scholarly journals The Incomprehension of Terror as a Harbinger of “Post-Truth”?

Stan Rzeczy ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 55-77
Author(s):  
Anna Shor-Chudnovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Open Book ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Political Epistemology ◽  
Soviet Russia

This article is devoted to the attitude to truth as a part of political epistemology and of political culture in post-Soviet Russia. It considers the extent to which the Great Terror contributed to the development of a specific political epistemology, which is also largely characteristic of later periods of Soviet history and perhaps even of today. Of particular interest is the population’s perception of the terror as inaccessible or poorly accessible to logical understanding. As main sources, the article relies on two literary texts: Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna and Veniamin Kaverin’s The Open Book. Despite all the apparent differences between the Soviet system and today’s Russia, one important similarity is striking: over the last two decades (after 1999) there has been a visible increase in the belief that it is impossible for a political subject to separate truth from lying and that the sphere of public administration and political interests is, by definition, a place where deception prevails. This article discusses the potential historical roots of this certainty.

Synoptic Thinking and Political Culture in Post-Soviet Russia

Slavic Review ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 630-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Predictor Variable ◽  
The Other ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
Secular Changes ◽  
Soviet Russia

There are two basic and conflicting views among scholars about the malleability of political culture—a group or nation's basic orientations to politics. By one account, culture is a relatively stable, ethnically or spatially specific predictor variable that shapes a nation's political institutions. In Russian studies, this is an approach that has emphasized the connection between the Russian autocratic past and the similarities between tsarist and bolshevik political institutions. Those attracted by this assessment of political culture are prone to think a statist, authoritarian political economy in Russia will be a constant regardless of the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991. The other approach views political culture as being more malleable. It has two variants. One snares with the first approach the assumption that culture is a predictor variable, but emphasizes the effects of secular changes in education and changes in work experience on the distribution of attitudes in a society.

Byzantium and Russia. The status of the sovereign as a reflection of political culture (late IX-early XVI century)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Kazancev
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
World History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Legal Science ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

The monograph is devoted to the history of medieval Russian and Byzantine teachings about the power of the sovereign and the reflection of these doctrinal ideas in the practice of public administration of the two peoples. The phenomena of the power of the sovereigns of the Byzantine Empire, Ancient Russia and the Moscow state are investigated and compared, and an attempt is made to answer the question of what is common and different in the foundations of the organization of power of these three states. The Byzantine influence on the political culture of Russia is still a subject of controversy, and therefore it is especially important to analyze the achievements of historical and legal science in this area for a reasoned discussion. For students and teachers, as well as anyone interested in national and world history.

Modern problems of the activities of public authorities in the light of their legiti-macy

2021 ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Dmitry A. Аvdeev
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Constitutional Amendments ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Modern System ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Existing Structure

The article examines the constitutional foundations of the legitimacy of public authorities, concludes that their activities correspond to the political interests of Russian citizens. The problem of the legitimacy of the activities of public authorities in the Russian Federation and the process of their legitimation, after the constitutional amendments, acquired particular relevance. Participation in the management of state affairs is determined by the peculiarities of the modern system of organization of power, as well as the ability of citizens to influence the functioning of the activities of its bodies, which makes it possible to determine the degree of legitimacy of public administration. The author, analyzing the existing structure of public authorities through the prism of the legitimacy of their activities, identifies some problems of an organizational nature and suggests ways of solving them in this regard.

Indignant and Precarious Youth

2020 ◽  
pp. 200-218
Author(s):  
Cristina Flesher Fominaya
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Democratic Imaginary ◽  
The Right ◽  
Dignified Life

Chapter 9, “Indignant and Precarious Youth,” explores Spain’s indignant “Youth Without Future” and how they are facing the post-crisis scenario by demanding the right to a dignified life and constituting a precarious political subject, “youth,” that greatly inspired the origins and development of the 15-M movement. From hunger strikers in the Puerta del Sol, to Juventud Sin Futuro (Youth Without Future, or JSF), to the Oficina Precaria (Precarious Office), these young activists creatively and passionately connect their lived experience directly with core austerity issues (education, housing, healthcare, precarious un/employment, and emigration), identifying a matrix of identifying those who are responsible for and benefit from austerity politics (bankers, etc.) against whom they direct their indignation. In so doing, they continually frame their activism in relation to the deficiencies of really existing democracy and contribute to the development of a new democratic imaginary, drawing on core elements of 15-M political culture and collective identity.

Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia: From Lenin to Gorbachev

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 549
Author(s):  
Robert W. Clawson ◽  
Robert C. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Soviet Russia

A Dissenting View on the Group Approach to Soviet Politics

1976 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 542-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Odom
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
Group Approach ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
Comparative Concept ◽  
Group Concept ◽  
Significant Support

In the struggle to find a successor to the totalitarian model for study of Soviet politics, the interest-group approach has won significant support. Yet this concept fails to meet all three of Huntington's criteria for a “useful” model. First, the group concept emphasizes the peripheral at the expense of what is of critical importance. Second, as a comparative concept it introduces errors in logic as well as a myriad of ambiguities in definition and taxonomy. Third, it is more likely to obscure than to clarify the dynamic character of the Soviet system. The group approach does not promise, as some assert, to bring the study of Soviet politics into the mainstream of comparative political theory.In contrast, the totalitarian model still goes far toward meeting Huntington's criteria. When supplemented by the notion of political culture and by middle-range concepts of organization theory and bureaucracy, the totalitarian model retains great heuristic value as an ideal construct from which Soviet realities diverge in various ways.

The Oil Deal: Nariman Narimanov and the Sovietization of Azerbaijan

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-394
Author(s):  
Sara Brinegar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
The South ◽  
South Caucasus ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Russia

This essay, with a focus on Baku, Azerbaijan, demonstrates that the need to secure and hold energy resources—and the infrastructures that support them—was critical to the formation of the Soviet Union. The Azerbaijani statesman Nariman Narimanov played a pivotal role in the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan by attempting to use Baku's oil to secure prerogatives for the Azerbaijan SSR. In part, Narimanov gained his position by striking a deal with Vladimir Lenin in 1920, an arrangement that I am calling the oil deal. This deal lay the foundations of Soviet power in the south Caucasus. Lenin charged Narimanov with facilitating connections between the industrial stronghold of Baku and the rural countryside of Azerbaijan and Narimanov agreed to do what he could to help supply Soviet Russia with oil. Lenin put Narimanov in charge of the Soviet government of Azerbaijan, with the understanding that he would be granted significant leeway in cultural policies. Understanding the role of the south Caucasus in Soviet history, then, is also understanding how the extraction and use of oil and other natural resources were entangled with more familiar questions of nationalities policy and identity politics.

Dissent and Consent under State Socialism

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-44
Author(s):  
David Lane
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
State Socialist

Professor Bauman's article is certainly a welcome contribution to the analysis of state socialist societies. He succeeds in breaking away from the myopic Kremlinological study of individuals and he also conducts his argument on a comparative sociological plane transcending the Sovietologist's ideographic viewpoint. However, he may be criticised at many points: it is very doubtful whether the state under capitalism is as ‘autonomous’ an institution as Bauman suggests; distinctions should be made between the socialist states of Eastern Europe, for what may be true of Poland and Rumania may not be true of the Soviet Union; international relations, particularly those between the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe and between East and West, have important effects on the political culture and significantly restrict the possibilities for social change; the diachronic development of the societies under consideration needs to be given more prominence, for what may have been the case in Soviet Russia in 1920 or in Poland in 1948 may not be so for either society in 1971. Here, I shall have to leave on one side such general criticisms to concentrate on a number of specific points in Bauman's argument relating to stratification in Eastern Europe which seem to me to be debatable.

The Competence of Political Science: “Progress in Political Research” RevisitedPresidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1999

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Holden
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Mullins Effect ◽  
Political Research ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Science Association

Political science is two realms, the intellectual and the organizational, and the task is to consider how the organizational realm might be adapted to the highest improvement of the intellectual realm. Political science has a certain competence (domain) in the study of politics as the organization of power. It also seeks to expand competence as capability. Charles Merriam provides a point of departure Merriam's most successful idea has been that of enhancing competence through improvements in “the field of method.” Competence, however, now demands methodological flexibility, so as to probe more into theexerciseof power. Four fields are strategic: public administration, political interests, urbanization, and the interpenetration of politics and economics. Competence also leads into unorthodox subjects, such as force and foolish, irrational, and pathological decision making (or “the Oxenstierna-Mullins Effect”). Finally, competence demands (and is enhanced by) the reach of political science into serious practical problems of human affairs.

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