Soviet Years Research Articles

Проблема департизации государственной власти в РФ после 1993 года

The purpose of the research is to consider departization of the top executive officials in the Russian Federation after 1993 as a systemic legal and political problem, which in the new his-torical conditions has acquired a slightly different connotation than in the late Soviet years. The subject of the research is contradictions related to the necessity of compliance of the top leaders of the executive bodies of the Russian Federation with the outdated legislative norms and require-ments to departization in the conditions when the objective situation dictated to the government officials and loyal governors the need to consolidate under the auspices of the new “party of power”. Scientific novelty and relevance of the research lies in the almost complete absence of works devoted to the study of the process of departization of the Russian executive power in 1993–1999, based on the consistent application of the principles of historicism, as well as formal and legal, systemic and problem-chronological approaches. The study of this issue allows us to better understand the roots of the contradictions of the modern political system of the Russian Federation. In the course of the study it was concluded that the time from the end of 1993 to 1999 can be considered as a certain transitional period when the society was gradually getting rid of the rudiments of the former one-party dictatorship, and the weakened post-Soviet bureaucracy had no incentives and resources to build a new “vertical of power”. Therefore, the legislation regulating the party and political status of the federal and regional chiefs was not distinguished by its integrity. This circumstance left the question about the prospects of official departization of heads of executive bodies of power.

Современное природопользование в Национальном парке «Тункинский»

Since the formation of Tunkinsky National Park in 1991, the territory of which completely coincides with the boundaries of the Tunkinsky district of the Republic of Buryatia, the nature resource management of the region has undergone significant changes. The national park is being developed in accordance with the environmental legislation provided for economic activities within such protected areas. The purpose of the creation of the national park was the need to preserve the diversity of landscapes of the Tunkinsky mountain valley and the mountain ranges surrounding it, the protection of biodiversity, natural, historical and cultural monuments in combination with tourism. The regulation of the use of the park territory is carried out in accordance with its functional zoning for environmental education, scientific, recreational and limited economic purposes. The study area has long been a place of traditional use of natural resources. Here people hunted, fished, grazed cattle, gathered wild plants, people settled along the banks of lakes and rivers. In the Soviet years, this area received intensive recreational development due to active tourist development, which was facilitated by good transport accessibility and the existing settlement infrastructure. A sociological survey, as well as conversations in local administration bodies, showed that such types of economic activity as agriculture, cattle breeding, recreation (serving tourists), gathering, crafts, etc. remain the main ones in the livelihood of the local population. All these forms of economic activity affect nature in different ways, transform it. The practical significance of the research lies in the possibility of using the results of the study by various organizations, including administrative bodies of any level, to assess the current socio-economic situation and forecast its development, to prevent conflicts in nature resource management, to make effective decisions in management, choosing strategies for the possible development of the territory.

Վրաց Ուղղափառ եկեղեցու և հայ Առաքելական եկեղեցու Վիրահայոց թեմի իրավական կարգավիճակի օրենսդրական կարգավորումը հետխորհրդային Վրաստանում

Since independence, Georgia has not adopted a law regulating the field of religious organizations and defining their rights and obligations (“Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations”). The relations between the latter and the state are regulated by a constitutional agreement approved by the Parliament as of October 22, 2002. Unlike other churches operating in Georgia, GOC is the most closed institution in the country with exceptional privileges, great economic and financial potential, the activity of which no state body can control, inspect or demand reports. Instead of passing the law on “Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations”, amendments to the Georgian Civil Code in 2011 allowed religious unions in the country, including the Armenian Apostolic Church, to register as a subject of public law. The mentioned changes, however, did not solve any general problem; the law did not enable the AAC Georgian Diocese to return the heritage taken away during the Soviet and post-Soviet years. The law did not regulate the mechanisms of the AAC Georgian Diocese acting as a religious organization in the field of public law; the Diocese continues to face multifarious administrative and legal problems while carrying out cultural, educational, social, charitable, office as well as activities of other nature and content.

“The New Man” On-Demand: A Student in Lithuanian Schools of the Late Soviet Years (1964–1988)

This article presents a socio-historical study that combines an analysis of the theoretical model of the “new man” in the late Soviet period (1964–1988) with an empirical study of personal experiences of people who were students at schools in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR) during this period. The aim is to analyze how the teaching and learning process were organized during the late Soviet period in LSSR schools, how it was understood by the participants of this study, and what were the possible differences in the experiences of schoolchildren. Also, it is equally important to determine which of the schoolchildren’s experiences in this period could be qualified as “unifying experiences” that formed the mentality of the late Soviet period generation. These experiences are compared with the common Soviet vision of the “new man” education, which was also changing during the late Soviet period. While searching for the answer to how much of the theoretical “new man” model was adopted by this last Soviet generation in LSSR, we use a post-revisionist approach and focus on the narrative of everyday history – what it meant to be schoolchildren in Soviet schools. The research revealed that the formal institutionalization of collective life for schoolchildren through Pioneer or Komsomol organizations was ineffective in creating a collective community feeling between the young generation. During the late Soviet period in LSSR schools there were four main disciplinary practices: formal notices by writing or by word, unsanctioned physical punishments, preventive disciplinary practices, and informal shaming. The last informal disciplinary practice was considered by schoolchildren in todays perspective as the most effective means of discipline at schools. These practices reflected the model of monitoring each other in the adult Soviet society and formed the horizontal control system involving students, their parents, and teachers. The research revealed a preliminary informal social stratification of children in LSSR schools during the late Soviet period. It was not related to the vision of “the new man” education but encouraged an already existing division within the LSSR society. This was a complete departure from the ethical-moral visions of educating “the new man” in schools, which were based on the demolition of the established class division, enabling this “new man” to create a welfare of socialist society by their own hard work and heroic achievements.

Mikhail Krutikov. Der Nister's Soviet Years: Yiddish Writer as Witness to the People. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. 309 pp.

Mikhail Krutikov. Der Nister's Soviet Years: Yiddish Writer as Witness to the People. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. 309 pp.

Der Nister's Soviet Years: Yiddish Writer as Witness to the People by Mikhail Krutikov

Der Nister's Soviet Years: Yiddish Writer as Witness to the People by Mikhail Krutikov

Русский космизм в культурном пространстве России

The article is devoted to the emerging trends in changing the image of Russian cosmism in Russian culture. The cultural phenomenon of Russian cosmism was realized decades after being hushed up, since the creative activity of the most significant thinkers-cosmists falls on the last decades of the 19th – first decades of 20th centuries. The formation of the concept of «Russian cosmism» in Soviet philosophy and science falls on the 1960–1980s, when V. I. Vernadsky’s idea of the noosphere approached the communist ideals of the future. During the years of «perestroika», Russian cosmism acquired its classic image of a syncretic worldview that can save humanity. During these years, Russian culture adopted «Russian cosmism» not only due to environmental discourse, but primarily due to the rediscovery of its own cultural origins and the publication of works by Russian cosmist philosophers, whose ideas were pushed out of the public sphere in the Soviet years. In the 21st century, thanks to the rapid development of science, information technology and the growing authority of technological solutions, Russian cosmism in the cultural space is no longer so much a teaching of the biosphere, which is turning into the noosphere, as an ethical and philosophical justification of transhumanism. The ideas of N. F. Fedorov in the cultural space of Russia are becoming more and more influential in comparison with the ideas of V. I. Vernadsky.

“Catering In Uzbekistan From The History Of The System”

The article describes the activities of the public catering system during the years of Soviet rule the policy pursued in this regard, logistics, problems and needs of the population in this regard. During the years of Soviet rule, new directions of the public catering system were formed. The management and supply system has changed. A number of reforms in the system have played an important role in over the years in the quality, cost and conditions for catering services in large industrial enterprises and educational institutions. The measures taken in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century to develop the public catering system and the lack of attention to the solution of existing problems in the scope of work did not meet the growing demands of the population on the system at that time.

Восточный вектор — приоритетное направление демографического развития России

The article covers the historical determinism of Russia’s choice of priority courses in terms of its subsequent centuries-long development. Being not only a European country but also an Asian one, Russia has developed into the largest country in the world, gaining access to the Pacific Ocean, expanding the opportunities for large-scale fleet development and extraction of coastal shelf resources. It has grown into the country rich in its natural resources. The necessity for large-scale integration of natural resources in the national economy along with the strengthening the Asian geopolitical status of the country was fully recognized in the Soviet years as evidenced by the successful settlement of Siberia and the Far East. The article states that in the 1990s Russia lost a number of benchmarks serving as boosters for its geopolitical status and economic po­wer. The paper provides evidence that for many decades the life expectancy level in Siberia and the Far East has been below its average level within the country, which remains a major determinant of migration outflows and the population decline in these regions of Russia. The authors present approaches to form the strategy of demographic development with respect to the eastern part of the country. The strategy proceeds from the need to ensure continuous growth of the demographic potential and at the same time to address ethnic, natural, geographical, geopolitical, and other conditions of the regions, which largely determine the specific character of population dynamics, its settlement, and much more.

On Valery Podoroga: Reflecting on the years of our friendship…

This essay remembers Valery Podoroga, whom I knew during the years of transition from Soviet to post-Soviet Russia. The details of our fortuitous meeting in Moscow in 1987 are chronicled in my book, Dreamworld and Catastrophe (2000), when we shared an interest in the early cinema of Eisenstein and Vertov, and a conviction that sensory experience — aesthetics in the general sense of the word — was the entryway to philosophizing. Podoroga translated these techniques of image-perception into a totally original, philosophical way of reading literature. Mimesis, his major work, contains reflections on the novels of Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Platonov, and others, analysing the sensory quality of these texts in order to feel bodily the transitory worlds that they created. Podoroga reads Platonov as embodying the rapid industrialization and agricultural collectivisation of high-Stalinism, a mimetic response that leads to the “de-anthropologisation” of experience. Mimesis describes how the bursting of literary forms culminates in the revolutionary consciousness of the avant-garde. Podoroga’s relation to Marx, who was a monumental figure in his childhood, differed from that of his predecessors (Lukacs, Lifschitz and others), and had affinities to Derrida’s reading of Marx’s “ghosts”. He considered the new, “glamorous” Marxism of the younger generation (editors of Stasis) as quite comfortably bourgeois and cautions that the equality of socialism was an equality of poverty. Podoroga valued the individual as the only possible philosophical subject. His idea of freedom was as an inner experience, which he himself attained in the last Soviet years when the archives of Western books opened to him and a “feast of knowledge” was made available. This private, inner freedom of reading and thinking was for him a kind of utopia. Yet this exercise of freedom was a strictly individual pursuit. Reflecting on the years of our friendship, 1987–2016, I ask whether the phenomenological experience of freedom would not, rather, require public acts of resistance.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ДЕМОГРАФИЧЕСКОГО РАЗВИТИЯ РОССИИ: ПРОШЛОЕ, НАСТОЯЩЕЕ, БУДУЩЕЕ

The article provides a brief analysis of the history of the demographic development of Russia, identifies three of its periods over the past four centuries: pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet, and shows the key features of demographic dynamics in comparison with the growth of the world population. From the general object (demographic development), its components are distinguished as a subject. In particular, in contrast to the prerevolutionary period of demographic development, when the expansion of the state’s territory played a huge role in population growth, in the Soviet years the natural movement of the population was the main source of demographic dynamics in the USSR and RSFSR. In the post-Soviet period, its place was taken by the migration component. Based on the analysis of official demographic statistics, it is shown that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent socio-economic upheavals have become a factor in the deterioration of the reproduction of the Russian population even more significant than the trends of the 1980s in its demographic development. At the same time, the first factor influenced to a greater extent the dynamics and structure of the mortality of the population, and the second – on the decrease in the birth rate. The features of the post- Soviet period of demographic development are considered in more detail. Their essence is that this is the time of depopulation, the first stage of which was the result of a significant increase in mortality and of a decrease in the birth rate, while the onset of the second stage of depopulation was initiated exclusively by fertility decrease. Since 2020, the mortality component of the population began to play the same role in depopulation as at its first stage. The final part of the article shows, firstly, what Russia can expect in the ongoing downward demographic dynamics, exacerbated by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and secondly, what are the possible solutions for the recovery of the rising population dynamics.

ABOUT LINGUISTIC SUBJECTIVITY. THE SOVIET PRESS AND THE RUSSIAN PRESS

This article highlights certain peculiarities linked to linguistic subjectivity in the Soviet and Russian press covering periods in the life of society: the Soviet years until 1985, the perestroika (1985-1991), the “democratic” years. (until 1999), current life. In a journalist’s work, the recourse to subjectivity remains his main tool. However, in journalistic work, the subject of the speech is capable of making not only subjective assertions but objective assertions too. The general peculiarity of totalitarian language is its ideological component, its politicization. Usual language standards acquire a dogmatic character. After the perestroika, which lasted from 1985 to 1991, we see a rapid and abrupt renewal of the language of the media. Currently, we are witnessing media stylization in Russia again. Some subjective emotionality comes into play, on the scale of current values. Thus, each era has its vision of the ideal author: the author-journalist is made up of two entities, social and private. The Soviet period put in the foreground the social component (the explicit us), the period of perestroika and Yeltsin, the individual, private component (the explicit I), the current period, again, the implicit social component where an I hides an us.

Развитие теплофикации в России: отечественная научная база

Relevance. The development of a scientific base in the field of thermal energy is inextricably linked with cen-tralized heat supply and its progressive direction of heating. Centralized heat production remains the main focus of improving the efficiency of heat supply systems. The scientific base, created in the Soviet period, confirmed the cor-rectness of the scientific and engineering decisions taken during its creation, made it possible to accumulate experience for improving the thermal power industry. The purpose of the study is to identify the facts of the development and practical activities of the domestic scientific base in the field of thermal energy during the years of Soviet power. The objective of the study is to analyze the features of the work of scientific institutes in the field of the devel-opment of domestic district heating at various stages of formation. Methodology. In the course of the analysis of various scientific sources, various methods were used: problem-chronological, historical, comparative methods. Thus, the choice of the historical method is applied due to the study of the dynamics of the development of the domestic science of thermal energy. Results. In the course of studying and generalizing various literary and archival sources, the study proved the fact that domestic scientific institutions have developed intensively and over the years have reached significant proportions, which have determined the development of modern thermal energy. Conclusions: In the process of studying various literary and archival sources, it can be concluded that the do-mestic scientific base in the Soviet years allowed for the perfect supply of heat energy to industrial and residential buildings of the Soviet state. These facts can contribute to the development of a strategy for improving modern domestic thermal power engineering.

«Настоящая моя жизнь — в одиночестве…». Из дневника Марии Пожаровой

The publication is dedicated to the poetess Maria Pozharova, who actively published in the Russian press at the beginning of the 20th century, and participated in the meetings of a number of St. Petersburg / Petrograd literary societies and circles in the 1910s. In the Soviet years, only her “children's” poems appeared in print — “for a younger age”, the publication of which was assisted by K. Chukovsky and especially S. Marshak. The published excerpts from Pozharova's diary (for 1909–1916) record her meetings and conversations with Z. Gippius, N. Gumilev, S. Yesenin, the poetess M. Moravskaya, prose-writer and literary critic N.N. Wentzel and other writers, contain detailed descriptions of the evenings of “Sluchevsky's Circle”, the literary life of the capital in the pre-revolutionary years. The introductory article also describes M. Pozharova’s difficult living conditions and marginal existence in the literature of the 1930–1950s. The text of M. Pozharova's diary is accompanied by a historical and literary commentary.

Северный морской путь: перспективы легитимизации национального статуса в рамках международного права (часть 2)

The second part of the paper shows that the regime of navigation in the Arctic, particularly on the NSR, defended by Russia today, is much more liberal than that which existed in the Soviet years: up to the Gorbachev’s 1987 Murmansk speech the Soviet Arctic was a closed sea region for foreign navigation. Per-missive order of passage established today at the level of Russian national legislation applies only to civil ships, and in the framework of the 1982 Convention, measures to protect the marine environment from pollution from ships cannot be applied to warships, military auxiliary ships, and ships on the state non-commercial service. However, the presence on the Northern Sea routes of water areas with the status of internal historical waters, including several Arctic straits, plus the special legal status of the Arctic, which is not limited exclusively to the 1982 Convention, allows Russia to insist on the applicability of the permit regime also to foreign warships. This approach is based mainly on the two states’ practice with the longest coastline in the Arctic: the USSR and Canada. Navigation along the NSR in today’s ice conditions is not yet possible without passing through the waters of the Russian Arctic Straits, whose waters are classified by the USSR as internal on historical legal grounds. Although under the 1982 Convention, they can be conditionally regarded as international, the lack of permanent transit through them makes it possible not to recognize them as such. However, the Russian Federation’s task to turn the NSR into an international shipping route may lead to a weakening of the current legal position. A similar situation may arise concerning the enforcement of Article 234 “Ice Covered Areas” of the 1982 Convention, which gives the Arctic countries additional rights in the field of navigation control. Lack of ice cover in the Arctic during most of the year can significantly strengthen the position of Russia’s opponents, who insist on a too broad interpretation of this article on our part. Finally, climatic changes may lead to the NSR becoming more latitudinal, and then the Russian Federation will lose any legal grounds to regulate navigation.

PATRON SAINTS OF GEORGIA IN MODERN ORTHODOX WRITERS’ LITERATURE

Semantics and functions of images that represent Georgia’s patron saints are examined in this article as exemplified in the Georgian Rhapsody, a collection of stories by O. Nikolayeva, stories by M. Saradzhishvili (from the books Do not rush to condemn and Next to you), Exile, a short story by V. N. Lyalin, and Wonderful journey to Orthodox Georgia by O. Rozhneva. Referring to episodes from the hagiography of Georgian saints in the texts in question allow us to trace the spiritual history of Georgia since the time of adoption of Christianity. The detailed list of saints is present in the books of О. Nikolayeva and О. Rozhneva. Even though only particular periods of Georgia's history are reflected in the stories of М. Saradzhishvili and V. N. Lyalin, the country's patron saints participation in the life of their characters in Georgia’s recent past or present day is undeniable. For example, Saint Equal-to-the-Apostles Nina performs a guardian function and her appearance during the Soviet years provides spiritual support to the female character of V. N. Lyalin’s story. First and foremost, a patron in combat, Saint George the Trophy Bearer is also a patron of the family. Venerable David of Garedzha is both an example of humility and a patron of the hearth and home. With his gift of prophecy, Blessed Gabriel (Urgebadze), mentioned in the book by О. Rozhneva, also assists on the path of personal salvation. Whereas О. Rozhneva’s book is exclusively focused on depicting Orthodox Georgia and its saints, the work of О. Nikolayeva provides a more comprehensive image of Georgia, including a vast stratum of the country’s cultural characteristics. In О. Nikolayeva’s book the saints represent a significant facet of Georgia’s image.

ДВА ПСЕВДОЕВАНГЕЛИЯ: ВАРИАНТЫ ПРОФАНИЗАЦИИ САКРАЛЬНОГО ТЕКСТА

Intertextuality is expressed in different forms, one of the most common among them is parody. The object of parody usually becomes high-law works, as the comic effect of distorting their usual appearance turns out to be easily predictable and accessible to a wide audience. It is natural that public attention is often offered parody versions of canonical confessional texts fundamental to any religion. In such cases, the inversion of universal opposition is realized sacral/ profiled, and the resonance result is achieved, as a rule, by using genre-stylistically heterogeneous language units for it in the presentation of the constant plot. Two paraevangelia are considered as examples of such parodies. One written by D. Bedny in 1925, the other by M. Schilman in 1990. In both cases, the authors apply the reception of the transmission of well-known fabular moves and their characters by lexico-phraseological means alien to the Church Slavic element. However, the supposed intences of the writers vary markedly. D.Bedny is an active participant of the anti-religious campaign of the first Soviet years, executor of the state campaign order; M. Schilman is an obvious henchman of propaganda operations of so-called restructuring aimed at destroying the state. Atheistic events were intended to replace Orthodox religion with communist ideology; Reconstruction and reform manipulations involved the destruction of sacred values in general. The study leads to the conclusion that, in many ways, similar modifications of fundamental religious texts are undoubtedly different from each other by inducible impulses of public consciousness.

Manipulating post-Soviet nostalgia: contrasting political narratives and public recollections in Central Asia

AbstractThe vision of the Soviet years in post-Soviet republics varies depending on the government's official master narrative, foreign policy priorities, and general public perceptions of the past. By contrasting the published interviews of presidents Putin, Nazarbayev, and Karimov and the outcomes of in-depth interviews with the elderly public in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan), this paper reveals the differences between the official master narratives of political leadership (positive or negative) with respect to the Soviet past and public attitudes. This paper aims to demonstrate that the narratives of political leaders/governments and public recollections coexist in the same social space in parallel to each other. While governments attempt to use their narratives to promote certain policy goals, people use their nostalgic recollections to make sense of the social changes in their respective countries and use such recollections to interpret their lives.

Siberian Tatars of Knyazevs: historical and genealogical essay

This paper aims at reconstructing the genealogy of Siberian Tatars of Knyazevs (Western Siberia), identifying the origins of their surname, which is not characteristic of the Tatars, and at analysis of the influence of socio-political and socio-economical processes in Russia in the 18th through 20th centuries on the social transformation of the family. The sources were represented by the materials of the Inventory Revision Book of Tarsky District of 1701 and census surveys of the end of 18th through 19th centuries, which allowed tracing the Knyazev family through the genealogical succession and identifying social status of its members. In this work, recordkeeping ma-terials of the 18th–20th centuries and contemporary genealogical and historical traditions of the Tatars have been utilized. In the research, the method of genealogical reconstructions by archival materials and their correlation with genealogies of modern population has been used. The history of the Knyazev family is inextricably linked to the history of modern village of Bernyazhka — one of the earliest settlements of the Ayalintsy (a group of the Si-berian Tatars) in the territory of the Tarsky Irtysh land which became the home to the Knyazevs for more than three centuries. The 1701Inventory Revision Book cites Itkuchuk Buchkakov as a local power broker of the Aya-lynsky Tatars in the village. During the 18th century, this position was inherited by his descendants who eventually lost this status in the beginning of the 19th century in the course of the managerial reforms by the Russian gov-ernment. Nevertheless, the social status of the members of the gens remained high. In the mid. 19th century, the village moved — the villagers resettled from the right bank of the River Irtysh onto the left one. As the result, the village was situated nearby the main road connecting the cities of Omsk and Tara. At the same time, the village became the center of the Ayalynskay region. That led to the strengthening of the social status and property en-richment of the descendants of Itkuchuk Buchkakov. The Knyzevs’ surname first appeared in the materials of the First All-Russia Census Survey of 1897. Some of the descendants signed up under this surname later in the Soviet period. During the Soviet years, members of the Knyzev’s gens had different destinies: some worked in the local government, whereas the others were subjected to political repressions and executed. Knyazevs took part in the Great Patriotic War and seven of them perished. Presently there are no descendants of the Knyazevs in Bernyazhka as they spread over the villages of the Omskaya Region, some living in Omsk and other towns of Russia and abroad.

Armenian cinema in the late Soviet years: desexualisation as a narrative convention

ABSTRACT This article addresses Soviet-Armenian love narratives in cinema in the Soviet political and cultural context, revealing the negative impact of ideological restrictions on Armenian romance films between 1970 and 1990. On the one hand, the state censorship of film production and, on the other hand, the local conventions on social and sexual mores were detrimental to the development of Armenian romance films through a sanitisation of the subject-matter, particularly sexuality. The article examines Armenian love narratives through the philosophy of the being of love and with reference to the principles of realistic narratives and the romance genre. In a range of aspects, from cinematic articulation of heterosexual love, through a variety of theories of cinematic realism to features of visual narration, Armenian love narratives are shown to make use of a set of features aimed at the desexualisation of male and female love interests. Using a selection of films from the 1970s and 1980s with desexualised love narratives, the argument is made that characterisation and narrative are deficient inasmuch as they refrain from realistic representations of Armenian men and women in psycho-sexual terms.