Post Soviet Studies

Soviet policy-makers, in order to aid and abet industrialisation, seem to have chosen science as an agent for development. Soviet science, mainly through the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, was driving the Soviet industrial development and a key element of the preparation of human capital through social programmes and politechnisation of the society. This provided a broad set of the skills, including management and governance, multidisciplinary synthesis, and analytical ability which were required to ensure sustainable technical and industrial development. This process of human capital development in the USSR could not take place without a particular Soviet social policy which was designed by the Party and Government and included the development of science, education, healthcare in synchronisation. The success was achieved due to the implementation of the large programme for human capital development in whose preparation both basic research and education played the critical role. S...

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was reduced from the role of a global hegemon to that of a regional hegemon. As the regional hegemon, Russia was responsible for creating a regional order that was nested within the global order. However, since the Soviet Union had collapsed, it could not be assumed that Russia would create a regional order that was compatible with the global order. Would Russia create a regional order that was incompatible with the global order, and further, would Russia be a dissatisfied state that would challenge US hegemony? Using network analysis, I discover that Russia created a regional order that was compatible with the global order. In other words, Russia did not directly challenge the global order. More specifically, Russia accepted the global order that existed at the end of the Cold War. Providing that the global order remained static, Russia would not challenge that order. However, US actions following the collapse of the Soviet Union s...

This  essay  attends  to  the  temporal  and  material  relations  through  which  the  former  Soviet proletariat and former factory directors pull the remnants of the socialist factory into relations of capital. I introduce the concept of trials of ruination to refer to the  struggles  to  discover  value  in  old  things,  when  the  temporal  and  material  logics  of capital, and the waning life course of objects and humans, test the limits of those efforts.  A  life  extempore  is  one  in  which  the  primary  tactic  for  discovering  value  is  perpetual extemporization, doing things one never planned or was trained to do. Life extempore alerts us to an orientation to time that is grounded firmly in the present, marked by a sense of urgency, requiring creativity and spontaneity, and existentially linked to a position of exteriority from dominant temporal ideologies of socialism and capitalism. This study focuses on the improvisational practices of two “extemporists”, and  their  efforts  to  revalue  the  persistent  material  world  of  Soviet  industry.

Հոդվածում  քննարկվում  են  այն  ժամանակային  եւ  նյութական առնչակցությունները, որոնց միջոցով նախկին խորհրդային պրոլետարիատը եւ գործարանների նախկին տնօրենները կապիտալի հարաբերությունների մեջ են ներքաշում սոցիալիստական գործարանի մնացորդները։ Ես առաջարկում եմ «փլատականացման  փորձության»  (“trials  of  ruination”)  կոնցեպտը,  որն անդրադառնում է հին իրերի մեջ արժեք գտնելու համար պայքարին, երբ կապիտալի ժամանակային եւ նյութական տրամաբանությունը, ինչպես նաեւ առարկաների եւ մարդկանց կրճատվող կենսընթացները փորձարկման են ենթարկում այդ ջանքերի սահմանները: «Extempore», այսինքն  «հանպատրաստից”  կյանքը  այնպիսի մի  վիճակ  է,  երբ  արժեքի  բացահայտման  հիմնական  մարտավարությունը հավերժական մի փորձարկում է, որի ընթացքում արվում են այնպիսի բաներ, որոնք  երբեք  չեն  պլանավորվել  կամ  սովորական  չեն  համարվել։«Extempo-re»-կյանքը ժամանակային առումով միշտ վերաբերում է ներկային, նշանավորված է  հրատապության  զգացմամբ,  պահանջում  է  ստեղծագործականություն  ու ինքնաբխություն եւ էքզիստենցիալ կերպով կապված է տարբեր ժամանակներում գերիշխող սոցիալիզմի եւ կապիտալիզմի գաղափարախոսություններից դուրս գտնվող դիրքավորման հետ։ Այս ուսումնասիրությունը անդրադառնում է«ex-tempore»կյանքով ապրող երկու անհատների իմպրովիզացիոն պրակտիկաներին եւ  խորհրդային  արդյունաբերության  դիմակայող  նյութականությունը վերարժեւորելու  նրանց  ջանքերին:

Abstract: This paper addresses the post-Communist color revolution phenomenon, utilizing aspects of all the major approaches (structure, agency, diffusion). It surveys the varying degrees of success enjoyed by color revolutionary movements and demonstrates that the color revolutions ...

This collective monograph analyzes post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe through the paradigm of postcoloniality. Based on the assumption that both Western and Soviet imperialism emerged from European modernity, the book is a contribution to the development of a global postcolonial discourse based on a more extensive and nuanced geohistorical comparativism. It suggests that the inclusion of East-Central Europe in European identity might help resolve postcolonialism’s difficulties in coming to terms with both postcolonial and neo-colonial dimensions of contemporary Europe. Analyzing post-communist identity reconstructions under the impact of transformative political, economic and cultural experiences such as changes in perception of time and space (landscapes, cityscapes), migration and displacement, collective memory and trauma, objectifying gaze, cultural self-colonization, and language as a form of power, the book facilitates a mutually productive dialogue between postcolonialism a...

This collective monograph analyzes post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe through the paradigm of postcoloniality. Based on the assumption that both Western and Soviet imperialism emerged from European modernity, the book is a contribution to the development of a global postcolonial discourse based on a more extensive and nuanced geohistorical comparativism. It suggests that the inclusion of East-Central Europe in European identity might help resolve postcolonialism’s difficulties in coming to terms with both postcolonial and neo-colonial dimensions of contemporary Europe. Analyzing post-communist identity reconstructions under the impact of transformative political, economic and cultural experiences such as changes in perception of time and space (landscapes, cityscapes), migration and displacement, collective memory and trauma, objectifying gaze, cultural self-colonization, and language as a form of power, the book facilitates a mutually productive dialogue between postcolonialism a...

The ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia provides many examples of using media, including technologically new ones, to conduct information warfare. The article focuses on the issue of the importance of digital media in the context of war in eastern Ukraine and socio-political protests (2013/2014) that preceded the armed conflict. This article analyzes the methods of instrumental usage of digital media by Russia as the dominant entity in conducting aggressive information warfare against Ukraine as well as civic actions on the Ukrainian side aimed at counteracting Russian propaganda. The results show that, in the times of the mediatization of war, different entities tend to actively use both traditional media present in the digital space and social media. In addition, this work systematizes the conceptual apparatus related to the discussed issues. The article is based on the analysis of case studies (mainly Russian RT and Ukrainian, social initiative StopFake), content analysis...

In international relations, the last three decades have been marked by national and institutional fragmentation. The fate of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, and the regrettable way that events played out (especially in the former case), could befall other federative entities as well. Canada and Belgium come to mind, as do countries like Spain, all of which effectively function as federations. However, while federations usually have dispute settlement and mechanisms for secession embedded in their constitutions, sub-constitutive territories are often excluded from such considerations. What territories such as Kosovo, Sandjak, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, etc. have in common is that they share a desire for independence from their parent country. However, achiveing independence would present risks to the territorial integrity of other countries (what can be termed the domino principle), as well as risks to the endurance of flexible international law. The cases we have alluded to above cul...

In spite of development of international and global institutions, the modern state remains a powerful construct as the legitimate means of political organization and the exclusive location of political authority. Contemporary states went through a long process of institutionalization marked by the milestones like the Westphalian peace, age of the world imperial system, The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, decolonization, Helsinki treaty, and globalization. Despite this long history, the modern state system does not fully deliver on its promise of order and security, and often leads to contestation of territorial integrity and alternative claims to sovereignty. Such claims occur within existing recognized states from groups which feel themselves excluded and prefer to aspire to their own statehood and international status. By implication, competing claims to statehood can turn into seemingly ‘frozen conflicts’, as local authorities embark upon their state-bui...

Political debates on the Baltics, and in particular Estonia, have often pointed to “nationalisting” and exclusive narratives constructed at the institutional level. Accordingly, emphasis has been put on the lack of opportunities for Russians to integrate into an Estonian context. While acknowledging the shortfalls of the Estonian political project, this article contrasts these views in two ways. By emphasizing people’s agency and their capacity to question, contrast, or even reject the identity markers proposed by Estonian official narratives, we maintain that the integration of Russians might be more advanced than insofar claimed by other studies. We then look at the way identities are lived in an everyday context by inhabitants of Estonia to counterpose national narratives proposed by the state and its political institutions, with the way people live and whether they accept these narratives. By doing this, we explore the role of the everyday in the reconstruction of national ident...

Ukrainian revolution frequently called “Euromaidan” changed Ukrainian society in 120 days and, later, became a regional conflict and a challenge to a global order. This primary social revolution was followed by value and paradigmatic shifts, middle class revolution, and a struggle for human rights, equality, justice, and prosperity. This study examines values and social structure of Euromaidan. In addition to ethnographic study consisting of participant observations and informal interviewing, data from European Social Survey (2010-2013) and face-to-face survey conducted by an initiative group of sociologists on Maidan were used in order to approach this goal. Results of the study show that values of Euromaidan (Universalism, Benevolence, Self-Direction, Stimulation, and Security) coincide more with European values, especially those of developed Western and Scandinavian countries, than Ukrainian ones. Furthermore, values of protesters find its reflection in deeply rooted Ukrainian id...

This article draws on International Relations theory to attempt a reframing of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Nagorny Karabakh as an enduring rivalry (ER): a particular kind of interstate conflict known for its longevity and stability. The article begins by identifying a number of conceptual deficits circulating around this conflict, notably the notion that it is a “frozen conflict”, before introducing the ER framework and its analytical dividends for this case. Different layers to the ER between Armenia and Azerbaijan are then explored at systemic, interstate, domestic, decision-maker and temporal levels, with a view more to identifying directions for future research than conclusive findings. Among the article’s tentative conclusions are the primacy of endogenous over exogenous factors in explaining the durability of the rivalry between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the impacts of the passage of time on the human and physical geography of the territory under dispute, and the convergence of conflict dynamics across disparate levels.

The collapse of USSR in late 1980’s and the beginning of 1990’s was accompanied by a series of local and regional separatist movements that have rapidly burst out into local violent confrontations or civil wars, resulting in so-called “frozen conflicts” in Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Georgia), Transnistria (Moldova) and others. Since 2014, the Eastern part of Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk regions) is undergoing a seemingly similar scenario. Large numbers of people originating from conflict zones have migrated to Western Europe in search for peace, better economic conditions and personal and professional accomplishment. How do these migrants identify themselves once settled in destination countries? How do they define their own “national identity”, as persons originating from unrecognized “States”? In this paper, we compare the cases of these separatist regions in an attempt to offer an insight into a new topic, situated at the confluence of migration studies, geopolitics and ethnology.

This chapter explores the everyday experience of living in the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. Through long-term ethnographic research, the chapter reveals the informal methods and understandings of nuclear space that allow people to inhabit a landscape of extreme social, economic and environmental marginalization. The chapter finds that informal activity can be used as a means to circumvent the stealthy violence of state abandonment: a tactical method of asserting agency over spaces from which you have been excluded. By framing Chernobyl as a ‘space of exception’ (Agamben, 2005), we can begin to unravel the way that informal activities are used to circumvent and challenge people’s vulnerable status of post-atomic ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998). In doing so, the Exclusion Zone’s porous nuclear borders become contested and subverted, as people and materials informally pass in and out of this official nuclear geography. Though radiation is an ever-present and unseen ...

The changes since the breakup of the USSR have impacted African migrants' social composition, as well as their strategies and forms of adaptation and integration in the capital city of Moscow. In this study, we discuss the factors influencing the choices of African migrants, related to their background as Africans and to their perceptions of the receiving society. We distinguish between two social groups of African migrants and argue that while one group seeks integration into the Russian society, the other limits itself to mere adaptation to life in Moscow.

The past five years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in the Soviet Union and its successor states. [1]
[1]
The following conferences hosted some of the scholars featured… This special issue extends our understanding of the history of queer experience in the late Soviet Union and its successor states. Its eight articles balance attention between the Russian “core” and republics on the “periphery” of the USSR: Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Latvia. One article draws attention to Italy, and to the 1970s transnational gay, artistic, and socialist campaigns to liberate film director Sergei Parajanov, whose stellar career encompassed his three Soviet homelands: Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine. The articles explore the ways in which Soviet queer people understood and imagined same-sex desire and gender fluidity.

2They consider the ways in which queers fashioned their subjectivities, forged relationships, and rejected or accepted medical, legal, and popular labelling. In fact, all the articles in this issue are marked by plural identifications and intersections: of nationality, of sexual desire, of gender, generation, and class. They also reveal how transnational knowledges of sex and gender dissent were not something that burst onto the scene in 1991 in Russia and Eurasia, imported from a “victorious West” after the Cold War. Instead these knowledges had surprisingly deep roots on the territory of the USSR throughout the twentieth century. Two articles explore contemporary questions with roots in the Soviet past. One examines the practices and obstacles to coming out reported by queer people in Russia. Another looks at how Russian publishers of sex-education literature for children and young people have responded to the 2013 “gay propaganda” law. Each article in the special issue considers the challenges that Soviet queers and their post-Soviet successors face in wrestling with visibility and invisibility as non-heterosexual.

3We wanted the Russian-language articles to open the special issue because when it comes to LGBTQ histories, scholars from outside the Russophone world have often spoken first and loudest. This is an imbalance the special issue recognises and tries to address by asking you to consider these voices first. We are excited by these three articles, by Georgy Mamedov and Nina Bagdasarova, Polina Kislitsyna, and Galina Zelenina, as offering fresh and challenging perspectives on respectively queer sociability, queer visibility, and queer disidentification. Next, we turn to the articles by Arthur Clech, Rustam Alexander, and Ineta Lipša which all focus on the individual queer male voice, as heard in different genres of ego documents. Clech’s carries forward intelligentsia and class issues explored by Zelenina; while Alexander’s takes us into the realm of Soviet psychotherapy and the “cures” for homosexual desire. Lipša’s diarist explores his queer subjectivity in a private journal where he cycles, over an amazing lifetime, through various models for his queer desires. Finally, we turn to the work of Stefano Pisu and Bella Ostromooukhova. Pisu’s exploration of an international campaign against Soviet persecution of male homosexuals shows that the history of sexual and gender dissent in the USSR is not confined to the borders of the Soviet state. Ostromooukhova’s study of sex education manuals (domestic and in translation for Russian audiences) takes us back to the present, and contemporary controversies over “gay propaganda” and supposed transnational influence on “traditional Russia.”

We are indebted to Arthur Clech who suggested the idea of a special issue of Cahiers du monde russe, and who drafted the call for papers. He was inspired in part by his co-organization of and participation in the 2017 “Communist Homosexuality 1945-1989” conference at the University of Paris-Est Créteil and École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Arthur also made an equal contribution to the labour of reading, evaluating, and editing the responses to the call for papers, and the final papers themselves. As an editorial troika, we are also indebted to the anonymous peer reviewers who gave our contributors rigorous and helpful commentaries

My current research focus is an on-going study of the last Soviet generation (amongst whom I include myself). I see this as the ‘Lost Generation’ in Russia. Understandably, this study involves the broader themes of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequences of it. My argument is that in failure to change the nature and composition of the ruling elite lay the essential explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union. This failure was evident during the Brezhnev era from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Renewal of the ruling elite should have taken place in the mid-1970s. The newer, more open-minded elite should have come to power at that time. Thereafter, the opportunity was lost and the downward course set in motion. Many younger men and women were kept in minor provincial positions during this crucial period. The ‘lost generation’ consists of their sons and daughters. This on-going project, ‘The Last Soviet Generation,’ already consists of interviews with individuals who, like myself, fall into this category of the ‘lost’ or ‘superseded’ generation. I have presented conference papers on this topic, lately at the International Sociology Conference in Buenos Aires in August 2012 and in Turin , September 2013. The ‘last Soviet generation’ is a lost generation due to: a demographic trough and dual identity (Soviet and ‘New Russian’). My in-depth interviews also reveal the phenomena of “a No-Prospects” Syndrome, a negative attitude to the authorities or a ‘closet’ opposition and passivity in politics. This is a complicated phenomenon, which cannot be explained exclusively by recent development in Russian politics, in which the domination of ‘United Russia’ is the principal development. The increasing authoritarianism and centralism of United Russia and its search of a substitute ideology in Orthodoxy and Tsarist-era attitudes, however, does leave the ‘lost generation’ excluded from any possibility of political participation.

Abstract The 2012 parliamentary elections witnessed Georgia’s first peaceful post-independence transfer of power. Under Bidzina Ivanishvili, the government formed by the Georgian Dream Coalition significantly softened the harsh anti-Russia rhetoric of Saakashvili’s ‘National Movement’, launching a policy aimed at normalising relations with Russia. Such a shift of a steady, almost decade-long counter-Russian foreign policy resists explanation by structural theories on small states located in relatively stable external environments. Mapping discursive changes and employing a constructivist framework, we argue that distinct foreign policy visions are reflections of the differences between the identities of the two leadership camps.

Foreword Alexsander Kwasniewski, President of Poland 1995-2005 Introduction Donnacha O Beachain, Vera Sheridan and Sabina Stan 1. Poland Jane Hardy 2. The Czech Republic Frank Cibulka 3. Slovakia Vladimir Bilcik and Juraj Buzalka 4. Hungary Umut Korkut 5. Slovenia Matevz Tomsic and Lea Prijon 6. Lithuania Mindaugas Jurkynas 7. Latvia Zaneta Ozolina 8. Estonia Viljar Veebel and Ramon Loik 9. Romania Lavinia Stan and Rodica Zaharia 10. Bulgaria Svetlozar Andreev Conclusion Donnacha O Beachain, Vera Sheridan and Sabina Stan

Abstract:This article is a case study framing the issue of alienation and othering between Georgians and Abkhazians. The underlying assumption is that a possible solution of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict can be based on identity research. At this point, the theoretical framework of identity studies merges with the methodological standpoint of discourse analysis, with identity presented through the "winning" discourse, being a result of a competition of different flows, including the Golden Age of independence, imperial Russian and Soviet past, experience of the 1990s, religion, traditions, and so on. Respondents of the study are Georgians and Abkhazians active in thematic groups in social networks. Asking them about their self-perception and perception of "the other," we are facing narratives of an imaginary nature based on reconstruction and over-construction of the past. This suggests that we look for a possible solution of the conflict through direct negotiations between the parties, starting from a "zero" point of current interests. A supplementary finding, which gives space for optimism, indicates the low level of hate in our respondents' narratives toward each other, although these narratives are still highly emotional.

This paper examines the recent history and current situation of the Armenian Catholic Church from the vantage point of its in‑betweenness. The Armenian Catholics' liminal position in‑between the particularity and exclusiveness of the Armenian Christianity and the inclusiveness and expansionism of the Roman Catholicism have created diverse, often contradictory, politics of identity construction and representation; of cultural absorption and resistance; and of belonging and alienation. The paper takes a closer look at these politics at work in formulating, negotiating, and challenging a distinct character of this strand of Christianity in post‑Soviet Armenia and Georgia, where a large portion of Armenian Catholics live and where the Armenian Catholic Church came back to existence after it was banned for over six decades in the Soviet Union.

Translanguaging is seen both as a threat and as an opportunity for minority language development and transmission. While the theme of translanguaging has been explored especially in a context of migration, the novelty of this study lies in its investigation of the multiple contexts in which translanguaging is examined. In order to understand the nature of translanguaging, we adopt a novel interdisciplinary approach and view it in all its complexity, including liminal spaces of linguistic landscape. Family language policy affects the home linguistic environment. Our purpose is to investigate language choices by multilingual Russian-speakers in Cyprus, Sweden and Estonia, immigrant and minority settings, and try to understand how they are reflected in the multilingual interaction of the families. Using ethnographic participant observations and oral spontaneous multilingual production, our study attempts to describe how communication is managed through translanguaging practices among m...

ABSTRACT This paper reports on the application of Sharf and Kahler’s (1996) Cultural Sensitivity Model to the experiences of cross-cultural researchers engaged in the conduct of the Tatarstan Women’s Health Survey. In the summer of 2001, a cross-cultural team composed of researchers from Kazan State Medical University, Kazan State University, RO RT OPP Women of Russia Movement and the University of Nevada, Reno, USA, with the support of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Tatarstan, conducted an interview study of 1018 female subjects throughout the Tatarstan Republic. Topics covered dealt with a variety of interpersonal, intercultural, social and economic issues faced by Tatarstan women in their everyday life. This paper analyzes the choices and challenges experienced by the cross-cultural research team as they engaged in this collaborative project, and reiterates the importance of applied communication theory and research in promoting international public health collaborations. Basic tenets of effective international public health collaborations have emerged and their implications are discussed.

The “universalization of the Holocaust” and the insistence on Roma rights as an EU accession criteria have changed the memory of the Roma genocide in post-communist countries. This article examines how Roma are represented in post-communist memorial museums which wanted to prove that they correspond with “European memory standards”. The three case studies discussed here are the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising, the Jasenovac Memorial Museum and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. I argue that today Roma are being represented for the first time, but in a stereotypical way and through less prominent means in exhibitions which lack individualizing elements like testimonies, photographs from their life before the persecution or artifacts. This can only partially be explained by the (relative) unavailability of data that is often deplored by researchers of the Roma genocide.

While much has been written on private security expansion in a few English-speaking industrialized democracies, less is known about why the industry does not develop uniformly around the world. We propose some hypotheses about constraints on private security growth in other settings, based on three comparative case studies in authoritarian states (Russia and Georgia), developing countries (Guyana and Trinidad) and non-‘Anglosphere’ industrialized democracies (continental Europe). In authoritarian states, private policing is more politically sensitive than in democratic states, sometimes resulting in more draconian restrictions on it. In developing societies, despite widespread fear of crime, potential consumers sometimes favour in-house measures over private security firms and electronic devices. In developed democracies, variation in private security growth reflects regulatory, institutional and ideological differences between the Anglosphere and continental Europe. We conclude tha...

The fundamental problem faced by the states that have emerged in the area of the former USSR involved the definition of the desired form of their own political regime. The choices made in this respect in the first stage of political transformation were frequently limited only to the formal stipulation of model legal and constitutional solutions. The post-communist elite wielding power in the new states was characterized by a desire to form a one-man organ of state in the form of a strong president. The absence of democratic traditions and the negative legacy of the USSR have profoundly influenced the processes of shaping the political regimes in the post-Soviet area, and have actually become the predominant reason to legitimize authoritarianism. Only a few states of the former USSR have decided to adopt a model of governance other than a strong presidential system. Latvia deserves attention in this respect, as it has decided to reinstate the tested political principles of the interw...

The present special issue has the ambition of contributing to the further development of critical legal theory of a specific, Central and Eastern European strand, paying attention to the characteristic features of the legal life of our region. The nine papers in this volume can be divided into four distinct groups, addressing issues of our current predicament and its methodological implications (papers by Cercel, Tacik and Mercescu); questions of Central and Eastern European legal identity (paper by myself and by Nazmutdinov); theoretical and philosophical issues particularly in the contemporary Central and Eastern European context (papers by Fusco and Reid); and finally, questions of law and ideology in Central and Eastern Europe analysed through the lens of case studies from various areas of positive law (papers by Kuźmicka-Sulikowska and Rudt).The main question that we want to address is the methodology of critical legal theory as applied to the specific context of Central and Ea...

This chapter provides an overview of legislative measures that set the legal framework for dealing with the totalitarian heritage of the 20th century history in post-communist Lithuania. These measures were adopted since the emergence of the popular movement in the late 1980s to the present time. They were specific legal manifestations of state-sponsored history that were introduced during the intense period of transition from Soviet rule and the formation of an independent nation-state. As part of the general process of transitional justice, they include not only the so called ‘memory laws’ (i.e., laws that dealt specifically with certain historical events such as Soviet deportations, the Holocaust, or the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939), but also other laws and institutions dealing with various issues of the historical past in Lithuania (such as lustration, restitution, official apologies, criminal prosecutions for participation in genocide, truth commissions, etc.).