post-Soviet System Research Articles

‘My English seems not enough’: moving from language deficit views to Kazakhstani CLIL (content and language integrated learning) teachers’ funds of knowledge

ABSTRACT Our paper critiques the native speaker fallacy underpinning state-mandated policies requiring teachers who speak languages other than English to use it as the medium of instruction. Using a centre-based Funds of Knowledge (FoK) lens, we examine how Kazakhstani biology teachers navigate Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) through English Medium Instruction (EMI). A qualitative analysis of teacher reflections, observations, narratives, and focus groups revealed their hybrid epistemic stance discernible in their shift between knowledge transmission and knowledge construction and their flexible linguistic stance when leveraging their students’ Russian and Kazakh linguistic repertoires to contribute to science understanding and learning in EMI. In highlighting CLIL as a travelling policy, our results revealed the complexities of integrating Western educational models into a post-Soviet system, challenging the theory-practice divide, because a centre-based FoK lens redirected our focus from Western standards to the recognition of teachers’ professional identities and EMI pedagogies as both contextually relevant and locally grounded. Hence, our results call for more inclusive and social justice theoretical lenses to bridge and engage with the pedagogical nexus when different linguistic, cultural and epistemological ways of being merge.

Peculiarities and ways of resolving the military-political conflict

The purpose of the article is to analyse the causes of the war that spread across the entire territory of Ukraine in February 2022. The main purpose of the study is to substantiate the essence of international economic and political conflicts, as well as scientific and theoretical approaches to resolving the political conflict that is the root cause of the russian-Ukrainian war. Various methods were used in the research, including the comparative-historical method, the method of source analysis, as well as induction, deduction, synthesis and analysis. This made it possible to gain a deeper understanding of the essence of political and political-economic conflict, as well as to divide political-economic conflicts into conflicts of values, interests, and identification, determining their essential causes. An armed conflict that turns into a war is the most dangerous form of political conflict, as it causes a transition to destructive actions on the territory of the country, involves the involvement of a large number of participants and significant losses among the military and the civilian population. The historical and modern reality in Ukraine since 2014 is characterized by the presence of political and armed conflicts that arose as a result of serious contradictions that were not resolved within the framework of the post-Soviet system. It is because of this that armed, political, economic and inter-ethnic conflicts became more frequent in the 21st century. For a long time, domestic science believed that state power and politics were aimed at finding a balance of the interests of seizing natural, energy and human resources, which was supposed to completely eliminate the conflict. However, the authorities of Ukraine did not cope with the invasion of certain territories, which has been going on for more than eight years. The article analyzes the prerequisites and nature of a full-scale invasion of the territory of Ukraine as a political conflict, and suggests key ways to resolve it. The conclusion states that Ukraine's accession to the EU and NATO is a significant prospect for ensuring future guarantees of peace and protection against further or new invasion of the Russian Federation on our territory.

Environmental tragedy of Central Asia: the Aral Sea problem

The whole natural system contributes to the creation of the most favorable environment for a stable environment, biological life, and especially human life. Nature is not the wealth of mankind, it is the natural world that surrounds it, and man is a part of it. The formation of a system of knowledge about the state of human and environmental protection and the interaction between the hazardous impacts of the polluted environment creates the problem of creating a unified and integrated system for environmental security. “Ecological exploitation” of totalitarian, authoritarian policies in the post-Soviet system is one of the main reasons for the emergence of a severe environmental situation in the country. The negative consequences of this policy were particularly evident in the globalization of the Aral Sea problem, which began in the 1960s. This article covers environmental and natural security issues in the Republic of Uzbekistan, and the Aral Sea, one of the strongest natural disasters in the region. Key words: Natural security, The Aral problem, environmental protection, environmental cooperation

The Russian system of pre-trial proceedings as a synthesis of different types of criminal procedure

The article is devoted to the study of prerequisites that determined the distinctive character of the Russian system of pre-trial proceedings in a criminal case. Analyzing the vector of development of national criminal justice and criminal procedure legislation, drawing comparative parallels with foreign mechanisms of preliminary investigation, the author comes to the conclusion that the gradual separation of the Soviet and post-Soviet system of pre-trial proceedings was caused by the well-known historical cataclysms of the 20th century. It is noted that a unique model of pre-trial proceedings has been formed in Russian Federation that represents a chaotic synthesis of various, including poorly compatible, elements inherent in different types of criminal proceedings.

Summa Theologiae 2.0: Intellectual Mass Media in the Modern Russian Realities, or How “The Academic” became “The Mediatic”

The research paper focuses on the specific features of the status of theology in the modern humanities in Russia. Studying the complexities and difficulties of the institutionalisation of theology and its localisation in the Russian university system and academic culture, the author foregrounds the post-Soviet European experience of the Baltic countries and Ukraine, where theology acquired the status of a “normal” science earlier than in Russia. Within the framework of this study, the peculiarities of the controversial status of theology in the system of higher education as well as in the Russian postgraduate and doctoral studies are considered in the contexts of the frontier of knowledge and the post-Soviet stereotypes. It is assumed that several factors, including the Soviet atheistic cultural heritage, the post-Soviet system of secular degrees and the traditionally significant role of representatives of the natural sciences in the academic community, may significantly contribute to slowing down the transformation of theology into a “normal” science. The paper also deals with the issue of how theology is transforming from the church life of the Russian Christians and becoming more noticeable in the Russian educational cultures and academic spaces. The arguments of the supporters and opponents of the official institutionalisation of theology in the higher education system are critically examined. The author pays special attention to the prospects and possibilities of using the Western experience of “secularization” of theology and its integration into the secular canons of science.

SOCIO-CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF UKRAINE IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN VALUES

The article considers the issues of changing accents and cultural transformation in Ukraine, Great Britain and other European countries. In recent years, Ukraine has seen an active revival in the cultural sphere. From publishing to music, from film production to theater, from fashion to curatorial exhibitions – the Ukrainian cultural environment has become bold, diverse and large-scale. Euromaidan has given impetus to a powerful wave of cultural activism: from discussion platforms to spontaneous exhibitions, from urban regeneration projects to volunteer groups seeking to protect dilapidated national heritage sites. The impetus for it was the dynamism of the Ukrainian creative community. And further development became possible thanks to the support of new state cultural institutions. These institutes emerged after Euromaidan, such as the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the Ukrainian Book Institute, and the Ukrainian Institute. Institutions with a long history, such as the State Agency of Ukraine for Cinema, have strengthened their positions. The creation of these new institutions marked the departure from the post-Soviet system of cultural management. And the transition to a consistent and comprehensive cultural policy. The main thing is that the creation of a new system of culture in Ukraine has helped to bridge the gap between the state and cultural activists and the creative sector. One of the most important problems of the cultural sector in Ukraine for the last 25 years is funding. This problem is also relevant for the United Kingdom. But when it comes to finding resources for artists and cultural institutions, British policy has a respectable tradition and a number of successful answers. Support for the arts by both the state and business seems to be a matter of course for the British. At the same time, the idea of the self-worth of art is also supported by the idea of its social significance, as well as the perception of art as a primary source of creativity, innovative development, creative industry. The relationship between the European Union and the society of Ukraine is already yielding some results in the context of ensuring the democratic and European development of the state. For the successful implementation of European integration in Ukraine, it is necessary to apply such mechanisms that will ensure coordinated management of social processes of the state in the direction of European integration. The main mechanism is cultural policy, which should be aimed at regulating the regulatory framework. And the application of regulations in practice. This will allow culture to take a leading position on the path to national modernization. Legislation should be a mechanism for achieving goals, and the main thing should remain that the person should be at the center of cultural policy of the state. Given the experience of the United Kingdom, the formation of Ukraine's cultural policy should be based on the idea of the all-encompassing impact of culture on modern society. Accordingly, such a policy, being aimed at the cultural sector, effectively affects all spheres of public life. Consistent support for culture at the financial and fiscal, legislative and executive, national and local levels should, above all, be based on an awareness of the value of culture. Culture enriches people's lives, changes their worldview and inspires creativity. In the social dimension, its impact has the most significant impact on education, health and cohesion.

THE PROBLEMS OF THE TRAINING SYSTEM OF SCIENTIFIC AND TEACHING STAFF IN POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

The article considers the main problems of the efficiency of the system of the preparation of scientific and scientific-teaching staff in contemporary conditions of the reformation of system of higher and postgraduate education in the Russian Federation. The integration into the Bologna process has the number of advantages, but became the reason of the series of objective difficulties, unavoidable under the conditions of the projecting of the European approach to higher education system on the existing post-soviet system. One of a such of difficulties is the reconsideration of the approach to the levels of higher and post-graduate education, which has significantly and disputable influenced to the efficiency of the current system of preparation of high-qualified staff. The establishment of the postgraduate school as another stage of higher education and the definition of the getting of a diploma of “researchist. teacher-researchist” as the main purpose of educational process instead the previous main purpose of the preparation and defense of a candidate’s dissertation means the significant change of postgraduate school’s priorities. It seems, that the educational component of this system has the secondary character, by primarily promoting the establishment of a postgraduate student in the role of a researchist, also including the preparation to the teaching process in a university. With that, the preparation of researchist as the high-qualified staff is highly demand not also within the framework of scientific and teaching community, but also in the system of the governing of the field of science and higher education, expert, legislative and other types of activity. And the most markable feature in the labor market is the presence of scientific degree in the relevant field of knowledge, but not the post-graduate school diploma, if the defense did not become the logical finish of study. The indicated problem requires the gradual, multi-stage reformation of the current legislation, which has to be focused to the correct prioritizing in the existing system of preparation of high-qualified staff, their careful selection and further stimulating.

Public Property in Australia and Russia: The Concept and the Role of the Constitution

The modern democratic state embodies the concept of the state as a service. For this reason, the administration of public property is one of the major issues related to the efficiency of public authority. Common law countries and post-Soviet countries have completely different legal explanations and bases for public property. This article takes a comparative approach, showing similarities and differences in the public property regimes in these two systems.This article investigates why the two systems have different approaches to public property issues and how the differing experiences result in differing implementation. Australia and Russia have been chosen as examples of a common law system and the post-Soviet system, respectively. In addition to property regimes, this paper also discusses federalism issues.An analysis of these countries’ historical development permits a significant enhancement of the philosophical and legal understanding of property, especially public property. Protection of private property in Russia was very strong by 19th century standards. However, the Russian Empire fell behind in questions of public property compared to its protection of private property, and also compared to other systems outside of Russia. Some aspects of dealing with the most critical natural resources expand public property regulation issues into the constitutional sphere. Public property issues need constitutional justification in both Australia and Russia. However, Russia has constitutional provisions that provide the categories of property rights existing in its domestic law, while a great deal of effort was required in Australia to create the constitutional basis for water resources administration.

Building Healthcare Capacity in Pediatric Neurosurgery and Psychiatry in a Post-Soviet System: Ukraine.

Many academic centers in North America are initiating global partnerships to build physician capacity in resource-poor countries. An opportunity arose to develop a pediatric program (Ukraine Paediatric Fellowship Program, UPFP) in Ukraine, a large European country in transition from a Soviet/communist political and social system. This entailed dealing with a centralized and rigid healthcare system based on the Semashko model of the former Soviet Union. Our capacity-building model has several key features: endowed philanthropic funding for sustainability, bilateral exchange of knowledge, a focus primarily on pediatric brain disorders, and team building. Centers for partnering are selected on the basis of need, receptivity to change, and participants' fluency in English. Ukrainian physicians attend month-long observerships in Toronto, and biannual teaching visits are conducted by Canadian clinicians. Over 5 years, 7 teaching visits have taken place, and 20 physicians have trained at SickKids Hospital in Toronto. Six Ukrainian children's hospitals are now collaborating with UPFP. New surgical procedures have been introduced, such as endoscopic ventriculostomy and corpus callosotomy. Patient referrals to regional institutions have increased, and new projects that affect fetal and infant neurodevelopment have been initiated (e.g., treatment of perinatal maternal depression and folic acid fortification of flour). Ukrainian participants rate the program highly in their evaluations. In a short time, UPFP has had considerable success in increasing physician capacity for improved pediatric care in regions of Ukraine. The keys to success have included focusing locally, selecting trustable partners, building incrementally, and creating interspecialty synergies.

The World Bank Improving Environmental and Natural Resource Policies: Power, Deregulation, and Privatization in (Post-Soviet) Armenia

Summary Over the past decades, development projects by international organizations like the World Bank use concepts such as “joint forest management”, “community-based natural resource management”, and “participatory conservation” as integrated approaches to poverty alleviation and conservation. These Integrated Conservation and Development Projects primarily promote the intensification of natural resource production. Currently, a research program on the pathways and politics through which international organizations influence related domestic policy and cause changes is being developed. The aim of this study is to analyze the influence the World Bank had on environmental and natural resources policies aiming at poverty alleviation in Armenia. We use Armenia for analyzing how this neoliberal approach of the World Bank echoes in a post-Soviet system. Empirically, we use a qualitative case-study design building on content analysis of key policy documents from World Bank interventions and subsequent domestic policy changes. Our results show that the World Bank interventions in Armenia, formally aiming to reduce rural poverty by means of improving natural resources management, de facto promoted policy and administrative changes. These changes, however, largely benefit transnational private companies, while at the same time restricting the access of poor local users to natural resources. By employing a discourse of illegal logging and by framing local actors as the main drivers of deforestation, the World Bank achieved considerable deregulation of the forest sector. This in turn promoted privatization of the forestland as well as a reform of the state forest administration. We conclude that interventions by international organizations, such as the World Bank, may formally claim to enhance the common good e.g. through strengthening ecological goals in natural resources management. Informally, however, quite the opposite might happen: Neoliberal privatization and deregulation will further weaken state actors and their capacities, while at the same time strongly and quickly incentivizing the increase in extractive natural resource production, as observed with increased timber harvests and exports.

One for all, each on its own: Analysing the post-Soviet system of collective security

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 allowed independent states, which emerged in its place, to construct their own alignments. The choice of the case for empirical analysis had been made based on several unique characteristics. Orthodox Alliance Theory had almost never properly addressed alignments in the post-Soviet space due to the lack of access to information during the Soviet period - along with the structure of the state: only Soviet alignment policies were taken into consideration, instead of those of its constituent republics as well - and modest interest of alliance theorists in the region. Continued disintegration of the post-Soviet space, which has not stopped with the collapse of the Soviet Union but keeps fragmenting further, creates a unique setting for researching the adequacy of Alliance Theory's classic assumptions as well as developing new approaches. This work traces the development of the post-Soviet system of collective security and its subsequent transformation into a series of bilateral security relations, along with the shortfall of multilateralism.

Managing Strategic Changes Through DEEP Reforms: A View from the Perspective of U.S.–Armenia “Smart Power” Cooperation

Education is a systematic process of forming the fundamental ability to think analytically, incorporating both basic and specialized knowledge. Therefore, in the armed forces of leading countries of the world, the field of military education and personnel management is regarded as a primary factor for ensuring the efficiency of the defense security system and the combat capability of the military.Defense education reforms are a significant part of the overall reforms being implemented in the defense security sector in Armenia that are helping bring both more credibility and accountability into the Armenian Armed Forces and the National Security System on the whole. The importance of defense education has grown significantly within recent years due to the introduction of sophisticated new armament systems. Current military standards demand a new level of requirements for both soldiers and officers, and military professional education is one of the most important tools to help prepare highly qualified personnel who will be capable of implementing different tasks in the rapidly changing atmosphere of the modern battlefield.The cause and the essence of these innovations are not only due to hard power subsystem dynamics, but also require accepting the fundamentally new orientation in thinking about security that is not exclusively based on threat assessments and a presumed hard power response, as was the case in the past. Over the past decade, after the Prague NATO Summit, Armenia has employed comparative analysis and innovative decision making to smoothly turn its defense security thinking toward a goal-oriented approach that synthesizes both soft and hard security dimensions within one holistic smart power-oriented defense security policymaking system. The other important dimension of these improvements is a gradual transition from an obsolete apparatchik mode of Stalinist-style military governance of the Ministry of Defense to a modern leadership and management culture characterized by the redistribution of powers between defensepolicy institutions and military bodies and the delegation of power and duties to lower tiers in the hierarchy.In the United States, the system of professional military education (PME) must meet certain basic requirements, namely that it should be comprehensive, systemic, consistent, realistic, effective, and unanimous in concept, terms, goals, challenges, and opportunities. The U.S. system is familiar to me, due to my five and a half years of Defense, Army, Air Force, and Navy Attache service as well as having held academic fellowships at the Defense Language Institute in San Antonio, Harvard University's National Security Program, the National Defense University, RAND, and the Marshall Center for Security Studies. PME training places constant tension on the mind, will, and body, giving great attention to physical fitness and its major role in service activity of all categories of personnel.The Early Stages of Armenia's Defense Education Sector DevelopmentThe formation of Armenia's armed forces coincided with what was probably the most difficult and stressful period of modern Armenian history: the transition from a Sovietstyle totalitarian regime to independent national statehood oriented around the values of liberal democracy. Drafting the main design of the Armenian Army simultaneously with the establishment of Armenian independent statehood became a challenge that needed to be addressed precisely, given the conditions of extreme uncertainty that characterized the dynamics of the post-Soviet system of global, regional, and national security. It was a matter of great responsibility and commitment for me to be ordered by the leadership of the newly born Ministry of Defense to develop the Basics of Military Policy of the Republic of Armenia, published in 1992 as the first military-political national document outlining the doctrinal content and strategic caliber of an independent Armenia. …

Organisational Management Peculiarities of the Public Sector Referring to Sports as a Public Sector Example

The article analyzes organisational management peculiarities of the public sector organizations, paying a special attention to sports as a public sector. The development of Lithuanian, as well as of the other postSoviet countries has caused sport system to go through the immense multimeaningful change. Structural changes inside the system, inside and outside judicial environment, the expansion of the market relations are an everyday success guarantee for every sport organisation. Dynamic development of sports requires timely and qualified decisions in a constantly changing environment of opportunities. The top sport manager plays an ideological role in the post-Soviet system. Top manager plays a crucial role in the modern sports world by putting his/her knowledge and capabilities to have the organisational goals met by striving for quality and meeting the needs of the members and market. The quest for higher performance by public organizations is a central and recurring theme in government policies and academic research (Boyne, Farrell, Law, Powell, Walker, 2003; Pollitt, Bouckaert, 2000). For complex and permanent modernization of public sector, a complex strategy of modernization is required (vision, mission, provisions, and concepts of modernization) (Skietrys, Raipa, Bartkus, 2008). An effective strategy formation capability is a complex organizational resource – a dynamic capability that should lead to superior performance (Slater, Olson, Hult, 2006). Although the notion of strategy has its origins in the military arena, strategic planning in recent years has been primarily focused on private sector organizations and much of the theory assumes that those in executive control of an organization have the freedom to determine its direction. Strategic planning is a means to an end, a method used to position an organization, through prioritizing its use of resources according to identified goals, in an effort to guide its direction and development over a period of time (Wilkinson, Monkhouse, 1994). Research on the general topic of organizational performance in the public sector is limited in quantity and quality (Boyne, 2003), so it is hardly surprising that the reversal of organizational decline has received little serious academic attention. Interest in the subject has come largely from practitioners rather than researchers (Borins, 1998; Moore, 1995). It is important to stress at the outset that public and private management are significantly different in several respects. For example, public organizations are generally more bureaucratic, public managers have less discretion over organizational missions and personnel, and the staff in public organizations is less likely to be motivated by financial incentives (Nutt, Backoff, 1993).

Cooperation in private forestry of post-soviet system: Forest owners’ cooperatives in Lithuania

The current state of cooperation in private forestry in Lithuania is examined, with a focus on the analysis of objectives, organisational structure and the ways forest owners’ cooperatives operate. A postal survey has been used as a main research instrument, the questionnaire consisting of a series of multiplechoice close-ended questions. This paper provides insights into the state forest enterprises and other private companies operating in the private forestry sector, and places forest owners’ cooperatives in a broader context of the private forestry sector. A typical forest owner’s cooperative in Lithuania has up to 10 members and about 20 clients to whom services are provided. The leaders of cooperatives indicate that the optimal number of clients using their services should not exceed 40. The main stated objectives of cooperatives are the provision of services to their members under the most attractive conditions, uniting members, and earning a profit for the members. These activities of cooperatives revolve around timber harvesting and trade. It is concluded that the process of cooperation of private forest owners in Lithuania is rather slow, although positive development can be observed.

Elites, Old and New in Novosibirsk

The collapse of communist rule has removed many of the obstacles to research into elites in the former Soviet Union. A clear difference of approach has emerged between investigations of state-level elites, which tend to be quantitative, and studies of sub-state regional and local elites, which tend to be qualitative. In the case of the Russian Federation, state-level regulation of elite circulation at all levels has weakened considerably with the disappearance of the CPSU nomenklatura mechanism of appointment. Concurrently, the fragmentation of power in the post-Soviet system, at a time of immense political and economic transformation, has accentuated the importance of sub-state regional and local elites.

The Estonian Family in Transition

All of the sociological surveys of Estonians carried out after the Second World War have highlighted family life and children as the main values for Estonians. Family and children were also the values that survived the transition from the Soviet to the post-Soviet system, becoming even higher ranked in Estonians’ value priorities. Other rising values during the transitional period were health, close friends, self-education, and a pollution-free environment. Among those aspects suffering considerable decline were participation in social as well as in cultural activities (visiting cultural institutions, reading books,etc.),professional work, and taking care of one's own physical well-being. The rural lifestyle together with Lutheran religious values, which emphasize the family and a “good mother,” have been the main cultural orientations handed down through generations of Estonian families. Even the Soviet period with its forced industrialization, collectivization and political terror did not break this value-system but, quite the opposite, often meant that the family became a place that provided “refuge, and temporary escape” from these pressures, thereby preserving important elements of an earlier cultural orientation. Through its ideologically restricted social studies and deformed official statistics, which left people without reliable information about reality, the Soviet system managed to preserve the relatively strong impact of cultural traditions on people's behavior.

The Post-Soviet System of States

The Post-Soviet System of States