Russian Audience Research Articles

Traditsii i nasledie russkogo prava by O. A. Omel'chenko (review)

REVIEWS 189 The book isnot always an easy read, nor is the editing always up to scratch. Nevertheless, it isa valuable contribution to our understanding of the complex patterns of capitalism that have arisen from the rubble of Soviet-type Communism. TransformationofCommunistSystems Project Robert F. Miller Research School ofPacific andAsian Studies The Australian National University Omel'chenko, O. A. Traditsii i nasledierusskogo prava. Opera Omnia, 2.MGIU, Moscow, 2006. 492 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Price unknown. Comparative lawyers have been according Russian law short shrift these days. In his influential Legal Traditions of the World (3rd edn, Oxford, 2007) Patrick Glenn, having given theRussian law tradition threeparagraphs inhis treatise, dismisses it as 'brute force' unworthy of more attention. All the more reason why leading modern Russian legal historians such as Omel'chenko need to make their labours available to a wider audience. The volume under review is the second of twelve intended to encompass the 'Opera Omnia' of the author. There isan uncommon bibliophilic bent to Omel'chenko, fornot only is the volume attractively designed, but fiftyof the 220 copies printed are signed and numbered by the author for those fortunate enough to receive a copy. The volume, which consists of essays, chapters, encyclopedia articles and notes written and/or published during the past two decades invarious media, many revised for thisoccasion, isdivided into four parts. The firstand longest comprises fourteen surveys of the 'historyof legislation of old Russia', ranging from theRusskaia Pravda, to the Sudebniks, Sobornoe ulozhenie, Kormchaia kniga, the Zertsalo, Catherine's Nakaz and concomitant reform schemes, the Svod zakonov, 1864 judicial reforms, closing with the Basic Laws of 1906. These were, and remain, 'popular scientific essays' intended for the layman and mostly firstpublished in thatmost popular of legal journals, Chelovek i zakon. For laymen they may have been intended, but they also are an admirable primer for the specialist. The second 'cycle' consists of chapters intended for a new textbook on Russian legal history under the editorship of Professor Kodan, scheduled for publication in 2007. These concentrate upon the period for which Omel'chenko ismost celebrated ? the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The firstis devoted to the 'Development of the State Law System ofRussia in the Seventeenth Century', and the second to the 'State-Law System of Rus sia in theEighteenth Century'. The third 'cycle' comprises articles originally prepared for encyclopedias, one ofwhich was a casualty of the disappearance of the Soviet Union (and therefore the articles are first published here) and the other ofwhich has been widely published under various names. The fourth and final cycle comprises two essays. The firstexplores the historical tradition of legal regulation in 190 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 2OO9 Russia through the prism of theLaw and thePress. The second addresses the same general subject by examining the issue of pornography: a problem of law ormorality? This is a first-class cohesive collection. Omel'chenko writes with grace and clarity, and he has assembled materials that franklywould have been over looked even by a Russian audience because they are so widely dispersed. Given his general propensity for specialized monographs, most colleagues would have remained unaware of this considerable dimension to his academ ic output. That he has taken the care to dress his work in a book design of taste and beauty makes itall themore sympathetic. Dickinson School ofLaw W. E. Butler PennsylvaniaStateUniversity Crate, Susan A. Cows, Kin, and Globalization: An Ethnography of Sustainability. Globalization and the Environment, 4. AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD and New York, 2006. xxvii + 355 pp.Maps. Illustrations. Figures. Tables. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $29.95: ?19.99 (paperback). Susan Crate's studyof theViliui Sakha (located in the southwest of the Sakha Republic of the Russian Federation) joins a rapidly growing collection of impressive ethnographies that do much to reverse the stereotypes of isolation and exotic otherness so often associated with Siberia. Based on nearly fifteen years of familiaritywith and fieldwork among the 'highest latitude agropasto ralists in the world' (p. 3) ? including surveys, focus groups, participant observation and extensive interviewing ? the book describes a resilient set of cultural and agricultural practices that have once again been put to the test in the turbulence of the post-Soviet period. Viliui Sakha...

Ruling Russia: Law, Crime, and Justice in a Changing Society by William A. Pridemore (review)

REVIEWS 767 asked about the role of themedia, their own viewing habits, and specifically about whether or not themedia influenced theirvote.Most showed awareness of bias on television and of deliberate attempts tomanipulate public opinion. An oil worker said of the 2000 campaign 'There was the impression that only one man was really running, i.e. Putin [...] It didn't beat you over the head, itwas very competent [eto ne v lob delaetsya, a ochen' gramotno]' (p. 145). Some participants admitted being influenced by what they watched even though theyknew the informationwas one-sided. Others appeared to accept bias as natural: theirprincipal criticismswere not about a lack of objectivity but about the negativity of themedia. Focus-group findings such as these can enhance our sensitivity to the Russian audience, but do not prove that TV carries the vote. On this point, Oates turns to survey data. She organized an opinion survey dedicated tomedia issues in 2001, updated by an additional survey in the winter of 2003/04. Her 2001 data snowed that themedian Russian adult watched two to three hours of television on a weekday, and four tofive hours on days off.The 2003/04 survey showed thatmore than four-fifths of respon dents heard about politics on television either daily or several times a week. She presents regressions showing that, controlling for demographic character istics, viewers who prefer the main state channel ORT were somewhat more likely to vote forPutin in 2000, and fans ofNTV were slightly more critical of Putin's performance. Simple regressions such as these do not predict the vote accurately, but since other studies show that television does indeed influ ence voting preferences, at least in presidential campaigns, Oates is on safe ground. Her conclusions boil down to the following: first,television inRussia is used as an instrument formass political manipulation; second, meaningful discussion of sensitivepolitical topics isno longer part of thejournalistic main stream; third, audiences in Russia, though canny, are vulnerable because of theirheavy exposure to a centrally controlled medium. The prospects for the media to play a positive role in Russian democratization are, therefore, bleak. Centre for theStudy of Public Policy Neil Munro Universityof Aberdeen Pridemore, William A. (ed.). Ruling Russia: Law, Crime, andJustice ina Changing Society.Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, New York, Toronto and Oxford, 2005. xii + 325 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?22.99 (paperback). This collection is an ambitious undertaking. William Pridemore's stated goal is to provide a comprehensive point of reference in relation to the changing nature of the rule of law, patterns of crime and the criminal justice system in Russia as a result of the collapse of Communism and the break-up of the USSR in 1991, and the subsequent impact of the post-Communist transition during the last fifteenyears. Presenting a wide-ranging collection of articles 768 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 related to this topic,written by a disparate group of authors (in terms of both their geographic and academic orientation), Pridemore largely succeeds in achieving his goal. The end result is a highly informative and credible assess ment of the complex process of building a democratic legal and criminal culture in contemporary Russia. The collection isdivided into three sections, each containing studies broad ly related to the key themes covered by the book: Law, Crime and Justice. The opening chapter by Richard Sakwa begins with an incisive study of the enduring dominance of the executive in contemporary Russian legal-political infrastructure,particularly highlighting the 'hegemonic presidency' that has evolved during the recent re-assertion of state authority under Vladimir Putin, while Linda Cook goes on to demonstrate that this is one of the key factors that has undermined the state reform agenda forwelfare provisions, at a time when the political and economic strains of transition have negatively affected thewelfare ofmany of the population. Olga Schwartz competently assesses attempts to create an independent judiciary in Russia, in the light of long-standing historical state dominance and popular suspicion of the judiciary pre-dating theCommunist regime, while in the final chapter in this section she assesses the impact of theRussian Criminal Code of 2001, dubbed by Peter Solomon as a 'compromise...

Television, Democracy and Elections in Russia by Sarah Oates (review)

766 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 Despite these, and other, shortcomings, Runaway State-Building is a signifi cant and substantive monograph which develops a valuable link between state building and party competition, and presents important findings. It is a recommended read for those interested in state-building and patronage innew democracies, as well as party scholars more generally. Department ofPolitical Science& International Studies Ingrid van Biezen Universityof Birmingham Oates, Sarah. Television,Democracy andElections inRussia. BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies, 27. Roudedge, London and New York, 2006. xv + 222 pp. Figures. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?65.00. Television is the primary means of top-down political communication in Russia today. Slick, careful, pro-government reporting and analysis present reality as the Kremlin sees it, and Russians, by and large, accept this state-of affairs with resignation. Sarah Oates's study shows us how this came about, using an impressive array of interviews with media professionals, focus-group findings and survey data. An enormous amount of work, supported by several major research grants, has gone into this book. Oates analyses three elements in the process of political communication: media environment, content and audience. In tackling the first of these, she finds that although media law seems to provide for freedom of speech, in reality journalists face multiple constraints on their independence and professional freedom. Both state officials and owners of commercial or semi commercial media oudets use themedia to promote political and corporate interests.For journalists who engage indaring or confrontational investigative reporting, there is a high risk of being fired, and the persistent offender runs the risk of being physically attacked or even murdered. Oates's focus is on TV election coverage and political advertising. She analyses approximately one month of evening news programmes on the lead ing state-owned channel, ORT, and the leading commercial channel, NTV, during each of three Duma and three presidential election campaigns from 1995 through 2004. Concurrently, she examines a selection of the paid political advertising and free-time spots provided toparties under election law. In the 1995-96 election season the state or state interests did not have a controlling stake in NTV. Although NTV had taken a critical stance on thewar inChechnya in 1995, both channels rallied toEl'tsin's support in the crucial 1996 presidential election, eschewing any pretence at objectivity. The loyalist trend continued during the 1999 and 2000 election season, and moves during Putin's first term against oligarchs with television interests eliminated the few remaining pockets of editorial independence. By 2003, Kremlin dominance of all national TV channels appeared to have been consolidated. Oates uses focus-groups to tap into viewers' responses. These included a series of twenty-four focus groups before and after the 2000 presidential elec tions, as well as ten focus groups after the 2004 election. Participants were REVIEWS 767 asked about the role of themedia, their own viewing habits, and specifically about whether or not themedia influenced theirvote.Most showed awareness of bias on television and of deliberate attempts tomanipulate public opinion. An oil worker said of the 2000 campaign 'There was the impression that only one man was really running, i.e. Putin [...] It didn't beat you over the head, itwas very competent [eto ne v lob delaetsya, a ochen' gramotno]' (p. 145). Some participants admitted being influenced by what they watched even though theyknew the informationwas one-sided. Others appeared to accept bias as natural: theirprincipal criticismswere not about a lack of objectivity but about the negativity of themedia. Focus-group findings such as these can enhance our sensitivity to the Russian audience, but do not prove that TV carries the vote. On this point, Oates turns to survey data. She organized an opinion survey dedicated tomedia issues in 2001, updated by an additional survey in the winter of 2003/04. Her 2001 data snowed that themedian Russian adult watched two to three hours of television on a weekday, and four tofive hours on days off.The 2003/04 survey showed thatmore than four-fifths of respon dents heard about politics on television either daily or several times a week. She presents regressions showing that, controlling for demographic...

The Six Month Kingdom: Albania 1914 by Duncan Heaton-Armstrong G. Belfield B. Destani Albania and King Zog: Independence, Republic and Monarchy 1908-1939 by Owen Pearson (review)

i6o SEER, 85, I, 2007 debates on capitalism in the I89os, on his significance for young economic historianssuch as Petr Liashchenko,and on his visit to Russia. It also includes the texts of his articlesand the interviewshe gave on the occasion of his first and only visit to Russia. By the time he had reached forty, Sombarthad alreadypublished substantial studies on socialistthought and social movements, on German economic development and on modern capitalism. (Moderne Kapitalismus, a work that coined the term 'capitalism',has never been translatedinto English.)He had begun to develop an interest in the history of consumption and leisure. According to the authors, he was already well known to a Russian audience by virtueof the relaxationof censorshipin Russiain 1905-07, which permitted the translationof his book on the 'Jewishcontribution'to economic development . His views on modernization and 'culturalprogress'gained an enthusiastic reception among Russian liberals, although radical social democrats questionedhis shiftfrom a purelyMarxistto what the authorshere describeas a more 'romantic'anti-capitaliststance, founded upon a belief that capitalism had produced a 'fragmented'society. One of his Russianreaders,perhapsnot unfairly, criticized Sombart on the grounds that he failed to clarify for his readerswhich of the many mono-causal explanationshe had proposedfor the development of capitalism,Jews, war, love or luxury, was decisive. Sombart's works are now largely ignored except by specialists and it is unlikelythat this book will remedy this state of affairs,although this is hardly the authors' fault. Their book does not pretend to be a full exposition of Sombart's intellectual development. Its aims are more modest and in any case, if truthbe told, Sombart'snewspaperarticleson his trip to Russia make no great impressionon the reader -'Ich bin sehr froh, in Russland zu sein [...] Das russischeVolk ist ein mysterioserGigant, hinter dessen Geheimnis man nicht so leicht kommen kann' (p. II7). It is to the authors'creditthat they have carefullyand thoroughlydocumented Sombart'sreception in Russia and demonstratedwhy leading Russian thinkerstook him seriously,at least until the onset of Stalinism. Schoolof Arts, Historiesand Cultures PETERGATRELL University ofManchester Heaton-Armstrong, Duncan. 7he Six MonthKingdom: AlbaniaI9I4. Edited by G. Belfield and B. Destani. I. B. Tauris in association with the Centre for Albanian Studies, London, 2005. xlv + I9I pp. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. [24.50. Pearson, Owen. AlbaniaandKingZog:Independence, Republic andMonarchy I908I939 . Albania in the Twentieth Century: A History, Volume i. I. B. Tauris in association with the Centre for Albanian Studies, London, 2005. xvii + 585 pp. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. [49.50. A few months before the outbreakof World War I, Europe'ssix greatpowers called Albania into existence, hoping to calm the dangerous situation in the Balkans.They also decided its constitution,which they modelled in their own REVIEWS i6i image. The new principalitywas to be a hereditary,constitutionalmonarchy. Its firstprince, chosen by a committee of the Powers,was the unobjectionable Prince William of Wied, a presentable 37-year-old Captain in a German Uhlan regiment. Though hyped by his aunt, Queen Elisabeth of Romania (alias Carmen Silva, the romantic novelist), the Kaiser thought William unsuitable and Edith Durham concurred,judging him 'a feeble stick [with] a nervous laugh'. Lacking energy, diffident, indecisive, and ignorant of the countryhe had been chosen to rule, he resemblesa bemused innocent, out of his depth in a Balkanmaelstrom, the central characterin a farce. If William was the star, there was a strong supporting cast: an AngloAustrianprivate secretaryto whom contemporariesreferredas 'the chocolate soldier';an Italian political adviser who would creep into the Prince's study at night to spy on his correspondence; a wily Minister of the Interior who coveted the throne; a harp-playingprincess;wild-lookingtribesmenraised to defend the regime, who refused to march against rebels because they 'were wearing theirbest clotheswhich they did not intend to spoil for anybody';and an unflappable English butler who, when the sound of gunfire drew near, complained only that 'these scares do delay meals so'. Some Western newspapersmight have describedAlbania as a fairyland,but the stagewas set for tragedy rather than farce. The country had little infrastructure,few assets, and a huge balance of payments deficit. The population was mostly poverty-strickenand illiterate; differenceswere customarilysettled by blood feud rather than by the courts; and...

Word, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson. Stanford Slavic Studies, 29-30 by L. s> Fleishman G. Safran M. Wachtel (review)

146 SEER, 85, I, 2007 (P. 158). His own analysisis itself constantlyon the move, searchingfor ideas and patternsthat link and bind the whole together.Throughout, he drawsour attentionto Belyi'suse of contrastin the novel, with the constantinterplayand counterpoint of flesh and spirit,turbulenceand stasis,gesture and the spoken word, Dionysian disintegrationand Apollonian calm, the transcendentaland the quotidian, revealing its hidden connecting threads. At times Langen's analysisdoes not fully convince. In his discussion,for example, of the episode in which Apollon Apollonovich offers to escort a young girl home, Langen arguesthe case for his belief in the primacyof gesture,with his claim that it is the walk in silence that 'carriesthe real meaning here'. And yet, a few lines later, we are told that the verbal element the formal addressto the girl - 'carriesthe same level of significance'as the gesturalelement (p. ii6). We are also told that 'what is unusual is the extent to which [Petersburg's characters] interprettheir world as if it were a book' and that these characters'confront the same interpretivedifficultiesas the novel's readers', except that for the characters'the consequences are much more dire' (p. I5). But this goes without saying and, in any case, is it so unusual for a novel's charactersto be the unwitting victims of circumstancesbeyond their control or to be stumbling around in a fog of uncertainty?What is certainlyless common is the manner in which Belyi shatters expectations that this fog will finally clear when the conclusion to the novel has been reached. As Langen remarks:'No epiphany is recorded, no solution, no tragedy,no punch line' (p. 40). Petersburg indeed is so resistant to final interpretationthat it is hardly surprisingthat it evades Langen here. As is evident from his introduction he is aware that he will not be able to 'produce a master-thesisfrom which the whole novel could be derived' (p. xiv). From this viewpoint the book can be most fruitfullyseen as an exploration and mining of the seemingly limitless ideas and possibilities that the novel presents,reflectingBelyi'sown desire to emphasize the process of arrivingat a goal, rather than the goal itself. If, as might be inferred from the opening acknowledgments, this study started life as a dissertation,then it only rarely betrays its origins;Langen's often informal style is refreshing, even if occasionally jarring. The book contains informative notes and a useful bibliography.Langen may not have fully achieved his aim of demonstrating that Petersburg possesses a sense of organicwholeness, but he has succeeded in producinga challengingand often thought-provokinganalysiswhose greatestvalue is that it acts as a stimulusto read and reread a work of unquestioned genius. Exeter ROGER COCKRELL Fleishman, L., Safran, G. and Wachtel, M. (eds). Word,Music, Histoy: A Festsch7iftfor Cagyl Emerson. Stanford SlavicStudies, 29-30. StanfordUniversity , Stanford, CA, 2005. 777 pp. (2 vols). Notes. Selected bibliography. Price unknown. ONE of the abiding strengthsof Caryl Emerson'swork has been its emphasis on the importance of the interlocutor real, ideal, imaginary in Russian REVIEWS I47 culture. Whether discussing Bakhtin and Dostoevskii, or the canny Russian audiences who watch their operas through the prism of the original works on which they are so often based, Emerson has always carefully explored the dynamics that bind authors, texts and audiences. It is entirely fitting, therefore, that this Festschrift should place such high expectations on its potential readers, who are required to have a mastery of a wide range of primary sources and secondary material, a mastery, moreover, entirely characteristicof its dedicatee. Of course, for the contributors to these two volumes there is the perennial risk of the anxiety of influence;how can they find their own voice, especially when they are treading on the very areas covered by the figure they gather to honour? Yet Emerson's authority also rests on its generosity and grace, as well as its readiness to embrace alterity and debate, characteristicsthat surely explain the willingness of so many of her friendsand colleagues to pay tribute to her here. The forty-fourarticlesand essaysgatheredin these two volumes all attestto Emerson'sinterestsand influence.Most are by leading American Slavists,but there are also voices from Britain and Russia (indeed five are written in Russian...

Nikita Mikhalkov: Between Nostalgia and Nationalism

Adored by Russian audiences for his commercially-oriented films, and loathed by the Russian intelligentsia for the same, Nikita Mikhalkov is one of the most successful, ambitious and controversial film-directors in the history of Soviet and Russian cinema. Revealing and discussing the key themes explored in his work, Birgit Beumers follows his career from his 1974 debut At Home Among Strangers, a Stranger at Home; through to the French co-productions: the award-winning Urga and the internationally renowned Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun, 1994.

Werner Sombart in Russland. Ein vergessenes Kapitel seiner Lebens- und Wirkungsgeschichte by Joachim s> Zweynert Daniel Riniker (review)

REVIEWS 159 In such a miscellanythe declaredcommon theme of Hungarians'capacityfor survival,in an often hostile world, is not always obvious, but two things that shine through in all the pieces under review are Kiraly's simple patriotism, and his at times naive readiness to attributethe best of motives to his fellow Hungarians in their relationship with the peoples around them. This Panglossianundertoneis most evidentin the articleson issuesof confederation and Danubian cooperation, as well as in those celebrating there is no other word possible the 'enduringfriendship'of Poles and Hungarians.In some of the earliest articles the author's limited command of English is still apparent,and he has not been well servedby his editors,who have let numerous typographicalerrors slip through. However, the majority of the articles are of continuing interest and importance. Those on the Polish-Hungarian symbiosis, for instance, highlight the extent to which both Polish and Hungarian gentry assumed, following Galicia's annexation by the Habsburg Monarchy in I772, that the province rightfully ought to be incorporated within the Kingdom of Hungary. This assumption, which Francis I was minded to accept, was not abandoned until I830, when the Polishinsurrection of that year turned the Galician Poles northwards,and drove Habsburgsand Romanovs closer together. The articleson land reformand the peasantryare uniformlypacked with useful information, and reflect the research that went into Kiraly'sHungagy in theLateEighteenth Centugy (New York, I969), as well as his biographyof Ferenc Deak (Boston,MA, 1975),a vocal advocate of peasant emancipation from the very start of his parliamentarycareer. An article on peasant movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is particularly informativeon the difficultyof startinggenuine peasant parties in Hungary's restrictivepolitical system, despite the very real grievancesand lively political consciousness of peasants as a whole. All in all, the republication of these articlesis welcome, and makes a fittingtribute to Kiraly'spersonal sacrifices, as well as his lifelong commitment to the study of his country'shistory. Grant MacEwanCollege, Edmonton IAND. ARMOUR Zweynert, Joachim and Riniker, Daniel. WernerSombartin Russland.Ein vergessenes Kapitel seiner Lebens- und Wirkungsgeschichte. Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschsprachigenOkonomie, I9. Metropolis, Marburg, 2004. I58 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.?22.8o. THIS short book, one in a seriesof studiesin the historyof German economic thought, opens with a photograph from Zhivoeslovoof the once illustrious economist Werner Sombart (I863-I941) during the month-long lecture tour he made in Russia during the springof 1914. The authorsbelong to a team of scholars who are re-examining the German-Russian social scientific nexus during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Future work is promised on figures such as Tugan Baranovskii,Mendeleev, Kulischer, von Storch and Weber. This book, which is a successorto Zweynert'smuch more substantial monograph, Eine Geschichte des okonomischen Denkensin Russland,I805-I905 (Marburg,2002), has brief chapterson Sombart'splace in the intense Russian i6o SEER, 85, I, 2007 debates on capitalism in the I89os, on his significance for young economic historianssuch as Petr Liashchenko,and on his visit to Russia. It also includes the texts of his articlesand the interviewshe gave on the occasion of his first and only visit to Russia. By the time he had reached forty, Sombarthad alreadypublished substantial studies on socialistthought and social movements, on German economic development and on modern capitalism. (Moderne Kapitalismus, a work that coined the term 'capitalism',has never been translatedinto English.)He had begun to develop an interest in the history of consumption and leisure. According to the authors, he was already well known to a Russian audience by virtueof the relaxationof censorshipin Russiain 1905-07, which permitted the translationof his book on the 'Jewishcontribution'to economic development . His views on modernization and 'culturalprogress'gained an enthusiastic reception among Russian liberals, although radical social democrats questionedhis shiftfrom a purelyMarxistto what the authorshere describeas a more 'romantic'anti-capitaliststance, founded upon a belief that capitalism had produced a 'fragmented'society. One of his Russianreaders,perhapsnot unfairly, criticized Sombart on the grounds that he failed to clarify for his readerswhich of the many mono-causal explanationshe had proposedfor the development of capitalism,Jews, war, love or luxury, was decisive. Sombart's works are now largely ignored except by specialists and it is unlikelythat this book will remedy this state...

English and emerging advertising in Russia

Abstract: This paper focuses on the role of English in the emerging advertising market in Russia. A brief overview of the advertising industry in Russia is presented, and the current attitudes of the Russian audience and institutions toward advertisements and foreignisms are demonstrated. Multiple language mixing, predominantely of English and Russian, is observed in three types of TV advertisements: social, service, and commercials. In TV commercials code-switching and code-mixing are a dominant feature, as 76 percent use English or an English-Russian mix. A correspondence exists between the type of product, and the language choice for the brand name: names of the Western products are presented totally in English, while Russian goods employ both languages in naming and labeling. Results indicate that there is a preference for using English names and the Roman script for a variety of products, such as electronic appliances, cars, personal care, laundry and household products. Abundance of English usage in the commercials can be explained by utilitarian reasons, as Western firms promote their brand names and logo in English all over the world, and by social reasons, as English signals novelty, prestige, and high quality products.

The Comedy of Female Sleuths: Televising Dar'ia Dontsova's Ironic Detectives

Detective series (detektivnye serialy) are hardly a novelty for post-Soviet prime-time television viewers and have appeared on almost all major Russian channels.' Russian audiences are also not entirely unfamiliar with the image of the female detective. From American and British imports such as Murder She Wrote (Ona napisala ubiistvo) and Miss Marple to domestic televised versions of Alexandra Marinina's Kamenskaia and Stanislav Govorukhin's Female Logic (Zhenskaia logika), women have followed leads, interrogated suspects, and solved crimes through pure logic and deduction. Launched in 2003, the television series Dasha Vasilieva, Amateur Private Investigator (Liubitel'nitsa chastnogo syska Dasha Vasil'eva) and Evlampiia Romanova, the Dilettante Investigator (Evlampiia Romanova: Sledstvie vedet diletant) also feature female sleuths. Based on Dar'ia Dontsova's best-selling crime novels (ironicheskie detektivy), the series balance criminal mystery with situational comedy, melodrama, and soap-opera, all grafted onto a gently ironic portrayal of contemporary Russian socioeconomic circumstances.2

Return of the prodigal daughter: The portrait of the heroine in the soviet novel Mat' Marija

The article explores the portrayal of the poet, intellectual and religious activist Mother Maria Skobcova (Elizaveta Kuz'mina-Karavaeva, 1891–1945) in the Soviet novel Mat' Marija written by Elena Mikulina (1983). In the first part, the genealogical background of the novel is addressed, and how the text can be approached within its genre, the socialist realistic novel. In the second part, the portrait of the heroine is in focus. It is demonstrated that the novelist, paralysed in her work by official literary control, could quote her heroine's, Skobcova's, authentic writings only selectively. In consequence, the novel portrays the heroine as an archetypal “prodigal daughter”, a puppet-like naïve person who repents of her political errors and wishes to “convert”, that is, to be accepted by the Bolsheviks. In this rigorous example of the Soviet mass novel, the heroine is represented as a martyred struggler of the anti-fascist Resistance, but her authentic personality, her oeuvre as well as theological views are systematically ignored. As this essay argues, the novel is no biography. It provides a clichéd portrait which has little in common with the historical person, whose authentic writings and visual art have only recently reached a Russian audience.

The Good Russian Prisoner: Naturalizing Violence in the Caucasus Mountains

Almost daily, the Caucasus hits the front page. War in Chechnya, the struggles of breakaway republics, oil politics, security issues, and the election of autocrats are among the stories that bring the region to our attention. Much of recent scholarship has focused on these issues in which violence, as it so often does, speaks for itself. At best, one finds a language of challenge and riposte in which conflicts are read as retributive justice for past violence in a dialectical exchange of blows. Yet the more common practice after years of the Chechen war, in Russia and elsewhere, is to venture that the peoples of the Caucasus are by nature violent or corrupt. In this article, I argue for a close reading of the lived experience of violence in the Caucasus in the patterned artifacts of Russian popular culture that have been keystones of knowledge for Russians and Caucasians alike. Asking how diverse genres of Russian popular culture have come to constitute the Caucasus as a zone of violence to Russian audiences not only illuminates these particular logics of sovereign rule but invites a more nuanced view of violence and its consequences in this region. For almost two hundred years, Russian poets, short story writers, novelists, journalists, choreographers, opera librettists, and filmmakers have narrated a remarkably persistent story of kidnapping in the Caucasus. Taking the social, political, and economic dislocations of Russia's early 19th-century imperial campaign as its setting, this tale of two star-crossed lovers-the kidnapped young Russian man-in-chains and the Caucasian woman who sets him free-presents one of the dominant means by which successive generations of Russian publics have come to know and understand the fractious populations living along their mountainous southern border. This story builds on a recursive set of encounters in the serrated southern edges of what was once the colonial Russian empire, then the socialist Soviet Union, and what is now a more fragmented commonwealth of newly independent states. From the 19th-century poetics of Aleksandr Pushkin to the cinema screens of a post-perestroika Russia, the detailed renderings of this specific colonial encounter have changed surprisingly little. Yet for all the well-studied vectors

Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia by Louise s> McReynolds Joan Neuberger (review)

REVIEWS 723 European cultures, with no extenuating circumstances, neither superior nor inferior, but above all as one which can be analysed with the same critical apparatus and methodologies, and hence as comprehensible to an Englishspeaking audience as any other 'foreign' culture could be, or would be once properly explained. This achievement, together with its direct and clearsighted approach to many controversialand alternative issues in the diverse complexity (as it is now clearlyrevealed)of Polishculture, make it an entirely worthy memorial to its dedicatee: Donald Pirie, Stepek Lecturerin Polish at the University of Glasgow (i 984- I994) and Grossman's predecessor in this post, who died inJanuary I997. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies URSULA PHILLIPS University College London McReynolds, Louise and Neuberger,Joan (eds).Imitations ofLife.TwoCenturies ofMelodrama inRussia.Duke UniversityPress,Durham, NC, and London, 2002. x + 338 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. /4I.95; [14.50. As its title suggests, this wide-ranging collection of eleven essays, with an introduction by the editors, explores, in broadly chronological order, the nature,function and fate of melodramain Russia over two centuries,fromthe earlynineteenth centuryto the end of the twentieth. Between them, the essays examine artisticmanifestationsof melodrama in Russia, including theatrical works, popular novels and films, but more unexpectedly they also analyse the use of melodrama in real life events, such as the funeralsof wellknown figures of Russian and Soviet cultural and political life and the show trialsof the Stalinistyears. While the editors and contributorsdraw their definitions and conceptions of melodrama from the existing body of scholarship on the genre in particular Peter Brooks's seminal work 7The Melodramatic Imagination. Balzac, Henygames,Melodrama, andtheModeofExcess(New Haven, NJ, 1976) and the essaysin ChristineGledhill'sedited collection Homeis Where theHeartIs: Studies inMelodrama andtheWoman's Film(London, I987) Imitations ofLifedoes not merely rehearseor gloss existing approaches,but develops them in interesting ways. That the contributors situate their consideration of melodrama specifically in Russia also marks this book as a new departure, for, as the editorsnote, althoughendlesslypopularwith consumers,melodramahasbeen 'routinely denigrated' and dismissed by the Russian intellectual elite as a debased, lowbrow and essentially conservative genre unworthy of serious study (p 5) Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger's detailed and densely footnoted introduction provides a useful 'history of melodrama in Russia' (p. 4), that also examines the changing critical responses to the genre through time, in Russia and the West. It also sets out the general approach adopted by most contributorsto theirmaterial.Underlying the entirecollection isthe argument that, as a genre defined by its 'presentism' and its 'engagement with contemporaneous social issues', melodrama offers cultural and social 724 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 historians a rich, untapped source of 'documentary evidence of the social traumas of the past' (p. 9) and can shed new light on 'the dominant ideologies political, culturaland social -in which each storyis set' (p. 5). As it is difficultto dojustice to each essay in the space available,the following comments aim to provideprospectivereaderswith an overviewof the material discussedin this collection. Theatrical melodramaisthe focusof severalessays.Richard Stitesdiscusses the composition of the Russian audience for melodrama and the reception of three particularlyinfluentialmelodramas from the early nineteenth century. Julie A. Bucklerexplores four nineteenth-century melodramas by European writers that all use Russia as a location or a character, showing how they exploit melodrama in order to create an imaginaryRussia more revealing of Western anxieties about Russia than of Russia itself. Julie A. Cassiday examines, against the background of Anatolii Lunacharskii'spromotion of melodramaasavehicle forsocialandpoliticalpropagandaamong unsophisticated audiences, the messagescommunicated to viewersin the so-called Soviet temperance dramas both theatricaland cinematic that were popular in Russia in the twenties. Lars T. Lih's contribution examines what he terms 'political temperance dramas'. He dates the development of this genre to the I930s and argues that, as they enact the fundamental 'political' and 'constitutivemyths of the prewar Soviet Union' (p. 178), a link can be made between such plays and the show trials of I936 to I938, which manifested Stalin'sconsummate manipulationof melodramaticstructuresto awardGood and punish Evil. Finally, Susan Costanzo's study discusses Rolan Bykov's innovative I 958 stagingof a Czech melodramaattheMoscow StateUniversity studenttheatre. The melodramatic novel receives less attention. Beth Holmgren's essay examines one of the most successful, Anastasiia Verbitskaia...

Sotsial′naia istoriia Rossii perioda imp erii (XVIII–nachalo XX v.) Genezis lichnosti, demokraticheskoi sem′i, grazhdanskogo obshchestva i pravovogo gosudarstva (review)

Reviewed by: Sotsial′naia istoriia Rossii perioda imp erii (XVIII–nachalo XX v.) Genezis lichnosti, demokraticheskoi sem′i, grazhdanskogo obshchestva i pravovogo gosudarstva Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter Boris Nikolaevich Mironov, Sotsial′naia istoriia Rossii perioda imp erii (XVIII–nachalo XX v.) Genezis lichnosti, demokraticheskoi sem′i, grazhdanskogo obshchestva i pravovogo gosudarstva. 2 vols. St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1999. 548 pp. ISBN 5-86007-151-5 (v. 1), 566 pp. ISBN 5-86007-170-1 (v. 2). It is a truism that historians echo the concerns of the times in which they live as much as they describe past events. Even so, for Americans living in a period of relative calm, devoid of revolutionary change, Boris Mironov's Social History of Russia appears strikingly topical. As an effort to conceptualize the social history of imperial Russia, Mironov's study must be understood in relation to the contemporary Russian audience he explicitly addresses. The author has assimilated a large body of foreign scholarship – primarily "new social history" produced by Anglo-American authors, along with a sprinkling of more broadly European economic and demographic history from the 1970s and 1980s – which is effectively incorporated into his own very deep empirical knowledge. This exercise is useful for two reasons: 1) it frees Mironov's analysis of Soviet-era definitions and categories tainted by communist ideology, and 2) it gives Mironov's Russian audience a brief introduction to important scholarship long unavailable to the reading public of the former Soviet Union. The reader does not find in this extensively researched account the standard Soviet answers to specific historical questions. Mironov has abandoned most Soviet cliches, though he still assumes that laws of Russian history can be identified based on social science theory and quantitative analysis. Mironov implicitly rejects a reading of his work as moral or philosophical commentary that employs historical knowledge to elucidate Russia's difficult transition from communism to capitalist democracy. His overarching purpose is stated at the outset and drives his analysis throughout: the basic tendencies and directions of Russian history are those of Europe. The result is a scholarly narrative that emphasizes potentialities rather than actualities – one that illuminates the direction towards which Russia was advancing at a given moment (the "genesis" of Mironov's title) rather than the dynamics of where the country actually stood. Thus, we learn that while the nuclear family became predominant in Russian society during the 18th and 19th centuries, a majority of peasants still spent most of their lives (youth and old age, it seems) in extended families. [End Page 183] Above all, Mironov describes in linear fashion what he believes to be the logical historical pattern that inevitably will be reached in the course of Russia's future development. The ultimate goals or developmental endpoints identified are those embraced by the liberal intelligentsia (both pre-revolutionary and post-Soviet) and broadly characteristic of modern European democracies: the rule of law, democratic politics, civil society, free enterprise, private property, the nuclear family, and individualism. To approach the history of the empire in terms of a European spectrum has been characteristic of Russian and non-Russian scholarship since the 18th century. Only under communist rule did Russian exceptionalism strike deep roots and discourage attention to the larger European context. It is therefore highly significant when a Russian scholar who was trained and rose to high position in Soviet times self-consciously seeks to explain to his countrymen that they possess a "normal" history in European terms. In the words of Boris Mironov, the "normality of development is evidence that in time Russians will enjoy well-being, a state based on the rule of law, civil society, and all the other blessings of civilization" (1: 17). To that end Mironov calls upon historians to play the role of "social doctors" who point out to Russians (rossiiane) their "virtues and shortcomings." Russians, he comments, are in need of "cliotherapy," and like psychoanalysts, historians can free "the people" of the "complexes" that have developed in the course of their history. In the case of the Russian people these complexes result from late entry into the process of modernization and from the effort "to drive evaders/laggards (ushedshie) forward" (1:16...

National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia ed. by Roman Szporluk (review)

National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia ed. by Roman Szporluk (review)

A Chilean Model for Russia

What Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century was not a Bolshevik Revolution but an American one. The tragedy of that great nation was that it got a Lenin instead of a Jefferson. Today, nearly ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin, has the historic opportunity to start the freedom revolution that his country missed last century. I had the opportunity to assess Russia's situation at the end of April, when I traveled to Moscow at the invitation of President Putin s newly appointed economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov. As a member of the team of economists that entered the government in Chile in the 1970s to produce a free-market economic revolution and a return to democratic rule, I was inevitably asked whether Russia needed a Pinochet and whether the country should introduce a economic model. My unequivocal answer was no to the first question and yes to the second. President Putin and his government must not identify the core of the Chilean experience with its historically specific interruption of political liberties. Such a break has happened in many other nations, and in almost all cases, their generals-turned-presidents have not only been a disaster for their countries but have also left a legacy of more state intervention and corruption. I told my Russian audiences that the replicable aspect of the Chilean model is the radical, compre

The American Declaration of Independence in Russian: The History of Translation and the Translation of History

This essay continues Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov's work on the ideas of the Declaration of Independence as they were accepted in Russia from 1776 till our days. The purpose of this second piece is to look at the relationships between the famous American document and its Russian readers from a slightly different angle. We would like to shift attention from a focus on the general flow of ideas in the style of intellectual history to a practical historical analysis of the translations in which the main elements will be the texts, their interpretations, and their historical significance. As Bolkhovitinov's essay has shown, Russian acquaintance with the Declaration of Independence has a long and turbulent history: it embraces welcoming gestures by the Empress Catherine the Great and careful study of the text by such enemies of absolute rule as the Decembrists. Nonetheless, only the reforms of the 1860s brought the possibility of the first publication of the text in Russia and in Russian. We may speak about two periods in the Russian history of the declaration using the date of the publication of the first Russian translation in 1863 as a milestone. While from the very beginning English and French versions of the text published abroad were accessible to the educated and interested audience, it was the first Russian translation that opened the way to the intercultural existence of the famous American document in Russia. Since that time numerous translations of the full text of the declaration have been completed.1 The first Russian translation not only introduced a broader Russian audience to the declaration but also launched a kind of contest involving the authors of the document and its Russian interpreters. The prize they competed for was the mind and

Meyerhold Meets Mei Lanfang: Staging the Grotesque and the Beautiful

Meyerhold Meets Mei Lanfang: Staging the Grotesque and the Beautiful Min Tian [T]he theatre itself is essentially an example of the grotesque. ... the grotesque [is] the basis of its existence. —V. E. Meyerhold1 Chinese classical song-dance drama (gewuju), like other art forms, has its own aesthetic basis. . . . Whether the character in the play is truly mad or is just feigning madness, the artist must see to it that all the movements and postures on the stage are beautiful. —Mei Lanfang2 Mei Lanfang's 1935 visit to Russia has been considered one of the most important events in the twentieth-century intercultural theater. This historical meeting between Mei and a host of renowned Russian and European theater artists brought about significant repercussions both in the West and in China. After observing Mei's performance, Vsevolod Meyerhold predicted in 1936 that after twenty-five to fifty years, "a certain union of devices of Western-European and Chinese theaters will occur," and he argued that "the glory of the future of the theater" and the Soviet "socialist realism" would be based on the techniques of the Chinese theater.3 Today with the flourish of intercultural theater, Bertolt Brecht, Meyerhold, and Sergei Eisenstein have been recognized for their "insight" into the Chinese and Asian theater traditions and their "fusion" of them in the formation of their new theater aesthetic. Elsewhere,4 I have examined Brecht's interpretation and incorporation of Mei Lanfang's art and Chinese xiqu.5 This article will be focused on Meyerhold's. Long before his experience of Mei Lanfang's performance, Meyerhold had been initiated in Chinese xiqu through reading. In 1914, talking about the actor's movement and gesture as "the most powerful means of theatrical expression," Meyerhold advised the members of his Studio to "read about the Chinese travelling companies."6 He might also have learned about the 234 Min Tian235 Chinese and Japanese theaters through Valéry Inkinzhinomov, a Mongolian expert of the Asian theater and one of the founders and best teachers of Biomechanics in Meyerhold's theater.7 As we shall see, time and again Meyerhold referred to the Chinese theater, sometimes along with the Japanese theater, in his writings , lectures and letters. But it was Mei Lanfang's tour that had the most direct and immediate impact on Russian theater, not only because Mei and his troupe brought an authentic Chinese xiqu performance to Russian audience for the first time8— attracting such notable theater artists as Stanislavsky, Eisenstein, Tretyakov, Tairov, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Gordon Craig, Piscator , and Brecht, as well as Meyerhold—but also because Mei, seen by Eisenstein as "the greatest master of form,"9 arrived at the crucial moment when alleged formalism could suffer denigration and prosecution. The Russian avant-gardists saw in the Chinese master, who was officially invited by the Ail-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries for enhancing the Soviet-Sino friendship, a potentially powerful alliance in their on-going campaign against the naturalist theater and struggle for artistic freedom. Meyerhold acutely sensed the significance of Mei's appearance. He asserted in 1935 in a speech on Mei's performance: "Now already we have clearly seen that Mei Lanfang's arrival will be terribly significant for the future destiny ofthe Soviet theater."10 Mei's performance drew unanimous acclaim from leading Russian theater artists. Their comments, especially Meyerhold's and Eisenstein's, testify to the perception of Mei's art as commensurate with the vision of the Russian avant-gardists. But it is my contention here that, in essence, Chinese xiqu as crystallized in Mei's performances does not conform to the ideas and visions of Russian avant-garde theater. The fundamental difference between them can be best summarized in terms of Meyerhold's art of the grotesque and Mei Lanfang's art of the beautiful, the former capitalizing on contrast, incongruity, contradiction, improbability , alienation, disharmony, physicality, and mechanism, and the latter stressing harmony, clarity, familiarity, spirituality, organicity, and perfection. I am not assuming any value judgement on the concept of the grotesque in a negative perspective as it was treated in its earlier history, but consider it essentially as "a basic esthetic category" as Wolfgang...

The “Crimean Sonnets” of Adam Mickiewicz—A New Translation

In this bicentenary year of his birth, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), the Byron, Goethe and Pushkin of Poland, remains an anomalously obscure figure to the English-speaking world. To this day his nimbus outside of the Slavic world rarely transcends the confines of the academic lecture hall and the serious poet's private study. How to account for this? It is tempting at this point to trot out the standard explanations: that phonetically Polish is a difficult language; that it is spoken by a relatively small proportion of the world's population whose political and economic stature has been eclipsed and mangled by the forces of modern history. One could adduce further reasons: the general loss of interest in the McLuhanesque Western world in classical literature, especially lyrical poetry (Poland's generic forte), the increasing anglicization of world culture and the attendant decline in the study of foreign languages and the literary patrimonies of non-English-speaking cultures; the demise of the culture of artistic translation. To this one could add the fact of Mickiewicz's own deceptively simple poetic style and language, which no less than that of Dante or Pushkin (though the latter have found no end of more or less accomplished translators in English) presents an enormous challenge to the resources of even the best of translators. But in the final analysis, Mickiewicz stands in no need of vindication. For whatever reason, our ignorance of his artistic legacy remains our loss, not his or the Slavic world's, where he holds a secure place in the pantheon of great world poets. It is instructive here to contrast Mickiewicz's under-recognition in the English-speaking world with the special position of prominence he holds in Russia. Since Pushkin's days, when Mickiewicz was lionised for his volcanic improvisory eruptions in the refined ambience of the drawing rooms of Odessa, Moscow and St. Petersburg, poets and writers have been rendering his works as a kind of rite of passage in the process of honing their artistic craft. In much the same way aspiring pianists approach the etudes and preludes of Mickiewicz's contemporary, Frederic Chopin. Pushkin, Kozlov, Viazemskii, Fet, Maikov, Bal mont, Akhmatova, Khodasevich, Bunin and Nabokov have all either translated, studied or expressed deep admiration for Mickiewicz. Even today the poetry of Mickiewicz can work magic among ordinary Russian audiences. I personally witnessed this one late summer's afternoon a few years ago when during a spontaneous poetry sharing session in the birchwoods surrounding the small central Russian town of Bely (Zhukovsk's ancestral home), I recited Mickiewicz's ballad Ambush (Czaty) in Polish to a motley group of Russians of all ages and walks of life, participants in an annual Tolstoyan pilgrimage to Optina Pustyn'. The poem was well known to them through Pushkin's own poetic paraphrase of the work titled Voevoda. Russian culture is of course unique in the importance it attaches to poetry in everyday life. Even in Poland where the rift between the cultures (in C.P. Snow's sense1) is also less marked than in many countries of the West, Mickiewicz no longer enjoys (if he ever did) that spontaneous and universal adulation that modem Russians of all ages still accord their beloved Pushkin. How likely is it that the President of Poland will follow suit and name a civic holiday after its national bard, as Yeltsin has recently done? Of course, observations of this sort are perilous since they are bound up with purely accidental myths that have arisen around the two poets in their respective cultures. In one sense, like his poetic masterpiece Eugene Onegin, the national myth of Pushkin is characterised by its tragic simplicity and purity of line. Pushkin died young at the height of his creative powers. This fact has contributed to the Pushkin's mythic, Adonaic stature of perennial youth, part of which has rubbed off on Russia's own cultural myth of Mickiewicz, whose life and creative work became for a few brief years so interwoven with Pushkin's. …

Return of mother hero

For 70 years, Soviet film audiences viewed to order. Then came the market and freedom of choice. And Russian audiences were quick to tell it what they wanted: good old-style heroes and villains and more than a touch of the Soviet ethic

The wrath of Dionysus: a novel

'This novel has everything - love, romance, lust, travel, adventure. Yowee!' - Richard Stites. 'I would describe Nagrodskaia's work as a cross between the novels of Danielle Steele and Marge Piercy' - Beth Holmgren. Evdokia Nagrodskaia's novel The Wrath of Dionysus, with its theme of gender roles and sexual identity, became a sensational and controversial bestseller soon after it hit Russian bookstores in 1910. Long before post modernism suggested that gender was a social construct rather than a biological absolute, Nagrodskaia's novel put this issue before the growing middle-class Russian audience hungry for popular fiction.The Wrath of Dionysus describes the creative life and romantic entanglements of Tatiana Kuznetsova, an artist who temporarily forsakes her longterm lover and soon-to-be-husband for a sexual affair with an Englishman she meets on a train. Narrated by its heroine, the novel reveals a self-sufficient, emancipated woman wrestling with the issue of how to reconcile an artistic career with the demands of love and, eventually, of motherhood. Male beauty (Tatiana's masterpiece, The Wrath of Dionysus is a portrait of her English lover, Edgar Stark) and homosexual love (as a 'feminine' man, Stark appeals to the 'masculine' Tatiana) figure prominently. A consummate story of the search for personal identity, this novel raises issues as relevant at the end of the twentieth century as they were in Russia when the century began.