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This paper follows the developments in Chinese studies in Moscow and Leningrad–Saint Petersburg during the Soviet and post-Soviet decades. It provides an overview of institutions and key currents in research conducted in these two cities, while also contextualizing the general political conditions under which Sinology existed. The paper examines the ways researchers responded to the ideological requirements placed upon them in the early Soviet period, then outlines the main trends in Chinese studies after the establishment of the PRC and during the Sino-Soviet split, and, finally, traces the continuities and changes of the late Soviet and post-Soviet years. This article provides some information on existing bibliographical publications, conferences, and journals as an aid for following China-related research conducted in Russia. It also demonstrates that, while many problems continue to hamper the development of Sinology in Russia, this field has sound foundations and many promising tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previews articles about ethnic survival published in the March 2001 issue of the journal 'Nationalities Papers.' Authors who represent Russia's Finno-Ugrians; Introduction to the lives of eastern Finno-Ugrians; Eastern Finno-Ugrians' shared historical experiences within Russia; Positive and adverse developments concerning Finno-Ugrians in the 1990s.

Occupying the dual space of psychoactive substances and food, alcohol has to date escaped the international labelling standards required of either category. Following growing consumer concern focused on ingredient and energy labelling, the issue of alcohol labelling has been brought to the Codex Committee on Food Labelling (CCFL). Russia led the development of a discussion paper on the labelling of alcohol beverages, which was debated in May 2019. The discussion paper presented five policy options, ranging from doing nothing to initiating open-ended work on a new Codex standard. The progression of alcohol labelling through the CCFL raises a number of issues for public health advocates, as placing alcohol within the scope of the Codex clearly places labelling within the food system and has the potential to side-line health labelling concerns. This paper will first describe the process leading to the consideration of alcohol labelling at the CCFL and then consider the health and advocacy implications of the different options proposed to progress the work plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the role of Russian print media and government in forming and publicizing nationalist sentiment through a content analysis of newspaper coverage of ethnic conflict in Stavropol in 2007. It shows that though the government officially pursues an inclusive multicultural approach (which I call associative nationalism), newspapers owned by Kremlin-loyal business holdings printed quite nationalist and sensationalist versions of the events in question. I argue that this is a passive promotion of a dissociative type of nationalism on the part of the Kremlin, which works against its stated purposes of bringing together all those in the Russian territory into a united national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The premise of Russia's 2012 "Foreign Agents" Law, one of the first such laws restricting foreign funding for non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), is that foreign monies equal foreign agendas. Since then, over 50 countries have adopted similar laws using a similar justification. This paper interrogates this claim of foreign donor influence through examining legal mobilization by human rights NGOs at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). We track donor support for litigation by providing an overview of all foundation grant flows relating to strategic litigation for 2013–2014, and then matching the granting activities of two major U.S. foundations over 14 years to human rights NGO participation in cases before the ECtHR. Further, through case studies of Russian NGOs, we assess the causal role that donor support has played in facilitating their increased involvement in ECtHR litigation. The combined analysis indicates broad patterns of private foundation support to litigating NGOs, but uncovers no evidence that foreign donors were "pushing" NGOs toward litigation as a strategy, but instead more evidence suggesting that NGOs convinced donors to support human rights litigation. Despite the inaccuracy of the justification underpinning Russia's foreign agent law, the law threatens the survival of human rights organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Campanian Beloe Ozero locality within the Rybushka Formation in Saratov Province, Russia, is one of the richest and most diverse Upper Cretaceous pterosaur localities in Europe. It produces identifiable remains of Pteranodontidae indet. and Azhdarchidae indet., as well as bones which can be attributed to either of these groups. The pteranodontid specimens from the Beloe Ozero locality described in this paper include a cervical III, distal scapula, humerus deltopectoral crest, proximal syncarpal, preaxial carpal and complete femur. Based on the femur and proximal syncarpal, the wingspan estimate for the Beloe Ozero pteranodontid varies from 5.2 to 6.5 m. Volgadraco bogolubovi, known from the neighbouring Shyrokii Karamysh locality of the same formation and attributed previously to the Azhdarchidae, is more likely pteranodontid than azhdarchid. The other putative records of the Pteranodontidae in the Late Cretaceous of North America, Europe and Asia are discussed. Pteranodontid pterosaurs had a much wider distribution on the northern continents in the Late Cretaceous than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and to what extent do defense actors use publicity in trials of protesters in contemporary Russia? Why do they fight over strategic uses of publicity if "everything is decided in advance"? Drawing on original ethnographic research, this article finds, first, that publicity accompanies legal resistance to politicized prosecutions and is inventively used by the defense. Second, mobilization of publicity creates opportunities for the defense to bargain with and keep the prosecution in check. Third, the relationship between publicity and legal resistance in repressive settings is ambiguous. Some human rights lawyers embrace publicity and others avoid it. I argue that this divergence should be interpreted in relation to lawyers' embeddedness in different professional ecologies. At the same time, lawyers' publicity strategies are altered by the interactional dimension of the trial. The latter manifests itself on two levels: at the micro‐level of a courtroom and in the public sphere where different publics engage in debates that interfere with lawyers' defense strategies. This paper has broader implications for the analysis of defensive legal mobilization in dual legal systems beyond the Russian case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates part-year factory operation, a common but understudied dimension of industrializing economies, in a prototypical late-industrializing setting that offers rich factory-level data: Imperial Russia. Newly compiled data provides detailed descriptions of all Russian manufacturing firms operating in 1894 and shows that factories operating a greater number of annual working days were more mechanized, more urban, more likely to employ women and children, more productive, and more likely to survive. Rather than arguing that part-year operation demonstrated Russia's uniquely inexorable backwardness, we stress operating time's relationship to fundamental drivers of growth, including urbanization, geography, and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Russian migration and citizenship regime as encountered by forced migrants from Ukraine who fled to Russia during the period of 2014-2016. Based on legal and other official documents, media articles, and interviews, it gives an account of these migrants’ reception in Russia in theory and practice. Russia made great efforts to accommodate them, and in Russian media they were often spoken of as an easily integrated labor resource and as potential citizens. In 2015-2016, around 165,000 Ukrainians acquired Russian citizenship. While ethno-cultural similarity does privilege Ukrainian migrants in Russia, full asylum has been granted sparingly, and citizenship is not unconditionally granted. As this paper shows, Russian authorities have rather tried to control and distribute these forced migrants for the benefit of the state, according to principles of selectivity and economic interests - giving privileged access to permanent residency and citizenship to working-age people willing to settle in regions where population growth and more workers are deemed necessary. However, permanent residency and citizenship are also available to those able to circumvent or pay their way through the obstacles encountered - taking advantage of the flexibility inherent in a system that is not totally consistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing focus on business and human rights (BHR) in civil society and policymaking has not been matched by research on corporate actions to respect and protect human rights. The lack of research on BHR is especially acute outside of Western Europe and Anglo-centric contexts. This paper seeks to investigate how the largest Russian firms conceptualize and fulfil their human rights obligations under the UN Guiding Principles and the extent to which internationalization of those firms may have impacted these behaviours. I use a unique dataset created from a sample made of the 100 largest firms listed on the Moscow Stock Exchange. Using the theoretical construct of institutional conflict, I find that cross-listing on other stock exchanges and the extent to which firms frame their broader social responsibility issues as 'sustainability' or 'sustainable development' rather than 'corporate social responsibility' has a substantial impact on firm attention to human rights. While this attention is encouraging, firm disclosure of actions taken to mitigate against violations and protect human rights is extremely limited and the strength of domestic institutional pressures has resulted in very little firm action in the face of the extreme and widespread human rights violations being committed in Ukraine by Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might public policy changes affect electoral support for authoritarian regimes? Missing from the existing scholarship, which focuses mostly on regimes generating political budget cycles and manipulating electoral rules, is an exploration of how non-fiscal and non-electoral policies may impact incumbent support. We examine this issue with electoral and census data from one of the world's most prominent authoritarian regimes – Russia – to evaluate the regime's 2017 change to the policy governing native language instruction, which curtailed minority students' ability to learn their native languages and faced opposition in some ethnic regions. Examining panel data on presidential elections using fixed effects models, our results reveal that the regime's support decreased in titular minority areas in 2018. The results also indicate that some of these patterns emerged in previous national legislative elections and thus cannot be solely attributed to the policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates collective memory of the Soviet experiment in the narratives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), in the period of 1993–2004. My research finds that ideological differences within the CPRF led to the creation of multiple and contrasting depictions of the Soviet past in the discourse of its leaders. Challenging dominant assumptions, I argue that these differences did not conflict and undermine one another, but were structured to strengthen the public appeal of the CPRF. The paper adds empirical findings to the study of the CPRF and of collective memory at the (so far underdeveloped) level of public organizations. The paper also challenges the prevailing assumption that diverging historical narratives necessarily imply conflict and contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explains the causes of the Russia–Ukraine war starting in 2014 from the energy and energy markets perspective, based on resource dependency theory and the conceptual framework outlined by Jeffrey D. Colgan (2013). Our findings reveal that Russia is critically dependent on revenue from gas exports to Ukraine and the European Union, but also that Ukraine's energy deposits and pipeline system have the potential to be a direct competitive threat to Russia's energy exports. This paper argues that this was the underlying reason and main causal pathway leading to Russia's annexation of Crimea and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate the impact of numerological superstitions and discounts' effect on the buyers' behavior in the apartment market using actual sales data. Based on the dataset from Moscow primary real estate market, which includes 40 buildings, we test the apartments buyers' demand on lucky 7th floor and unlucky 13th floor in comparison to neighboring floors and its response to developers' discount policy for the apartments on the 13th floor. Results of the random-effects model for the preference towards 7th floor show that that "good luck" effect is present at the 90% confidence interval. Results of the mixed-effects model for the preference towards the 13th floor's apartments show that in case of discount moderation, the "bad luck" effect of the 13th floor is mitigated, while in case of "no discount" buildings we find the clear negative effect of the 13th floor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the military behaviour of Russia from 1992 to 2010. The method used is a combination of the dyad analysis introduced by Stuart Bremer in 1992 and the analysis of unit-level variables, which is distinctive of foreign policy analysis. We empirically test a set of hypotheses about the determinants of Russia's military behaviour in the post-Cold War period by considering the impact of changes of international variables – relative power, the presence of military alliance pacts, the territorial salience of the dispute – and state-level variables – the degree of democracy/autocracy and regime vulnerability. A bivariate and a multivariate analysis are carried out to explain the separate and joint impacts of independent variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses Russia's recent return to Africa. It attempts to answer the question to what extent Russia has abandoned its traditional tools of cooperation such as nuclear energy and military cooperation and engaged in new 'smart' ones as indicated by former Foreign Minister Ivanov in 2011. The paper builds on three case studies of African countries having the largest trade volume with Russia in 2018, i.e. Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, and analyses their changing relationship with Russia over the last decade. The results show that Russia has not abandoned its traditional tools but has intensified the use of new ones. The North African region as such has regained significance in Russia's foreign policy. Bilateral relations with all three North African countries have increased at both political and economic levels recently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late 1980s and early 1990s were characterized by the sudden rise of nationalist movements in almost all Soviet ethnic regions. It is argued that the rise ofpoliticalnationalism since the late 1980s can be explained by the development ofculturalnationalism in the previous decades, as an unintended outcome of Communist nationalities policy. All ethnic regions are examined throughout the entire history of the USSR (49 regions, 1917–1991), using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. This paper aims to make at least three contributions to the field. First, it is a methodological contribution for studying nationalism: a “quantification of history” approach. Having constructed variables from historical data, I use conventional statistical methods such as SEM. Second, this paper contributes to the theoretical debate about the role of cultural autonomy in multiethnic states. Finally, the paper statistically proves that the break between early Soviet and Stalinist nationalities policy explains the entire Soviet nationalities policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on a study which compares repatriation policies of Germany, Russia, and Kazakhstan. The choice of cases is based on a “most similar case design.” The Russian case results in unsuccessful and unsustainable repatriation, the German case exhibits a change from sustainable repatriation to a slow termination of the program, while the case of Kazakhstan is one of sustainable and relatively successful repatriation. The main argument of the paper is that in order for a repatriation program to be sustainable, the program must contain both a practical component and an ideological component. If a repatriation program lacks ideological backing which permeates other aspects of political life in a state, then the repatriation program grinds to a halt. If a repatriation program has ideological backing, but is rendered impractical and does not meet the economic, demographic and labor market needs of a state, then the further development of the program stops. The findings of this study merit further reflection on issues of changing national identities, on transnational migration pathways, and on the “post-Soviet condition” which has set the stage for all of the aforementioned processes and transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies the perception of regional variation in Russian among young Russian nonlinguists in Moscow, Perm, and Novosibirsk. I explore the labels used in 55 perceptual maps and categorize them in order to investigate the perceived character of regional variation among young Russians, including their explanations for regional variation. The data analysis shows that claims about regional variation are based on the informants' assessments of variation in Russian, but also on assessments of domains that they perceive as related to regional variation: style and accent, as well as extralinguistic features such as geography and climate. Based on this analysis, I argue that the line between regional language variation and other variations can be conceived of as fuzzy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid growth in large emerging economies has been spread unequally across their regions leading to growing income disparities. This paper examines the distribution of regional output per capita and the evolution of its shape in Brazil, China, India, and Russia from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s. A comparative analysis of convergence is conducted using a nonparametric methodology. The results reveal different distribution dynamics across the four economies. Chinese regions with below-median output per capita have the highest probability of transitioning toward higher-income levels, while their Brazilian counterparts are trapped at the bottom of the distribution. Although India has the lowest and Russia one of the highest regional income inequalities, they display similar divergence patterns exemplified by high persistence at both ends of the distribution. Our findings indicate that government spending and the rule of law are the major driving forces behind regional convergence, except in Russia where they have the opposite effect. Innovation and property rights also promote convergence in China, but cause regional divergence in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several years, various nationalist groups and the Russian state have been competing over nationalism as a political concept and for popular support to nationalist claims. This paper analyzes the relationship between the state and anti-government, ethnocentric nationalistic groups that gather annually in an event called “the Russian March.” Emphasis is on the change in that relationship that happened in 2014, when the state added efforts to channel and mobilize the nationalists to its previous repressive and controlling measures. The article conceptualizes the competition over the nationalist argument in contemporary Russia as a case of dissentful and consentful contention in hybrid regimes, and shows how the dissentful nationalists have been forced to make way for the more consentful ones. Until recently, the room for maneuver for the radical nationalists was relatively wide. The events in Ukraine, however, divided the nationalists, and since 2014 radical nationalists have faced increased state repression. At the same time, pro-government nationalist actors have strengthened, and new players have appeared in the field. These developments tell us not only about the Kremlin’s diminished tolerance for dissentful contention, but also about the importance of the nationalist argument in Russian politics today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on diasporic youth identities in the British and American context has stressed hybridity, heterogeneity and multiplicity. This paper draws upon ethnographic research undertaken with Armenian girls to explore some of the tensions and ambivalences of negotiating diasporic identities in the Russian context. Diasporic identities are constructed through gender, and this paper illustrates how research participants negotiate their identities in relation to both belonging to the Armenian community and wider Russian society. At the same time, this paper examines how research participants draw differently on diasporic identifications in order to overcome tensions and ambivalences in their everyday lives. The paper shows that research participants are not inclined to reject their cultural roots in favor of new hybrid identities, but are able to recognize and appropriate different cultures in their identity negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns two themes: my personal experience of Russian philosophy and Russian philosophers on the one hand, and historicism on the other. My account of my limited experience of Russian philosophers and philosophy will be mainly autobiographical. My remarks about historicism will concern a single aspect of the philosophical consequences of the Soviet experience for Russian philosophy. When I come to Russia, I am always surprised by the degree of interest in a historical approach to knowledge, an interest that, so far as I know, is unique to Russian philosophy. This difference in perspective as concerns the historical character of cognitive claims needs to be explained. It needs to be explained why contemporary Russian philosophers and contemporary Russian philosophy are so hospitable to a historical approach to knowledge, an approach which has always been rare, even unusual, elsewhere. My hypothesis, which I examine the paper, is that there is a deep link between contemporary Russian interest in a historical approach to knowledge and Soviet philosophy. In particular, there is a link to Marx, who is a historical thinker, and to pre-Soviet Russian philosophy, as distinguished from Marxism, which is basically a-historical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the dynamics of dialect loss in a cluster of villages in rural northern Russia based on a corpus of transcribed interviews, the Ustja River Basin Corpus. Eleven phonological and morphological variables are analyzed across 33 speakers born between 1922 and 1996 in a series of logistic regression models. We propose three characteristics for a comparison of the rate of loss of different variables: initial level, steepness, and turning point. We show that the dynamics of loss differs significantly across variables and discuss possible reasons for such differences, including perceptual salience, initial variation in the dialect, and convergence with regionally or socially defined varieties of Russian. In conclusion, we discuss the pros and cons of logistic regression as an approach to quantitative modeling of dialect loss. Our paper contributes to the study and documentation of Russian dialects, most of which are on the verge of extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a youth-centred culture, where ageing is associated with physical and mental decline, investment in a youthful appearance promises access to socially valuable resources. The need for regular care for the self, primarily through consumption, constitutes part of the narrative of successful or positive ageing. Due to its emphasis on self-reliance and efforts to remain healthy, productive and youthful, the discourse of successful ageing has been seen as intersecting with a neoliberal rationality, or a shift of responsibility for risks associated with ageing from the state to the individual. While some authors criticise an emphasis on individual effort to maintain personal wellbeing for a lack of attention to structural factors, others view such an approach favourably as a way of transcending state paternalism. In this paper, I engage with the discourse of 'responsibilisation' drawing on the interviews with middle-aged, middle-class women from Moscow about their experiences of ageing. I employ the theoretical framework of 'governmentality' to demonstrate how the interviewed women's attempts to make sense of what it meant to age 'appropriately' within their milieus informed both their awareness of a need to improve and reinvent the self constantly through consumption in the context of post-Soviet Russian society, and their questioning of and resistance to this pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that ethno-nationalist models of state organization encourage and strengthen sectarianism by accentuating differences between respective majority populations and those with non-majority characteristics as problematic, and identifies and explains the impacts of this for intra-state security in the West and for building partnerships with non-Western populations, citing negative implications on how we understand political behavior and for influence in military operations. The paper uses nineteenth-century Russian identity as a case study, considers the conflation between modernization and Westernization occuring at the time and uses Russian Art of the period as an analytical tool to uncover nuances that are relevant to debates concerning security, identity, and political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In February 2017, Russia decriminalized domestic violence in cases where it does not cause "substantial bodily harm" and does not happen more than once a year. The independent media outlets have published a joint study on violence against women in Russia. Nearly four in five women convicted of murder in Russia have survived domestic violence. According to Russian police statistics, 15.381 women suffered domestic violence in the first nine months of 2019. This paper explores the common concerns expressed by experts, gives an overview of some cases (Khachaturian sisters' case - three teenage sisters stabbed and battered their father to death, the girls' father abused them physically and psychologically for years; the case of Margarita Gracheva - the 27-year-old mother of two boys, the husband chopped off her hands; and Ms. Yeshchenko case - the lover and former student of a historian who murdering her and dismembering her body) and provides strategies for prevention. This paper uses these endeavors as a case study with which to explore the perceived responsibilities of psychiatrists, to comment on and respond to the broader social and political context. This paper is a multi-stakeholder exploration of the position of my own with regard to the way preventive issues were being handled within the context of changing practices, policy, legislation and attitudes. The lessons learned to date the tricks and the pitfalls will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Russian occupation policy in Ukraine as an adaptive tactic of Russia's grand strategy and a manifestation of its military culture. Based on a comparative analysis of the Russian occupation policy during the hybrid and conventional stages of the Russian-Ukrainian war, including the employment of a de facto state playbook, we find both continuity and shifts in Russia's approach. Although the main shift lies in the change of Russia's conflict management in neighboring countries from reactive to proactive, the main continuities are the subordination of occupation policy to Russia's geostrategic interests and path dependence in its military culture, which together lead to the employment of brutal violence against civilians and the demodernization of occupied territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With over one million people arriving in Europe as refugees, the UN Refugee Agency declared 2015 "the year of Europe's refugee crisis." This article explores the meaning-making process surrounding the "refugee crisis" in a Russian context, using discourse theory to analyze representations of refugees, Russia, and the West in opinion pieces and interview articles in three major Russian newspapers. In addition to the humanitarian and security discourses presented in existing studies, I identify a geopolitical discourse that represents refugees as victims of interventionism and democratization processes that the West has promoted in the Middle East and North Africa. More generally, this study adds to the literature on discursive construction of identity and difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Robert Chambers, a Scottish publisher and popular writer, was one of the most influential evolutionary works in the pre-Darwinian age. This article examines the circumstances in which this treatise was published in Russia in 1863 and went through a second printing in 1868. Vestiges was translated into Russian by Alexander Palkhovsky (1831–1907), a former medical student, ideologically close to the nihilist movement, and was initially printed by the radical publisher Anatoly Cherenin, later prosecuted for his ties with revolutionary circles. Vestiges was translated not from the English original, but from a German translation by Karl Vogt. Given the popularity of German materialism among Russian radicals in the 1860s, association with Vogt's name did much to draw attention to the translation. Contrary to Vogt, who took an anti-evolutionary stance while translating Vestiges , Palkhovsky and other nihilists ardently supported evolution in the hope that it would help them combat religious belief. Praising the author of Vestiges for his evolutionary views, Russian radicals at the same time criticized him for numerous references to God, teleological thinking and blindness to social problems. In their attempts to put Vestiges into service, Russian nihilists were similar to English freethinkers of the 1840s. The study of how Vestiges was read and perceived in Russia provides a better understanding of the cross-cultural reception of evolutionary ideas on the eve of Darwin's Origin of Species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on collective memories in the Baltic states often stresses the irreconcilable division between Russian and Baltic official interpretations of the Second World War. This paper seeks to challenge this popular notion of two polemic collective memories – “Latvian” and “Russian”. While there is evidence that Latvia's Russian-speakers are heavily influenced by Russian cultural and political discourses, I will argue that the actual positions taken up by Russian-speakers are more nuanced than a crude Latvian–Russian dichotomy would suggest. Based on survey data collected at the site of the 2011 Victory Day celebrations in Riga, this paper points to the germane existence of a partial “democratization of history” among Latvia's Russian-speakers, typified by an increasing willingness to countenance and take stock of alternative views of history. Through an examination of the data it will be argued that such tentative steps towards a democratization of history are most visible among the younger cohort of Russian-speakers, whose collective memory-myths have been tempered by their dual habitation of the Latvian, as well as Russian, mythscapes. In order to more fully understand this process both bottom-up and top-down pressures will be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that nationalism and neoliberalism should not be considered as conflicting ideologies, but can enter into a productive association. This association creates an entrepreneurial nationalism that people can actively embrace as self-governing subjects in pursuit of a good life and successful career, rather than as subjects governed through state-mandated projects from above. The paper illustrates this argument with material from nine months of fieldwork at a Russian elite university. While students at that university strive to develop their potential and increase their market value to be successful in the competition for the best jobs, they also emphasize that developing themselves is not antithetical to serving Russia and being true to one's country. On the contrary, advancing Russia and advancing one's own career are articulated as two sides of the same coin. At the same time, the Russian nationalist project is reframed in entrepreneurial terms: making the Russian nation strong is about developing its potential and raising its competitiveness in the global marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Polish history, Prince Adam Czartoryski is almost universally regarded as one of the most important Polish statesmen and patriots of the first half of the nineteenth century. In Russian history, on the other hand, he is remembered chiefly as the Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire, and a close personal friend of Tsar Alexander I. How did Czartoryski reconcile his commitment to the Polish nation with his service to the Russian Empire (a state which occupied most of Poland)? This paper will attempt to place Prince Adam's friendship with Alexander, and his service to Imperial Russia, in the broader context of national identity formation in early nineteenth-century eastern Europe. It will be argued that the idea of finding a workable relationship between Poland and Russia, even within the framework of a single state for a “Slavic nation,” was an important and forgotten feature of Polish political thought at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By answering the question of precisely how Czartoryski was able to negotiate between the identities of a “Polish patriot” and “Russian statesman,” the paper will shed light on the broader development of national identity in early nineteenth-century Poland and Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sketches the ambitious outlines of an assessment of the place of Russian philosophy in philosophical history 'at large', i.e. on a global and world-historical scale. At the same time, it indicates, rather modestly, a number of elements and aspects of such a project. A retrospective reflection and reconstruction is not only a recurrent phenomenon in philosophical culture (which, the author assumes, has become global), it also is, by virtue of its being a philosophical reflection, one among many possible perspectives. The central claim of the paper is that the key to an assessment of the world-historical place of Russian philosophy is to be found in the Soviet period, not only because it was, through its isolation policy and its subordination of philosophy to political and ideological goals, a determining factor for a large part of the 20th century, but also, and more importantly, because it has systematically distorted the perception of Russia's philosophical history, including of the Soviet episode itself. The very undoing of these distortions, however, risks becoming a distortion because of, on the one hand, a demonization of the Soviet factor and, on the other hand, a disregard for its philosophical and meta-philosophical relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was written for a special issue of the Ekaterinburg Architecton devoted to the rich Constructivist heritage of that hitherto closed city beyond the Urals. Docomomo-Russia has an active working party there', but the combination of public poverty and vigorous real-estate pressures is making the fate of these buildings uncertain. This paper sought to offer some fundamental structuring ideas to the debate. We publish it here to stimulate discussion of problems also current elsewhere, but the author stresses that it should be read with its original purpose and audience in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the aspects of the relationship between rock art and shamanism, which has been supposed to be of a universal nature, inspired by trance experience, concerns the intentional integration of the images with rock. Rock surface therefore has been interpreted, in numerous shamanic rock-art contexts, as a veil beyond which the otherworld could be encountered. Such an idea was originally proposed in southern Africa, then within Upper Palaeolithic cave art and also other rock-art traditions in diverse parts of the world. This paper for the first time discusses the relevance of this observation from the perspective of unquestionable shamanic culture in Siberia. It shows that the idea of the otherworld to be found on the other side of the rock actually is a widespread motif of shamanic beliefs in Siberia, and that variants of this belief provide a new mode of insight into understanding the semantics of Siberian rock art. Siberian data therefore support previous hypotheses of the shamanic nature of associating rock images with rock surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of the article "Will It Come Here? Using Digital Humanities Tools to Explore Medical Understanding During the Russian Flu Epidemic, 1889-90," which appeared in the December 18, 1889 issue of the "Detroit Free Press" is presented.

This article aims at an empirical verification of prosecutors’ partisan behavior through a case study based on the Russian President Yeltsin and Putin periods. According to Gretchen Helmke's original theory of strategic defection, dependent judges may occasionally check their principal, the executive leadership, by withdrawing their support in the course of an electoral cycle. However, a modified theory of strategic defection can be readily applied to civil-law prosecutors’ behavior in new presidential democracies, where several presidents dominated that office during most of their tenure but experienced prosecutorial defection in their final phase. Russia provides a textbook case for examining the modified theory in relation to prosecutors’ partisan behavior against an incumbent president. Meanwhile, this paper uses within-case analysis based on a qualitative method, because the methodological approach can have more advantages in discovering whether prosecutors acted ‘really’ strategically when an incumbent government was outgoing in Russia, and in further explaining a pattern of prosecutors’ partisan attitudes in new presidential democracies, through the modified version of Helmke's theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper specifies the conditions for conflict in Central Asia. Given Russian preponderance this should be an easy case for neorealism. But we demonstrate that the consequences of Russia's superior power will depend on the nature of its regime and domestic stability in Central Asia. The type of nationalism, the robustness of political institutions, and the success or failure of economic reform will be critical conditions for Central Asian stability. The paper also evaluates the prospects for conflict resolution and prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates trace elements and crystal-rich fluid inclusions in spodumene from rare-metal pegmatites of the Kolmozero lithium deposit in the Kola region, Russia. The main lithium mineral in the pegmatites is spodumene, which occurs in three generations, designated as Spd-I, Spd-II and Spd-III. Iron, Na and Mn are the most typical element impurities in spodumene. The Fe/Mn ratio is 7.1 in Spd-I, 12.3 in Spd-II and 13.2 in Spd-III. Spd-II contains fluid and crystal-rich fluid inclusions. The crystal-rich fluid inclusions in Spd-II originally trapped CO2-bearing aqueous fluids with dissolved alkali carbonates. The crystal-rich fluid inclusions contain zabuyelite (Li2CO3) and cristobalite (SiO2) as solid phases, which have not been reported previously from the Kolmozero rare-metal pegmatites. These minerals are assumed to have resulted from a reaction between a CO2-bearing aqueous fluid and host Spd-II and are not related to the mineral-forming system of pegmatites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at four families living in and around the small town of Gatchina, not far from St Petersburg, Russia, in the long nineteenth century. Their family histories are recreated from archival files based in tsarist Russia's system of social estates (soslovie), supplemented by city directories, newspapers, and many other sources. Taken together, the four family histories expand our understanding of tsarist Russia's middle classes in two ways. First, they highlight the role that women played in families as economic actors and as agents of their own destiny. Second, they demonstrate the role that social mobility did and did not play in maintaining families across the long nineteenth century. In addition, they demonstrate some of the ways in which the Russian empire's experience of the nineteenth century differed from a standard Eurocentric narrative, in particular in the way that 'archaic' and 'modern' worlds existed simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The glacier system covering Europe's highest mountain, Elbrus, has exhibited an accelerated retreat since 1980. Some studies have related this retreat to a significant summer temperature increasing trend. Relief- and aspect-related parameters for the glacierized area have an important impact on glacier changes. In this paper, the changes in glacier area are identified, quantified and correlated with relief parameters for the period 1985–2007. Spatial analysis was performed using the GLAM-CD (Glacier Mapper – Change Detector) algorithm. The input data for this algorithm were Landsat 5 images, the Aster Global Digital Elevation and the glacier outlines from the GLIMS project (Global Land Ice Measurements from Space). Regression analyses between glacier area losses and relief-related parameters indicate a significant positive relation with the altitude and a significant negative relation with the glacier surface area. In this context, we used a correlated component regression to model these relations. The model explains >50% of the total variation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Seversky Donets River (Northern Donets) basin in eastern Ukraine and the Lower Don River valley in Russia were inhabited by populations that have been considered to be one of the earliest pottery-using cultures in Europe. The early pottery sites are all located on riverbanks and contain middens with many mollusk shells and fish bones. This suggests the intense exploitation of freshwater resources. The accuracy of radiocarbon dates obtained from these locations is of crucial importance for understanding the development of new technologies, diversification of the food consumed and its preparation strategies, as well as the degree of sedentism in this region, associated with the beginnings of pottery-making technology. The chronology of Neolithic sites in this region, however, was developed on the basis of 14C dates commonly obtained through the dating of freshwater mollusk shells, pottery with mollusk shell temper, or organic residue on pottery shards. Such samples are potentially affected by the freshwater reservoir effect, raising concerns about the accuracy of those dates. This paper presents accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C dates from a small pilot study from sites in eastern Ukraine in order to test for the presence of the reservoir effect in this region. The AMS 14C dates presented in this paper challenge the 14C chronology based on mollusk shell or organic residue, which appears to generate much older dates than those on wood charcoal or terrestrial animal bone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the origins of Iranian studies in the principal centers of Oriental studies in Russia, located in Kazan, St. Petersburg and Moscow from the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. It concerns the international political situation and major social changes which created a demand in the Russian intellectual market for both academic and practical experts on the entire Muslim world. The paper also describes how, thanks to the efforts of German scholars who were invited to these centers, the different fields of modern Iranian studies, including the academic traditions, achievements and key publications were initially formed and then were developed by their Russian colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bryozoans from the Dapingian (Middle Ordovician) of the Baltic paleobasin remain poorly studied and their taxonomic composition is unclear. In this paper, three bryozoan taxa, a bifoliate cystoporate Planopora volkhovensis n. gen. n. sp., a trepostome Hemiphragma insolitum n. sp., and an esthonioporate Esthoniopora clara Koromyslova, are described from Dapingian deposits of an unusual clayey-calcareous Hecker-type mudmound on the right bank of the Volkhov River in Leningrad Oblast', north-western Russia. Combined X-ray microtomography, scanning electron microscopy, and light microscopy of thin sections were used to characterize their morphology. Analysis of the stratigraphic distribution of early cystoporate bryozoans suggests that Planopora n. gen. is the oldest сystoporate bryozoan with an erect, bifoliate colony. The growth modes of these bryozoans are discussed. The colonies of P. volkhovensis n. gen. n. sp. and E. clara have an attachment structure, a holdfast, at their base, probably indicating their attachment to sponge spicules. The bryozoan H. insolitum n. sp. produced rod-like colonies, formed by overgrowing the problematic tubular fossil Sphenothallus Hall. It can be assumed that sponges with unfused siliceous spicules and individuals of Sphenothallus were numerous on the surface of the mudmound during its formation and provided a suitable substrate for settlement of bryozoan larvae. UUID: http://zoobank.org/5715872a-8c61-446e-9413-d713fdef1a08 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper opens a series devoted to the mineral diversity of the Mochalin Log rare earth element (REE) deposit, South Urals, Russia. There is a brief outline of the history of studies and geology of the deposit as well as the description of two new isostructural gatelite-group minerals, ferriperbøeite-(La) (CaLa3)(Fe3+Al2Fe2+)[Si2O7][SiO4]3O(OH)2 and perbøeite-(La) (CaLa3)(Al3Fe2+)[Si2O7][SiO4]3O(OH)2. Both minerals occur in polymineralic nodules and are associated with one another and allanite-(Ce), allanite-(La), bastnäsite-(Ce), bastnäsite-(La), ferriallanite-(Ce), ferriallanite-(La), ferriperbøeite-(Ce), perbøeite-(Ce), törnebohmite-(Ce) and törnebohmite-(La). The new minerals form isolated anhedral grains up to 0.3 mm [ferriperbøeite-(La)] and 0.5 mm [perbøeite-(La)] across and granular aggregates up to 1.5 mm × 0.5 mm [ferriperbøeite-(La)] and 3 mm × 1 mm [perbøeite-(La)]. Both minerals are brownish-black with vitreous lustre. Dcalc = 4.510 [ferriperbøeite-(La)] and 4.483 [perbøeite-(La)] g cm–3. They are optically biaxial (+); ferriperbøeite-(La): α = 1.788(5), β = 1.790(5), γ = 1.810(5) and 2Vmeas = 40(10)°; perbøeite-(La): α = 1.778(8), β = 1.783(8), γ = 1.805(8) and 2Vmeas = 40(10)°. Chemical data [wt.%, electron-microprobe; Fe3+:Fe2+ ratio from charge-balance requirements, H2O by stoichiometry; ferriperbøeite-(La)/perbøeite-(La)] are: CaO 4.91/4.81, ThO2 0.00/0.32, La2O3 23.75/22.16, Ce2O3 19.69/20.05, Pr2O3 0.85/1.09, Nd2O3 1.48/2.18, MgO 1.47/1.38, Al2O3 10.68/11.25, MnO 1.07/0.92, FeO 3.04/3.35, Fe2O3 5.31/3.78, TiO2 0.19/0.19, SiO2 27.47/27.35, F 0.11/0.23, H2O 1.61/1.54, –O = F –0.05/–0.10, total 101.58/100.50. The empirical formulae based on O20(OH,F)2 are for ferriperbøeite-(La): (Ca0.95La1.58Ce1.30Nd0.10Pr0.06)Σ3.99(Al2.27Fe3+0.72Fe2+0.46Mg0.40Mn0.16Ti0.03)Σ4.04Si4.96O20[(OH)1.94F0.06]; and for perbøeite-(La): (Ca0.94Th0.01La1.49Ce1.34Nd0.14Pr0.07)Σ3.99(Al2.42Fe3+0.52Fe2+0.51Mg0.38Mn0.14 Ti0.03)Σ4.00Si4.99O20[(OH)1.87F0.13]. Both minerals are monoclinic, P21/m; the unit-cell parameters [ferriperbøeite-(La)/perbøeite-(La)] are: a = 8.9458(2)/8.9652(4), b = 5.72971(13)/5.7306(2), c = 17.6192(3)/17.6770(9) Å, β = 115.9497(19)/116.053(6)°, V = 812.06(3)/815.88(6) Å3 and Z = 2/2. The crystal structures are solved on a single crystal and converged to R = 0.0355 [ferriperbøeite-(La)] and 0.0750 [perbøeite-(La)]. Ferriperbøeite-(La) and perbøeite-(La) are named as the La-analogues of ferriperbøeite-(Ce) and perbøeite-(Ce), respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia remains the destination of choice for Tajik migrants. Its migration policies have profound implications for migrants' legal status and capacity to remit and return home. This article draws on ethnographic research in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and explores how the enforcement of Russia's immigration laws affects Tajik migrants and their families. By 2016, over 300,000 Tajik migrants were issued entry bars (zapret na v'ezd) for three or more years for two or more administrative offenses, including the lack of a work permit or a residential registration and a traffic violation. Migration and the transnational lifestyle increase agency among Tajik men and women, informing gender transformations. Entry bars produce temporary constraints to spatial and social mobility as migrants readjust to well-defined gender roles in their home country. We note how immigration laws affect men and women in different ways, contextualizing the gendered effects of entry bars through the lens of gender relations and understandings of masculinity and femininity in Tajikistan. We argue that the constraints to migrants' mobility developed by Russian migration policies inform the reconstitution of gender relations in Tajikistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia is one of the world's largest migrant-receiving countries. The recession of recent years, changes in labor market and immigration policies, and an increase in anti-foreign sentiment have directly affected immigrants' lives in Russia. This has been reflected not only in how immigrants find employment and housing in the country but also in how they perceive Russia as a country in which to work and live. This article analyzes remigration as a coping strategy of Afghan immigrants in Russia. These immigrants face severe everyday difficulties as irregular migrants and suffer discrimination and uncertainty. Despite their low status and vulnerability, we argue that Afghan immigrants still have agency, evident in how they interpret and live in the Russian anti-immigrant atmosphere. The article is based on stories narrated by Afghan immigrants in Russia and a qualitative content analysis of the asylum application protocols of Afghan asylum seekers in Finland that was produced by the Finnish Border Guard, Police, and the Finnish Immigration Service. A total of 632 Afghan citizens applied for asylum after entering Finland from the Russian Federation along the "Arctic route" between 2015 and 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beremendiini is an extinct group of soricine shrews that were widely distributed during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Their occurrence in China has been investigated, but their presence in northern Asian regions has remained poorly studied. This paper analyzes 56 fossil remains of Beremendiini collected from 16 early Pliocene to early Pleistocene localities in Russia (Siberia), Kazakhstan, and Mongolia and shows the presence of two beremendiin species: Beremendia fissidens (Petényi, 1864) and Beremendia minor Rzebik-Kowalska, 1976. Northern Asian Beremendia considerably vary in size and qualitative characteristics, although most of the different states have been identified in European or Chinese specimens. Through the application of geometric morphometric techniques, mandibular shape analyses reveal similarities between the members of the beremendiin genera Peisorex Kowalski and Li, 1963, Beremendia Kormos, 1934, and Lunanosorex Jin and Kawamura, 1996. Shape analyses and comparisons of mandibular characteristics reveal 'trophic' analogies between Beremendia and Blarina spp. and a new model of 'Mandible Swinging and Sliding' (MSS-model) accounting for the similarities in mandibular morphology with implications for the understanding of the diet of Beremendia. UUID: http://zoobank.org/ef92ee1a-3977-44b2-86d7-381665bcf78b [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do young Russians relate to World War II and the violence of the wartime period? This article explores the degree to which societal and elite-driven narratives about history converge in the context of a crucial historical anniversary. We demonstrate that the memory of World War II serves as an integrative historical event for an abstract, temporally transcendent idea of Russia. Our analysis draws on focus groups conducted among young people of different political orientation in June 2019, survey data targeting urban youth, conducted over three consecutive years (2018–2020), and cultural artifacts such as film and literature. There is significant overlap between the views that young people express about victory and commemoration and the prevailing cultural, political, educational, and historical discourses. However, there is significant controversy when it comes to the actual ways in which the current political regime remembers the victory, the role of Stalin, and how to understand violence against the civilian population. The shared historical view that the Putin regime has created therefore remains contested. Disagreement limits the extent to which memory can be a foundation for today's political Russia as young respondents differentiate between their support for an abstract ideal of Russia and the existing political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]