scholarly journals Production of indicators as a mechanism for suppression of production of knowledge, technology and competencies

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeny V. Semenov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Scientific Production ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Scientific Organizations ◽  
Knowledge Competencies ◽  
Goals And Objectives ◽  
The Way

On the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, public administration of the scientific and technological system was shifting more and more towards the total use of such a “tool” as estimated indicators. The article provides examples of the analysis of the harmful consequences of administrative-command coercion of Soviet science to produce indicators in V.L. Tambovtsev’s two monographs of 1990 and 1993 and in E.V. Semenov’s monograph of 1990. The experience of this analysis thirty years ago became again relevant in connection with the restoration in Russia, starting from 2012, of a system of administrative-command management of science, which based on forcing science to produce indicators. The article shows how, under the pressure of production of indicators, the transformation of science from the production of knowledge to the production of informational noise occurs. It shows that scientific production under the conditions of “demonstrative” management forced to reorient from the production of knowledge for its consumer to the production of indicators for the administrator. Work on indicators leads to the degradation of scientific organizations and a decrease in the professional level of the scientific community. The situation aggravated by a catastrophic decline in the professional level of government officials responsible for scientific and technological policy and the management of the scientific and technological field. The way out of this situation is possible due to the mass return to the system of state administration of science, starting with key positions, the category of professionals, by revising the system of goals and objectives of the country’s scientific and technological development, including replacing formal indicators and standards with meaningful goals and objectives, by the way of revival of the system of self-organization and wide self-government of the scientific community, by launching an innovative system that allows one to switch scientific production from reports to administrator to the production of knowledge, competencies, research and development for the real sector of the economy.

The Evolution of Russian Government Priorities for Scientific and Technological Development: 1990s — 2010s

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Denis Sekirinskiy
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Technology Policy ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Science And Technology Policy ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Scientific Potential ◽  
Scientific And Technological Development

As the Soviet Union collapsed, science and technology policy in Russia turned out to be out of the decision-makers’ attention focus. The socio-economic transformations of the early 1990s negatively affected the scientific and research organizations, which led to a gradual stagnation in the development of scientific knowledge. By the mid-1990s it had posed a threat to the whole scientific potential of the country. Such a crisis triggered debates on what measures should be taken to reorganize state science and technology policy. The reorganization was marked by the practice of goal-setting, a process based on both historical background and socio-economic tasks of a specific time period with all the participants sharing common perspective of the future. This article is an overview of the key program and strategic documents adopted in the period from the mid-1990s till the late 2010s. These documents reflect the evolution of state priorities for scientific and technological development. The analysis of these documents allows us to trace how the scientific and technical policy of the Russian Federation has been transformed from the principle of preserving and supporting the already existing scientific potential to the principle of finding response to specific challenges.

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.

scholarly journals Situation of Tatars and other Muslim minorities in communist Bulgaria

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Eldar Kh. Seidametov ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The State ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
Muslim Minorities ◽  
The Way

The article examines the situation of the Tatars and other Muslim minorities in Bulgaria during the communist period. The policy of the state in relation to Muslim minorities after the proclamation of the People`s Republic of Bulgaria and the establishment of socialism in the state according to the Soviet model, when the political, economic and social models of the USSR were imported and introduced without taking into account the national characteristics of Bulgaria, are analyzed. As in the Soviet Union (especially in the early stage of its formation, religion was banned and this applied to all confessions without exception. The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) made every effort eradicate religious identity and, in particular, Islamic identity. It was planned to replace the religious ideological fragment with a socialist one, and then, on its platform, form and stimulate the development of the national, modernist and Soviet identity of Muslims. Moreover, the emphasis was also placed on improving the way of life and the material situation of the Muslim population, which, according to the Marxist theory of culture, should have contributed to a more effective formation of socialist consciousness. The ruling party saw in the Muslim religious consciousness and rudiments of the Ottoman past, an obstacle on the way of socialist progress and formation of socialist consciousness. Emasculating elements of the religious worldview from the mind of people, the BCP set itself the task of creating a modern, secular, socialist personality. To this end, in 1946–1989 the government implemented a number of economic, educational and cultural establishments.

scholarly journals USSR and Germany: on the Way to June 22, 1941

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (6) ◽  
pp. 202-213
Author(s):  
Vladimir Schweitzer ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
The Way

The article deals with the Soviet-German relations in the period of 1939‒1941. It is shoun that after signing of the Munich agreements in September, 1938, Germany generally defined its strategy of pressure on countries that fit into the Hitler’s concept of "Push to the East". Its victims in 1935 were Czechoslovakia and Poland. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Great Britain and France sought to review the "policy of appeasement" of Hitler and were ready to join the USSR in the search for ways to prevent Hitler's expansion. However, the inconsistency and contradictoriness of this "change of milestones" strengthened the position of the Soviet leadership in favour of reaching agreements with Germany. The summer of 1939 was the apotheosis of fruitless negotiations between the "Troika" (the USSR, Great Britain and France), which objectively prompted Moscow to accept the German proposal for fundamentally new bilateral agreements (the Pact of August 23, 1939). Subsequent events up to June 22, 1941 showed the unreliability of agreements with Nazism, facilitated the fleeting victory of Germany over Poland and France, and the actual isolation of Great Britain. Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union did not remove from the Soviet leadership the historical guilt of being unprepared for war with fascism, for the colossal human and territorial losses of the first stage of the Great Patriotic War

The Kinetic Icon in the Work of Mourning

October ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 169 ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Annette Michelson
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Work Of Mourning ◽  
Religious Icons ◽  
The Way

Among Dziga Vertov's films, Three Songs of Lenin is unique in its immediate and enduring approval within the Soviet Union. The film was commissioned for the tenth anniversary of Lenin's death and made extensive use of archival material documenting Lenin's political trajectory and his funeral. Annette Michelson offers a reading of the film's political function within the historical situation of the USSR in the 1930s, claiming that the register and scale of Three Songs of Lenin make the film a “kinetic icon” for the deceased leader. Michelson discusses similarities between religious icons and films, particularly the way in which death haunts both, and she examines the way in which the film's emphasis on the role of the female mourner enables it to transform document into monument.

Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union: Technologies of Production and Consumption, 1950s–70s

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Elena Kochetkova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Market ◽  
Foreign Companies ◽  
Domestic Technology ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
History Of

This article examines the nature of Soviet consumption and technological development through the history of milk and milk packaging between the 1950s and 1970s. Based on published and archival materials, the paper focuses on the role that milk played in Soviet nutrition and the role that packaging played in Soviet consumption. The article also examines the modernization of technology for making packaging as well as technology transfer from the West. It concludes that, as in many Western countries, both the Soviet state and Soviet specialists saw it as important to increase the consumption of milk after the war, but the meaning of milk changed. Milk, a basic staple for nutrition, became a matter of science and specialists sought to explain its positive effects. In addition, due to the development of the paper and chemical industries, new forms of milk packaging, more practical in their uses, were introduced in the West. Soviet leaders and specialists saw the new packaging as a desirable feature of modernity, but were unsuccessful in launching domestic technologies for manufacturing such packaging. While experimenting with domestic technology, Soviet producers also received foreign equipment for making milk packaging. Nevertheless, the capacity of such foreign equipment was not enough to satisfy growing demand and the consumption of “modern packaging” remained lower than in the West until the introduction of capitalism and, with it, foreign companies into the Russian market in the 1990s.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Jeff Eden
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
Popular Religiosity ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Way

The Second World War was a period of “religious revolution” in the Soviet Union. The Introduction describes how this book, focusing on Soviet Muslims, approaches pivotal developments related to this revolution: the way religion was mobilized as a new tool of state propaganda; the way religious repression receded, and then changed shape; and the way Soviet Muslim communities responded to the dawn of unprecedented religious freedoms, some of which were shepherded by the state and some of which were achieved thanks to its incompetence or indifference. The Introduction then addresses debates on the biggest questions of all: Why did the revolution in religious life take place? What role did “popular” religiosity and public religious devotion play? Why did the Soviet state, just a few years after slaughtering religious elites by the tens of thousands during the Great Terror of 1937–38, shift dramatically toward religious tolerance?

The “Americanization” of Russian life and literature through translations of Hemingway’s works

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Burak
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
Male Population ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
Soviet School ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
Style Of Writing ◽  
The Way

The article analyzes the reasons for Hemingway’s powerful impact on the Soviet culture from the 1930s through the early 1980s. I suggest that this influence was created not so much by Hemingway himself as by the way his works were translated and presented to the readers in the Soviet Union. In particular, the article examines the style of translation employed by a cohesive collective of Russian-Soviet translators (the Kashkíntsy) in their translations of Hemingway’s works that came to be identified with the “Soviet school of translation.” The translators used a distinctive set of linguostylistic means consisting, to a significant extent, in enhancing the expressive properties of the Hemingway originals in their Russian translations. The resultant translated texts not only affected the behavior of a significant part of especially the male population of the Soviet Union but also set the stage for establishing a distinctive “American style” of writing within the mainstream Soviet literature. In other words, the Soviet translators collectively invented Hemingway’s style that made their translated texts sparkle in Russian.

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