Search

Eta kniga — rezul'tat mnogoletnego issledovaniia o seksualizirovannom nasilii nad zhenshchinami v Vengrii vo Vtoroi mirovoi voine. S pomoshch'iu arkhivnykh istochnikov, interv'iu i lichnykh dnevnikov Andrea Peto vosstanavlivaet dramatichnyi opyt vengerskikh zhenshchin, udeliaia osoboe vnimanie prestupleniiam Krasnoi armii v Vengrii — teme, kotoraia prakticheski otsutstvuet v rossiiskom publichnom prostranstve. Transnatsional'nyi podkhod pozvoliaet Peto podcherknut'universal'nost'uiazvlennogo polozheniia zhenshchin vo vremia voiny. Kniga analiziruet seksualizirovannoe nasilie, sovershennoe armiiami SSSR i natsistskoi Germanii v Vengrii, i sravnivaet ego s nasiliem so storony soiuznykh voisk v zone okkupatsii na Zapadnom fronte, ekspluatatsiei'zhenshchin dlia utesheniia'v iaponskikh voennykh bordeliakh v 1931–1945 gg., a takzhe prestupleniiami protiv zhenshchin vo vremia Iugoslavskikh voin v 1991–2001 gg. Vo vtoroi chasti knigi Peto pytaetsia otvetit'na voprosy: Kakoi sled seksualizirovannoe nasilie vremen Vtoroi mirovoi voiny ostavilo v kollektivnoi pamiati grazhdan Rossii, Vengrii, Pol'shi, Germanii i Ukrainy? Kakie faktory vliiaiut na to, kak imenno oni pomniat — ili ne pomniat — o nem?

In 1996, the Russian Federation became a member of the Council of Europe. Two years later, the Russian parliament ratified the Council's major document—the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). These papers were presented at a conference at Yekaterinburg in spring 2001. The collection represents a snapshot of Russian and Western approaches to human rights protection at a moment when Russia was going through an adaptation of the political system created by Boris Yeltsin to the new modes of state-society relations being introduced by Vladimir Putin.Contents: Sergey Alexeyev on human rights and Modernity; Rainer Arnold on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights; Valery Mikhailenko on ethnic separatism; Julia Kharlamova on the impossibility of an ECHR-implementation in Russia; Yekaterina Khodzhayeva on human rights discourses in Tatarstan's mass media; Anatoly Azarov on the Russians'knowledge about the ECHR; Manja Hussner on the incorporation of international treaties into Russian law; Marat Salikov on the Constitutional Court; Anton Burkov on the detention of mentally ill persons; Igor Shirmanov on ambiguities in Russian legal norms; Olga Selikhova on human rights issues in the regions; Olga Aleksenko on the Human Rights Commission of Rostov; Yelena Goncharova on the right to a fair trial; Tatyana Gladkova on the Sverdlovsk Oblast Ombudsman; Andrey Lyamzin on Yekaterinburg's detention system; Andreas Umland with Oxana Stouppo on Western policies towards Russia.

The collective volume that provides an academic analysis of oil and gas export pipelines from the post-Soviet region, covering new pipeline projects and the exploitation of existing pipelines, as well as offering fresh theoretical perspectives on the interpretation of conflicting interests between producers, consumers and transit countries. The volume offers insights into the pipeline policies of different actors from various theoretical angles, including constructivism, liberal intergovernmentalism, geopolitical approaches, interdependence theory and securitization studies.

A Witness Report from Behind the Scenes of Russian Politics II A Threat to Ourselves and Those Around Us (Observations and Warnings Concerning Developments after 2000)

A Witness Report from Behind the Scenes of Russian Politics I Is It Possible to Create Good Out of Evil? (Memories and Deliberations on the Last Soviet and First Post-Soviet Years)

These two volumes describe and document in detail the history and ideology of the Russian neo-Nazi party Russkoe Natsional'noe Edinstvo RNE (Russian National Unity) from 1990 to 2000 when the organization broke up into several minor groups. It is the first time that the RNE becomes the subject of a thorough investigation. Volume 1 one tells the story of the emergence and rise of the RNE, and, in an epilogue, summarizes the development of the most important of the RNE's various miniscule successor organizations from 2000 to 2005. The volume also contains short descriptions of various local and foreign branches of the RNE in the Russian regions and countries of the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 2000. It finally provides a biography of the RNE's founder and foremost leader Aleksandr Barkashov.Volume 2 contains a collection of documents of the RNE including its various programs, leaflets and other party literature and propaganda material. The volume's second part consists of appendices reproducing lists of names related to the RNE's and its allies', such as the Spas Movement's, activities, i.e. a list of candidates for elections, and a list of the RNE members who took part in the October 1993 uprising in Moscow. The volume's third part contains an extensive bibliography. Finally, there are twenty black-and-white pictures of the RNE's leaders, activities, emblems and leaflets.

The Russian nationalist idea, considered a marginal tendency in the 1990s, has, during the last years, transformed into an official state and widely popular ideology. The Russian political spectrum is unified in its promotion of a discourse grounded in undisguised anti-Westernism as well as the paranoid view that national unity and authenticity are threatened by various external and internal enemies. The space of political representation has become increasingly covered by nationalism to the point that it is today regarded a “politically correct” attitude in Russia. Nationalist and, in some cases, crypto-fascist factions operate in all major political parties of Russia today.The government actively contributes to promoting this trend through introducing patriotic education at school, revitalizing anti-Americanism as a foreign policy doctrine, new national holidays and commemorations, a growing cult of the military, frequent references to Orthodoxy, utilizing ultra-nationalist groupings in its manipulation of public life through “political technology”, and essentializing “ethnic rights” of the national subjects of the Federation. The media has come to play a crucial role in the dissemination of cryptic and, sometimes, manifestly nationalist ideas. The submission of most major mass media outlets to the authorities highlights the “fourth power's” status as a proponent of nationalist discourse in its own right. The media has been playing an increasing role in exacerbating xenophobic tensions within Russian society.This nationalist climate is not restricted to politics and journalism, but is also to be found in numerous sections of cultural and academic life. Thus, in Russia today, apart from various cases of para-science and alternative history, the notion that certain academic disciplines have the mission to justify “Russian specificity” is widespread among scholars, as are approaches, defined as “civilizationist,” that systematize national stereotypes. History, sociology, economics, and literature as well as the new disciplines of “culturology” and “geopolitics” propagate ethnocentric precepts with consequences yet to be explored.Contents:Marlène Laruelle, Deliberations on “Russian Nationalism” as a Subject of Academic Research; Galina Zvereva, The Discourse of the State Nation in Contemporary Russia; Viktor Voronkov and Oksana Karpenko, Patriotism as Nationalism of the (Post-)Soviet Man; Andreas Umland, Three Varieties of Post-Soviet Fascism: Conceptual and Contextual Problems of Interpreting Contemporary Russian Ultra-Nationalism; Aleksandr Verkhovskii, The Church's Project of Russian Identity; Dmitrii Dubrovski, Sports and Politics: Soccer as a National Idea in Contemporary Russia; Viktor Shnirelman, The Civilizational Approach as National Idea; Aleksandr Nikulin and Irina Totsuk, The Metahistorical Matrix of Great Power Rent-Seeking: Politico-Economic Peculiarities of the Academic National Idea; Natalia Ivanova, Specificities of the Nationalist Discourse in Contemporary Literary Criticism; Yulia Liderman, The Course towards Patriotism and the Answer of Russian Cinematography after 2000: New Budgets, New Genres, New War Movies; Vera Zvereva, TV Celebration Concerts: The Rhetoric of State Nationalism.

Ukraine of the last years has been an unpredictable country. The frequent changes of government and parliamentary coalitions as well as the contradictory foreign policy orientations of the main political actors and the switching between different modes of international integration – how can one predict the future of such a state? Are there any constants and long-term trends? The following collected volume is an excerpt from a broader collective investigation of several Ukrainian scholars conducted in 2007-2008, and revised in accordance with the new realities of 2010. On the basis of an analysis of different spheres of society, the authors propose integrated scenarios of the nearest Ukrainian future: (1) a “realistic” (inert) one, (2) an “optimistic” one, and (3) a “pessimistic” one. The real development of the coming years may comprise elements of all three scenarios. Yet the reader will be able to follow certain constant tendencies – the deepening of the socio-demographic crisis, the politicians'continued ignoring of the social capital and resources of civil society, as well as a possible loss of sovereignty in Ukraine's relations to Russia. In the introduction, Galushko presents the approaches and concepts of the study. The chapter “The Main Problems and Tendencies of Socio-Economic Development” was written by a team of sociologists under the leadership of Smola. The attempts of “development by plan” and evolution of the information sphere of Ukraine are analyzed in separate contributions by Smola. Viktor Kotigorenko considers risks of ethnic conflicts while Evgenii Magda outlines the main tendencies of political development. Elena Titova deals with the problems of a preservation of the Ukrainian cultural heritage. In conclusion, integrated scenarios are formulated by Galushko in collaboration with Smola and Magda.

This monograph is devoted to ‘Mother Russia'as a principal concept of Russian nationalism. The volume demonstrates the role of the mythology of ‘Mother Russia'in inventing and reinventing Russianness, in producing Ours and Theirs, in constructing external and internal Enemies, in legitimating and delegitimating power within the political system of Russia. Chapter I ‘Nationalism, Gender, and War: A Methodological Framework'starts with definitions of the study's key terms – gender, nationalism, identity, and discourse. Interpreting gender as a referential, context-dependent and heterogeneous phenomenon as well as showing its implication in power relations, the author demonstrates that all principal concepts of nationalism as a discursive formation intersect with gender discourse. This, on the one hand, comes about through the role of nationalism in the formation of gender order during Modernity, and, on the other hand, through the potential of gender to serve as an effective marker facilitating the process of inclusion and exclusion in the making of collective identity. The author argues that gender discourse serves as a weapon of war, playing an important role in national mobilization, as well as in the assertion of supremacy in war, both militarily and morally. The aim of Chapter II ‘“Mother Russia” Through the Lenses of Postcolonial Studies'is a general explanation of the symbol. ‘Mother Russia'is rooted in a myth-symbol complex of Russian culture. At the same time, it has also been developed under the influence of the discourse on Modernity that has divided the world into ‘the West and the Rest'. In Western culture, ‘Mother Russia'serves as a ‘symbolic border-guard'between a ‘masculine'West and ‘feminine'Russia. ‘Mother Russia'keeps functioning as a factor of the identity of the West in the post-Cold War era. Contemporary Western mass media actively exploits this symbol to mark a border of the West and to designate Russia as irrational, archaic, chaotic, mysterious, unpredictable, and passive.In Russian culture, the development of ‘Mother Russia'is, to a considerable extent, a reaction to these practices of her ‘othering'within Western discourse. The idea of the femininity of Russia is accepted, first of all, in the ‘messianic'discourse, which treats Russia as the savior of the West and of all humankind. The author shows that some other non-Western cultures use the similar ‘authofeminization'accompanied by a representation of the Western civilization as extremely masculine, ‘dangerous masculine'. The symbol is exploited in the politics of identity of Russian nationalism to provide unity for the Russian nation. By determining ‘Ours', the discourse on ‘Mother Russia'also produces Enemies both in national and gender dimensions. Chapter III ‘“Mother Russia” in the History of 20th Century'analyzes the major phases of development of the symbol during the last century, focusing on its functions in wars (including the Russo-Japanese war, First and Second World Wars, as well as Cold War), revolutions and civil conflicts. It focuses on the mutual influence of ‘Mother Russia', on the one side, and national, military, political, imperial, and gender discourses in Russia, on the other. The study shows how various discourses in- and outside Russia contest for the interpretation of ‘Mother Russia'so that to speak on behalf of her. This discursive struggle around the maternal image of Russia accounts for the polysemy of this symbol and heterogeneity of national identity in general.

This book analyses Russian cinema movies that became blockbusters among home-produced motion pictures of the 1990s, and the plots of which refer to the Soviet past. The study seeks to establish the nature and function of the particular past that the post-Soviet films of the 1990s portrayed. This recent past is reproduced today primarily through the stereotype of a'Soviet man.'The study is located within the field of modern cultural and anthropological studies. For the first time, the post-Soviet film-industry is scrutinized with methods of cultural anthropology. The analysis reveals heavy borrowings from structural elements of Soviet culture in the movies scripts of the 1990s. The themes of'trial'and'proof'reflect the evaluation of a person's destiny primarily through its correspondence with the life of the country or community that were normative for Soviet culture. The book discovers the mechanisms of forming the'new Soviet man'represented in the Soviet film-production, and demonstrates the logic and notion of the'Soviet destiny'in the thematic variants of post-Soviet motion-pictures. The study also explores theoretical approaches to the analysis of Soviet anthropology such as the development of a specialized language for describing images of collectiveness and of the system of instruments for de-individualization in Soviet culture.