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Abstracts

AB, CDEF, GHIJ, KL, MNO, PQR, ST, UVWXYZ

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK

27 – 29 March 2010

Abstracts

P-R

Pallot, Judith, Moran, Dominique and Gavrilova, Sonya
Mapping the Gulag: Geographies of Imprisonment in Russia
This paper introduces a new website which represents the first attempt to map, systematically, the changing geography of Russia's penal institutions over an eighty-year period from the 1930s to the present day. By mapping the Gulag through time we can correct the impression that there was a complete and continuous coverage of the USSR with labour camps in the Stalin era. In reality, the geography of the Gulag was complex and penal institutions were not fixed in time and space; as new camps were formed, others were closed, and certain regions experienced intense development at certain times and others not, depending upon the economic and political priorities of the day. The maps included on this site try to capture this changing geography, showing the geographical spread of penal institutions in the USSR at critical periods in its history - the eve of the Great Terror, the War years, on the eve of Stalin's death and of the Secret Speech, what was left after the major wave of prisoners' releases, and the contemporary geography of imprisonment in Russia. The paper will introduce the website via a live weblink.

Paperni, Vladimir
Полководцы и врачи в романе Льва Толстого “Война и мир”
Описывая в 3 томе «Войны и мира» Наполеона накануне Бородинского сражения, Толстой, с одной стороны, сравнивает его с самоуверенным врачом-хирургом, хорохорящимся перед операцией, а с другой – представляет его как больного насморком, разражающегося обличением медицины, бессильной справиться даже с такой легкой болезнью. В ходе самого сражения Наполеон, по Толстому, «играл роль доктора, который мешает своими лекарствами, - роль, которую он так верно понимал и осуждал». Такого рода словесных сравнений полководцев с врачами и военного искусства с медицинским в романе достаточно много. Вместе с тем в нем присутствует также отчетливая тенденция изображать как сходные процессы болезни-выздоровления/умирания человека и процессы истории. Врач и лекарства точно в той же мере непричастны к выздоровлению Наташи Ростовой, о котором рассказано в начале 3 тома «Войны и мира», как полководцы – к успехам или неуспехам изображаемых и объясняемых на последующих страницах романа военных действий. Для Толстого эти события – полностью однотипны, что вытекает из фундаментального для его философии представления о том, что индивидуальная и историческая («роевая») жизнь людей имеют общую природу – природу живых организмов, судьба которых «предопределена свыше», проявляется в сцеплении бесчисленных случайностей и не может быть изменена по человеческой воле. Сравнение полководцев и врачей, развернутое в риторической, тематической и композиционной структуре романа, является, таким образом, выражением одного из принципиальных аспектов мировосприятия его автора, в сознании которого недоверие и враждебность к власти и медицине соединены и смешаны.

Parutis, Violetta
Changing Sexual Attitudes and Behaviour of London’s Estonians, Latvians & Lithuanians
The 1990s saw huge increases in sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV rates across Central and Eastern Europe, including the Baltic States. Despite subsequent declines and diverse experiences across the CEE region, STI and HIV rates remain high. The post-2004 period also witnessed high levels of migration from CEE to the UK. The migrant population is at potential risk of sexual ill health and reproductive morbidity: the demographic profile of the CEE migrant population in the UK indicates that they are likely to be sexually active and have reproductive ambitions; there is a high background prevalence of STI and HIV in their countries of origin; sex education is limited in their home countries and their uptake of safer sex measures and patterns of health service use are unknown. The aim of this paper is to present the results of the MRC-funded project on the Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles of London’s East Europeans, to show how the sexual behaviour and attitudes of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians in London compare with each other, with other Central and East Europeans and with the host nation.

Pasti, Svetlana
Journalists in Russian Magazines: What Does Make Distinctions in Their Professional Culture?
A magazine in Russia remains to be in vogue in different hypostases: as a form of periodicals and a media product for the audience, as means to promote business for a advertiser and an entrepreneur, as a place of job and self-expression of a professional. Its current development outstrips the other segments of the media market. In comparison with the Soviet time it also demonstrates the success. Its amount (11236 magazines) published in 2008, twice exceeds the amount of the magazines (5265 magazines) published in 1979. By factor of salary the magazine’s business looks the most attractive one among all other print editions. Thus, the average monthly salary here in 2007 was 40960.2 rubl., whereas in the newspapers sector it was 18465.2 rubl. The study intends to explore social profile of journalists working in the magazines, their motives for journalism and working methods, as well as their attitudes to the audience. The aim is to clarify the distinctive features in their professional culture in comparison with the journalists from the other types of media. Analysis will be done on the basis of the data of the recent survey of Russian journalists carried out at the end of 2008 with the sample about 800 respondents.

Paulsen, Martin
Challenging Cyrillic: Towards a Typology of Latin Alphabet Writing in East Slavonic Languages
With the introduction of computer-mediated communication the Latin alphabet has become more relevant for users than it was in the preceding typographic era. In my research project “East Slavonic Languages and the Latin Alphabet in the Era of New Technology” I study the technologic, linguistic and metalinguistic aspects of this development. For this paper I have chosen to focus on the linguistic aspect. In a recent conference paper I explored the creative side of this linguistic aspect, looking at how the written linguistic code has recently been subjected to so-called “norm negotiations” by the members of the East Slavonic language communities. In this paper I want to focus on the outcome of these “norm negotiations”. Is it possible to identify any system in the use of the Latin alphabet for writing Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian, or is the situation just chaotic? My aim is to establish a typology of different approaches to the use of the Latin alphabet in these language communities.

Pearce, Amy
Sovereign Democracy in Russia
The concept of sovereign democracy has generated a great deal of interest among academics and policymakers since it was first introduced by Vladislav Surkov in 2006. Russia’s new vision of self not only has significant implications for international policy-making (e.g. democracy promotion and foreign aid) but also for re-visiting the concept of democracy itself. In particular, sovereign democracy raises the possibility of offering an alternative to the dominant liberal model of democracy, with both Vladimir Putin and Surkov speaking about Russia’s right to pursue its own path. This paper explores what the concept of sovereign democracy means for Russia and how it affects the way in which democracy is conceived within the literature. The idea of sovereign democracy seen as a valid non-liberal model of democracy raises some considerable questions regarding the underlying principles of a non-liberal model of democracy, particularly referring to what distinguishes it from an authoritarian style of government.

Pechurina, Anna
Objects as Documents: Visualization of Different Waves of Migrants
The paper discusses how Russian migrants preserve and present at home material things, brought from their places of origin. It examines the meanings of objects and their relevance to “a collective sense of past, a remembrance that is simultaneously both private and communal” (Hecht 2001: 144). The paper describes how such visualisation of Russian-ness becomes important for migrants and helps them feel at home. In this sense, material objects are the ‘documents of life’ that portray and represent the “everydayness” of a generation and its related culture.

Peers, Eleanor
Spiritual Agency in Popular Siberian Newspapers: Can Pre-Soviet Religion Affect Contemporary Practice?
his paper compares the popular ideas about spirituality currently in circulation among the Buryat and Sakha peoples of East Siberia, in the Russian Federation. It is based on a qualitative analysis of popular newspapers, published in the respective Buryat and Sakha federation subjects, the Republics of Buryatia and Sakha (Yakutia). The newspapers from both Republics ascribe a spiritual dimension to a similarly wide range of social phenomena – from non-Russian cultural history, to the actions of local area spirits. This variety reflects the increasing estrangement of urban Buryat and Sakha from rural religious practices, and the clan- or territory-specific spiritual entities they concern. However, the newspaper samples showed a clear difference in the way they represented the manifestation of spiritual agency within everyday life. Buryatia’s commercial newspapers described abstracted, generalised spiritual forces, which could interact directly with human beings – while spiritual agency in Sakha (Yakutia)’s newspapers appeared as mediated by individuals with unusual and sometimes superhuman talents. I suggest that this difference can be explained by the Buddhist influence on Buryat traditional religion. The Mongolian Buddhist Church made a successful attempt to evangelise the Buryat living east of Lake Baikal during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the Sakha meanwhile retained a shamanic religious tradition, influenced by a partial Christian conversion during the nineteenth century. I contend that the Buryat Buddhist heritage encourages the positing of universalised, abstracted entities in Buryatia’s popular discourse, while the Sakha shamanist perspective leads to an emphasis on the qualities of individual people.

Pietiläinen, Jukka
Russian and Finnish Media Images in 2009: Accumulating Problems?
n 2009 several minor incidents occurred in Finnish-Russian relations which were reported in different ways in the Finnish and Russian media. These incidents include:

1) The Finnish-Russian conflict on child custody. A Finnish diplomat illegally transported a father and his child to Finland in his diplomat car, after Russian authorities refused to leave them out of the country. Before that boy’s Russian mother had illegally taken the boy to Russia.

2) The hijack of the vessel ‘Arctic Sea’. A Finnish-owned vessel with a Russia crew was hijacked by Russian-Estonian pirates in the Baltic Sea. Later Russian marines got the control over the ship in Cape Verde. Rumors on the possible illegal cargo (officially Finnish timber to Algeria) and Russian investigations on the role of the crew appeared.

3) A discussion around the Finnish decision to allow the construction of the gas pipeline through Finnish economic zone in the Baltic Sea.

4) A discussion on summer house purchases in Finland by Russians. In some places in Eastern Finland this has cause irritation among Finnish summer house owners and local people.

Because of their conflictual nature these incidents may have violated the normally good neighbor images between Finland and Russia. The paper uses these incidents to address how Finland is represented in the Russian media and how Russia is represented in the Finnish media in 2009.

Pleshakova, Anna
The Post-Soviet Mythologized Concept of Enemy: Profiling New Russian National Construal
The formation of a mythologized concept of enemy is viewed in this paper as the activation of national unity, the idea which has recently been strengthened in Russia. It manifests a rise of nationalism in post-Soviet Russia, the phenomenon which despite being extremely vital and influencing modern Russian culture, language, economy, politics, etc. and having received much attention in academic literature and beyond, still remains insufficiently explored and understood. The paper explores the mythologized concept of enemy as a new Russian national construal and investigates conceptual (metaphoric) processes underlying the formation of this concept using a new interdisciplinary methodology based on conceptual integration/blending. The paper investigates novel Russian metaphors behind which lies the idea of mythological transformation or metamorphosis, e.g. oborotni v pogonakh, their meaning construction, and linguistic realization in contemporary Russian mass-media discourse. The paper focuses on an exploration of vital relations of counterfactuality and analogy/disanalogy that help to structure the new national construal of the mythologized concept of enemy and profile it for rhetorical and ideological purposes. The paper’s interdisciplinary research reveals both the important aspects of the construction of post-Soviet national identity and the significant aspects of conceptual integration’s usage as a research method for cultural analysis. The paper’s cognitive study of Russian culture as a creation of human minds in the post-Soviet environment helps to fill the current lacuna in our understanding of conceptual processes underlying such manifestations of Russian nationalism as the post-Soviet mythologized concept of enemy.

Poerzgen, Yvonne
From “We” to “Me”: Identity as the Result of Inclusion and Exclusion in Miljenko Jergovic’s Texts
Miljenko Jergovic – born in 1966 in Sarajevo, but living and working in Zagreb since 1993 - answers the question after his national identity in different, even contradicting ways. Jergovic told a translator that he should decide for himself whether Jergovic’s texts were written in Bosnian or in Croatian. In the autobiographical essay he contributed to the anthology Der andere nebenan [The Other Next Door] (Croatian title: Nepoznati susjed; Bosnian title: Zaљto mi to radiљ, 2007) he defines non-homeland as “the place where different people live”. In this text, Croatia is “the country of my native language” and he calls himself a Croat. But shortly afterwards he modifies himself in claiming his “Croate-dom” was Bosnian. Finally he feels unable to hate Germans or Serbs because they defined his identity as well, “because my own identity is mostly combined of what I am not and far less by what I am.” These mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion are one of the basic structures in Jergovic’s texts. My paper will analyse how they affect the formation of identity with characters in Jergovic’s prose texts, especially in the novels Freelander (2007) and Dvori ot oraha (2003).

Popova, Ekaterina
SELF and OTHER in Contemporary Russian Migration Discourse: Study of Discourse Metaphors
The study presented in this paper is based on a socio-cognitive analysis of a corpus of texts consisting of a corpus of Russian newspaper articles which appeared on the web-site of the Moscow city council from August 2006 until May 2007 under the rubric “Migration”. The study investigates such forms of mental imagery as discourse metaphors in relation to the negotiation of the concept SELF-OTHER in contemporary Russian migration discourse. Discourse metaphors are seen as comparison-based verbal expressions, which are negotiated in a discourse community over a certain period of time (Zinken et al. 2007). Certain discourse metaphors, such as NATION IS HOUSE, NATION IS FAMILY, MIGRATION IS INVASION etc. employ cultural knowledge and may be coined to advance certain interests at the expense of others as the study demonstrates. Frequently used image schemas in the investigated discourse metaphors, such as CONTAINMENT, FORCE, PATH, are discussed in relation to the source domains of CURRENT, HOUSE, WAR, BODY, ANIMAL. Discourse metaphors are explored from the point of view of the Conceptual Blending Theory (Turner 1996, Fauconnier 1997, Fauconnier and Turner 2002). Their pragmatic function with regard to the representation of SELF and OTHER in migration discourse is identified through discourse-specific strategies of social actors’ representation (Van Leeuwen 1996).

Popova, Evgenia
Electoral Rhetoric of the Kremlin and Oppositional Parties in Russia: Before and Under Putin
This paper analyses Russian electoral politics 1995-2008 in terms of the ideological and issue dimensions displayed by parties and candidates. It reviews parties’ and candidates’ platforms – their location in the policy space and their ideological consistency in various electoral cycles. Then the parties’ positions in State Duma elections are compared to those of the parties’ candidates in presidential elections to uncover similarities and differences. Finally, comparison is made between the platform rhetoric of the 1990s and the issues represented in the 2000s for the purpose of understanding how the institutional and political changes affected the structuring of the party system. Contrary to theoretical expectations, Russian parliamentary elections demonstrate more moderate confrontation on issues and ideology than presidential elections, and the paper suggests various explanations for this.

Prifti, Erida
Is the Albanian Language Headed Toward Extinction?
Since 1991, when the fiercest of all Communist isolations broke and the borders to the world were finally opened, the Albanian language has been undergoing significant changes in its lexicon and, at a certain measure, in its structure. Numerous concepts have found their way into the Albanian knowledge base before an Albanian word was ever found to name them. This phenomenon brought in an avalanche of borrowings from other languages, especially English, Greek and Italian. Some of these words are being naturalized by inflection and transliteration, others are being used as calques, while many of them find themselves in everyday use as foreign words, being eloquently integrated in spoken conversation, but having great difficulty in gaining approval from linguists when seen in written Albanian texts. The invasion of so many borrowings in such a short span of time has alarmed the Albanian linguists to such an extent that some of them are searching arguments to convince the public opinion that the Albanian language in a few years is going to be extinct. Taking into consideration the validity and reliability of the arguments presented by the abovementioned linguists and providing relevant information on the development stages of the life of a language, this paper defends the thesis that the Albanian language in not going to be extinct any time soon, on the contrary, it displays all the characteristics of a vivid, modern language in a very dynamic stage of its development.

Pusic, Danica
The Past in Serbian Variant of Serbo-Croatian
Distribution of verbal tenses: from registers to regions
Some research was done on the use of verbal tenses in Serbo-Croatian (Savic, S. 1992. Pragmatic aspects of tenses in narratives in the Serbo-Croatian standard language. Annual Review of the Faculty of Philosophy 20. 149-155.), but no abundant literature relative to the present topic is to be found. The aim of the present paper is to foster the knowledge on temporality domain in Serbo-Croatian. Results have been updated regarding not only diatopic distribution, but the different language registers as well. Indeed, this language shows a peculiar transition status from the ancient system, still preserved in Bulgarian, to a tense-system shown by Russian; unlike in Bulgarian, however, this structure might be on the way of being lost. A questionnaire focusing on the use of past tenses in narrative and spoken language has been distributed to native speakers in four cities and one region (Montenegro). It is shown, through a statistical elaboration of the data, how some of the suppositions concerning diatopic distribution of past tenses are still (not) valid. Used variables are: involvement of the narrator, location of the event in time, telicity and agent switching. As it is well-known, Simple Past tends more and more to be substituted by Compound Past. Though, it doesn’t mean that Aorist is disappearing from the language, as it has usually been claimed. Absence of Imperfect as well as the growing usage of Aorist in the colloquial varieties sticks out.

Ragaru, Nadege
Screening Socialism. Power and Daily Life in Bulgarian Cinema (1970-1980s)
The present paper aims at telling the story of Bulgaria’s movie industry in the 1970s-1980s with a view to enhancing our understanding of daily life and the concrete workings of power under socialism. It is grounded upon two assumptions. First, one needs to move beyond a clear cut opposition drawn between “state control” (over film production, distribution and even reception) and “societal resistance”. Not all practices that did circumvent some socialist rules aimed at opposing the regime. They also found their meanings within the broader framework of individual existences that were also banal and at times happy. Second, in methodological terms, it may be fruitful not to oppose bottom-up approaches (sensitive to make-do strategies) and top-down approaches (that explore power relations). A study of daily life in the Bulgarian movie industry indeed shows a more nuanced picture in which social actors occupy multiple roles (within the state, the Party, the movie industry, their friendship circles) and mobilize several codes (in conformity and/or at odds with regime demands) depending on context. Focusing of the social dynamics at play within a specific professional milieu, the kinadzhii, will also allow us to provide a more complex picture of the social and symbolic changes brought about by socialism - and the ways in which departures and continuities were inextricably interwined. This research is based on extensive archival work (archives of Filmoteka, of D.O. Kinematografija, State Central Archives, in particular), on interviews with Bulgarian filmakers, cameramen, script-writers, critics...as well as on visual content analysis.

Rann, James
Dropping Bombshells: Futurism, Terrorism and Modernity
Considerable scholarly energy has been expended discussing the relationship between avant-garde art and revolutionary politics, and particularly, in the Russian context, the links between Futurism and the Revolution. This paper will provide a novel approach to this question by ignoring direct influence in favour of examining the typological similarities between Russian Futurism and revolutionary terrorism (Populist, Anarchist and Socialist Revolutionary) as group movements, and the consequent affinities in their respective self-identities. Both phenomena, it will be argued, are instantiations of Habermas’s notion of the ‘counterdiscourse to modernity’ which emerges from the work of Nietzsche: they oppose modernity’s ends (the separation of the expert cultures of art, science and politics, not only from one another, but from the people) and its means (in the political realm, liberal reform and progressivism; in the aesthetic, the legitimizing role of tradition). I will then show how the resulting contradiction between extremist means and utopian ends produced a tension in the relationship between these avant-gardes and society: both wished to transform society for the better, but their modus operandi inspired public repudiation, fostering an embattled group-identity which, coupled with a belief in their messianic mission, led to a quasi-aristocratic sense of superiority. Both groups wished to be a part of society, but also apart from society. Finally, I will suggest ways in which the shared self-identity of these groups proved influential in the formation of aspects of Soviet identity.

Ratilainen, Saara
Media and Popular Genres in the Post-Soviet Russia
When discussing the relationship between the media market and consumer behavior in the context of the paradigm shift from the Soviet culture to the post-Soviet, one of the most common ways of depicting the current situation is to note that Russian audience has turned from a “reading nation” into a “television watching nation.” My paper will discuss the cultural history of reading of popular genres in Russia. I will also look at how the book market and publishing policy influence on conceptualization of reading and “media literacy.” I will argue that the post-Soviet trajectories in the publishing market and the creation of new reading practices are telling both in terms of economical and cultural history. On the other hand, the recent history of Russian popular print culture offers yet another interesting, and maybe less theorized, perspective to the question of Russian media change -- how the phenomenon of Russian mass literary culture has been at the heart of understanding the causes and consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Two words conceptualizing perhaps the best the shift that took place in the pos-Soviet publishing market would be “Westernization” and “feminization.” Therefore I will concentrate on analyzing developments in the popular media genres targeted mainly at female audience; such as women’s magazines and popular literature written by female authors.

Renfrew, Alastair
Dostoevsky in Tynianov and Bakhtin: From Parody to Genre
This paper returns to deceptively familiar ground – the question of Gogol’s influence on Dostoevsky – with quite different purposes to those associated with literary histories of the Russian nineteenth century. It seeks first to examine Iurii Tynianov’s utilization of Dostoevsky as an unacknowledged point of embarkation for his later theory of literary genre (evolution), contextualized against relative Formalist neglect of Dostoevsky. Tracing the trajectory from Tynianov’s reading of Dostoevsky as the focal point of a theory of parody (‘Dostoevskii i Gogol (k teorii parodii)’, 1921) to his last overtly theoretical work (‘O parodii’, 1929), the paper seeks to examine Dostoevsky’s displacement in the latter work in the context of the theory of genre Tynianov has developed in the intervening period (‘Literatunyi fakt’, 1924 and ‘O literaturnoi evoliutsii’, 1927). The paper’s primary objective is to show that Tynianov’s identification of parody and stylization as different forms of ambivalent doubling in Dostoevsky is significant not only for his later theory of parody, but for the theory of genre it informs. Then, as a counterweight to the ‘canonized’ relationship of influence between Gogol and Dostoevsky, the paper seeks to establish the extent to which Dostoevsky can be characterised as a bridge between the respective theories of genre of Tynianov ¬– seen here as offering an alternative to the dialectical reasoning with which he has been associated ¬– and Mikhail Bakhtin, whose 1929 book on Dostoevsky has been seen both as an anti-dote to Formalist neglect of Dostoevsky, and as an anti-dote to literary Formalism as such.

Reynolds, Susan
`Nejaky hanebny básnírík nemecky’: Grillparzer and the Czechs
The Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) displayed a highly ambivalent attitude towards the Czechs. He frequently expressed contempt for the Czech nation, language and national revival, despite drawing extensively on the history of Bohemia for his dramatic works, notably König Ottokars Glück und Ende, Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg and Libussa. The author examines the reasons for this extreme antipathy, which contrasts with his sympathetic attitude to the Poles and his sparse if unfavourable remarks on the Russians. She considers the psychological, cultural and political factors involved, surveying the portrayal of the Czechs in the three plays cited and Grillparzer’s unhappy experiences as a tutor in Kostelec which established an early prejudice against the land and its people, and sets the discussion of these in the context of the Czech Národní obrození and the threat to Austrian unity which Grillparzer perceived in it. She also notes the reactions of the Czechs themselves to Grillparzer’s treatment of the nation, its history and culture.

Richter, Nicole
Structuring oral Spontaneous Speech – Auditive and Visual Cues in Russian
Studies in rhetoric communication show that both visual and auditive characteristics have an influence on the effect of a speech as a whole. It might be interesting to look for cues that are directly linked with the verbal message. Words are accompanied by both visual and auditive elements of speech. It is known that co-speech gestures for instance occur in combination with prosodic highlighting. I will consider authentic Russian speech samples (e.g. speeches or excerpts from TV talk shows) to search for phases in which there are thematic boundaries or rather topic changes. What are the elements that announce such a topic change? How are, in general, boundaries realized prosodically? It will be interesting to study the structuring of an oral spontaneous text. Topic changes are not only signalled by a change in the content but also by other cues like differences in the prosodic or the nonverbal realization. Prosody in this respect concerns changes of temporal cues and pitch movement, nonverbal cues might e.g. be sudden hand movements. Methodologically, speech production as well as speech perception should be focussed. Comparing several oral texts of the same speaker gives us the opportunity to recognize prosodic and nonverbal patterns used to indicate topic changes or thematic boundaries.

Ristolainen, Mari
Virtual Frontiers: Russian Border Guards’ Poems Online
This paper is based on a recently launched post-doctoral study called Virtual Frontiers: Russian Border Guards’ Poems Online where I examine amateur poems posted by Russian border guards in their own online forum. This study seeks to demonstrate how the thousands of Russian men and women guarding the longest border in the world have given themselves a voice. The objectives are to study how the Russian border guards re- and de-construct the post-Soviet borders in their poems on the ‘virtual frontiers’; and to locate the cultural changes when a state border starts to be represented as an ‘outpost’ of an empire or a ‘link’ between neighbouring nations in border guard writings. This study gives an example of cultural border construction and negotiation processes ‘from the bottom up’ perspective and raises awareness that Russian amateur writings online are understudied, but a significant field of study that can be used to demonstrate how post-Soviet society is formed from an ‘inside’ perspective. Overall, the study of Russian border guards’ poems follows my two previous case studies, where I have examined the relationship between Soviet and post-Soviet cultural practices of the amateur activity in a small town of some 5000 inhabitants in the Pskov province (Ristolainen, Mari (2008), Preferred Realities: Soviet and Post-Soviet Amateur art in Novorzhev. Helsinki: Kikimora Publications), and in the post-Soviet Karelian Republic (Ristolainen, Mari (forthcoming article), “My Karelia” – “The Home of Our poems”: Karelianness as a Feeling of Locality in Amateur Writings).

Roberts, Sean
Verticals and Horizontals: The Role of United Russia as a ‘Management Tool’ in the Emerging Post-Yeltsin Regime
Russia, in the post-Yeltsin period, has witnessed increasing regime closure and reduced political freedoms as the federal centre has sought to rationalise governance with the broad aim of creating and maintaining political stability. This rationalisation is often referred to as the creation of a ‘power vertical’; an informal structure emanating from the federal executive branch downwards and including the political party United Russia, which as an all-national organisation provides an important ‘link’ in the vertical chain of command between the federal centre and regions. As the question of the durability of Russia's post-Yeltsin authoritarian-turn become an increasingly relevant area for analysis, so too the dynamics of this power vertical as an essential feature of the current regime. However, the post-Yeltsin period has seen the creation of numerous structures, which although ultimately subordinate to the federal executive branch, are primarily designed to facilitate horizontal linkage between regions and between elites and society. In this sense, United Russia also forms an important component of the ‘power horizontal’ that contributes to the overall stability of the regime. This idea of a power horizontal has so far received much less attention, but revives earlier, theoretical notions of the importance of political parties and similar organisations for political integration, both in democracies and authoritarian regimes. This paper employs a range of materials, including elite and expert interviews to assess the success of United Russia in attracting and incorporating supporters and its overall effectiveness as a tool for integration for the current Russian leadership.

Rochlitz, Michael
The Political Economy of Industrial Policy in Putin's Russia
The paper – based on current research for my PhD dissertation – examines the implementation of industrial policy in the Russian Federation between 2000 and 2008. While Russian manufacturing industries are in a dire state and the Russian economy was and is in urgent need of diversification, the Russian government has been surprisingly hesitant to promote the building of domestic productive capacities outside the natural resource sectors, and the few policies implemented have remained without success. Considering the financial and political possibilities of the Putin administration, the relative absence of policies such as state support for domestic industries through provision of subsidized credit, temporary protection or tax relief, the building of clusters and special economic zones as well as investment in education, R&D and infrastructure (policies heavily used by the Chinese state during the same period) is difficult to explain. In examining the case of the Russian automobile industry, as well as the defense sector and the new initiative to build a competitive nanotechnology sector in Russia, the paper argues that the system of rent-sharing established by Putin to ensure political stability and secure his hold on power impedes the successful implementation of industrial policies in the country. As control of economic assets is given to members of the ruling elite in return for political support to the Kremlin, a system based on short-term horizons is created that creates the wrong incentives and effectively prevents economic diversification. The potential mid- and long-term consequences of this development are serious, as the effects of the current crisis do show.

Rodigina, Natalia and Saburova, Tatiana
Project “Forward to Herzen”: The Representations of A. Herzen in Russian Intellectuals’ Memoirs in the Second Half of the 19th – the Beginning of the 20th Centuries
Alexander Herzen is one of the key persons in the history of the Russian political and intellectual life. A writer and a philosopher, a revolutionary and a liberal, the author and the publisher of legendary “Kolokol”. His name was the symbol of the abolition of serfdom in the Russian Empire but it was a forbidden name for Russian Imperial periodicals. This name was a subject of ideological struggle and periods of silence interchanged the intensive myths’ creating. This paper investigates constructing Herzen’s image by Russian intellectuals in memoirs. We aim to reveal different factors of “constructing” Herzen, taking into account the biographical and ideological characteristics of authors of memoirs about him, the political and socio-cultural context of their creation. It is extremely important for us to define the main values, norms and ideals of Russian intellectuals, which were embodied in Herzen’s image, to recognize the reasons of Herzen’s symbolic role for some generations of Russian intellectuals (intelligentsia). We research the relation between accepted norms of life writing in the Russian culture, the concepts of “self”, the images of “hero” and “anti-hero” in Russian intelligentsia’s tradition and components of Herzen’s image in memoirs, the transformation of this image in the consciousness of Russian intellectuals. We aspire to define the frame of reference, which formed the representations of Herzen, to reveal the metaphors used in memoirs for modelling representations and the influence of power discourse on the representations of Herzen in his contemporaries’ consciousness and the future generations’ memory.

Rogatchevskaia, Katya
The Development of the British Library Slavonic Collections in the Early 20th Century
Based on the study of the corporate archives, the paper will examine the way in which the Russian collection of the British Museum Library came into being and developed. By the end of the 19th century the BM Library had fulfilled its ambition to become the best depository of foreign books outside the countries of origin and its Russian collection was highly valued by Russian йmigrйs who took active part in developing the collection. The paper also deals with the relationship between the BM staff involved in the Russian collections and the readers, which in many cases can give interesting examples of the dynamics within the diaspora and between the Russians and the Brits interested in “all things Russian”.

Rogatchevski, Andrei
An Irishman at Yasnaya Polyana: Shane Leslie’s 1907 Visit to Tolstoy
On 19 November 1907, Winston Churchill's cousin John (Shane) Leslie (1885-1971) came to see Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. According to Dushan Makovitsky’s diary, the two talked ‘about serious issues’ in Tolstoy’s study. What did Tolstoy mean to the Eton- and Cambridge-educated Catholic convert who supported the Irish Home Rule? The paper tries to answer the question using Leslie’s autobiographical novels The Cantab (1926) and The Anglo-Catholic (1929), as well as the unpublished documents kept at the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow.

Roginskiy, Arseny
New Research on Stalin's Terror
Dr Roginskii will present the results of the latest research in an analysis of new archive documents recently published and the new so-called "Books of Memory".

Ross, Cameron
Federalism and Regional Representation in the Federation Council
In this paper I analyse the degree to which the Federation Council has been able to act as a forum for the aggregation and articulation of the interests of Russia’s federal subjects. In particular, I examine the various method of electing/selecting the members of the upper chamber under Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev and the impact these reforms have had on the ‘regionalization’ of the membership of the upper chamber. A fundamental prerequisite for a federal state is the formation of a bicameral parliament and the ‘legislative entreanchment’ of the federal subjects in the upper chamber. Through an analysis of the biographies of the members of the upper chamber, and in particular the connections/non-connections of the members with the regions they are meant to represent, I assess the degree to which the Federation Council can still claim to act as a champion of the federal subjects at the centre.

Rotman, David and Veremeeva, Natalia
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)/Eastern Partnership (EaP) and Belarus: ‘the odd one out’?
Based on nation-wide surveys, focus-groups, elite interviews and school essays conducted in Belarus during 2008-9, the paper sets to investigate the progress and difficulties in the development of the Belarus-EU relations, through the ENP and EaP perspectives. The paper will proceed in four sections. Section one provides a brief historical overview of the Belarus-EU relations, accounting for various difficulties and problems Belarus has experienced on the path leading towards building a reciprocal and trustworthy cooperation. Section two discusses particular progress made by Belarus in the process of building relations with Europe (following the ‘boundary-politics’ framework set in the first paper). Third section examines existing difficulties and obstacles in facilitating this cooperation, from the Belarusian perspective. In particular, the section examines the role of geopolitics (the Russian factor, Belarus’ multi-vectored foreign policy, the lack of EU membership aspirations, etc) and culture (public and elite perceptions; awareness; attitudes/values and expectations) in the Belarus-EU relations. The paper concludes by discussing the future prospects for the development of the Belarus-EU relations, and objectives that Belarus sees as essential for making the ENP/EaP effective and appealing for the participating sides.

Rövid, Márton
One-Size-Fits-All-Roma? On the Normative Dilemmas of the Emerging European Roma Policy
The paper discusses three moral and political dilemmas that inevitably arise in the context of the emerging European Roma policy, and on which all concerned parties, including grassroots Romani organizations, should be able to express their views. The first concerns whether anti-discrimination measures based on individual rights are sufficient to promote the social inclusion of Roma, or whether those based on group rights are required to ensure the exercise of their fundamental human rights. Even though there appears to be a consensus on the insufficiency of the former approach, it is unclear exactly what sorts of group rights should be promoted—which leads us to the second dilemma of generic versus targeted minority rights. Although populations labelled ‘Roma’ may confront similar forms of discrimination, for instance in education, housing or health care, which affirmative desegregation measures may counter, these groups also differ in many respects that do not only concern “specific issues of cultural identity” but are directly relevant for issues of social exclusion. The third dilemma is whether to recognise Roma as a national minority or as a non-territorial nation. The paper argues that the notion of non-territorial nation can be debated on anthropological, political and moral grounds. Anthropologists have pointed out that often communities labelled ‘Roma’ are not aware of the vision of a non-territorial nation or they do not identify with it. Others consider the claim politically harmful or counterproductive. Finally, the moral standing of such a post-national vision may also be contested.

Rush, Anna
‘Mentors’ and ‘Apprentice’: Pushkin and the Karamzins in Iu. Tynianov’s “Pushkin”
In this paper I will argue that in his novel Tynianov spirits the German national genre of the Bildungsroman across national boundaries and, while paying homage to the Russian tradition of the portrayal of an adolescent’s stanovlenie, focuses on Pushkin’s inwardness, the growth of his intelligence and the process of self discovery. It also presents a number of figures of authorities which act as young Pushkin’s counsellors, guardians and guides. The paper will concern itself with one of the profoundly influential surrogate patriarchal figures in the otherwise monocentric Bildungsroman, Pushkin, N. M. Karamzin, whose literary, linguistic and philosophical influences act as models and determinants for the budding poet. I will also examine Tynianov’s assumption that, though a figure of lesser historical stature, Karamzin’s wife actually performed the crucial role of Pushkin’s most significant mentor and Muse. I will argue that Pushkin’s emotionally strained relationship with the Karamzins signified hiss search for alternative parents and home. The portrayal of Karamzin at a stage in his life as a thoroughly lonely and reflective figure, plunged in uncertainty and disillusionment, prefigures Pushkin’s situation in later life and provides a paradigm for his own struggles with an unyielding Emperor and hostile Court. I shall argue that Tynianov uses his theoretical and factual discoveries of the preceding decade as the foundation for his novel, not by reducing the novelistic genre to a direct illustration of his scholarly conclusions, but by introducing certain correctives into the scholarly schemata, while painting a picture at once broad, subtle, humanised and psychologically convincing. In Tynianov’s interpretation the figure of Karamzin as Pushkin’s literary confederate, adversary and friend, achieves a depth and complexity unprecedented in the Russian historical novel.

Rusina, Olena
Kiev as Sancta Civitas in the Muscovite Mentality and Political Practice (15-16th centuries)
There is no need to prove that Kiev was the most sacred and venerable religious centre of the Old Rus’. In the mid-13th century it experienced a catastrophic reversal of fortune in consequence of the Mongol invasion and, then, the Lithuanian expansion. But even after Kiev lost its political significance it retained its charismatic status as the “mother and head of all Rus’ cities”. That is why medieval Kiev cannot serve as an illustration of the well-known paraphrase “Sic transit gloria urbis”.No wonder that the notion of Kiev as “caput Russiae” was frequently used by politicians – in particular, by the Muscovite rulers, who had energetically insisted since the late 15th century on their right to rule freely throughout their Rus’ “patrimony”. Kiev was the central point of these Muscovite pretensions, some of them relating to its status as sancta civitas which it did retain in spite of age-long desacralization. Sebastian Kl’onovich expressed this idea in poetic form in his “Roxolania”: “Know all people that in Rus’ Kiev means as much as ancient Rome once did for all Christians”. The paper demonstrates that from the late 15th century Moscow attempted to inherit Kiev’s status as sancta civitas both by military and ideological means. Special attention will be paid to the Muscovite ecclesiastical claims to the Kievan inheritance as well as to the various ideas of translatio as applied to Kiev (Moscow’s pretensions to be the “mother of all Rus’ cities”, “second Kiev”, “god-saved city” etc.).

Kusa, Zuzana and Rusnáková, Jurina
Why Early School Leavers LIke School Most in Slovakia?
Early school leavers represent serious problem for many EU countries. Though their percentage in Central European countries such As Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia has been smaller than the EU average and statistical picture looks favourable, unemployment among 15-24 youth and especially among young Roma has been enormously high with few prospects for improvement. In spite of the fact that several studies of Roma school performance and hindrances to their educational advance have been run in Slovakia, until EDUMIGROM project there has not been any research in Slovakia that could also have given “voice” to Roma pupils themselves in order to share their experiences and feeling connected with school .
The comprehensive methodology of the EDUMIGROM project enables us to grasp the Roma experiences with schools and test the hypothesis about the lack of recognition as one of the reason of Roma resistance to school in several ways: by survey data (the survey has been held in the two Slovak middle-towns in April – May 2009 and covered their almost full population of their 15-years pupils that Roma pupils), by in-depth face-to face interviews of Roma pupils and their parents, by class observations and focus group debates. In this paper we will attempt to explain rather surprising finding of the EDUMIGROM survey that in general, Roma pupils seem to find themselves more satisfied with school and show much higher self-regard than Slovak pupils. As we wish to be faithful to “giving the voice ethics” of the project, possible explanations of this findings has been debated with the survey and interviews participants and thus went trough “participant validation” (Lincoln 1994). Our paper has the following structure: in the first part we delineate the problem of early school leaving in Slovakia in comparative perspective and with regard to youth unemployment in the country and ethnic differences in (youth) unemployment. Then we introduce the hypothesis about relation between early school leaving and lack of recognition of Roma pupils in school. Then we proceed with description of the survey data concerning various sorts of school experiences and level of self-regards and with comparisons of students along the ethnic and gender lines. After introducing quite surprising findings from the survey that rather contradict our main hypothesis we offer several tentative explanations that would also include the hypothesis that the survey questionnaire still represent the disciplining tool that does not give Roma pupils space for communication of their authentic feelings. However, finally we will present the explanation that has been later validated by the Rome pupils – survey participants survey themselves.

Ryan, James
‘War Against war’: The Significance of the First World War in the Thought of V.I. Lenin on Violence, 1914-21
This paper assesses the impact of the First World War on V.I. Lenin’s views on the necessity and justification of revolutionary and state violence. Beginning with a brief overview of Lenin’s wartime thought, it focuses on the development of Lenin’s discourse on violence after October 1917, through the Civil War and into NEP. Recent scholarship, especially that of Peter Holquist, has placed early Soviet state violence within the context of the War, of the general ‘Time of Troubles’ afflicting Russia and Europe generally since 1914; this paper takes a detailed look at the discursive element of the War’s impact on Soviet state violence during the years of Civil War and subsequent peacetime economic construction, through an analysis of Lenin’s thought. The paper argues that, though the outlines of Lenin’s ‘war against war’ conception were in evidence as early as 1905, the War provided a crucial dimension to his thought, convincing him not only of the moral bankruptcy of capitalism in its latest, imperialist, stage but of the absolute necessity for breaching this system, for waging war against it, and for justifying recourse to state violence against the class that would inevitably engender new and even bloodier conflicts if returned to power. The paper makes the case for the highly ‘ideological’ nature of this violence.

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