Overcoming the Soviet legacy?

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Katre Luhamaa ◽  
Judit Strömpl
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-60
Author(s):  
Evgeniya Polyakova ◽  
Mikhail Manokin

In this study, we aim to provide a statistical portrait of employment in the cultural field with regard to occupations on the Russian labor market. The data from the ‘Comprehensive Monitoring of Living Conditions’ are used to illustrate the main differences in the socio-demographic and occupational characteristics of culturally employed respondents and other professional groups. Additionally, the most relevant factors that may have an impact on individuals’ probability to be cultural workers are analyzed. Our study is based on the theoretical frameworks of U. Beck, R. Florida, J. Urry, and Z. Bauman. We also consider the possible Soviet legacy of the contemporary Russian culture, which may interconnect with labor conditions in this field, using S. Fitzpatrick’s works. We also provide an overview of other relevant studies. Our findings show that a larger number of cultural workers among the respondents are librarians, archivists, teachers of music and art schools, linguists, museum workers, journalists, and writers. The results on the statistical portrait display that on average, the cultural workers are highly educated married women in their forties or older who live predominantly in the largest regions of the Russian Federation (Moscow and Moscow region, St. Petersburg). Almost three-quarters of the group have relevant education. They are mostly regular full-time employees with a daytime work schedule. We have also found that the most influential factors for becoming cultural workers are the region of residence and relevant professional education.


Author(s):  
Daniil A. Anikin ◽  
◽  
Andrey A. Linchenko ◽  

Within the framework of this article, the theoretical and methodological framework of the philosophical interpretation of the concept “memory wars” was analyzed. In the context of criticism of allochronism and the project of the politics of time by B. Bevernage, as well as the concept of the frontier by F. Turner, the space-time aspects of the content of memory wars were comprehended. The use of Bevernage's ideas made it possible to explain the nature of modern memory wars in Europe. The origins of these wars are associated with an attempt to transfer the Western European project of “cosmopolitan” memory, in which Western Europe turns out to be a kind of a “referential” framework of historical modernity, to the countries of Eastern Europe after 1989. The uncritical use of Western European historical experience as a “reference” leads to a superficial copying of the politics of memory, which runs counter to the politics of the time in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, the idea of two totalitarianisms is presented as a single and internally indistinguishable era, and the politics of modern post-socialist states are based on the idea of a radical spatio-temporal distancing from their recent past. The article analyzes the issue of the specifics of the Eastern European frontier, the conditions for its emergence and the impact on modern forms of implementation of the politics of memory. The frontier arises as a result of the collapse of the colonial empires and becomes a space of symbolic struggle, first between the USSR and Germany, and then between the socialist and capitalist blocs. The crisis of the globalist project of the politics of memory and the transfer of the German model of victimization to the territory of the Eastern European frontier leads to the competition of sacrificial narratives and the escalation of memorial conflicts, turning into full-fledged memory wars. The hybrid nature of the antagonistic politics of memory in the conditions of the frontier leads to the fact that not only the socialist past, but also the national trauma of individual states becomes the subject of memory wars. The increasing complexity of the mnemonic structure of the frontier is associated with the emergence of a number of unrecognized states, whose memory politics, in contrast to the national discourses of Eastern European states, is based on a synthesis of the Soviet legacy and individual elements of the imperial past.


2021 ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle

This chapter goes back in time to look at the Soviet construction of the Russian term fashizm and some of the ambiguities that the Soviet society cultivated toward the term and its historical personification, Nazi Germany. It recalls that the term fascism (fashizm), in Soviet times, belonged more to an emotional than to an analytical lexicon. The chapter also discusses Russia's history and Russians' memories of the Second World War, called the Great Patriotic War in Russian (Velikaia otechestvennaia voina) and Victory Day (Den´ pobedy). It reviews how the cult of war is intimately linked to the Brezhnev era and provided the context in which commemoration of the Great Patriotic War was institutionalized as a sacred symbol of the Soviet Union, a confirmation of the soundness of the socialist system and the unity of its peoples. The chapter then argues that the very solemnity of Soviet anti-fascism, and its centrality to the country's political identity constitute the fundaments inherited from Soviet times on the basis of which the notion of fascism is operationalized in today's Russia. Ultimately, the chapter further elaborates the three main sources of the Soviet's cryptic fascination with Nazi Germany and source of knowledge about fashizm: the Nazi propaganda, criminal culture, and cinema and culture.


2015 ◽  
pp. 26-27
Author(s):  
Tatiana Jean

President Putin wants five Russian universities in the global TOP 100 by 2020. The quality of training deteriorated during transition period, particularly because of insufficient state funding. Soviet legacy, research activities remain separated from teaching. Student demography is an additional worrying factor today. In spite of three Excellence Initiatives and increasing founding, Russia's road to international leadership seems to be a long one.


Author(s):  
Akbarzadeh Shahram

This chapter examines the limited role of Islam in shaping the public space of post-Soviet Central Asia. It documents Soviet instruments of administrative control on Islam in Central Asia and then examines the behavior of the incumbent regimes which inherited this Soviet legacy. It shows that despite strong expectations of Central Asia's transition from authoritarian rule to democracy following the Soviet collapse, the incumbent elite managed to thwart that process and return to the familiar modes of centralized authoritarian rule. The chapter concludes by exploring the prospects of Islam's political role in Central Asia.


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