Травматический опыт сталинизма в романах Гузели Яхиной

The traumatic experience of stalinism in the novels of Guzel Yakhina. The focus of the study is on how the bestselling novels of the young writer Guzel Yakhina reflect on Russian collective trauma and the traumatic experience of the 20th century. The novels Zuleikha and My Children are set in the post-revolutionary period, among ethnic groups who were victims of Stalinist terror. The analysis explores how Yakhina depicts the colonialism of the Soviet empire and the role of mythic and mythological models in the interpretation of historical events.

SHEVARDNADZE'S DIPLOMATIC CAROM OF 1983 YEAR

Even in the conditions of the Soviet Empire, the conquered Georgia did not forget its condition and consequently, unilaterally violated “Treaty of Georgievsk” by Russia. Georgia did not miss the opportunity, took advantage of the moment and used the Kremlin's instructions to protect the country's interests, showed the world political community that Georgia should not be considered a politically written-off country. Eduard Shevardnadze took political points from the conqueror Russia, as well created the illusion of effectively carrying out the Kremlin's task, and at the same time avoided the solemn celebration of the annexation. That is, he literally caught two rabbits - fulfilled the task of the Kremlin and paid tribute to the Georgian cause.

REFRACTIONS OF THE IMPERIAL COMPLEX IN THE IDENTITY OF THE IMPERIAL PEOPLE (“CEMENT PEOPLE” WHO SETTLING THE "TAKEN REGION" OR THE “RUSSIAN-SPEAKING POPULATION” WITH INTERETHNIC MARRIAGES)

The article examines the phenomenon of the imperial people, which has some special qualities that allow it to integrate peoples and territories. Many researchers of the empire recognize the importance of the imperial people factor, but it is quite difficult to indicate its specific characteristics. It is concluded that the Russians, having moved to the outskirts of the empire, to some extent changed their behavior patterns and became what is sometimes called “other Russians”. They differ from the Russians from the indigenous territories and have the qualities of a “cement people” that holds together parts of the empire. The Russians identity turned out to be duplex. They are predominantly occupied with themselves in their autochthonous territories as one of the peoples of the Earth and can perceive themselves as an ethnic whole. But they absorb the contradictions between peoples on the outskirts of the empire and create a kind of new — imperial — integrity. Then they have not have only a special Russian national identity, but rather a messianic one, coupled with an imperial function. Russians as an imperial people understand themselves (and others too) as bricks of a single empire. We aim to cover this topic in this article we rely on data from sources about the Russian peasant colonization of the late 19th — early 20th centuries. We also use the statistics of interethnic marriages in the USSR, which were an important factor in the homogenization of the peoples of the Soviet empire.

Constitution-Making in the Informal Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Inner Asia, 1945–1955

This chapter provides an overview of dependent constitution-making under one-party regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, North Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia during the first decade after the Second World War. Employing and further developing the concept of the informal Soviet empire, it discusses the structural adjustments in law and governance in the Soviet dependencies. The chapter outlines the development of the concepts of “people’s republic” and “people’s democracy” and discusses the process of adoption and the authorship of the constitutions. It then compares their texts with attention to sovereignty and political subjectivity, supreme state institutions, and the mentions of the Soviet Union, socialism, and ruling parties. Finally, it surveys the role of nonconstitutional institutions in political practices and their reflection in propaganda. The process of constitution-making followed the imperial logic of hierarchical yet heterogeneous governance, with multiple vernacular and Soviet actors partaking in drafting and adopting the constitutions. The texts ascribed sovereignty and political subjectivity to the people, the toilers, classes, nationalities, and regions, often in different combinations. Most of the constitutions established a parliamentary body as the supreme institution, disregarding separation of powers, and introduced a standing body to perform the supreme functions, including legislation, between parliamentary sessions, which became a key element in the legal adjustment. Some constitutions mentioned socialism, the Soviet Union, and the ruling parties. The standardization of governance in the informal Soviet empire manifested itself in the constitutional documents only partially. Propaganda and archival documents revealed the prominence of nonconstitutional institutions, parties and leaders, as well the involvement of Soviet representatives in state-building. Domestic parties and leaders in the Soviet dependencies were also presented as subordinate to their Soviet counterparts in propaganda.

The Boarder Text in Andrey Bitov’s works

At first glance, the border text in Andrey Bitov’s works is connected with the topic of traveling. Not only does the travelogue genre play an important role in his works, his stories reveal an underlying structure of traveling: protagonists cross borders both literally and metaphorically. Yet the notion of the border is important beyond the thematic layer. In his essay “The borders of the genre,” the author problematizes the notion of the genre. His masterpiece, a novel The Pushkin House is full of border crossings, for example, generic, social, ethical, and epistemological. In his last phase, Bitov more and more thematises the (im)possibility of crossing state borders, which was a crucial question for Bitov during the Soviet “Empire”, as he was allowed to travel abroad only in the late 1980s. This lead to the invention of an autobiographical myth about “the one who is not allowed to go abroad”, concerning not only himself but also Pushkin. The manifold aspects of the border in Bitov’s works thus establish a certain poetics of the border.

A Post-Soviet Empire?

“Russia’s current foreign policy is both post-imperial and post-Soviet. The prefix ‘post’ does not mean impotence or uncertainty. It means that the present is predetermined by the past, it is the inheritor of the past. The inheritor is dissimilar from what it inherits and as long as the inheritor remains dissimilar and not fully aware of its own identity, it continues to be ‘post’.”