study social and mass media phenomena from the point of view of linguistics, sociology and journalism. This makes it relevant to study media issues of gender through links with language (cognitive linguistics). The purpose of the work is to clarify the gender sphere of concepts in the study of Ukrainian periodicals for women and men. The article implements a combination of concrete-historical, structural-typological, system-functional methods. Descriptive and comparative methods, typology, modeling methods are used at different stages of work. The study used the method of content analysis to study the gender content of modern gender-labeled magazines. The article proves that the gender sphere of concepts is based on the basic gender macroconcepts “woman” and “man”. They are used in the periodicals under study in various proportions, depending on what roles are played by a woman or a man in society. It is from the balance, thoughtfulness, responsible selection of gender characteristics that are presented in gender-labeled periodicals that modern and future gender images are formed, the idea of ideal women and men, their needs, opportunities, responsibilities in the family, at work, and in general in all spheres of life.

Neoliberalization and Politics of Shaming

Drawing on Norbert Elias’s writing and sociology of emotion literature, this study proposes viewing neoliberalization as a “civilizing process,” which is enabled by politics of shaming. By tracing two streams of protests triggered by neoliberal transformations—by farmers and schoolteachers—in the 1990s and how they were handled by the ruling elite publicly in the mass media, this article finds that, in post-Soviet and neoliberal Latvia, in moments of tension between the state and society, rule occurred through a politics of shaming that utilized three instruments: the neoliberal ideology of a good citizen, essentializing language, and dividing language. This article contributes to the post-Soviet studies’ scholarship, the growing body of scholarship that explores relationships between neoliberalization and emotions, as well as social movements literature.

The History of Jewish Jokes in Russia: 1900–1990

Among its various activities, the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University holds a weekly Colloquia Series, in which invited speakers present formal papers on themes chosen for that year. In spring 2021, the topic of the series was "Authoritarian Laughter: From a Joke to a Revolution." In April, Dr. Aleksandra Arkhipova from Moscow presented her new research on the phenomenon of Jewish jokes (anekdoty) in Soviet popular culture. The Q&A session from the event is published in this issue of Ab Imperio. The colloquium participants asked the speaker what was the function of Jewish jokes in Soviet society, what made them so popular, and what distinguished them from Georgian, Armenian and other ethnically marked humor.

МЕЖДУНАРОДНАЯ НАУЧНО-ПРАКТИЧЕСКАЯ КОНФЕРЕНЦИЯ «ГУМАНИТАРНОЕ СОТРУДНИЧЕСТВО НА ЕВРАЗИЙСКОМ ПРОСТРАНСТВЕ: ОПЫТ И ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ. К 30-ЛЕТИЮ ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ СНГ»

The publication covers the international research and practice conference, which was held online on the 17th of November of 2020 with the participation of employees of the Institute of Post-Soviet and Interregional Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities, as well as representatives of the scientific community of the CIS. The conference was dedicated to the thirtieth anniversary of the Commonwealth of Independent States (8 December 1991). The participants discussed the most relevant issues of humanitarian cooperation in the Eurasian space, including interuniversity partnership, interaction of leading research centers in the Commonwealth countries, the preparation of joint educational and methodological guides and programmes and other projects that would facilitate the formation of the unified Eurasian information space and speed up the processes of social and cultural (humanitarian, broadly speaking) integration. Issues related to studies of Russian language in post-Soviet states, as well as to preserving the national traditions and international representation thereof, were discussed in close conjunction with the issues of humanitarian integration. Special attention was paid to subjects concerned with preserving the memory of the Great Patriotic War, including cooperation between search teams and arranging international search and commemorative projects on the territory of post-Soviet states. The conference participants also raised issues related to security in the post-Soviet states as well as to joint solutions to such acute challenges for the Commonwealth as illegal migration and drug trafficking.

ОБ ЭКСПЕРТНО-ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОМ ПРОЕКТЕ «ТОЧКИ РОСТА»

The present review is concerned with the participation of an associate professor of the Institute of Post-Soviet and Interregional Studies of RSUH in the project “Points of growth”. During the project activities, A.V. Gushchin gave lectures, presentations, took part in a situational analysis. The project “Points of growth”, which is an expert and educational platform for Eurasian integration, is dedicated to the core area of activity for Institute – the study and forecasting of international, socio-political, economic and cultural processes in post-Soviet Eurasia. The program of the forum platforms provides for meetings in the format of “Dialogue on equal terms” with the leading Rus- sian and foreign experts in the field of international relations, political science and geo-economics, the diplomats, the representatives of government and busi- ness. The target audience of the project are the leaders of youth organizations, young representatives of political parties and experts in the field of interna- tional relations and Russian foreign policy, students interested in international relations and Eurasian issues. It is implemented by the Institute of Russian Abroad in cooperation with the partner organizations using a grant from the President of the Russian Federation provided by the Presidential Grants Fund. The present review contains information about the key activities of the project that took place in Pskov, Minsk and Kolomna in 2021.

The comparative analysis of foreign and post-soviet studies on subjective well-being

The comparative analysis of foreign and post-soviet studies on subjective well-being

РЕЦЕНЗИЯ НА КНИГУ: ТРУДЫ ИНСТИТУТА ПОСТСОВЕТСКИХ И МЕЖРЕГИОНАЛЬНЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ / ОТВ. РЕД. Е.И. ПИВОВАР. ВЫП. 3: АЗЕРБАЙДЖАНОВЕДЕНИЕ. М.: РГГУ, 2020. 283 С.

The review is devoted to a unique collective scientific work of Russian and Azerbaijani authors, whose pages reflect important issues of the history and modern political, socio-economic and cultural development of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani-Russian and Azerbaijani-Iranian relations, and Baku’s foreign policy in the context of integration processes in the post-Soviet space. The publication lists an overlook of six research papers and proceedings of the conferences “Humanitarian cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan: spiritual and historical traditions and present time” and “Humanitarian dimension of eurasian integration: history and outlooks”, organized by the Institute of post-Soviet and inter-Regional Studies of Russian State University for the Humanities. Following the principles of objectivity and a systematic approach, using a wide range of sources, many of which are first introduced into scientific circulation in Russian historiography, the authors of the reviewed issue identify the key features of the formation and functioning of the modern Azerbaijani state and its foreign policy priorities. This publication develops a new interdisciplinary field of scientific research – Azerbaijani studies, which is located at the intersection of historical, political, economic and cultural studies and offers a wide methodological tools for studying topical issues of history and modernity of the most important regional processes and trends in the framework of the South Caucasus, in the post-Soviet space and on the scale of Greater Eurasia.

Conceptualization of post-Soviet regime changes: Some intermediate results

The aim of the article is to analyze the attempts to conceptualize post-Soviet regime changes that have been undertaken over the past thirty years. For convenience, all concepts are grouped around three main approaches. The first one examines regime transformations in the former USSR from the point of view of a possible transition to democracy (transition paradigm); the second approach emphasizes the continuity between the post-Soviet political regimes and previous ones, overlooking fundamental differences between them; the third approach assumes that the post-Soviet transition did take place, however, it was “autocracyto-autocracy transition” (from one-party communist dictatorship to hybrid regimes or consolidated personalistic autocracies). The author considers regime change as transformation of some basic formal and informal rules of the game that determine the functioning of a given political system (from the way of making key decisions and allocating resources to the main channels for recruiting to the elite). As a result, the author proves that the third approach is the most relevant for understanding post-Soviet politics. Inter alia, its advantage is that it allows us to fit post-Soviet studies into the wider field of comparative political science: the analysis of post-Soviet politics, on the one hand, can significantly enrich our ideas about “how dictatorships work” at large, on the other hand, empirical knowledge about autocracies outside post-Soviet Eurasia and theories built on this basis will help us to understand the nature of authoritarianism in Russia’s “near abroad”.

\u201cWhat good are all these divisions in Islam?\u201d. Everyday Islam and normative discourses in Daghestan

Republic of Daghestan is the most multiethnic and troublesome region in the Russian Federation. The social, religious and political landscape of this republic has radically changed over the last two decades. Daghestan appears in academic and analytical papers mostly in relation to terrorism or security issues. The everyday religiosity is, for the most part, out of the picture. This paper aims to fill the gap by focusing on everyday Islam in this republic. It is intended as a contribution to the anthropology of Islam and post-Soviet area studies. What can we learn about the social changes in the given setting if we re-focus our attention from religious figures, organizations and institutions and drift towards the everyday perceptions and experiences of ordinary Muslims, towards religiosity as embedded in everyday life but not within a clearly identifiable group? Religious life in Daghestan is usually viewed through official categories of “traditional Islam” and “non-traditional Islam”, the former equated with “Sufism”, the latter with “Wahhabism”. As will be clear from this paper these theology driven qualifiers are usually used in a secular sense, with no clear religious content attached to them. However, as a part of powerful discourses they affect religious life of ordinary Muslims. How do they relate to these categories? In my paper I show how attitudes towards Salafi-oriented Muslims changed in Daghestan between 2007 and 2017: they drifted from being informed by official categories to being informed by everyday experiences. I will also show how and in what contexts Daghestani Muslims engaged and played with the categories, bringing in some comparisons with late-Socialism. Eventually, I will engage with the concept of “everyday Islam”, its potentials and limitations as an analytical category used for the analysis of social life in the North Caucasus where an organized religious and political activity is limited and where the clearly identifiable groups are not those that are behind the most vital social changes. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2017 among Daghestani Muslims in Makhachkala and beyond.

Bildungskorruption in Russland und der Ukraine, written by Eduard Klein

There is likely not a single topic in post-Soviet studies that does not get more interesting when examined through the comparative lens of Russia and Ukraine. In his work on the quest for unified university entrance exams, author Eduard Klein brings such a comparative focus to the growing topic of corruption in education. This monograph under review represents a Ph.D. thesis defended by Klein in 2016 and published in 2017, apparently without any major revisions. Perhaps the author would have been well advised to contribute to the growing international research on

A Green End to the Red Empire? Ecological Mobilizations in the Soviet Union and Its Successor States, 1950–2000: A Decentralized Approach

In the introduction to the forum "A Green End to the Red Empire," its editors explore the history of ecological mobilizations during the late Soviet period and in post-Soviet states. They focus on defining the phenomenon of Soviet "environmentalism," the intertwining of environmental histories of the Cold War with other national and transnational narratives, as well as on the problem of a recent "regional turn" in Soviet and post-Soviet studies. Localized and at the same time multiscale histories open new perspectives on the past and help identify entanglements of central and peripheral actors. Finally, the authors review the main findings of the four articles published in the forum and put them in perspective to answer the question: What was late Soviet environmentalism?