scholarly journals Magicalized Socialism: An Anthropological Study on the Magical Practices of a Secularized Reincarnated Lama in Socialist Mongolia

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 799-829
Author(s):  
Ippei Shimamura
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
The Way

AbstractSocialist regimes lead by the Soviet Union were one of the great experiments for human life “without religions”. In Mongolia, as in other socialist countries, modernity was constructed by expelling religious practices from the sphere of everyday life in the name of atheism. However, modernity has never completely succeeded in fully establishing secularization anywhere in the world, and the phenomena of magico-religious practices continue and even are rampant, not least behind the facades in post-socialist countries. In other words, it can be said that the affiliation between secularization, de-sacralization, and modernity, which many scholars imagined, was just fantasy. Following the way in which Talal Asad examines the “novel” form of secularism present in Euro-American societies, it becomes quite easy to understand that socialist modernity was formulated as the “novel secular” by the Soviet Union. While examining Soviet-style atheism or Soviet-formed secularization, we need to rethink the practices that are “in between” the religious and the secular. Mongols have been practicing religion secularly. We see this in how selecting reincarnated lamas has been a political act, and in the way they have been practicing secular politics so religiously – for example, the importance of fortune telling and shamanism in political decision-making. Further, we need to note that the socialist expulsion of institutional aspects of religions such as churches, clergies, and religious scriptures resulted in the spread of magical/occult practices. In this paper we explore Mongol practices that are in between the religious and the secular by examining Buddhist practices in Zavkhan Province, where people maintained strong worship for reincarnated lamas secretly and in disguise during the socialist era.

scholarly journals Doffing "Mankurt's Cap": Chingiz Aitmatov's The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years and the Turkic National Heritage

1987 ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Mozur
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
The Way

The appearance of Chingiz Aitmatov's I dol' she veka dl itsia den' (The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years) in December 1980 created a major literary sensation in Moscow. There was something in the novel for everyone, and reviews in the Soviet Union. the Western press. and in emigre periodicals were overwhelmingly positive. Soviet critics especially welcomed the novel for its timely appearance after a serious discussion about the crisis of the genre "novel" in contemporary Soviet letters. As such Aitmatov's novel was singled out as the work pointing the way Soviet literature should go in the 1980s.

scholarly journals The crisis of modernity as the crisis of the political: Towards a critique of the reason of the ethos

2003 ◽  
pp. 61-85
Author(s):  
Simo Elakovic
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Political Decision Making

The crisis of modernity as the crisis of the political is seen by the author primarily as a crisis of the "measure" of the criterion of political decision making and action. This crisis is understood in the first place as a crisis of self-awareness and practice of the ethos. Machiavelli was the first to attempt a solution to this problem by introducing the concept of virtus, which became the fundamental principle of modern political philosophy. However, many modern and contemporary interpreters of Machiavelli's thought often ignore the social and political context in which the political doctrine of the Florentine thinker arose. Namely, Machiavelli's effort to find an authentic form of the political act that would make possible a harmonization and stabilization of the dramatic political circumstances then prevailing in Italian cities required a reliable diagnosis and adequate means for a successful therapy of the sick organism of the community. The epochal novelty in Machiavelli's political theory was the shift from the ancient theorization of virtue to its modern operationalization. Nevertheless, this shift is often interpreted as a radical opposing of the Greek concept of arete to the Roman virtus, which is crudely and simplistically reduced to bravery and strength necessary for taking and keeping political power. Hegel in his political philosophy travels an important part of the road - unconsciously rather than consciously - along with Machiavelli and Shelling. This particularly holds for his understanding of the necessity of strength and bravery in the process of operationalizing the spirit of freedom in history through the mediation of "negation" as "the power of evil". The mediation of subjectivity and substantiality, according to Hegel, takes place in the state by the brutal bridling of the world spirit where not just individuals but whole peoples are sacrificed - toward freedom, i.e. its realization in the community of the ethos. The "trouble of the times" is a consequence of the separation between I and the world (Entzeiung) and stems from a reduced political reason which lacks the criterion of the ethical totality for political action and decision making. By the separation of the ethos this reason get routinized and political action is reduced to naked technique of winning and keeping political power. In the concluding segment of the paper the author points to some global consequences of the crisis of political decision making in the historical reality at the end of 20th century.

scholarly journals Viewing ‘the other’ over a hundred and a score more years: South Africa and Russia (1890–2010)

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
I Liebenberg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Auto Ethnography

Whether novel is history or history is novel, is a tantalising point. “The novel is no longer a work, a thing to make las t, to connect the pas t with the future but (only) one current event among many, a ges ture with no tomorrow” Kundera (1988:19). One does not have to agree with Kundera to find that social sciences , as his toriography holds a s tory, a human narrative to be shared when focused on a case or cases. In this case, relations between peoples over more than a century are discussed. At the same time, what is known as broader casing in qualitative studies enters the picture. The relations between the governments and the peoples of South Africa and Russia ( including the Soviet Union), sometimes in conflict or peace and sometimes at variance are discussed. Past and present communalities and differences between two national entities within a changing international or global context deserve attention while moments of auto-ethnography compliment the study. References are made to the international political economy in the context of the relations between these countries.Keywords: Soviet Union; South Africa; Total Onslaught; United Party; Friends of the Soviet Union; ideological conflict (South Africa); Russians (and the Anglo-Boer War); racial capitalism; apartheid; communism/Trotskyism (in South Africa); broader casing (qualitative research)Subject fields: political science; sociology; (military) history; international political economy; social anthropology; international relations; conflict studies

Attaining Primacy

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-208
Author(s):  
William O. Walker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
Smithsonian Institution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Soviet Union

This chapter explores Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s disdain for hegemony and search for primacy as they sought to refurbish America’s tarnished reputation. Through their pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union and China, their resort to the Nixon Doctrine (to exit as gracefully as possible from Indochina), and the meeting at the Smithsonian Institution in December 1971 to restore America’s global economic stature, they attempted to achieve U.S. primacy in world affairs. Their efforts to implement the novel grand strategy of strategic globalism fell short, as seen in the difficulty of extricating the United States from Vietnam, Nixon’s Watergate imbroglio, and the presence of competing visions of world order among allies, most notably in West Germany’s pursuit of Ostpolitik.

scholarly journals Friends in war: Sweden between solidarity and self-help, 1939–1945

2020 ◽  
pp. 001083672090438
Author(s):  
Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou ◽  
Felix Berenskötter
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Winter War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This article scrutinizes the assumption that friends support each other in times of war. Picking up the notion that solidarity, or ‘other-help’, is a key feature of friendship between states, the article explores how states behave when a friend is attacked by an overwhelming enemy. It directs attention to the trade-off between solidarity and self-help that governments face in such a situation and makes the novel argument that the decision about whether and how to support the friend is significantly influenced by assessments of the distribution of material capabilities and the relationship the state has with the aggressor. This proposition is supported empirically in an examination of Sweden’s response to its Nordic friends’ need for help during the Second World War – to Finland during the 1939–1940 ‘Winter War’ with the Soviet Union, and to Norway following the invasion of Germany from 1940 to 1945.

The Decolonization of the Environment in Kazakhstan: The Novel Final Respects by Abdi-Jamil Nurpeisov

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Sharipova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Aral Sea ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fishing Village ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Sea Power ◽  
Entire World

AbstractThis article examines the novel Final Respects by Abdi-Jamil Nurpeisov from a postcolonial ecocritical perspective. Nurpeisov was one of the first Kazakh writers to discuss the decolonization of the environment and the “process of self-apprehension” by writing about the tragedy of the Aral Sea, power relations between the center and periphery, and the interconnectivity of humans and the environment in the Soviet Union. Through the prism of a small fishing village, he shows the tragedy of a nation that has an impact on the entire world. The novel is thus a critique of anthropocentric policies imposed by Moscow on Kazakhstan and other Soviet republics. Throughout the text, Nurpeisov reiterates the connection between the local and the global on one hand, and human culture and the environment on the other.

Traveling Policies: Hijacked in Central Asia

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iveta Silova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
The Way

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asian education reform discourses have become increasingly similar to distinctive Western policy discourses traveling globally across national boundaries. Tracing the trajectory of ‘traveling policies' in Central Asia, this article discusses the way Western education discourses have been hybridized in the encounter with collectivist and centralist cultures within post-socialist environments in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. In the context of international aid relationships, the article considers different motivations and driving forces for reforms, the way pre-Soviet and Soviet traditions are affirmed within the reforms, as well as how these reforms speak back to Western reform agenda. Emphasizing the historical legacy of Soviet centralist traditions, this article reveals how traveling policies have been ‘hijacked’ by local policy makers and used for their own purposes nationally.

Empire and Ethnicity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Geraci
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Territorial Integration ◽  
The Way

Drawing on a lively recent historiography stimulated by the fall of the Soviet Union, this chapter considers various ways in which Russia/USSR can be regarded as an empire and goes on to explore the relationships between Russians and the myriad other ethnic groups within the Empire’s borders. After showing how those borders expanded and contracted between 1552 and 1991, the chapter discusses the resultant territorial integration and demographic intermingling. The bulk of the chapter concentrates on four fundamental shifts that changed the way Russia’s rulers and elites viewed the Empire’s diversity and rationalized imperial rule between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Arguing that authorities viewed the Empire and its population through four successive ideological lenses—Christian, civilizational, nationalist and Marxist—the chapter concludes by suggesting that the post-Soviet Russian Federation remains an empire, or at least that its imperial legacy remains crucial to its identity.

scholarly journals Urban Societies in Europe since 1945: Toward a Historical Interpretation

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
MORITZ FÖLLMER ◽  
MARK B. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Alternative Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
The Way

How can we write the history of urban societies in Europe after 1945? This article offers an interpretative overview of key developments in both Eastern and Western Europe, while also discussing some key conceptual issues. Along the way, it takes stock of the relevant historiography (much of which is very recent) and introduces a selection of papers from a cycle of three international workshops held between 2011 and 2013. The papers range geographically from Britain to the Soviet Union and cover topics as diverse as post-war reconstruction and alternative communities in the 1970s. Their respective approaches are informed by an interest in the way societies have been imagined in discourses and reshaped in spatial settings. Moreover, the papers move beyond case studies, urban history's classic genre, and can therefore facilitate synthetic reflection. It is our hope that, in so doing, we can make urban history more relevant to contemporary European historians in general.

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