School Of Slavonic Research Articles

The Implications of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-1878 on the Muslim Minorities in Bulgaria: Reports from the British Documents

The Russo-Ottoman war that broke out in 1877-1878 was aimed at solving the issue of Ottoman administration in the Balkans, especially regarding the alleged weakness of the Ottoman administration over the Christian people in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ironically, the war had a more significant impact on Muslims in the Balkans, especially in Bulgaria, than the solution to the issue in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This article analyzes on how the war has had implications on the Muslim minority population in Bulgaria. This article uses a qualitative method approach which involves the content analysis of British official documents and records collected from the British National Archives and the University of London from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. The findings proved that the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877 was not intended to give justice to the Christian community under the Ottoman empire but was a strategy of the Russia and Bulgarian governments to carry out ethnic cleansing on the Muslim minority in Bulgaria. The implication of this war led to widespread oppression and mass expulsion of the Muslim population in Bulgaria, resulting in significant demographic changes and a prolonged humanitarian crisis. For future research, it is suggested that an in-depth examination be conducted on the roles and positions of other European powers in the Russo-Ottoman conflict of 1877, particularly regarding their attitudes and reactions towards the fate of the Muslim population in Bulgaria.

Pertempuran Rusia-Uthmaniyah 1877-1878 dan Impaknya terhadap Muslim Bulgaria The Battle of Russo-Ottoman 1877-1878 and Its Impact on Muslims in Bulgaria

The fierce battle that broke out in history between Russia and Ottoman in 1877–1878 was an attempt to solve the problems faced by the Ottoman administration in the Balkans. This is mainly related to accusations that the Ottoman government cannot protect Christians in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ironically, Russia's victory did not lead to the resolution of the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Instead, it negatively impacted Muslims in the Balkans, especially in Bulgaria. This article will analyse the social effects of the war on Bulgaria's Muslim minority. This article uses a qualitative method called content analysis to evaluate British official documents and records collected from the British National Archives and the University of London, specifically from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. The result shows that the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877 was not intended to give justice to the Christian community under the Ottoman empire; on the contrary, it was a strategy used by Russia and the Bulgarian government to eliminate the Muslim minority in Bulgaria.

The World of Czech Intellectuals in the Life of Roman Dyboski

The paper discusses the role of Czech (Czechoslovakian) intellectuals in the life of Roman Dyboski (1885–1945), professor of English philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Dyboski was one of just a few Polish scholars who, despite the tense political relations between Czechoslovakia and Poland at that time, advocated the idea of mutual intellectual cooperation. Roman Dyboski’s position was quite specific. He grew up in the Polish-Czech border region and studied English language and literature. His chief aim was to bring closer Poland and the Anglo-Saxon world. To this purpose, he corresponded actively with scholars from Czechoslovakia, especially with experts on English studies, including Otokar Vočadlo. He also met many of them in person when he was in London as a lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University College London established by Tomáš G. Masaryk. Dyboski was also one of but a handful Polish experts who spoke Czech and published in Czechoslovakia not only on Polish but also on English matters, which given the considerable level of interest in Anglo-Saxon culture in both countries brought Poles and Czechs closer together.

Encounters, Institutions & Lessons: 25 Years after the Good Friday Agreement

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJames HeadleyJames Headley is an Associate Professor in the Politics Programme at the University of Otago. His research interests are in Russian foreign policy, the European Union, nationalism, and International Relations theory. He is the author of Russia and the Balkans: Foreign Policy from Yeltsin to Putin (Hurst and Co./Columbia University Press). He completed his PhD at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London.Lena TanLena Tan is senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand). Her research interests lie in provincializing IR through postcolonial, decolonial and other critical approaches, and the construction and constitution of the Global South in international relations. She has published on IR theory, 20th century decolonization, the role of metropolitan identity in Indonesian foreign and security policies and the end of British rule in India. E-mail: Lena.tan@otago.ac.nz

Touching Base: Hungarian Intelligence and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the 1960s

Abstract: This article deals with a neglected dimension of Cold War history, namely the role of minor Communist secret services in subverting cultural relations with Britain. In particular, the article examines the efforts of Hungarian State Security to penetrate a university centre in London during the 1960s. Drawing on hitherto unexplored archival material, it documents the intensive attempts made to monitor or cultivate individuals at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies — notably the historian Dr László Péter — as part of a wide-ranging and ambitious intelligence offensive on the tenth anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. Paradoxically, this heightened espionage activity took place at a time of enhanced bilateral ties. The historical records analysed here provide new insight into the duplicity of Hungary’s foreign policy, and the hypocrisy of the post-revolutionary regime’s cultural ‘opening’ to the West, during a defining decade.

Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism by Mircea Raianu

Reviewed by: Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism by Mircea Raianu Sangaralingam Ramesh (bio) Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism By Mircea Raianu. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021. Pp. 304. This book is based on documentation found at the Tata Central Archives (TCA) in Pune and the Tata Steel Archives (TSA) in Jamshedpur, India. It runs from the founding of the Empress Mills in 1877 by Jamsetji Tata, forerunner of the Tata Corporations, to India's 1975 Emergency Laws. Several monographs have appeared on the Tata company's history: Kuber and Pande, The Tatas (2020); Witzel, Tata (2010); The Tata Saga (2018); and Maira, The Learning Factory (2020). But so far, none has delved into its archives. Raianu's main argument is that the development of Tata has mirrored the transformation of the Indian economy from trade to industry and then to the services sector. From its foundation in 1877, the company has branched out to textiles, iron, and steel, as well as hydroelectric power. Jamsetji Tata was guided by the concept of constructive philanthropy, which brought him into conflict with the British rulers of India. While the British did not anticipate India's independence, Jamsetji felt that it was the Indian private sector's responsibility to build the industrial infrastructure for a future independent India. Moreover, in bequeathing an endowment for establishing the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Jamsetji felt that besides the material infrastructure associated with factories and manufacturing, the Indian economy should also have a complementary infrastructure for the production and exchange of knowledge. This in turn would facilitate the development of an innovative economy. However, the establishment of the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) at the turn of the twentieth century reflected how underdeveloped the Indian economy had become under British rule, especially regarding the lack of skilled labor and limited urban development. TISCO was established by Sir Dorabji Tata in 1907 in Jamshedpur. As skilled labor was hardly available, TISCO trained unskilled workers to use sophisticated technology and thus laid the foundations for the urbanization of Jamshedpur. Tata set the future pattern for the industrialization of India, acting like a sovereign power, both in acquiring land from local villagers in the Jamshedpur region and in labor relations. TISCO's R&D department did not produce new technologies but implemented imported ones. The firm became a significant player in the national economy. In the period after independence, Tata expanded into chemicals, aviation, and automobiles, which required advanced technology and labor skills. However, Raianu's account of how Tata developed only goes as far as the mid-1970s. Important developments in more recent times are therefore not discussed, [End Page 920] for example the turn to neoliberalism under pressure from the IMF and the shift to the IT sector, which is now its main source of income while profits from manufacturing are declining. From its very beginnings, Tata's main contributions to India's economic development have consisted of importing technology, training unskilled labor to perform skilled, technical work, and the establishment of institutes such as the IISC. Furthermore, as India came to govern itself and the government was able to establish policies for India's development, more and more educated workers were graduating from Indian universities. As Raianu's description of Tata ends in the 1970s, he neither evaluates nor analyzes the company's endogenous technological innovations. On this topic, there is scope for another book. Sangaralingam Ramesh Sangaralingam Ramesh is currently lecturer (teaching) at University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and tutor at the University of Oxford's Department for Continuing Education. He is also the author of several books, including The Rise of Empires: The Political Economy of Innovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Citation: Ramesh, Sangaralingam. "Review of Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism by Mircea Raianu." Technology and Culture 63, no. 3 (2022): 920–21. Google Scholar Copyright © 2022 Society for the History of Technology

Slavonic and East European Review, 1922–2022

Slavonic and East European Review, 1922–2022 Simon Dixon (bio) This year marks the one-hundredth anniversary of this journal, launched in June 1922 as the Slavonic Review, renamed Slavonic (and East European) Review in 1928, and known since 1931, when the brackets were silently dropped, under its current title, commonly abbreviated to SEER. The centenary offers a natural opportunity to reflect on the journal's achievements and vicissitudes and to glance forward to challenges ahead.1 Except for the war years, 1941–44, when the numeration was maintained but SEER was published without British involvement in the United States, it has been edited in London at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). A constituent part of King's College from 1915 until 1932, when it became an independent Senate Institute, SSEES struck some outsiders as one of the more inward-looking institutions in the British higher education system before its merger with University College London (UCL) in 1999.2 However, both the School and its cosmopolitan staff developed in counterpoint with the turbulent history of the region they studied and with changes in academic life in the world beyond. The same is true of the Review. Conceived as 'the joint product of British and American [End Page 1] Slavonic scholars, and of representative Slavs in every field of intellectual effort',3 the journal relied from the outset on the fluctuating international collaborations highlighted in this article. Since the journal's lifespan has so far fallen into two distinct parts, the article's final section focuses on the years after 1950, when SEER became an academic periodical among a growing galaxy of specialist competitors. But I begin in the aftermath of the peace settlements of 1919–20, when Slavonic studies gained unprecedented prominence in Europe and the United States, and when the Review first appeared as a hybrid combining scholarly articles with politically committed contributions inspired by the shared Liberal vision of its two principal founders, R. W. Seton-Watson* (1879–1951) and Sir Bernard Pares* (1867–1949). Scholarship and political activism, 1922–40 In presenting their new journal as a multi-disciplinary miscellany, studded with essays and documents on contemporary affairs, Pares and Seton-Watson ran against a swelling tide of academic professionalization originating in Germany. In their own subject — history — France's Revue historique (1876), the English Historical Review (1886) and the American Historical Review (1895) had all been established in the wake of the Prussian Historische Zeitschrift (1859) as bastions of a 'scientific' method designed to supplant the romantic effusions of 'men of letters'.4 Nevertheless, the transition was neither universal nor smooth.5 And it was especially uneven among historians who sympathized with the 'oppressed' nationalities of the Habsburg Empire and rejoiced in their new-found statehood after 1919. Barely a decade after collaborating with Seton-Watson in British intelligence, the émigré Polish Jew Lewis Namier* (1888–1960) published The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929), a work whose very title signalled the author's determination to privilege what he called 'sociological' analysis over teleological narrative.6 By contrast, Seton-Watson and his Liberal friends remained faithful to a heroic vision of national emancipation, granted as a reward for moral courage. Warning against the spurious claims to objectivity of 'colourless' history that 'gave [End Page 2] no clue to the author's party allegiance or ulterior motive', Seton-Watson insisted in his 1928 Creighton Lecture that 'no historian who is worth his salt can altogether avoid taking sides in the tremendous controversies of Authority and Reason, of Tradition and Liberty, of unquestioning faith and sceptical inquiry'.7 Harold Temperley* (1879–1939) might have agreed. Though he launched the austerely professional Cambridge Historical Journal in 1923 and checked his contributors' references at the Public Record Office, Temperley never wholly suppressed the romantic streak that inspired his fascination with the Serbs, the Hungarians and the Slovaks. Having partly overcome his initial mistrust of academic interventions in affairs of state — 'Oh these Professors', he wailed to Seton-Watson in 1909, 'how they fail in politics' — Temperley went on to play a minor part in the peace settlement ten years later.8...

Grigore Nandriș. Bridging the East and the West through the History of Language, Culture, Religion

In a recent context in which Romania is confronted with the problem of emigration, this article portrays the life and works of Grigore Nandriș (1895-1968), university professor and patriot, who offers an example of devotion to his profession and country that could be set as a standard for all the following generations. He defended Romania in the war, as a soldier, and then at home in the academia, at the University of Chernivtsi and abroad, in France, at the Romanian School at Fontenay-aux-Roses, and in England, at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. Brilliant linguist, speaking 14 foreign languages, he left a considerable amount of books, articles, reviews, conferences on linguistics, folklore, religion, and culture, being mainly interested in establishing links between language and place and culture and neighbouring nations. And above all, Grigore Nandriș’s personality remains a landmark among scholars in his field and colleagues, friends, students, and followers, who admired his devotedness to the Romanian cause abroad.

Professor Neil Cornwell (1942–2020)

Slavonic and East European Review, 99, 1, 2021 Professor Neil Cornwell (1942–2020) Many former colleagues in the field of Slavonic studies were greatly saddened to learn of the death of Neil Cornwell on 23 March 2020, at the age of 77. Neil graduated in 1972 from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, where he is still remembered by colleagues from that time as an outstanding undergraduate. He then lectured in the Department of Slavonic Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, from 1973 to 1987, where he also gained his PhD (1983). In 1987 he transferred to the Department of Russian Studies at Bristol, where he was promoted to a chair in 1993 and became Emeritus Professor in 2007. Neil was a highly productive scholar whose corpus of authored books, edited books, articles, chapters and reviews spanned a wide field, from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature to comparative literature. His first book, The Life, Times and Milieu of V. F. Odoyevsky (Athlone Press, 1986), is a comprehensive and still valuable study of an eccentric dilettante, polymath and writer of prose fiction who made a colourful contribution to Russian literary and intellectual life in the age of Nicholas I. Neil often returned to this fruitful subject. In 1988, he published a Russian edition of Prince Odoevskii’s tales, with notes and bibliography. He also tried his hand at literary translation, producing an English edition of eight of Odoevskii’s stories under the title, The Salamander and Other Gothic Tales (Bristol Classical Press, 1992). He authored two further books on Odoevskii: Vladimir Odoevsky and Romantic Poetics (Berghahn, 1998) and Odoevsky’s Four Pathways into Modern Fiction: A Comparative Study (Manchester University Press, 2010). The publication of the latter, and final, monograph of Neil’s career coincided with the appearance of his translation of two more of Odoevskii’s tales, under the title Two Princesses, with a foreword by Bridget Kendall (Hesperus Classics, 2010). Besides his extensive, pioneering work on this previously little-known writer, Neil produced monographs on three major Russian authors of the classical period and the twentieth century. There was a thoughtful study of Aleksandr Pushkin’s tale, ‘The Queen of Spades’ (Bristol Classical NEIL CORNWELL 156 Press, 2001), which had been preceded by Pasternak’s Novel: Perspectives on ‘Doctor Zhivago’ (Keele University, 1986), and Vladimir Nabokov (Northcote House, 1999). However, Neil was a comparativist as much as a Russianist. His broader interest in European literature and literary movements was reflected in his books, James Joyce and the Russians (Macmillan, 1992; translated into Russian and published in St Petersburg in 1998), The Literary Fantastic: From Gothic to Postmodernism (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990) and The Absurd in Literature (Manchester University Press, 2006). In numerous articles and contributions to books edited by others, his attention also ranged over other non-Russian authors writing within diverse traditions and at various times, from Umberto Eco, Thomas Hardy, Ernst Hoffman, Henry James and Fitz-James O’Brien, to Orhan Pamuk, Jan Potocki and Salman Rushdie. In his excursions into the work of such authors, Neil would generally keep in mind their relation to or affinities with writers in the Russian canon. Neil was also a skilled and energetic editor of valuable collections of essays and materials, such as a collaborative book on the early Soviet prose writer and poet Kharms (another enduring interest), Daniil Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd: Essays and Materials (Macmillan, 1991). Some of his edited volumes arose from colloquia he himself had organized, notably The Society Tale in Russian Literature: from Odoevskii to Tolstoi (Rodopi, 1998), which contained eleven chapters, one by Neil himself in addition to his introduction, and The Gothic-Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (Rodopi, 1999), containing twelve chapters and Neil’s substantial introductory essay. Neil’s masterpiece, though, is surely his Reference Guide to Russian Literature (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998), which perhaps most perfectly reflected his interests, methods, breadth of learning and attention to detail. Running to almost a thousand pages, this volume is of enduring significance for students of Russian literature. It comprises over 500 entries, written by an international team of 180 contributors, on individual authors and...

Backroom Dealings

Research Article| June 01 2018 Backroom Dealings World Policy Journal (2018) 35 (2): 75. https://doi.org/10.1215/07402775-7085676 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Backroom Dealings. World Policy Journal 1 June 2018; 35 (2): 75. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07402775-7085676 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsWorld Policy Journal Search Advanced Search The following definitions are taken from the glossary of The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, a two-part book that emerged as part of an ongoing research project by University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Committed to the study of the “world’s open secrets, unwritten rules, and hidden practices,” the project is the first of its kind to seriously investigate the informal ways in which people make things happen. Issue Section: Megalomania You do not currently have access to this content.

Interview with Prof. Alena Ledeneva: Thriving on the Fringe

I NTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED EXPERT ON INFORMAL GOVERNANCE IN R USSIA , P ROFESSOR A LENA L EDENEVA , IN CONVERSATION WITH S LOVO ’ S E XECUTIVE E DITOR B ORIMIR T OTEV . Alena Ledeneva is a Professor of Politics and Society at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. Her research interests include corruption, informal economy, economic crime, informal practices in corporate governance, and role of networks and patron-client relationships in Russia and around the globe. Her books ‘Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange’ (Cambridge University Press, 1998), ‘How Russia Really Works: Informal Practices in the 1990s’ (Cornell University Press, 2006), and ‘Can Russia Modernize? Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance’ (Cambridge University Press, 2013) have become must-read sources in Russian studies and social sciences. She received her PhD in Social and Political Theory from Cambridge University. Currently, she is the pillar leader of the multi-partner ANTICORRP.eu research project and also works on the Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, The Global Informality Project, and the FRINGE CENTRE: Centre for the Study of Social and Cultural Complexity. Read full text here.

Editorial to Special Interview Issue

It has been both a great challenge and an incredible honour to work on SLOVO Journal during such a thriving year for our awareness of Russian history and culture, marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution, but also a year that has tested the academic community’s ability to come together and defend its right to academic freedom. In the past year, we have produced two pronounced issues under VOL. 29 of SLOVO Journal, concentrating on the publication of interdisciplinary academic work of the highest standard. As an exclusively self-managed postgraduate project, and a unique part of the UCL Press family, we continue to provide some of the freshest insight into the Russian, East & Central European and Eurasian regions to our global readership. I’d like to repeatedly thank this year’s Editorial Board and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies for the precious amounts of time and dedication offered to SLOVO Journal. Read full text here.

Review of Badcock, Sarah. A prison without walls? Eastern Siberian exile in the last years of Tsarism

SEER, 95, 4, OCTOBER 2017 770 Great Institute. Together with their various co-sponsors, these two beneficent institutions not only brought these books into being, but also facilitated the precious international scholarly interchange from which they derive. UCL SSEES Simon Dixon Badcock, Sarah. A Prison Without Walls? Eastern Siberian Exile in the Last Years of Tsarism. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2016. xv + 195 pp. Maps. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £60.00. Few places on earth are more closely identified with exile and punishment than Siberia. To date, however, scholarly interest in the Siberian exile system prior to 1917 (at least outside Russia) has not been equal to the region’s notoriety, and much of what is widely known about the subject remains derived from the unrepresentative experiences of revolutionary memoirists and notions of topdown brutality long enshrined in Soviet historiography. The present study, in which Sarah Badcock attempts to redress this balance by reconstructing the lives and daily struggles of those who comprised Siberia’s exile population in the final years of autocratic rule (1905–17), is therefore most welcome. Badcock’s book is well researched and cogently structured. She has worked extensively in a number of Siberian archives, and has consulted both official publications and a wealth of memoirs written by political exiles. Following a weighty introduction, four thematic chapters follow the narrative arc of life and death in Siberian exile. The first focuses on the journey to Siberia and on Irkutsk’s Aleksandrovskaia transfer prison, one of the book’s two geographical loci (the other being Iakutsk). The second chapter concerns everyday life in exile, with particular attention devoted to material conditions, community networks and relations with Siberia’s native and settler populations. A third chapter examines exiles’ efforts to find work in Siberia, and their attempts to escape when such efforts failed. The fourth and final chapter deals with experiences of illness and infirmity in exile, and includes an absorbing discussion of the effects of hard labour and enforced isolation on exiles’ mental health (pp. 149-157). Much of this book’s analytical power results from its relatively short chronology. The social unrest that swept Russia after 1905 saw tens of thousands condemned to Siberian exile and hard labour (katorga), with political offenders accounting for an unprecedented 10 per cent of the region’s exile population. Badcock shows these ‘politicals’ — predominantly soldiers, workers and peasants — to have borne little resemblance to their nineteenth-century predecessors, and thereby challenges the traditional juxtaposition of political and criminal exiles, showing such categories to have been more fluid than often REVIEWS 771 supposed. The decade in question also saw mass peasant resettlement in Siberia — a policy at odds with the region’s traditional role as a penal colony. On this point, the chapter on work and escape, which demonstrates that many exiles’ escapes were in reality attempts to move around freely in search of gainful employment — thus revealing the extent to which the autocracy’s failure both to develop Siberia economically and to control its exile population were closely connected — is particularly interesting. Nonetheless, as befits history written from below, such arguments are ultimately secondary to the author’s fascination with her protagonists themselves. She emphasizes ‘the experiences of lower class and disempowered people on the peripheries of empire’ (p. 23), striving to recover their lost voices. In this she succeeds admirably. The book is a treasure trove of archival vignettes and, in all, the best account of preRevolutionary Siberian exile yet written. Badcock’s emphasis on the distinctive features of the exile system after 1905 sometimes sees her overlook illuminating continuities with the preceding period. For instance, she demonstrates the autocracy’s failure to reconcile the punishment of political offenders with its own colonizing mission by highlighting such cases as that of V. A. Voznesenskii, a political exile who found his true calling as a railway engineer in Siberia (pp. 112–13). Such tensions, however, were evident from the early nineteenth century onwards: the case of the Decembrist exile and colonial administrator Dmitrii Zavalishin is especially noteworthy, as are the contributions to Siberian life made by many of the revolutionary populists befriended by George Kennan in the...

Corruption Studies for the Twenty-First Century: Paradigm Shifts and Innovative Approaches

Slavonic and East European Review, 95, 1, 2017 Corruption Studies for the TwentyFirst Century: Paradigm Shifts and Innovative Approaches ALENA LEDENEVA, ROXANA BRATU and PHILIPP KÖKER The key question currently driving innovations in corruption studies is why anti-corruption reforms do not work. The explanatory factors for the disappointing outcomes of anti-corruption interventions over the last twenty-five years include those associated with: 1) understanding and modelling of corrupt practices; 2) measurement and monitoring; and 3) policy design and implementation. This special issue emerges from the international seminar series on innovations in corruption studies in Europe and beyond held by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University College London, between October 2015 and March 2016. The purpose of the series, which brought together researchers of the project ‘Anticorruption Policies Revisited: Global Trends and European Responses to the Challenges of Corruption’ (ANTICORRP), was to highlight innovations in the field of corruption studies regarding theory, methodology, analysis and policy. The articles in this issue represent a sample of the wider academic debates but focus on integrating expertise relating to Central and Eastern Europe Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at UCL SSEES, Roxana Bratu is an ANTICORRP Postdoctoral Research Associate in Global and European Anti-Corruption Policies at UCL SSEES (2012–17) and Philipp Köker is a Senior Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations in the School of Psychology, Politics and Sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University, and ANTICORRP Fellow at UCL SSEES from 2012 to 2016. The authors wish to thank the European Commission and the SSEES Centre for European Politics, Security and Integration for their financial support of the series, and all participants in the seminars for their constructive comments, useful suggestions and insightful contributions to the general discussion. The authors likewise gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the anonymous SEER reviewers, SEER Deputy Editor Dr Barbara Wyllie, General Editor Professor Martyn Rady and the SEER Editorial Board. ALENA LEDENEVA, ROXANA BRATU & PHILIPP KÖKER 2 — the domain of Slavonic and East European Review (SEER) — into a comparative framework. The outcome reflects the openness of the authors to work across area and discipline and to ensure cross-fertilization between area studies and the social sciences in general. Such network-based research has been enabled by funding from the European Commission.1 Wider ANTICORRP findings include a historical analysis of corrupt practices,2 how they are reflected in the media,3 how they surface in measurement,4 how they relate both to good governance and to organized crime5 and how they differ locally, regionally and globally.6 In this special issue, we interpret ‘corruption studies’ narrowly, meaning academic discourse, separate from government policy, media or activist discourses. Rather, we focus on the challenges in corruption studies and the emergence of cross-discipline and cross-area analyses in order to accommodate the complexity and context-bound nature of corruption. 1. The challenges of defining and modelling corruption One of the earlier academic definitions postulates that corruption is ‘the intentional misperformance or neglect of a recognized duty, or the unwarranted exercise of power, with the motive of gaining some 1 Grant No. 290529, ‘Anticorruption Policies Revisited: Global Trends and European Responses to the Challenges of Corruption’. 2 Mette Frisk Jensen and James Kennedy (eds), ‘Two literature reviews on the pre-modern and modern categories of cases respectively’, ANTICORRP Deliverable D2.1, August 2013 [accessed 24 October 2016]. 3 Paolo Mancini (ed.), ‘A comparative research on the print press coverage of corruption’, ANTICORRP Deliverable D6.1, June 2016 [accessed 24 October 2016]. 4 Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (ed.), ‘A comparative assessment of regional trends and aspects related to control of corruption’, ANTICORRP Deliverable D3.2.1, February 2014 [accessed 24 October 2016]; Jana Warkotsch (ed.), ‘Case study reports on control of corruption and EU funds’, ANTICORRP Deliverable D8.2, February 2016 [accessed 24 October 2016]. 5 Salvatore Sberna and Alberto Vannucci (eds), ‘Integrated report on the link between political corruption and organised crime’, ANTICORRP Deliverable D9.1, February 2015 [accessed 24 October 2016]. 6 Davide Torsello (ed.), ‘Comparative country reports on institutional performance’, ANTICORRP Deliverable D4.1, June 2014 [accessed 24 October 2016]; Lena Wängnerud, ‘Case...

Isabel de Madariaga (1919–2014)

Occasionally, the scholarly world is disturbed by the publication of a book so controversial that it shoots over the historiographical landscape like a comet, leaving trails of sparks behind it in the form of heated discussion and reviews. All too frequently, however, such books soon crash to earth, leaving posterity to wonder what all the fuss was about. Rather less often, a work appears that so transforms our understanding of its subject that it leaves a permanent imprint on everything written in its wake. Isabel de Madariaga's Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great is just such a book. Universally acknowledged as a classic on its first publication in 1981, it was reissued in 1990 by Yale University Press, translated into many other languages (the Russian edition appeared in 2002), and is still in print in a variety of paperback editions. (1) Few historical monographs published in the last 50 years can claim the same longevity; fewer still have had quite such a revolutionary effect on their field. Ignored by the historical establishment on both sides of the Iron Curtain and mocked by generations of popular biographers as a libertine and a hypocrite, Catherine was portrayed instead by de Madariaga as one of Russia's most sophisticated rulers--a tolerant and engaging woman determined, despite the many obstacles in her way, to establish both Russia's place in European civilization and its status as a European great power. Indeed, it was the links that the author established between these aims that gave the book its explanatory power. For this was no ordinary and times: it was a full-scale reinterpretation of the significance of the second half of the 18th century for modern Russian history, placing culture at the heart of an integrated analysis of government, politics, society, and the economy. In the light of the astonishing levels of productivity that Isabel de Madariaga maintained in the last 30 years of her life, it is not always easy to remember that Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great marked the crown of a distinctly unconventional career. Not until 1982, a year after the book's publication, was its author promoted to a personal chair at London University's School of Slavonic and East European Studies, where she had been appointed to a Readership--her first permanent academic post--only in 1971. Academic life had not been made easy for her, and she sometimes made it hard for others by seeming aloof and intimidating. She had few research students before she retired in 1984 at the age of 65, at a time when 60 was the standard retirement age for women. The most notable of her pupils were Janet M. Hartley and Pia Pera, who found it amusing that her supervisor should compliment her on the elegance of her spoken Italian. With celebrity, however, came a degree of relaxation, and in the autumn of her life, when at last it seemed that Russia might be accepted as part of Europe, as de Madariaga had always been convinced it should be, she was feted by scholars there in a way that had seemed impossible to predict for much of the 20th century. Born in Glasgow, where her mother, the economic historian Constance Archibald (1878-1970) had graduated in 1905 and seven years later married a Spanish engineer, Salvador de Madariaga (1886-1978), Isabel had an exceptionally cosmopolitan upbringing as the family followed her father's burgeoning new career as diplomat and liberal statesman. Between 1921 and 1928, Salvador de Madariaga was attached to the League of Nations in Geneva. In 1928, he became the first King Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish Literature at Oxford before moving briefly in 1931 to the United States of America as ambassador for the Spanish Republic. While he remained as Spain's permanent representative to the League of Nations, there followed a two-year spell as ambassador in Paris and another as a government minister in Madrid before civil war forced the family into permanent exile in England. …

John A. Armstrong's contribution to the study of nationalism and Ukrainian nationalism

John A. Armstrong ([1955] 1963) published his first major study of nationalism using Ukraine as his case example. This was published at Columbia University where Russian and Soviet studies had been launched in 1946. These programmes would eventually become consolidated in 1982 in the Harriman Center. Armstrong’s ([1980] 1990)’s groundbreaking study of Ukrainian nationalism was republished on the eve of transformative changes in the Soviet Union and the triumph of Ukrainian nationalism through the creation of an independent Ukraine and the spread of Ukrainian nationalism to central Ukraine during the 2004 Orange Revolution (Kuzio 2010) and 2013–2014 Euromaidan and war with Russia. Armstrong’s study of Ukrainian nationalism was published only three years after the Ukrainian nationalist movement (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN]) ended its underground partisan fight in Western Ukraine. The groundbreaking book was important for three reasons. Firstly, experts on the former USSR focused exclusively on Russia and were Kremlinologists; study of the non-Russian half of the Soviet population and Soviet nationality policies was a minority subject in Western European academia (US and Canada were always better) until the 1980s (Subtelny 1994). This was my experience studying in the mid-1980s for an MA in Soviet Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University Of London. Secondly, Armstrong’s work was a step into an under-researched scholarly area of Ukrainian history and politics. In the 1950s, American and Canadian academic centres on Ukraine did not exist, and Ukrainian diaspora scholars were not yet established in their professions; the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute was founded in 1973 and Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies in 1976. Further studies of Ukrainian nationalism would have to wait until Yaroslav Bilinsky (1964, 1983) and Alexander J. Motyl

Resistance, Rebellion and Revolution in Hungary and Central Europe: Commemorating 1956

The fiftieth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 produced a multitude of conferences both in Hungary and elsewhere, and the volume currently under review is the product of one of them, held in September 2006 at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Many of these conferences and the publications that surrounded the anniversary generated more heat than light, for they suggested limited innovation in thinking about the Revolution since it had previously been the subject of major commemoration on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary in 1996. Like the anniversary in general, this volume is a missed opportunity to ask new and important questions about the Revolution. It, and the conference on which it is based, promised a new approach to the Revolution, by situating it in a broad context—both spatially and temporally. On the one hand, it sought to examine 1956 in the light of a long history of popular protest in Hungary, which has had a decisive impact on the country's political culture. On the other hand, its intention was to examine Hungarian popular protest in a broader European context, thus potentially rescuing this history from relative obscurity, and demonstrating what the study of Hungary can reveal about broader European trends. The editors are to be congratulated for their vision in attempting this enterprise even if they have not succeeded; as co-editor, Martyn Rady acknowledges in his concluding essay: ‘It nevertheless became clear that contexts, parallels and common-denominators were more elusive than the organizers had hitherto imagined’ (p. 349). Consequently, the volume is an uneven collection of revised conference papers, and personal recollections of the Revolution, which hang uneasily together. Some— such as the pieces by the historian, former conservative politician, Foreign Minister, and Hungarian Ambassador to Washington, Géza Jeszensky, and by political scientist turned centre-right Hungarian member of the European Parliament, György Schöpflin—combine normative political judgement with analysis. The piece by Krisztián Ungváry on the actions of the internal security services in Hungarian universities and research institutes under Kádár, given its focus on naming prominent intellectuals who collaborated, rather than a critical analysis of how the authorities actually operated, seems to be a quasi-academic complement to the interest of Hungary's tabloid press in personalities from the realms of sport and entertainment who spied on others for the state. Because of the lack of an overarching conception for the volume, the pieces that deal with protest in Hungary prior to the advent of state socialism, or with revolution in other contexts, sit uneasily within the volume.

Delivery and performance of a low-energy ventilation and cooling strategy

There is an appreciable literature exploring environmental design strategies for low-energy, naturally ventilated and cooled buildings, but less is recorded about their implementation in practice. The commissioning and monitoring of the passive downdraught-cooled UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), London, is reported. The building contractor, his suppliers and subcontractors experienced considerable difficulty in achieving defect-free environmental systems, adversely affecting the practical delivery of the strategy for an extended period. The design team was closely involved throughout this period to assist in establishing a stable controls regime reflecting the design intent. However, this intent was itself modified by feedback provided by monitoring. The widely used professional appointment and construction contracts employed for this project do not envisage the need for such extensive commissioning. However, it is argued here that the new generation of advanced naturally ventilated buildings, much encouraged by policy-makers worldwide, will require just such a comprehensive commissioning exercise to deliver anything like their full designed performance. Il existe une importante littérature consacrée aux stratégies de conception environnementale pour les bâtiments à faible énergie, ventilation et réfrigération naturelles; en revanche, elle est moins fournie en ce qui concerne la mise en œuvre de ces techniques. Cet article décrit la mise en service et la surveillance, à Londres, du bâtiment de l'UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) qui est réfrigéré par aspiration descendante. L'entrepreneur de construction de ce bâtiment, ses fournisseurs et ses sous-traitants ont été confrontés à de grandes difficultés lors de la réalisation de systèmes environnementaux sans défaut, ce qui a retardé pendant longtemps la mise en pratique de cette stratégie. L'équipe de conception, étroitement associée pendant toute cette période, a apporté sa contribution à la réalisation d'un régime de contrôle stable reflétant le concept. Toutefois, ce concept était lui-même modifié par des retours d'informations provenant du système de surveillance. Les contrats de désignation de professionnels et de construction, largement utilisés pour ce projet n'envisagent pas la nécessité d'une telle mise en service. Toutefois, on fait valoir ici que la nouvelle génération de bâtiments de pointe à ventilation naturelle, très encouragée par les décideurs politiques dans le monde entier, nécessiteront une mise en service complète pour que ces bâtiments offrent toutes les performances spécifiées. Mots clés: performances de bâtiments, mise en service, retour d'information, surveillance, ventilation naturelle, réfrigération passive par aspiration descendante, approvisionnement, livraison du projet, construction durable

Living through the Soviet System by Daniel Bertaux , Paul Thompson , Anna Rotkirch (review)

reviews 743 Bertaux, Daniel, Thompson, Paul and Rotkirch, Anna (eds). LivingThrough the SovietSystem. Memory and Narrative Series. Transaction, New Brunswick, NJ and London, 2005. x + 277 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $29.95 (paperback). Beginning in the heady days of perestroika and continuing throughmost of the 1990s, Russia was awash with a flood of first-person narratives. These came in a variety of forms, including journalistic interviews, life histories, written autobiographies and memoirs. The content of these materials ranged from storiesof repression and victimhood to accounts of everyday life.Perhaps most interestingly, the authors or subjects of the life histories were often ordinary people ? (present and former) peasants, workers, pensioners and professionals, as well as the generally more well-represented intellectuals. The end of the Soviet Union generated an amazing new category of sources. Most scholars, Russian and foreign alike, have yet to take advantage of these new sources. LivingThrough the SovietSystemis therefore an especially valuable work. This book isan anthology of articles by an international collective of authors, many of whom have participated in generating the new sources. In the firsthalf of the 1990s, Daniel Bertaux, of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales inParis, and a team ofRussian scholars, collected fiftytransgenera tional case histories of families living inMoscow. Paul Thompson and his associates at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at theUniver sity of London gathered forty-seven life-story interviews inMoscow and St Petersburg in the early 1990s. Anna Rotkirch of theUniversity of Helsinki was instrumental in conducting some sixty-eight interviews on sexuality with Russian teachers and psychologists. The interview work of the book's three editors, in combination with a series of other large interview projects surveyed in the book's epilogue and in combination with a massive amount of pub lished, first-person narratives, provides the basis for a huge new source of documentation on modern Russian history. The authors represented in this anthology showcase some of these new sources. If there is a general thesis argued here, it is that which is presented by Bertaux. He suggests the existence of a 'transgenerational moral economy' based on egalitarian values reinforced by the Communist system but originat ing in theOrthodox Church and the village commune. Although this is not necessarily a new argument (nor does Bertaux make that claim), what is fascinating about thisvariation of the thesis is theway inwhich the Stalinist system worked both to reinforce and recreate this particular ethos, especially among urban working-class barracks communities. Victoria Semenova dem onstrates this thesis as well in her discussion of the communal apartment and what she describes as 'equality in poverty'. In an exceptional essay, Ekaterina Foteeva makes use of interviews to examine the experiences of members of the former privileged classes who remained inRussia after theRevolution of 1917. She shows that representa tivesof these groups were not simply 'victims',but insteadmade use of various adaptation strategies to cope with the new system and to achieve what she labels 'social status restoration'. Irina Korovushkina Paert also uses oral 744 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 history to explore the adaptive strategies of marginalized groups, in this case Old Believers in theUrals. Paert's essay is an extremelywell-researched and well-argued analysis of the coping mechanisms of Old Believers. She documents the survival of theOld Belief through combinations of resistance and adaptation. She argues that accommodation to the Soviet system did not necessarily mean compliance. Instead, Old Believers coped with the new government inmuch the same way as they had with the old government, viewing state repression as inevitable and often comparing theworst of the Soviet repression with the early days ofmartyrdom of theOld Belief. Essays by Anna Rotkirch, Victoria Semenova and Paul Thompson, and Marianne Liljestrom discuss women's experience in the Soviet Union, empha sizing agency and subjecthood in a departure from the traditional stress on victimhood and passivity. Nanci Adler presents a series of interviews with returnees from the Gulag, analysing the difficulties of return and the tendency of Soviet society toward a kind of double repression (political repres sion followed by a more Freudian type of repression of the very fact of the experience). Naomi Roslyn Galtz offers a...

Reviews in brief: Moving lives: narratives of nation and migration among Europeans in post-war Britain. By Kathy Burrell. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 2006. xix + 212 pp. £50 cloth. ISBN 0754645746

School Of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London - (Parutis, Violetta)