scholarly journals Planning post-summurbia: From spontaneous pragmatism to collaborative planning?

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Nuga ◽  
Pille Metspalu ◽  
Anette Org ◽  
Kadri Leetmaa
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Collaborative Planning ◽  
Local Planning ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Building Activities

AbstractThe possibilities to apply collaborative planning frameworks in formerly strictly planned areas that have experienced spontaneous transformations since the demise of the Soviet Union are examined in this paper. The enquiry is based on a case study of the Tartu region in Estonia, former socialist summerhouse settlements (‘summurbia’), which are experiencing a transition towards permanent residence resulting in a new year-round form of suburbia. Both the residents and local planning authorities were interviewed in order to understand the prevailing planning and building activities, as well as the social relations between these stakeholders. The collaborative planning process is then elaborated by exploring the social dynamics and learned practices of the local residents.

scholarly journals A Context-Grounded Approach to Religious Freedom: The Case of Orthodoxy in the Moldovan Republic

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide N. Carnevale
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Right

This paper explores the relationship between human rights and social analysis within the main historical and theoretical perspectives adopted by social sciences. In particular, religious freedom will be analysed as one of the central issues in the recent engagement of the social sciences with human rights. After examining current narratives and mainstream approaches of the social sciences towards the right to religious freedom, this article will then underline the importance of a social epistemology which goes beyond a normative and legal perspective, bridging the gap between the framework of human rights and the social roles of religion in context. Within this framework, religious freedom represents a social construct, whose perception, definition and implementation dynamically evolves according to its influence, at different levels, in the lived dimension of social relations. The second part of the article proposes a context-grounded analysis of religious freedom in the Republic of Moldova. This case study is characterised by the impressive growth of Orthodoxy after the demise of the Soviet Union and by a complex and contradictory political approach towards religious freedom, both as a legal standard and as a concept. Emerging through the analysis of local political narratives and some preliminary ethnographical observations, the social importance of religion will be investigated both as a governmental instrument and as an embodied means of dealing with widespread socio-economic insecurity, creating tensions between religious rootedness and religious freedom. The local debate on religious freedom will then be related to the influence of geopolitical borders, the topic of traditional identity and the religious form of adaptation to the ineffectiveness of the new secular local policies, with orthodox institutions and parishes having new socio-political roles at both a global and local scale.

Humanizing Soviet Communication: Social-Psychological Training in the Late Socialist Period

Slavic Review ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Human Attention ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Psychological Training ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Sites

Business trainings are not a post-Soviet phenomenon but developed within the Soviet Union beginning in the mid-1970s. The social-psychological training was an interactive method of cultivating communication skills that drew on western methodologies but adapted them to Soviet conditions. It is now considered one of the key sites for the birth of a new practical psychology that encompassed psychotherapy in the late socialist period. While often framed as a scientific intervention into individual communication skills, trainings acquired additional meanings in the Soviet context. For many trainers, transforming language became a way of transforming Soviet social relations without targeting the entire Soviet system. Trainings created a space for reforming the impersonal, distanced registers of “official” Soviet life and imbuing them with more “human” attention to people's emotions, intentions, and individuality.

RESTORATION OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF YALTA IN 1944

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (72) (4) ◽  
pp. 24-36
Author(s):  
N. D. Borshchik
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Food Industry ◽  
Southern Coast ◽  
Recreational Facilities ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Resorts ◽  
Post War ◽  
Short Time

The article considers little-studied stories in Russian historiography about the post-war state of Yalta — one of the most famous health resorts of the Soviet Union, the «pearl» of the southern coast of Crimea. Based on the analysis of mainly archival sources, the most important measures of the party and Soviet leadership bodies, the heads of garrisons immediately after the withdrawal of the fascist occupation regime were analyzed. It was established that the authorities paid priority attention not only to the destroyed economy and infrastructure, but also to the speedy introduction of all-Union and departmental sanatoriums and recreation houses, other recreational facilities. As a result of their coordinated actions in the region, food industry enterprises, collective farms and cooperative artels, objects of cultural heritage and the social and everyday sphere were put into operation in a short time.

How Should One Evaluate the Soviet Revolution?

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Hösle
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Marxist Philosophy ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soviet Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractThe essay begins by discussing different ways of evaluating and making sense of the Soviet Revolution from Crane Brinton to Hannah Arendt. In a second part, it analyses the social, political and intellectual background of tsarist Russia that made the revolution possible. After a survey of the main changes that occurred in the Soviet Union, it appraises its ends, the means used for achieving them, and the unintended side-effects. The Marxist philosophy of history is interpreted as an ideological tool of modernization attractive to societies to which the liberal form of modernization was precluded.

Russian Organized Crime: Its History, Structure and Function

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 213-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph L. Albini ◽  
R.E. Rogers ◽  
Victor Shabalin ◽  
Valery Kutushev ◽  
Vladimir Moiseev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
Russian Economy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Client Relationships ◽  
And Function

In analyzing Russian organized crime, the authors describe and classify the four major forms of organized crime: 1) political-social, 2) mercenary, 3) in-group, and 4) syndicated. Though the first three classifications of the aforementioned types of organized crime existed throughout Soviet history, it was the syndicated form that began to emerge in the late 1950's, expanding during the corrupt Breznev years (1964–82), exploding during perestroika, and reaching pandemic levels after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. The abrupt transformation of the Russian society from a centralized command economy to one driven by the forces of market capitalism created the socio-pathological conditions for the malignant spread of mercenary and especially syndicated organized crime. New criminals syndicates were created by an alliance of criminal gangs/groups and former members of the Soviet Union's communist nomenklatura (bureaucracy) and the consequence was the criminalization of much of the Russian economy. The social structure of these syndicates is based on a loose association of patron-client relationships rather than a centralized hierarchical system; their function is to provide illicit goods/services desired by the people. The authors conclude their study by emphasizing that what has taken place in Russia is not peculiar to the Russian people, but exemplifies what can happen to societies that experience rapid and intense social change.

A New Circle of Hell: The Postwar Gulag and the Rise of the Special Camps

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Social World ◽  
Political Institution ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Significant Life Experience ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Significant Life

This chapter takes the Gulag into the postwar era when authorities used the institution in an attempt to reassert social control. At the same time, arrivals from the newly annexed western territories and former Red Army soldiers dramatically altered the social world of the Gulag prisoner. New prisoner populations of war veterans, nationalist guerrillas, and peoples with significant life experience outside the Soviet Union provided a potentially combustible mix. The isolation and concentration of many of these prisoners in a small number of special camps raised even further the potential explosiveness of the population. The Gulag was a political institution, though, and it was only the death of the system's founder that would set off the explosions.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann P. Arnason ◽  
Marek Hrubec
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
New Era ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
East Central European

Problems of social revolutions and/or transformations belong to the classical agenda of social inquiry, as well as to the most prominent real and potential challenges encountered by contemporary societies. Among revolutionary events of the last decades, particular attention has been drawn to the changes that unfolded at the turn of the 1990s and brought the supposedly bipolar (in fact incipiently multipolar) world to an end. The downfall of East Central European Communist regimes in 1989 and of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the beginning of a new era, originally characterised on the one hand by the relaxation of international tensions and on the other by the ascendancy of Western unilateralism. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Soviet collapse prompts the authors of this book to reflect on revolutions and transformations, both from a long-term historical perspective and with regard to the post-Communist scene. The social changes unfolding in Eastern and Central Europe are not only epoch-making historical turns; their economic, social and political aspects, often confusing and unexpected, have also raised new questions and triggered debates about fundamental theoretical issues. Moreover, they have had a significant impact on developments elsewhere in the world, in both Western and developing countries.

Society in Flux

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Wickhamsmith
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Literary Response ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Motorized Transport ◽  
Livestock Husbandry

Using S. Buyannemeh’s 1936 novella ‘Tovuudai the Herder’ (Malchin Tovuudai) as a basis, this chapter examines the social policies that the Party implemented so as to bring Mongolia into line with the Soviet Union. Through an analysis of the literary response to the unsuccessful policy of collectivization and to the more successful policies surrounding education and livestock husbandry, it shows how changes to the traditional nomadic herding culture – not only in the management of livestock, but in education and gender equality – affected society as a whole. In journeys such as Tovuudai’s, from the far west of Mongolia to the rapidly developing capital Ulaanbaatar, the kind of technological innovations that the Party wished to encourage – motorized transport and electrification – were seen as evidence of Mongolia’s modernization, and writers used the imagery and sensation of spee

Soviet Selves

2019 ◽  
pp. 60-81
Author(s):  
Justine Buck Quijada
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Religious Actors

Chapter 2 presents the Soviet chronotope embodied in Victory Day celebrations. Victory Day, which is the celebration of the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II, presumes the familiar Soviet genre of history, in which the Soviet Union brought civilization to Buryatia, and Buryats achieved full citizenship in the Soviet utopian dream through their collective sacrifice during the war. The ritual does not narrate Soviet history. Instead, through Soviet and wartime imagery, and the parade form, the public holiday evokes this genre in symbolic form, enabling local residents to read their own narratives of the past into the imagery. This space for interpretation enables both validation as well as critique of the Soviet experience in Buryatia. Although not everyone in Buryatia agrees on how to evaluate this history, this genre is the taken-for-granted backdrop against which other religious actors define their narratives.

Leftward Together

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Wickhamsmith
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Innovations

This chapter discusses the social innovations and industrialization that began to appear in Mongolia towards the end of the 1920s following Stalin’s accession to power and the implementation of increasingly leftist policies in the Soviet Union. It considers the establishment of the first Revolutionary Writers’ Group (Huvisgalt uran zohiolch naryn bülgem) and the publication in 1929 of the first anthology of Mongolian literature (Uran ügsiin chuulgan) in which revolutionary ideas were developed and promoted. The growing pressure on writers to conform to the Mongolian Party’s relationship to the policies advanced in the Soviet Union meant that what was published – and hence what was read – began to cleave more assiduously to this ideology. By presenting new or would-be writers with advice on how to create socialist literature, the introductory essays to the Anthology by S. Buyannemeh and Chimid Dungarin indicate how the Party focused on developing and using Mongolia’s literary talent to promote its ideology.

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