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The goal of our study was to explore the effect of living conditions on the odd of major and minor ECG abnormalities on a large region scale in Russia. For the analysis, cross-sectional data of the Russian study, ESSE-RF 2013–2014, were used. They were collected on a sample of 16,400 subjects from 10 regions of the Russia. ECG abnormalities were grouped into two categories: Major and Minor (sensu the 2009 version of the Minnesota Code Classification System). Regional living conditions were considered comprehensively via five indices combining 33 characteristics of the regions. The estimates were presented as odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals. The prevalence values of major abnormalities in the sample were 8.4% among women and 9.4% among men (p = 0.021). The prevalence of minor abnormalities constituted 34.1% and 45.9%, respectively (p < 0.001). In men, the odd of major ECG abnormalities increased with the demographic depression growth (1.08: 1.04–1.12) and with industrial development growth in the region (1.12: 1.07–1.17). In women, an increase in the odd of major ECG abnormalities was directly associated with industrial development (1.12: 1.07–1.16) and inversely related to the economic development in the region (0.94: 0.89–0.99). The odd of minor ECG abnormalities in men and women declined with the growth of the regional economic development: OR of 0.95: 0.93–0.98, and OR of 0.92: 0.87–0.99, respectively. The study demonstrated an effect of regional living conditions of the Russian population on the odd of major and minor ECG abnormalities. The most stable and logically explainable relationships were obtained for industrial and economic characteristics of living conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Soviet Union's collapse, Russia implemented reforms aimed at transitioning to a market economy and devolving power to regional and municipal levels of government. Although it is well known that these reforms created significant uncertainty, economic crises, and protest, most existing studies do not explore the considerable variation in protest patterns across localities. This article asks why, despite similar pressures, some cities have experienced protests that are consistently larger and more intense than others. Focusing on the context of the many company towns that emerged during Soviet industrialization, I construct a paired comparison of two average-sized company towns using process tracing through interviews and archival documents. This article also employs an original protest database created through newspaper analysis that tracks not only the instances of protest but also protest size, demands, and targets. What emerges are two pathways that explain the divergent protest structures in the two company towns studied. In Cherepovets, a city that is less dependent on the central state, local elites pursued strategies of co-optation and suppression, limiting the opportunity structure for contentious politics to small-scale, local protests. In Komsomolsk-na-Amure, a city where the primary industry is in decline and dependent on support from the center, local elites converged with opposition groups to improve their bargaining position vis-à-vis the central government; this produced protests that were larger and more extreme and targeted the system as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms entering transition markets are typically ignorant about those markets, and the markets, owing to the transition from a planned to a market economy, are typically turbulent. Consequently the entry process involves discoveries that could not have been predicted in advance. This position is supported by a longitudinal study in real-time of a Swedish firm's entry into the Russian market between 1987 and 1993. The paper distinguishes between three types of activity that form part of the entry process, namely search, routines and improvisation, and it discusses how they relate to operative and strategic discoveries made and the characteristics of the entry process. Key Results The paper offers a conceptual framework for studying the role of discovery in the process of entering turbulent foreign markets. A longitudinal case study of a Swedish firm's entry into Russia demonstrates that discoveries were important in the entry process. It shows also that strategic discoveries tend to be a result of either search or improvisation, while operative discoveries are usually made in the course of routine activities performed by the entering firm [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated students' perceptions of ethical organizational climates, attitudes towards ethical issues, and the perceived relationship between ethical behavior and success in business organizations. Comparisons were made between the attitudes of these future managers with previously published studies of Russian managers' attitudes. A survey of 100 business students in three Moscow universities showed that their attitudes toward ethical behavior were more negative than those of Russian managers. No significant differences were found in the perceptions or attitudes of students who had attended an ethics course and those that did not. The implications for both managers and researchers were reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the grain procurements during the Great Leap Forward in China. A central issue in the relationship between Marxist-Leninist states and their peasantries is the extent to which resources are extracted from the countryside in support of the goal of rapid industrialization and urbanization. The extreme case of relentless extraction was Stalin's Soviet Union, where the state's relationship to the peasantry amounted to an instance of internal colonialism. The state's procurement program imposed compulsory grain delivery quotas on the collective farms, the unconditional fulfillment of which, regardless of objective conditions, became the first commandment for all rural officials. At times, extraction was carried to the point of inducing not only severe food shortages in the countryside, but also widespread famine, particularly in 1932-1933 and to a lesser extent in 1947. The enforcement of the procurement program necessitated the imposition of tight bureaucratic straightjacket on the countryside, not only in the form of collective farms but also of associated institution such as the Machine Tractor Stations. The Great Leap Forward, an unprecedentedly intense mobilization effort launched in 1958 to achieve a developmental breakthrough suggests that the prevailing image of Maoist China as differing fundamentally from Stalin's Russia must be reexamined. That the Great Leap Forward should have brought China closer to Stalinist practice is at first glance a paradox. The Leap was Mao Zedong's effort to chart an independent developmental and ideological road by breaking with the preceding years of emulation of the Soviet model.