Soviet Governance Research Articles

Общественные настроения и перспективы советской власти на Дальнем Востоке РСФСР в 1923–1925 гг.

The period of 1923–1925 witnessed significant efforts by the Soviet power to consolidate power in the Far East region of the RSFSR. This article examines the socio-political landscape during this pivotal time, shedding light on the challenges faced and the strategies employed to establish Soviet governance. Public sentiments in the Far East were intricately tied to the tumultuous political and economic conditions prevailing in the aftermath of the Civil War and foreign intervention. Economic devastation and stagnation exacerbated social tensions, posing formidable challenges to the consolidation of Soviet power. The prospects of Soviet authority hinged upon understanding and navigating the intricate dynamics of the local population. Factors such as the dominance of affluent rural elites, Cossack privileges, and the presence of diverse ethnic groups like Koreans and Chinese shaped the landscape of governance. Despite the adversities, the Soviet authorities achieved a notable milestone with the successful conduct of elections to the grassroots councils across the region in 1923–1924. This demonstrated a degree of acceptance and legitimacy for the new regime, marking a crucial step towards consolidation. In conclusion, the establishment of Soviet power in the Far East of the RSFSR during 1923–1925 was a complex endeavor shaped by the interplay of socio-economic conditions and local dynamics. While challenges persisted, the successful conduct of elections underscored the resilience and adaptability of the Soviet regime in navigating turbulent waters and laying the foundations for governance in the region.

The Soviet scientific programme on AI: if a machine cannot ‘think’, can it ‘control’?

AbstractThis article analyses the intellectual and institutional development of the artificial-intelligence (AI) research programme within the Soviet Academy of Sciences from the 1970s to the 1980s. Considering the places and ideas from which it borrowed, I contextualize its goals and projects as part of a larger technoscientific movement aimed at rationalizing Soviet governance, and unpack shared epistemological and cultural assumptions. By tracing their origins to debates accompanying the introduction of cybernetics into Soviet intellectual and political life in the 1950s and early 1960s, I show how Soviet conceptions of ‘thinking machines’ interacted with dialectical materialism and communist socio-technical imaginaries of governance and control. The programme of ‘situational management’ developed by Dmitry Pospelov helps explain the resulting conception of AI as control systems aimed at solving complex tasks that cannot be fully formalized and therefore require new modelling methods to represent real-world situations. This specific orientation can be understood, on the one hand, as a research programme competing with systems analysis and economic cybernetics to rationalize Soviet management, and, on the other hand, as a field trying to demarcate itself from a purely statistical or mathematical approach to modelling cognitive processes.

Vicissitudes of the establishment of the Soviet Union in Georgia according to Guram Gegeshidze's novel "Voice of the Outcrier" (Gliding Blood on Read Flag)

The tragic event of 1921 marked another painful page in the history of Georgia. Parts of the Russian 11th Army invaded Georgia on February, 1921, supporting the Bolshevik uprising. After several days of unequal fighting and heavy casualties near Kojori and Tabakhmela, Georgian units relinquished their positions and so ended the short history of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Our country fell into the hands of Russian occupation and the seventy-year Soviet governance began. Many authors have described these tragic events of our history. Ilia Chavchadze says that the function of a writer is to awake the nation in hard times. Many Georgian writers took upon themselves this mission during the Soviet regime. However, it was often the equivalent of death. After Joseph Stalin became the leader of Soviet system in the 1930s, began the mass extermination of dissidents, including artists. The writers of the so-called first stream of anti-Soviet sentiment were: Mikheil Javakhishvili, Grigol Robakidze, Nikolo Mitsishvili, "Tsisperkhantselebi" and others.Guram Gegeshidze is a writer who worries about his country. His novels “Voice of the Outcryer” (1982), “Bloody Rains” (1991), “The Ash Tower” (2001) and “The Epiphany” (2016) describes several episodes of the historical processes in Georgia. After Stalin's death, from the 1950s to the 1980s, writers were no longer awaiting a death for criticizing the Soviet regime, but still were victims of harassment and arrest. For example, we can name the stories of Guram Dochanashvili and Chabua Amirejibi. Therefore, we think that in 1982, the publication of a novel by Guram Gegeshidze loaded with anti-Soviet ideology, "Voice of the Outcryer", required great courage on the part of the writer. Several important paradigms are noted in the work under consideration, including the concept of a father with a national spirit and his son, Kaplan and Nestor Vardanidze, which in our paper is considered to echo the epoch and is analyzed in the context of establishment of the Soviet Union. Also noteworthy is the Undiladze clan, ideologically opposed to the Vardanidze clan, which the author portrayed as a symbol of betrayal and immorality. The murder of Jambakur Vardanidze, who came out of the church and was dressed in white, is presented as an allegory of the murder of God and holiness by the Bolsheviks in our work. Guram Gegeshidze's emphasis on the gliding blood on read flag is another visible example of the author's attitude towards the bloody Soviet regime.

The form of state in the historical and legal research of the Soviet period

The subject of the article is the application of the concept of the form of state in the Soviet historical and legal science.The purpose of the research is to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that the understanding of the form of the state in the Soviet history of law was not discrete, it changed under the influence of political transformations and had a significant impact on the modern theory of the state.The methodology. The method of periodization was used to highlight the Soviet period of historical and legal science, the chronological method was used to determine the upper and lower boundaries of the Soviet period. The narrative method made it possible to describe the historiographic process. The historical-comparative method was required to compare individual concepts.Results, scope of application. The concept of the form of the state that was used in the historical and legal science of the Soviet period has been determined. The form of the state in Soviet science included two elements initially: the form of government and the form of statehood. The third element has been added since the 1960s – the political regime. The institutionalization of the history of state and law as a science took place by the end of the 1940s. While historians of the old school were working, the main topics included the early stages of the development of the state. Then after the change of generations the priority place was taken by the problems of the Soviet state. By the end of the Soviet period a more harmonious allocation of topics had developed. In Soviet historical and legal science the form of the state of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods was considered separately. The form of government of the Russian state in the pre-revolutionary period was defined as a monarchy. Several types of monarchy were distinguished: early feudal, estate-representative, absolute. The republican form of government was recognized for the Soviet state. Its class and social essence changed with the development of socialism. Organizational forms changed accordingly. When studying the polity, the main attention was paid to the federation. Its complex origin was noted, because the Russian Federation (RSFSR) was part of the federation of the USSR. The Soviet federations were built according to the nationalterritorial principle. The issue of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation remained debatable. Most researchers considered the RSFSR a state with autonomous entities. The development of the territory of the state as a whole has hardly been studied. Major administrative-territorial reforms carried out in the 1920s-1930s were considered in isolation from national-territorial construction. Generalized works on the territorial development of the state appeared only at the end of the Soviet period. Issues of the political regime of the feudal and bourgeois state were addressed in the study of direct democracy in the ancient Russian state, estate representative bodies, state power during the period of absolutism. Political liberalization was noted during the bourgeois reforms of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The democratic nature of the Soviet political regime was not questioned, therefore, the problems indicating trouble, crisis phenomena in the Soviet state were not identified.Conclusions. The understanding of elements of form of the state in the Soviet history of law was expanding. It changed in accordance with the changes in the Soviet governance. The main approaches to understanding the form of the state are accepted by contemporary Russian science.

Метафорические модели дискурсивного конструирования негативного образа России в испанских СМИ

This article deals with the problem of discourse designing of the negative image of Russia in Spanish mass media using metaphorical models with the target domain “Russia”. Within the framework of this study, a metaphorical model is defined as a mental scheme of connections between different conceptual domains, which is formed and fixed in the minds of native speakers. The material includes Spanish articles from reputable sources (El País and BBC News in Spanish) mentioning Russia (over 500,000 characters in total). With the use of discourse, corpus and lexical-semantic analysis as well as conceptual analysis of metaphorical models, the author found that the negative image of Russia is constructed in Spanish political media discourse through the following metaphorical models: “Russia is the country of Putin”, “Russia is the heir to the USSR” and “Russia is a pseudo-saviour of the world”. The following frames can be distinguished within the structure of the model “Russia is the country of Putin”: 1) Russia belongs to Putin; 2) Putin is a lifelong president; 3) Putinism is an ideology of Russian citizens. The metaphorical model “Russia is the heir to the USSR” includes the following stereotypical scenarios: 1) authoritarian, undemocratic methods of governance; 2) “Soviet” way of living; 3) backward economy. The frame that exists within the model “Russia is a pseudo-saviour of the world” actualizes the scenario of providing humanitarian aid for show. Among the lexical and grammatical representatives of these metaphorical models are the following: prepositional construction with de and the proper name Putin; adjectives with the semes “infinitely long, eternal” and “entire”; adjectives containing semes of distance/separateness; lexeme soviético, etc. The nominative field of the considered image contains both direct nominations, represented by the toponyms Rusia, Moscú and Kremlin, and metaphors that are mainly related to the size of the state. The stereotypical features of the source domain make it possible to create a negative image of Russia as an authoritarian, undemocratic state with an almost monarchical system, outdated Soviet governance methods, saviour-ofthe-world ambitions, and ostentatious behaviour in the international arena.

Making Communism Work: Sinicizing a Soviet Governance Practice

AbstractAmong various grassroots governance practices adopted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), few have proven more adaptive and effective than the deployment of work teams—ad hoc units appointed and directed by higher-level Party and government organs and dispatched for a limited time to carry out a specific mission by means of mass mobilization. Yet, perhaps because work teams straddle the boundary between formal and informal institutions, they have received scant analytical attention. While work teams figure prominently in narrative accounts of the major campaigns of Mao's China, their origins, operations, and contemporary implications have yet to be fully explored. This article traces the roots of Chinese work teams to Russian revolutionary precedents, including plenipotentiaries, shock brigades, and 25,000ers, but argues that the CCP's adoption and enhancement of this practice involved creative adaptation over a sustained period of revolutionary and post-revolutionary experimentation. Sinicized work teams were not only a key factor in securing the victory of the Chinese Communist revolution and conducting Maoist mass campaigns such as Land Reform, Collectivization, and the Four Cleans; they continue to play an important role in the development and control of grassroots Chinese society even today. As a flexible means of spanning the center-periphery divide and combatting bureaucratic inertia, Chinese work teams, in contrast to their Soviet precursors, contribute to the resilience of the Communist party-state.

Biopolitics of Knowledgeable Neglect: The Case of Famine in Kazakhstan in 1931-1933

This article examines and problematizes the historic case of famine in Kazakhstan in 1931-33 to illustrate that ‘starvation’, ‘famine,’ or ‘food crisis’ occurred primarily because of ‘knowledgeable neglect’ by the Soviet governance system in order to pursue the priorities of modern development, such as industrialization in the context of overall social modernization of population. The paper also explores the concepts of ‘famine’ through Malthusianism, ‘entitlement approach’ and ‘new famine’. It also explains the biopolitical implications of these concepts using the historical case of the 1931-1933 famine in Kazakhstan. The case shows that particular Soviet government policies and political decisions by individual officials to worsened the condition of marginalized communities at the social periphery for the attainment of a ‘greater good’ of the government national priorities, particularly overall industrialization and modern economic development. The case demonstrates that any promotion of a dominant ‘identity’, particularly in its modernist form with ‘civilizing’ function, exposes the inclination towards exclusion and repression of ‘bare life’ of marginalized people at the periphery. On the whole, the article critically explores the ‘famine’ as a complex biopolitical problem of public action or inaction, failure of accountability, and therefore ‘knowledgeable neglect’ of periphery populations.

The Struggle for Meaning of Obshchestvennyi Kontrol’ in Contemporary Russia: Civic Participation between Resistance and Compliance after the 2011–2012 Elections

This article explores contrasting conceptions of the essentially contested concept obshchestvennyi kontrol’, as understood by the anti-systemic opposition and the Kremlin. It shows that the period of contention accompanying the 2011–2012 elections allowed competing narratives of this concept to emerge. First, the opposition presented it as a means for citizens to hold corrupt authorities accountable to the law; second, the Kremlin promoted it as a means to enhance government efficiency. The article shows that the Kremlin has co-opted the counter-hegemonic discourse into a new law which delimits the possibilities for enacting this concept in a fashion that recalls Soviet governance practices.

The Great Socialist Experiment? The Soviet State in its International Context

This essay takes the October Revolution's centennial as an occasion to consider Soviet state practices in an international context. Many features of Soviet governance reflected an interventionist ethos that first arose in western Europe and subsequently informed programs of population management around the world. From this perspective, we see that Soviet methods of rule derived not from socialist ideology but rather from pre-existing state practices. Communist Party leaders used these practices to pursue ideological goals, but both ambitions to reshape society and the means to do so originated elsewhere. This comparative approach also highlights ways the Soviet case resembled that of other late-developing countries, where educated elites similarly relied on state interventions to transform their populations. For many of them, the Soviet Union offered an alternative model of socioeconomic advancement, albeit one based on extreme state violence.

University Governance Reforms in Kazakhstan

This article depicts the country’s efforts to loose centralized state control and grant more autonomy to higher education institutions. It explains the rationale for these reforms and how the traditional structure and individual actors in university governance have shaped the context and culture of the educational landscape. The author discusses evolution of corporate governance implementation and provides analysis of both the challenges of the process and positive developments resulting from it. He argues that lessons learned from Kazakhstan’s reform might be instrumental for other countries sharing the legacy of the soviet governance system.

A Struggle for the Soviet Future: The Birth of Scientific Forecasting in the Soviet Union

This article analyzes the development of Soviet scientific future studies after World War II, arguing that the field's theory and methods undermined the certainty of the communist future and laid the foundations for a new Soviet governmentality that acknowledged the intrinsic uncertainty of future development. The emphasis on uncertainty—but also the need for more data that could freely circulate between different branches of government and hence more transparency (glasnost')—called for radical revisions to Soviet notions of effective governance. Whereas some used future studies to criticize the actual practices of Soviet economic planning, others used this new type of expertise to extend personal influence and accumulate organizational power. Both cases, however, made it clear that Soviet governance had to accommodate the shift toward new constellations of power/knowledge in which scientific experts would play an ever-increasing role in shaping policy with regard to a fundamentally uncertain future.

Human Brucellosis Trends: Re-emergence and Prospects for Control Using a One Health Approach in Azerbaijan (1983-2009).

Brucellosis is one of the most common and widely spread zoonotic diseases in the world. Control of the disease in humans is dependent upon limiting the infection in animals through surveillance and vaccination. Given the dramatic economic and political changes that have taken place in the former Soviet Union, which have limited control, evaluating the status of human brucellosis in former Soviet states is crucial. We assessed annual spatial and temporal trends in the epidemiology of human brucellosis in Azerbaijan, 1983-2009, in conjunction with data from a livestock surveillance and control programme (2002-2009). To analyse trends, we used a combination of segmented regression and spatial analysis. From 1983 to 2009, a total of 11233 cases of human brucellosis were reported. Up to the mid-1990s, the incidence of human brucellosis showed a pattern of re-emergence, increasing by 25% annually, on average. Following Soviet governance, the incidence rates peaked, increasing by 1.8% annually, on average, and subsequently decreasing by 5% annually, on average, during the period 2002-2009. Despite recent national declines in human incidence, we identified geographic changes in the case distribution characterized by a geographic expansion and an increasing incidence among districts clustered in the south-east, compared to a decrease of elsewhere in the country. Males were consistently, disproportionately afflicted (71%) and incidence was highest in the 15 to 19 age group (18.1 cases/100000). During the period 2002-2009, >10 million small ruminants were vaccinated with Rev1. Our findings highlight the improving prospects for human brucellosis control following livestock vaccination; however, the disease appears to be re-emerging in south-eastern Azerbaijan. Sustained one health measures are needed to address changing patterns of brucellosis in Azerbaijan and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.

Changing patterns of human anthrax in Azerbaijan during the post-Soviet and preemptive livestock vaccination eras.

We assessed spatial and temporal changes in the occurrence of human anthrax in Azerbaijan during 1984 through 2010. Data on livestock outbreaks, vaccination efforts, and human anthrax incidence during Soviet governance, post-Soviet governance, preemptive livestock vaccination were analyzed. To evaluate changes in the spatio-temporal distribution of anthrax, we used a combination of spatial analysis, cluster detection, and weighted least squares segmented regression. Results indicated an annual percent change in incidence of +11.95% from 1984 to 1995 followed by declining rate of −35.24% after the initiation of livestock vaccination in 1996. Our findings also revealed geographic variation in the spatial distribution of reporting; cases were primarily concentrated in the west early in the study period and shifted eastward as time progressed. Over twenty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the distribution of human anthrax in Azerbaijan has undergone marked changes. Despite decreases in the incidence of human anthrax, continued control measures in livestock are needed to mitigate its occurrence. The shifting patterns of human anthrax highlight the need for an integrated “One Health” approach that takes into account the changing geographic distribution of the disease.

The status of zoonoses in Azerbaijan during Soviet and post-Soviet governance: analyzing space-time patterns of human brucellosis and anthrax

The status of zoonoses in Azerbaijan during Soviet and post-Soviet governance: analyzing space-time patterns of human brucellosis and anthrax

Everyday life in Central Asia: past and present

Introduction: Central Asia and Everyday Life Part One: Background Introduction 1.Turks and Tajiks in Central Asian History Scott Levi Part Two: Communities Introduction 2. Everyday Life among the Turkmen Nomads Adrienne Edgar 3. Recollections of a Hazara Wedding in the 1930s Robert Canfield 4. Trouble in Birglich Robert Canfield 5. A Central Asian Tale of Two Cities:Locating Lives and Aspirations in a Shifting Post-Soviet Cityscape Morgan Y. Liu Part Three: Gender Introduction 6. The Limits of Liberation: Gender, Revolution, and the Veil in Everyday Life in Soviet Uzbekistan Douglas Northrop 7. The Wedding Feast: Living the New Uzbek Life in the 1930s Marianne Kamp 8. Practical Consequences of Soviet Policy and Ideology for Gender in Central Asia and Contemporary Reversal Elizabeth Constantine 9. Dinner with Akhmet Greta Uehling Part Four: Performance and Encounters Introduction 10. An Ethnohistorical Journey through Kazakh Hospitality Paula A. Michaels 11. Konstitutsiya Buzildi: Gender Relations in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan Peter Finke and Meltem Sancak 12. Fat and All That: Good Eating the Uzbek Way Russell Zanca 13. Public and Private Celebrations: Uzbekistan's National Holidays Laura Adams 14. Music Across the Kazakh Steppe Michael Rouland Part Five: Nation, State, and Society in the Everyday Introduction 15. The Shrinking of the Welfare State: Central Asians'Assessments of Soviet and Post-Soviet Governance Kelly McMann 16. Going to School in Uzbekistan Shoshana Keller 17. Alphabet Changes in Turkmenistan: State, Society, and the Everyday, 1904-2004 Victoria Clement 18. Travels in the Margins of the State: Everyday Geography in the Ferghana Valley Borderlands Madeleine Reeves Part Six: Religion Introduction 19. Divided Faith: Trapped between State and Islam in Uzbekistan Eric McGlinchey 20. Sacred Sites, Profane Ideologies: Religious Pilgrimage and the Uzbek State David Abramson and Elyor Karimov 21. Everyday Negotiations of Islam in Central Asia: Practicing Religion in the Uyghur Neighborhood of Zarya Vostoka in Almaty, Kazakhstan Sean Roberts 22. Namaz, Wishing Trees, and Vodka: The Diversity of Everyday Religious Life in Central Asia David Montgomery 23. Christians as the Main Religious Minority in Central Asia Sebastien Peyrouse

The titularization of Latvian secondary schools: The historical legacy of Soviet policy implementation

Few would deny that the Soviet occupation has had an effect on post-restoration policy making and implementation in Latvia. Indeed, many commentators of post-Soviet politics insist that we must come to terms with the Soviet to understand the post-Soviet. In our view, the effects of the Soviet legacy on the policy process are clearly apparent in post-restoration Latvia, specifically in the area of language education policy. This article argues that both Soviet and post-Soviet policy making and implementation can be characterized in three ways: duplicity, a Soviet ethos, and “professionalization”. In what follows, we first engage with the Soviet policy process in general and the 1958–59 education reforms specifically. Based on interviews with education professionals, teachers and parents, we then analyze Latvian education laws and their implementation in 2004, highlighting the legacy of Soviet governance.

Statistique et revolution en Russie: Un compromis impossible (1880-1930), and: L'anarchie bureaucratique: Statistique et pouvoir sous Staline (review)

Reviewed by: Statistique et révolution en Russie: Un compromise impossible (1880–1930), and: L’anarchie bureaucratique: Statistique et pouvoir sous Staline Michael D. Gordin Martine Mespoulet , Statistique et révolution en Russie: Un compromise impossible (1880–1930) [Statistics and Revolution in Russia: An Impossible Compromise (1880–1930)]. 337 pp. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2001. ISBN 2868476120. €20.00. Alain Blum and Martine Mespoulet , L’anarchie bureaucratique: Statistique et pouvoir sous Staline [Bureaucratic Anarchy: Statistics and Power under Stalin]. 372 pp. Paris: La Découverte, 2003. ISBN 2707139033. €29.00. Numbers are indispensable to understanding the history of late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. This is not just because it is important to know such data as rates of economic growth, urban population, war casualties, and so on, in order to tell a detailed and nuanced history of the period from 1850 onward, but also because the late tsarist and nascent Soviet regimes saw much of their governance as about numbers. Figures such as census data, iron output, and net revenues do not just enable historians to evaluate these regimes; these data represent, to a degree, how these regimes evaluated themselves. The extent to which Russia was successful as a European power was tied to these figures, and the very nature of the Soviet economy—under war communism, the New Economic Policy (NEP), or Stalinism, to constrain ourselves to the period before 1940—demanded numbers for the sake of planning and for propaganda to demonstrate the victories of socialism over the reign of Nicholas II or the bourgeois West. Given the centrality of numbers to Russian statecraft, historians to date have shown remarkably little sensitivity to how those numbers were produced and what the process of their production can tell us about the state and polity in which those numbers were so centrally embedded. The two books under review, therefore, both expose a lacuna in the set of questions historians have asked about the period from 1880 to 1940—and go a long way toward completely closing the gap with detailed, perceptive analysis of the importance of statistics as a lens for examining the rise of Soviet governance. As such, they are vital reading for anyone interested in how the Soviet state built itself out of pieces from the ancien régime, and for anyone who craves a rich account of the interior workings of a crucial but strangely invisible organ of government. These two books form an almost continuous narrative from the beginning of the reign of Tsar Alexander III (1881-94) to the outbreak of World [End Page 803] War II, with a substantial overlap during the NEP of the 1920s, when both Mespoulet and Blum and Mespoulet see a deep—and disastrous—transformation in the role of statistics and the fate of statisticians in Russia. Mespoulet's book, Statistique et révolution en Russie, is largely a history of the statistical profession in Russia, told from the perspective of those specialists who worked gathering data for the zemstvos, the rural councils established by Alexander II as one of the Great Reforms in 1864.1 Her narrative is one of professionalization and then what she terms "deprofessionalization" as the statisticians were forced to adapt to the increasing control of the Soviet environment. Blum and Mespoulet, however, begin L'anarchie bureaucratique after the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 and are primarily interested in what the fate of statistics can tell us about the nascent Stalinist state. Both works are thoroughly researched, well argued, and nuanced in interpretation; and they leave one with a sense of despair at what became of the statisticians. The picture of a "lost world" that flourished under tsarism and then was crushed by the State Planning Committee (Gosplan), the Party, and the security organs underlies the overwhelming strengths of these works, as well as the relatively slight missteps and paths not taken in their analysis. By looking at both books together, one can see the illumination they cast, as well as the shadowy spots where their viewpoint will not let them travel. For the story of the Old Regime, one must turn to Mespoulet, who offers in this work the only sustained study...

Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944-1953

Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944-1953