Russia in the Putin era – a case of bureaucratic authoritarianism?

There has been much debate surrounding the classification of the kind of regime which developed in Russia following the collapse of communism and this has only intensified during the Putin era. This article considers whether the concept of bureaucratic-authoritarianism is really applicable in the case of Russia. Lilia Shevtsova was the first to tentatively state that Russia is a case of bureaucratic-authoritarianism. However, to provide more assured acceptance or rejection of the concept, this article returns to the paradigm’s roots. The concept of bureaucratic-authoritarianism was developed by Guillermo O’Donnell and thus the characteristics he outlined are applied to the case of Russia in the Putin era. Doing so allows for a level of precision and depth in concluding that bureaucratic-authoritarianism is a relevant paradigm. Confirmatory evidence for all seven of the characteristics enumerated by O’Donnell is found, suggesting that Russia in the Putin era can be considered a case of bureaucratic-authoritarianism.

Ukraine and Russia

This chapter describes the intertwined religious and political histories of Russia and Ukraine, focusing on church–state relations and religion’s role in relations between the two nations. It analyzes the common origins of these countries in medieval Kyivan Rus’, and the ongoing debate about the significance of the decision to accept Orthodox Christianity in 988 to both the relationship between church and state and the cultural orientation of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. It traces the legacy of separate religious development in the medieval era; changing church–state relations in Russia; the use of religion as a mode of governance; the civilizational debate about Orthodoxy and European identity; the experience under the Soviet regime; religious revival amid the collapse of communism; and post-communist tensions about the role of religion in a pluralist society, and about competing visions of a ‘Russian World’ on one hand and autocephaly for Ukrainian Orthodoxy on the other.

Człowiek współczesny w obłędnym tańcu emocji życia codziennego („Dziewięć opowiadań z obłędem w tle”)

This article focuses on the changes which occurred in modern Russian literature after the collapse of communism. There is no more Soviet censorship banning a lot of topics such as human beings, individual’s problems, life choices and decisions. The authors of the anthology titled Nine Stories with Madness in the Background write about individuality and difficulties connected with insecurity in the chaos of the modern world. Mental illness and disorders usually play the role of metaphors referring to the obstacles in understanding and behaviour in the new post-soviet space.

Debating (Post-)Coloniality in Southeast Europe: A Minority Oriented Perspective in Bulgaria

Despite the fact that its scholarly application has been considered highly problematic in the former Eastern Bloc and barely employed due to the Marxist background, post-colonialism has been recently introduced by a large number of scholars and academics. Yet, theoretical experiments, research, and projection of post-colonialism in Central and Eastern Europe have come to compose an abundant field of reference. Drawing on this theoretical approach, this paper aims to debate the category of post-coloniality in postcommunist Bulgaria in order to better venture the parapet of the post-1989 transition. Employing a ‘minority perspective’, which will reveal minority positionality in the contemporary Bulgarian cultural and political ground, this paper traces potential power actions of (dis)possession of knowledge among subaltern groups, which actions continue to negate, disavow, distort, and deny access to different forms of minority cultures and life visions represented by non-majoritarian segments of the Bulgarian society. In general, this paper digs into the historical experience of the ethnic Turks and Muslim minority groups in Bulgaria prior to the communist experience, throughout and after the collapse of communism, and in the contemporary Republic of Bulgaria. In particular, post-coloniality – understood in terms of ‘coloniality of being’ – shall offer a better and critical angle of investigation over the issues of human marginalisation, cultural subordination, and knowledge exploitation in Bulgaria and Southeast Europe.

Transformation in Eastern Europe — democracy or nationalism

The transformation process began in Eastern Europe with the “velvet” revolutions and continued after the “color” revolutions. There is much in common between these two types of transformational revolutions, starting with the fact that both are mass protest movements based on the mixing of ideological elements of democracy and nationalism. However, elements of nationalism usually emerge not immediately after the collapse of communism, but after the first democratic changes, even if these nationalist movements are still timid and unsuccessful. That is, nationalists are taking the initiative not from communists, but from democrats.

Ukraine in the Epicenter of the Confrontation of World Systems (1939-1990)

The key problems of nation- and state-building are revealed in the concept of the chronotope of the Ukrainian “long twentieth century,” which is a hybrid projection of the “long nineteenth century.” An essential feature of this stage in the history of Ukraine and Ukrainians is the realization of the intentions of socioeconomic, ethnocultural and political emancipation: in fact, the end of the Ukrainian revolution, which began in the context of World War I, and the destruction of the colonial system. The second book deals with the essential changes of the united Ukraine, which emerged within the framework of the Yalta-Potsdam system. Its fate in the era of World War II and the Cold War, the consequences of re-Sovietization, unconscious collective traumas and transgressions and their impact on modernity are the author's optics of studying the historical path of Ukraine in the era of confrontation of world systems and the collapse of communism, which enabled Ukraine's sovereignty. For a wide audience.

War and Gender

The chapter focuses on the development from the Global Cold War and anticolonial struggle to the global conflicts of the post–Cold War period. It first provides an overview of the complex features of a period that starts in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War with the challenges of the aftermath of the conflict and a post war reordering of economies, societies and national and international politics, and continues with the rise of the Global Cold War and the spread of the Wars of Decolonization in Asia and Africa that led to the decline of European empires. Then it explores the consequences of the collapse of communism, the end of the Global Cold War, and the proliferation of Wars of Globalization along with new forms of humanitarianism and peacekeeping. In the last section, it discusses the research by gender scholars from different disciplines on the Global Cold War and the Wars of Globalization and their attempts to rewrite mainstream narratives.

Up the Slope. Women’s Mobility Stories in Post-Transition Hungarian Cinema

Using data and statistics obtained in the research project The Social History of Hungarian Cinema (1931–2015), this study investigates the upward and downward mobility movements of women in the Hungarian films made after the regime change. The political transition following the collapse of communism radically altered the economic and social structure of Hungarian society. The social experiences of losses and failures, as well as the closing social structure are reflected directly and explicitly in many Hungarian films made between 1990 and 2015. With the help of Bernard Weiner’s social attribution theory for describing failure and success, the article analyses the narratives of these films in terms of the extent to which and the proportion that they are attributed to inner, individual dispositions or external circumstances. Based on this approach, the author states that female heroines in these movies appear to move “up the slope,” as they are pulled down not only by the gravitational force of economic and social crises, but also by the lack of emancipation and gender equality.