Russian Style Research Articles

Incentives to Provide Local Public Goods: Fiscal Federalism, Russian Style

This paper investigates how the institutional structure of the government affects the incentives of local governments to provide public goods both to individuals and private businesses. Using a unique data set on budgets of Russian cities, I show that the existing revenue sharing schemes between regional and local governments provide local governments with no fiscal incentive to increase their tax base and, therefore, to foster the growth of businesses. The main result is that in Russia, any change in local government's own revenues is almost entirely offset by changes in shared revenues. This situation leads to predatory governmental behavior towards private businesses. This finding is compared to the structure of federalism in China, where fiscal incentives are very strong. Some evidence is provided that local governments' fiscal incentives are an important determinant of (1) the formation of private businesses, (2) the allocation of local public finances among different uses, and (3) the efficiency of public goods provision at the local level. These findings shed some light on the puzzle of why Russia has grown more slowly and has less efficient public goods provision, compared to other countries undertaking economic reforms.

Crime and Redemption, Russian and American Style: Dostoevsky, Buckley, Mailer, Styron and Their Wards

Crime and Redemption, Russian and American Style: Dostoevsky, Buckley, Mailer, Styron and Their Wards

Enhancement techniques after incisional keratotomy

Purpose: To evaluate the safety and efficacy of a four-step enhancement nomogram to reduce low residual myopia after incisional keratotomy.Setting: Rancho Bernardo Eye Center, San Diego, California.Methods: This retrospective study comprised 86 eyes of 60 consecutive patients who received enhancements to reduce residual myopia (mean 1.30 diopters [D] ± 0.50 [SD]; range 0.75 to 3.00 D) after primary radial keratotomy (RK). For residual myopia of 1.37 D or less, a 0.25 mm optical zone (OZ) reduction was the preferred technique; a 0.50 mm OZ reduction was done for myopia of 1.50 [D] or more. Once a 3.00 mm OZ was reached in the primary or enhancement surgery, deepening (limbus to 5.00 mm OZ) and adding incisions were performed in some eyes for further myopic effect. All incisions were centripetal with globe fixation (Russian style). Follow-up was 6 to 42 months (mean 23.1 months).Results: All four enhancement techniques effectively reduced residual myopia. The 0.25 mm OZ reduction induced a mean 0.662 D of further refractive effect and was useful for myopic residuals from 0.75 to 1.37 D. The 0.50 mm OZ reduction was effective for residual myopia of 1.50 D or more and induced a mean 1.23 D of additional refractive change. Adding eight incisions (to eight at a 3.00 mm OZ) and deepening the limbus to the 5.00 mm OZ allowed mean myopic reductions of 0.695 and 0.640 D, respectively. The latter two techniques were useful for residual myopia of approximately 1.00 D. Pre-enhancement uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA) was 20/40 or better in 44 eyes and 20/50 to 20/300 in 42 eyes. Postenhancement, 83 eyes had an acuity of 20/40 or better and 71, of 20/25 or better. No postenhancement UCVA was worse than 20/50, and no eye was more hyperopic than 1.00 D (n = 1). No serious complications occurred.Conclusion: Reducing the OZ by 0.25 mm for small residual myopia and by 0.50 mm for larger undercorrections was an effective initial surgical approach. Adding and deepening procedures were useful after a 3.00 mm OZ was reached. The four-step nomogram allowed an incremental reduction in residual myopia after RK without producing significant overcorrections.

One-year Results of a Prospective Multicenter Study of the Casebeer System of Refractive Keratotomy

To evaluate the clinical results, predictability, stability, safety, and the patient satisfaction after refractive keratotomy for the correction of myopia and astigmatism using a defined protocol (the Casebeer system). The authors enrolled 324 patients (615 eyes) in a prospective study conducted by 18 surgeons. All procedures were performed using ultrasonic pachymetry with the diamond knife blade set at a length of 100% of the temporal paracentral corneal thickness reading and four to eight centripental (Russian style) incisions with or without fixation of the globe. Straight transverse incisions were done for astigmatism in 222 (36%) eyes. One to eight repeated operations (enhancements) were done on 241 (39%) eyes. Mean baseline cycloplegic refraction was -3.68 +/- 1.59 diopters (D) (range, -0.88 to -8.25 D). One-year data were available for 546 eyes (89%). At 1 year, mean spherical equivalent cycloplegic refraction was -0.27 +/- 0.78 D (range, -3.13 to +3.00 D). There were 373 (68%) eyes with a refraction of +/- 0.50 D, and 483 eyes (89%) within +/- 1.00 D of emmetropia. Ten eyes (2%) were overcorrected by more than 1.00 D. Mean baseline refractive cylinder was 1.01 +/- 0.75 D (range, 0-5.75 D); at 1 year, the mean cylinder was 0.40 +/- 0.55 D (range, 0-2.50 D). Uncorrected visual acuity was 20/20 or better in 297 (54%) eyes and 20/40 or better in 93%. Six eyes (1%) lost two to three lines of spectacle-corrected visual acuity; the worst visual acuity was 20/30. Of patients responding to a standardized questionnaire, 320 (77%) wore no spectacles for distance or near vision; there was a significant increase in glare and fluctuation of vision from baseline; and 247 (90%) were very satisfied with the outcome. Refractive keratotomy using radial incisions with or without transverse incisions and following the Casebeer system effectively reduces and often eliminates myopia and astigmatism with a high degree of safety. Enhancement surgery was required in 39% of eyes. Glare and fluctuation of vision increased postoperatively but were rated mild, and patient satisfaction was high.

Federalism—Russian Style: The Federation Provisions in Russia’s New Constitution

Federalism—Russian Style: <i>The Federation Provisions in Russia’s New Constitution</i>

Clothes Shopping in Imperial Russia: The Development of a Consumer Culture

The buying and selling of goods has taken on increased importance with the rise of modem industrial capitalism. While humans have always traded goods, the development of advertising, the mass production of consumer goods and the need for continually expanding markets under capitalism has given a prominent role to the consumer. Yet, despite the enormous emphasis placed on economic activity in imperial Russia by both and Soviet scholars, the study of consumerism has been ignored. Much has been written about the debates over capitalism and socialism in Russia, but one of the fundamental features of daily life, the buying and selling of goods, has gone virtually unstudied.1 The purpose of this article is to begin a preliminary exploration of consumer culture by analyzing the cultural meanings attributed to the commercial activity of clothes shopping. With the development and proliferation of dressmaking shops, arcade shopping centers and department stores in Russia's cities came the need to define clothes shopping both socially and culturally, to institutionalize the values and forms of relationships based upon the purchase and acquisition of clothing.2 In Russia as elsewhere the discourse on production and consumption was constructed along gender lines: men produced and women consumed.3 But in addition, those individuals who wrote about clothes shopping tried to use it as a way of defining national identity by claiming that there existed a Western and a Russian style of shopping. And, at the same time, there was an attempt to counterpoise the new urban world of the stores with the traditional trading of the markets. All of these oppositionsmale/female, Western/Russian and urban/rural-played a critical role in the discussion of clothes shopping and the creation of consumer culture.

Love: American style, Russian style, and Japanese style

AbstractThis study was undertaken to examine young women's and men's orientations toward love in three very different cultures: Japan (N = 223), Russia (N = 401), and the United States (N = 1,043). The love variables examined were: frequency of lore experiences, attachment types, love styles, love as a basis for marriage, romantic attitudes, and predictors of falling in love. Many cultural differences were found in the love variables, but the effect of culture was not always in the expected direction. We also examined how the pattern of gender differences in love variables differed across the three societies. Some of the gender differences and similarities found in previous love research and also in the U.S. sample of this study were not replicated in the Japanese and/or Russian samples. We discuss the importance of studying love and other aspects of close relationships with data collected from more than one culture.

Design Education and the Quest for National Identity in Late Imperial Russia: The Case of the Stroganov School

Of the three major industrial art schools operating in Russia on the eve of the 1917 Revolution, the Imperial Central Stroganov School of Technical Design in Moscow was the oldest, the most innovative, and the most controversial.1 The Stroganov School was the first art institution in Russia to confront the daunting problems of molding consumer taste and of improving manufactured goods aesthetically by providing the Empire's factories, workshops, and schools with well-trained industrial artists. For over half a century, it blazed a trail for other industrial art schools to follow, as its museum facilities, curriculum, publications, exhibitions, workshops, and factory internships all demonstrated a thoughtful and imaginative adaptation of modern Western ideas to local conditions. Above all, the Stroganov was known for championing a distinctively Russian style in manufactured objects, its mission being to wean Russian consumers from what was considered their inordinate love of foreign products while at the same time opening up new markets for Russian goods abroad. None of these goals was at all unique to Russia, of course. That the national economy of any industrializing nation could benefit from the injection of aesthetics and the marks of national distinctiveness into various manufacturing sectors was an accepted fact by the mid-nineteenth century, and the proliferation of industrial art schools throughout Europe, England, and America acknowledged the role that art education was believed capable of playing in economic life. What made the Stroganov School's mission so unusual, and so problematic, was the matrix of social, cultural, and economic factors in which it operated. Allocated a central part in the creation of a new Russian producer and consumer, the Stroganov came face to face with long-standing issues of Russian identity that it was powerless to resolve. In its efforts to forge a stylistic compromise between Russian and European culture (the so-called Stroganov style was essentially a Russian variant of Art Nouveau), the school involuntarily exacerbated the tensions that arose when a traditional agrarian culture confronted the demands of modern industrial society.

Mikhail Larionov and the Russian avant-garde

A revolutionary multi-media artist and flamboyant personality, Mikhail Larionov galvanized the art scene in the early twentieth century, striving for a truly Russian style of art to rival the avant-garde movement of Europe and setting the stage for Russian constructivism. With his life- long partner, Nataliya Goncharova, he led his generation in exploring mysticism and shamanism and sparked a counter- culture that flourished in the cabarets of Moscow. The development of his career, however, has long eluded the grasp of historians, partly because Larionov, ever conscious of his role in art history, backdated many of his paintings, set designs, and graphic works. In this richly illustrated book, which offers an in-depth treatment of the life and oeuvre of Larionov, Anthony Parton reconstructs an important episode in the story of the Russian avant-garde.A revolutionary multi-media artist and flamboyant personality, Mikhail Larionov galvanized the art scene in the early twentieth century, striving for a truly Russian style of art to rival the avant-garde movement of Europe and setting the stage for Russian constructivism. With his life- long partner, Nataliya Goncharova, he led his generation in exploring mysticism and shamanism and sparked a counter- culture that flourished in the cabarets of Moscow. The development of his career, however, has long eluded the grasp of historians, partly because Larionov, ever conscious of his role in art history, backdated many of his paintings, set designs, and graphic works. In this richly illustrated book, which offers an in-depth treatment of the life and oeuvre of Larionov, Anthony Parton reconstructs an important episode in the story of the Russianavant-garde.

Strategic planning, Russian style

Strategic planning, Russian style

Strategic Planning, Russian Style

Strategic Planning, Russian Style

Hospitality, Russian Style: Nine Communication Challenges. Dianne H. B. Welsh and Skip Swerdlow. The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 6, December 1992, pp. 64-72. 20 Thomwood Drive, Suite 106, Ithaca, NY 14850-9917. $95 institutional subscription rate

Hospitality, Russian Style: Nine Communication Challenges. Dianne H. B. Welsh and Skip Swerdlow. The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 6, December 1992, pp. 64-72. 20 Thomwood Drive, Suite 106, Ithaca, NY 14850-9917. $95 institutional subscription rate

Vasilii Titov and the ‘Moscow’ Baroque

The Baroque, which manifested itself in Muscovy during the course of the seventeenth century, has been recognized as one of the most dynamic and influential eras of Russian musical and artistic creativity. When looking at the history of Russian music one has a tendency to equate the new stylistic trends of the second half of the seventeenth century with those of the highly westernized eighteenth, and to dismiss both merely as periods of Western imitation. In reality music manuscripts reveal otherwise, and now that compositions are finally becoming available in transcription we realize that an entire era remains to be recognized and re-evaluated. In art and architecture, that era, known as the ‘Moscow’ or the ‘Naryshkin’ Baroque, is distinguished by a blend of Italian, Dutch, Russian, Ukrainian and Bielorussian features in a style that, although influenced by foreign elements, was none the less distinct from any in existence at the time. The Moscow Baroque embraced many aspects of the arts, from iconography, architecture and the applied arts to literature and music. Endorsed by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1645–76), foreign influence began to penetrate Muscovy, ushering in a cognizance of Western concepts that began to clash with the rich and long-established spiritual and cultural traditions. In fact Muscovy was just emerging from an aesthetic explosion known as the Golden Age of national artistic expression. Familiar are the magnificent onion-dome churches that were created during the sixteenth century and the flourishing musical centres in Novgorod and Moscow, where composers and singers developed an intrinsically Russian musical style. This was also the age of indigenous Russian polyphony (e.g. strochnoe moskovskoe, strochnoe novgorodskoe, znamennoe and demestvennoe mnogogolosie) which preceded the wave of Western infiltration that inadvertently led to an untimely halt of the evolutionary process of national awakening. Prior to that halt, the Moscow Baroque stands as a brief but unique chapter in the development of the Russian choral tradition.

Hospitality, Russian style: Nine communication challenges

As a market that has been closed for over 70 years, the former U.S.S.R. represents an exceptional business opportunity—but there are risks, too, given the political and economic uncertainties inherent in today's Russian culture.

Hospitality Russian Style

As a market that has been closed for over 70 years, the former U.S.S.R. represents an exceptional business opportunity—but there are risks, too, given the political and economic uncertainties inherent in today's Russian culture

USSR: The sanitary inspector, Russian style

USSR: The sanitary inspector, Russian style

Turning the Other Cheek - Russian Style

Turning the Other Cheek - Russian Style

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky Today

The centenary of the death of the Russian writer F. M. Dostoevsky (1821–81) is not merely an anniversary like any other, but a landmark in human history which deserves to be noted, observed and reflected upon. It is not just by chance that his novels and stories are still being read appreciatively, particularly by non-Russian speakers who have no background in Russian culture. Furthermore, it is not simply a desire to penetrate the secrets of the Russian heart, the peculiarities of the Russian character or the Russian style of life that creates their interest in his writings. Dostoevsky did of course reflect his own age and describe the situation in the Russia of his time, and it is valuable to study this aspect of his work. But it is not the whole. From the depth of his sensitive heart and with his prophetic finger this writer touched on something not exclusively Russian, but universal, global, even cosmic. He introduced philosophy and theology into a story in such a way that even a hundred years later everyone can find something familiar and personal in it, irrespective of his culture and language. He unearthed seeds which bore shoots many years later. He reflected in a Christian way on the crops and the future of what had been sown, and traced the mechanism of the historical process, not merely from the political and socio-economic point of view, but in human terms. This is probably the most significant feature of Dostoevsky's work.

In the Russian Style

In the Russian Style

A Practical Handbook of Russian Style. Words, Phrases, Derivation

A Practical Handbook of Russian Style. Words, Phrases, Derivation