General Information

Programme

Accommodation, Meals and Registration

Travel Information

Abstracts

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

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK

27 – 29 March 2010

Abstracts

S-T

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.

Salovaara-Moring, Inka
Dead Ground: Spaces of Geopolitics, Communication and ‘Frozen Conflict’ in Georgia
Geopolitics is the relationship between power, space and communication. This articulation of ‘geo-power’ over both people and territory is a critical function of the power politics of centres when they communicate through the international media as part of their interest politics. This paper explores the ‘geographies’ of cultural ‘dead grounds’ within reporting on armed conflicts from post-soviet Georgia. It introduces the concept of ‘dead ground’ that refers to hidden cultural spaces where the cultural fault lines of conflicts are located. It also analyses three different ‘elements’ of dead ground by comparing local and international discourses on the conflict. In order to bridge the gap between dead ground and cultural understanding the article proposes a methodological opening of the ‘cultural intervisibility’ studies. Empirically it explores the war between Russia and Georgia through interviews with local journalists, foreign correspondents and international observers.

Sätre, Ann-Mari
Women's Work in Transitional Russia: The role of Institutional Frameworks for Women’s Political Agency in Russian Regions
This paper looks at the impact of some ongoing transformation processes on women’s roles in the Russian society, from a local perspective. One effect of reforms is that local authorities are subject to an increased responsibility for social affairs. There are a few important novelties facing local authorities. Firstly, a new law on monetization of social benefits, which converted in-kind benefits into cash allowances was introduced in 2005. Secondly, changes in legal rules means a responsibility for self-financing at the local level. Changes in legal rules have further opened up for democratic development at the local level. Local politicians, including the mayor, are elected by the people. The main aim here is to discuss these novelties and how these relate to the survival and changes in institutions with respect to gender. The arguments and findings of this paper are also based on observations and interviews from three communities in a Russian region, representing the situation in scarcely populated areas as well as neighbourhoods near a city, conducted in 2002 to 2009. One finding is related to the fear that an increased responsibility for social affairs would further contribute to increase the load on women. As it appears women are in charge where there is no money. In localities with weak development women are put in responsibility positions, expected to save everybody. However, this paper also finds that women in charge feel more powerful with new possibilities to implement measures than before.

Savelli, Mat
Psychiatry and Politics in Communist Yugoslavia: Who Abused Whom?
Little historical scholarship has delved into the question of psychiatry under Communism. The work that has been done overwhelmingly concerns itself with the question of “psychiatric abuse” – the utilization of psychiatric services to achieve political aims. Consequently, there is no shortage of horror stories describing the forced treatment of people whose only ‘illness’ was opposing the Communist state. Yet, the intense focus on this particular element of psychiatry has obscured almost all other aspects of mental health care in the Communist world. This paper represents a departure from the dominant approach and seeks to understand other ways in which politics and ideology interacted with psychiatry. Specifically, it examines these questions through the lens of Communist Yugoslavia (1945-1991). The political and economic distinctness of Yugoslavia had natural repercussions on most facets of social and scientific life – psychiatry was not immune in this regard. As the primary arbiter in the definition of abnormality (and consequently normality), the psychiatric system is revealing of the values of the society in question itself. To analyze how (and how much) political and ideological developments left their imprint on Yugoslav psychiatry, this paper takes a multifaceted approach. It traces the role of self-managing socialism in the organization of mental health services and examines the extent to which state priorities determined the course of psychiatric research. Using archival sources, psychiatric literature, and interviews with key practitioners, it looks at conceptions of mental health and the treatment of diseases in questioning the links between psychiatry and Titoist ideology. What emerges is a psychiatric system distinctly influenced by political developments, but not necessarily in the manner described by the literature on psychiatric abuse.

Say, Sergey
Narrative-advancing Relative Causes in Russian
It is often assumed that non-restrictive relative clauses (NRRC) constitute a minor type of relative constructions and tend to contain a parenthetical assertion that is thematically backgrounded. Besides, it is sometimes claimed that Russian does not distinguish between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses. In a proposed corpus-based study, these assumptions are called into question. It is found that among relative cluases with kotoryj (‘which’) non-restrictive uses are more frequent than restrictive ones. The study is focused on a frequently occurring structure where a new referent (‘policeman’ in (1)) is introduced in the main clause and the next information unit, centered around this newly introduced referent, is expressed by an NRRC:

(1) Xozjain vyzyvaet milicionera, kotoryj lovit ^etogo prestupnika.
‘The owner sends for a policeman and the policeman catches the criminal’ (lit. ‘… for [a/the] policeman, which catches the criminal’).

Such “narrative-advancing” relative clauses demonstrate some properties that are not typical of Russian restrictive relative clauses and of subordinate clauses in general:
1) fixedness of word order;

2) an intonation break before the relative pronoun;

3) foregroundedness of the information contained in the dependent clause (cf. tense-iconicity of these bi-clausal structures and the ability of the dependent clause to have an illocutory force of its own).

It is claimed that narrative-advancing relative clauses are a syntactic means for reference-tracking of secondary topics that is a hybrid that inherits its structural and pragmatic properties from two other constructions, viz. restrictive relative clauses and chaining (“conjunctionless”) narrative structures.

Sayfutdinova, Leyla
Representations of Armenians in Azerbaijani 20th Century Fction: Friends and Eenemies
In the paper I explore representations of Armenian-Azerbaijani interethnic boundary in the Azerbaijani fiction written and published after the breakout of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (1988-1989). The findings are then compared with the fiction of previous relatively peaceful historical period. The research shows that the boundary between the two groups is usually clearly defined; it is marked by indicators such as characteristic ethnic name, direct identification, and invocation of distinctions based on religious differences between Christians and Moslems – consumption of pork and wine, for example. The intergroup boundary however can be weakened, and the communication and interaction across it can be intensified. The major factor that weakens the intergroup boundary is the experience of co-existence with Azerbaijanis, and the related emotional attachment on the part of Armenian characters towards Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis. On the other hand, the boundary can also be reinforced, and the interaction can be hindered or made more difficult. A major factor of reinforcement is hatred that may be felt by Armenian characters towards Azerbaijanis and Moslems in general. If friendliness is usually an outcome of the experience of peaceful co-habitation, the hostility is on the contrary an outcome of the lack of knowledge of Azerbaijanis: hostile Armenians are usually outsiders who come from outside of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus. The markers of the boundary and weakening factors are fairly consistent throughout 20th century literature. However, the descriptions of hostility only appear in the post-conflict literature.

Schimpfoessl, Elisabeth
Russia’s New Social Upper Class: Searching for Legitimacy
In recent years, members of Russia’s social upper class have been increasingly concerned with legitimising their wealth and power in order to secure their social status. To this end, they pursue legitimation strategies that are similar to those applied by upper classes in the West. Yet at the same time these strategies imply a conscious dissociation from the West. Over the last five years especially, the wealthy in Russia have come under increasing pressure to distance themselves from the flamboyant displays of opulence with which the rich and powerful were associated in the 1990s. Their opulent lifestyle has become less visible and enamoured with European tastes. However, even more important in securing legitimacy are demonstrations of patriotism and Russianness. It has become a strong obligation for the wealthy in Russia to engage in philanthropy and make charitable contributions. Elite benefactors often associate their charitable giving with Russian orthodoxy, Russian culture and patriotic gestures of concern for the wellbeing of their country, which establish links with the pre-Revolutionary nobility as well as with their intelligentsia parents’ values of Soviet kulturnost’. Such displays of social responsibility are complemented by a trend to resuscitating individual family histories and myths as proof of privileged family legacies from Russian history and to propagating the family’s dominant social status across the generations. The paper is based on 35 narrative interviews with members of the Russian upper class, the analysis of website blogs and on participant observations.

Schneider, Tobias
Divided memories. Memorials of the Bosnian War (1992-1995)
The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) caused an estimated number of 97.000 victims and all sides committed war crimes, such as mass rape and ethnical cleansing. In 1995 the Dayton peace agreement set an end to the fighting and saved the territorial integrity of the country. However, it also divided Bosnia into two ethnically defined entities. The Bosnian political scientist Dћemal Sokolovic once wrote, that in order to prevent a new war, there had to be at least 51% Bosnian citizens, whereas the rest could continue to be Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. It is important to look at the ways in which the Bosnian state today manages to deal with its recent history. In fact, different interpretations of the past among the three ethnical groups are still in the way of a state organized remembrance of past events. Instead local and ethnical group memories and their actors fill this lack. Thereby the transfer of individual and family memories onto media of cultural memory is out of state control. This becomes clear when taking a closer look at memorial sites all over the country, whose shape and design or message are restricted by no state law. The paper intends to shed some light on how Bosnia deals with its past by analysing more than 100 memorials. It shall give answers to the following questions: In which way are the memorials designed? What kind of messages do they convey? What can they tell us about common group memories?

Sevastyanova, Olga
The Symbolic Significance of the White Klobuk and the Policy of the Bishops of Novgorod in the XIVth Century
The white klobuk as a special head-dress of the archbishop of Novgorod is known to have existed from the first part of the fourteenth century. In the nineteenth century the colour of the klobuk was considered to be of liturgical and not political significance and was believed to be connected with the non-monastic origin of it’s owner. Since this belief contradicts the sources, klobuk began to be seen as a symbol of the Novgorodian desire for autonomy. The study of the symbolic significance of a white klobuk has shown that it was seen to reflect the view that its owner’s power came directly from Christ and thus the klobuk was used to assert the archbishop’s authority and to deliberately strengthen his position in the fourteenth century. The klobuk didn’t symbolise the Novgorodians desire for autonomy. In 1270 Novgorod rejected the supremacy of the Great prince of Vladimir. Only the interference of the Metropolitan made Novgorod stay under his control. The interference of the Metropolitan in Novgorodian policy meant that the status of an archbishop of Novgorod loyal to the interests of the great principality of Vladimir could be strengthened. The church became a unifying force for the disunited Russian principalities. The white klobuk underlined the high status of the church hierarchy and was the means whereby the church could defend itself from all attacks at the time.

Shcherbenok, Andrey
Chekhov's "Killing Realism" and the Problem of Meaning
Both the epistemological approaches to Chekhovian texts and the studies of Chekhov's relationship with Russian literary tradition necessarily depend on the notion of Chekhov's superior realism in the sense of providing an insight into the world "as it really is". In this paper I seek to dispute this view through close reading of two interrelated Chekhov's short stories, "The Student" and "The Bishop". The existing interpretations of both stories invariably apply to Chekhov's texts a fundamentally metaphysical concept of meaning, according to which meaning of human life and history can be – although often fails to be – grasped in the act of transcendental insight. I demonstrate, however, that Chekhov's stories not so much question individual events of insight that his characters think they experience but rather problematize the very possibility of meaning detached from the deesentialized system of textual differences. Not only do not Chekhov's characters have access to "the real truth," but Chekhov's texts themselves self-consciously undermine every foundation that could potentially guarantee their immediate grasp of reality. Chekhov's position is opposite to relativism: rather than asserting the existence of multiple individual truths, Chekhov deconstructs all of them, including that of his own narrator. This provides Chekhov with unique position vis-а-vis Russian nineteenth century literary tradition, best expressed by Gorky's ambiguous formula of Chekhov's "killing realism." In contrast to Gorky's argument, however, Chekhov is killing realism not because he perfects it to the limit but rather because he undermines its philosophical foundations, without, however, attempting to transcend realist poetics in favor of a supposedly superior modernist vision.

Shulga, Jekaterina
Testimony and Ideology: Remembering Trauma in Vasily Grossman's “Everything Flows”
Trauma theory is rarely applied as an approach to victims of wars, terror and the GULag in the Soviet Union, in part due to the pervasive Soviet ideology that created a world-view which concealed the experience of trauma under a narrative of stoicism and redemption. However, Soviet literature testifies to the existence of traumatic experiences and their manifestations in Soviet society. Although Vasily Grossman was never in a camp, his experiences with the Red Army at war and discovering Treblinka, led him to compare the Holocaust to the crimes of Stalinism in his work. In Everything Flows, Grossman depicts characters’ inability to testify to their traumatic experiences, both because the language is monopolised by the state, and because, living under Soviet ideology responsibility and blame have become entwined. The victims of famine and three decades of camp labour find themselves being victims and oppressors simultaneously. I trace the characters’ battle with silence in search for a language that is not tainted by ideology, in order to testify to human suffering, and their own implication in it. Grossman creates a dialogue not only between the traumatised and their testimony, but also between the language of trauma and the language of ideology; the novel itself testifies to the State’s attempt to rewrite history to the point where private memories are infected by official propaganda. By suppressing personal experience of trauma through a grand narrative compatible with Soviet ideology, the state altered people’s memories of trauma, problematising the application of trauma theory to Russia today.

Singh, Dorian
Accessing Healthcare: Understanding the Needs of Urban Roma in Romania
The Roma (gypsy) population represent the most marginalized and understudied group within Romania today. The social, political and economic upheaval and changes since the demise of state socialism have negatively impacted the Roma community more than other groups due to their vulnerable positioning within society. One substantial change during transition has been the reorganization of healthcare in Romania. Universal care has been replaced with a social insurance model in which employment is a pre-requisite for coverage. There is little understanding of the ways and mechanisms in which access to healthcare may be limited for the Roma today. Data are very scarce, often anecdotal and have tended to look at rural dwelling communities only. The research I propose to discuss presents qualitative and quantitative data from over 500 urban based Romanian Roma. The findings reveal that urban Roma face many challenges to accessing health care. Importantly, however, the urban sample encounters different barriers to accessing care than rural counterparts examined in previous scholarship. These findings are significant because, first, because they point to greater heterogeneity and diversity within the Romani community than previously assumed. Additionally the findings have significant policy implications. If indeed the health needs of urban Roma differ from rural Roma then policies intended to improve access to care need to be better tailored to address the needs of each community.

Smedile, Concetta
Crossing Ethnic Boundaries: Migration Prostitution and Identities Among Roma
My study aims at grasping the living experience of two different communities of Roma, who have changed their economic and social organization since the international migration caused by the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and by the collapse of the communist state in Romania. In order to make the most of the Western abundance of wealth members from Gypsy groups chose illegal activities. I am proposing to consider the phenomenon of prostitution within a Gypsy community as one of the new and increasingly functional elements in the accumulation of wealth, where the ideology of virginity is still at the centre of their ideological ethnic distinctiviness. Moreover prostitution is discreetly incorporated into their working practices under an ‘alternative economical morality’ and does not discombobulate their social order for three reasons:
(1) the more the ideal of virginity is frustrated in reality, the more it is defended ideologically and the value of shame is rhetorically stressed by the members of the community;
(2) prostitution, although considered a feature of the world of the Gaje, has become another way to illegally obtain money from the abundance of non Gypsies. This is similar to the responses of encapsulation and social exclusion by people who are associated with the hunter gatherer society;
(3) Wealth is always justified as it is needed for the requirements of new marriages.

Smirnova, Maria
O.Wilde’s Plays: New Russian vs. Soviet Translations
In the paper the author analyses the approaches of translation of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde into Russian which were undertaken in the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. Comparative stylistic analysis of translations of the play The Importance of Being Earnest undertaken by different translators in different time reveals the principles of translation and illustrates the strategies of translation. The author of the paper also examines a tendency in the policy of present day publishers to produce new translations which pretend to introduce the original in full for the first time in the history of O. Wilde’s plays translation into Russian. Thus, the paper aims to introduce a comparative study of the translations of the famous play as well as perception of these translations in present day Russia via analyzing publishing policy.

Snezko, Julija
Imperial and (Proto)-National Semantics in Nikolaj Karamzin‘s Public Discourse
This paper follows the researches that seek to investigate how the imperial experience is embodied or reflected in culture, the relation of national and imperial dimension in it, and aims at showing different ways in which the imperial and (proto)-national semantics is formed in public texts of N. Karamzin, as well as the ways a concrete text becomes part of imperial or national discourse. In this respect, Karamzin seems to be an interesting figure. On one hand, according to the opinion of Viktor Zhivov, he, together with other Russian sentimentalists, stands at the beginning of formation of the Russian national discourse. On the other hand, as Ewa M. Thompson states, Karamzins stands at the beginning of imperial discourse in Russia, which is confirmed by his „History of the Russian State“. Therefore this question is still open for discussion and therefore it is interesting to see how it becomes possible to distinguish the imperial and (proto)-national meanings, which at the beginning of XIX century in Russia are quite intermingled and not easily separated. In Karamzin‘s public/critical discourse both meanings are articulated mainly (but not only) in such places where other countries important to Russia‘s relationship are mentioned and the ground for some kind of explicit or implicit comparison is established thus creating a place for the interplay of meanings. This very interplay of meanings is the object of analysis in this paper.

Solomonovskaya, Anna
Translation of Commentary to a Patristic Text and the Mentality of a Medieval Translator
The first complete Slavonic translation of Corpus Areopagiticum was performed in the XIV century by an Athonian monk Starets Isaiah. A sample of 100 commentaries on the first of the treaties included in the Corpus were selected, which allowed to draw some preliminary conclusions about the way Isaiah decided on conveying each particular comment. Unlike the translation of the treaties themselves, the translation of the commentary (attributed now to John Bishop of Scythopolis and Maximus Confessor) was not always done word to word, though 44% of the commentaries were still translated this way. On the one hand, the style of the commentaries was much less poetic and much more understandable, so Isaiah was able to translate rather “sense-to-sense”). Moreover, the translator felt free to omit certain comments that were related to either the Greek language or culture only (16 out of a preliminary sample 100 comments). Some commentaries (15%) were shortened considerably. In some cases the translator omitted pagan allusions (e.g. classic philosophers); sometimes he did not convey superfluous information. Approximately in 5% of commentaries considered do not have Greek counterparts, either being the translator’s commentary or originating from some unknown Greek manuscript. Eight contexts out of 100 reflect the peculiarities of the Greek manuscript, which S. and D. Fahl consider to be the closest to Isaiah’s original. The rest of commentaries which differ considerably from their suggested original pertain to the manuscript F VI/6 itself. The lexis of commentaries is more varied than that of the treaties.

Sommer, Lukasz
Language planning and language consciousness: Finland and Estonia in the 19th century
Finnish and Estonian are languages whose most intensive development took place during the 19th century and came along with the growth of national movements. Within a couple of decades, the two spoken vernaculars with scarce literary traditions became vehicles of high culture as well as symbols of national identity. In both countries, these processes of social and cultural advancement involved systematic description, norm setting and planned enrichment. They were also accompanied by disputes on such issues as orthography, dialectal bases of the emerging norms, attitudes toward lexical and structural loans. Despite their Herderian inspirations and Romantic rhetoric, the patriotic-minded Finnish and Estonian linguists tended to be engineer-minded rather than Romantic in their policies: while studying and extolling their “national language”, as “the people’s mother tongue”, they were actually constructing new clear-cut linguistic entities with previously unknown internal hierarchies and external boundaries. Despite the two countries’ closeness, differences between their historical and social backgrounds, sociolinguistic landscapes and early nationalist milieus are reflected by their respective language planning strategies. Because of the relative lateness and rapidness of their standardization and social advancement, peripheral national languages offer a handy historical perspective on the shaping of modern language consciousness – a Europe-wide process, yet conditioned by local factors, reflected in language policies, but also in various forms of linguistic discourse (both normative and descriptive, the line between the two often being blurred), and involving the meanings of such fundamental terms as “mother tongue” or even “language” itself.

Stegniy, Oleksandr
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)/Eastern Partnership (EaP) and Ukraine: ‘lost in transition’?
Based on a nation-wide survey, focus-groups, elite interviews and school essays conducted in Ukraine during 2008-9, the paper sets to investigate the progress and difficulties in the development of the Ukraine-EU relations, through the ENP and EaP perspectives. The paper will proceed in four sections. Section one provides a brief historical overview of the Ukraine-EU relations. Section two discusses particular progress made by Ukraine 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 Ukrainian perspective. In particular, the section examines the role of geopolitics (the Russian factor) and culture (public and elite perceptions; awareness; attitudes/values and expectations) in the Ukraine-EU relations. The paper concludes by discussing the future prospects for the development of the Ukraine-EU relations, and objectives that Ukraine sees as essential for making the ENP/EaP effective and appealing for the participating sides.

Marsh, Cynthia, Turbine, Vikki, Chmielewska, Ella, Kosmala, Katarzyna, Kay, Rebecca, Stella, Francesca and Swain, Geoff
'Ideas that Never Meet': Navigating Interdisciplinary Knowledge and Practice within Slavonic and East European Studies
Area studies have traditionally embodied a range of disciplinary and methodological practices in order to explore the multiplicities of social, cultural and historical phenomena characterising Slavonic and East European societies. As such, they provide a potentially stimulating intellectual context within which to consider the ways in which different knowledges and understandings might be exchanged, combined and transformed in order to generate innovative approaches to understanding the region more deeply. In recognition of this, the roundtable aims to further debate around two main themes:

(i)east/west ‘knowledge exchange’ with a specific focus on the interpretation/use/reworking of particular western concepts in the ‘eastern’ context as well as reflections on comparable east-west movements and the ways/means of facilitating/assessing such exchanges.

(ii)the nature and character of knowledge exchange and dissemination in the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences with a view to facilitating innovation in these areas.

Stoyanov, Dragomir
European Integration and Bulgarian Political Parties
Right after the country accession in 2007 Bulgarian political parties, for the first time, took part in EP election campaign. In their EP election manifestos main Bulgarian political parties tried to develop new, more nuanced approach towards the EU as compared to the one of their national campaigns. Thus the EU was represented not only as a highly consensual issue but through the party ideological lenses, making an attempt “to quit” national consensus discourse and to present the EU integration process from different “party specific” points of view. In the article “The Past in the Present: A Cleavage Theory of Party Response to European Integration” Marks and Wilson (2000) advance the hypothesis that Western European political parties integrate the EU issues into the already existing party ideologies. In the case of Bulgaria I argue that it is because of some specifics of Bulgarian political parties – newly emerged political institutions without long ideological and institutional history – that the EU issues have been viewed from the perspective of the political positions declared by European party federations. One can say that in their EP election campaigns Bulgarian political parties do not “digest” the EU issues through the particular Bulgarian domestic problematic and cleavages but utilize the established European party federations’ positions as a clichй, which they adapt. Thus my paper focuses on Bulgarian EP Elections 2007-2009 thematic and on patterns of Bulgarian party competition developed during these electoral campaigns. The purpose of the paper is twofold: first to estimate the degree of “penetration” of EU problematics into national party discourse, using as reference tools party manifestos, party discourse and party slogans, and second to analyse on the basis of this descriptive information the patterns of party competition developed during these elections.

Strovsky, Dmitry
Social Conflict in Russian Mass Media Coverage
In recent years the Russian media have been actively involved in numerous social conflicts which are still predetermined by the rigid contradictions. To what extent are the media are able to be objective and therefore professional in the coverage of these situations? The current media practice demonstrates that the partisanship of Russian journalists is affected by their strong dependence on the political powers which suppresses media freedom and inevitably raises a question if the media are capable of becoming a "fourth power" in Russian society. The above dependence leads to the media's lack of objectivity, which stimulates incomprehension by their audience of the situations in which media participate. A good example of this situation is the author's two week hunger strike against the closure of a secondary school in the city of Ekaterinburg that was initiated in early September 2009. It was a purely social conflict focusing on the illegal activities of the city's authorities that are infringing the Russian Constitution and labour law. Despite this, the positions of the media, especially on the regional and local levels, were different due to their initial dependence on certain political forces, through such issues as ownership. Some media were open adherents of the mayor's office which had issued the "rules of the game" and permanently spun the mayor's position to their audience. It became an additional illustration of inability of the modern Russian media to unite people in defending their civic rights and seeing the core of the social problem.

Law, Ian and Swann, Sarah
Missing Out: Gypsy/Roma/Traveller Children and Rducation, Some Evidence From Fieldwork in a Northern City in the UK
This paper presents new information on the experiences of Gypsy/Roma/Traveller children and education in Britain, providing both an assessment of current patterns of social and educational exclusion, and evidence from fieldwork with schools, parents and community groups in a Northern City. Welfare outcomes are particularly poor for this group, for example they have higher levels of infant mortality and lower life expectancy due to difficulties in accessing health services than most other groups, life expectancy for men and women is 10 years lower than the national average and Gypsy and Irish Traveller mothers are 20 times more likely than mothers in the rest of the population to have experienced the death of a child. In education, as well as some of the lowest levels of educational attainment, some schools are refusing to admit children from this group, imposing discriminatory conditions on admission or delaying registration. Also, of those that do get access to education, at least half of gypsy and traveller children in England and Wales drop out of school between the ages of 8 and 16. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence of almost total failure of access to higher education for this group. This paper will assess how these patterns of exclusion play out in contemporary British society, and consider the relational and comparative implications of UK evidence for the position of Roma in Central and Eastern Europe.

Swartz, Anne
Piano Makers in Russia: The Transition to Russian-Owned Firms During Alexander II’s Reign
This original study focuses on the transfer of the piano technology from the earlier European artisans who established family firms in Russia in the early decades of the nineteenth century to Russian-trained artisans who founded musical instrument factories in the 1870s, during a period of favorable trade policies with the Russian Far East. In particular, the Russian-owned firms of Vasilii Semenovich Karetnikov, Anton Ksaverievich Dovnarovich, Andrei Emel’ianovich Kulakov, and Piotr Rozmyslov manufactured the royal’ and the pianino, and produced a variety of popular domestic keyboard instruments, including piano rolls and mechanical organs, for shipment to all regions of the empire. Customs declarations and tariff regulations offer evidence concerning the importation of raw materials and mechanical components necessary for the production of the concert grand and the cabinet piano. Exhibition catalogues and price lists indicate that while the royal’ and pianino were marketed in the Russian Far East, these instruments were not readily available for export to the west. Financial documents reveal that the Russian-owned factories garnered substantial revenues and maintained a high annual production, while the number of skilled and unskilled workers remained fairly low. Conclusions illuminate the extent to which the technological achievements of Russian-trained artisans enlivened Russian musical culture, as Alexander espoused the technological achievements of a modern industrial state.

Taroutina, Maria
“Flight to Byzantium”: ReinsCribing the Past and the Periphery into the Rise of Russian Modernism
This paper examines how the Neo-Byzantine Revival played a formative role in the rise of Russian Modernism. Spearheaded by the scholars Nikodim Kondakov and Dmitrii Ainalov, an increased art historical interest in Russia’s Byzantine past led to multiple restoration and revivalist activities in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. As a result, previously overlooked cities such as Kiev, Pskov, and Suzdal were foregrounded as important centres of artistic production and fresh sources of creativity. Accordingly, artists who participated in these projects came to regard Russo-Byzantine art as a divergent system of visuality and a powerful pictorial alternative to the then pervasive nineteenth-century naturalism propagated by the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Thus, many young artists began to look beyond the two capitals for a different formal and conceptual genealogy. One such example is Mikhail Vrubel, whose involvement in the restoration of the Kievan churches of St Vladimir and St Cyril prompted him to explore a new artistic idiom, resulting in a strikingly Modernist visual language of saturated color and spatial ambiguity. Likewise, the abstract vocabulary of Wassily Kandinsky and the materialist innovations of Vladimir Tatlin were undeniably catalyzed by the artists’ firsthand acquaintance with the Russo-Byzantine pictorial tradition, garnered during their extensive travels through the Russian periphery. This paper thus seeks to give texture to the existing accounts of Russian Modernism by emphasizing the role of the periphery and the past as important ciphers for a regionally specific response to Modernity.

Tchentsova, Vera G.
“Byzantine” Regalia in the XVIIth Century Moscow: on the Origins of Some Objects of Jewellery Brought by the Greeks to the Court of the Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich
Ideological changes in Russian state in the middle of the XVIIth century which accompanied active foreign policy and large territorial annexations, caused appropriate transformations of regalia of the Russian tsar in order to approach them to those of a “Greek” (Byzantine) emperor. In that time contacts maintained with the Christian East were particularly important. One of the aspects of these contacts was the creation of an image of sovereign as a protector of all Orthodox Christians, successor of Constantine the Great. In the 50s and early 60s of the XVIIth century the Greek merchants arrived to the Muscovite court with the pieces of exquisite jewellery such as sceptre, staff, arms, various church items, luxurious horse trappings, orb and ceremonial collar (barmas). The study of the documents from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts concerning the arrival of these objects to Moscow and the comparison of some of these articles with the church items conserved abroad (Patriarchate of Jerusalem etc.) revealed the names of some of the goldsmiths (such as Loisos or Mikhalaki Phranzиs) and the existing links of these artisans and of merchants, coming to Russia with the objects of jewellery, with the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Some of the ecclesiastical effects (belonging to the chair of Jerusalem), sometimes modified, found its way to Moscow transformed into royal power attributes.

Tigountsova, Inna F. I.
Death and Beyond in Fedor Dostoevsky’s “Bobok: From Someone Else’s Diar”y and Liudmila Petrushevskaia’s “Number One, or in the Gardens of Other Possibilities”
This paper compares after-death experiences in the short story Bobok (1873) by Dostoevsky and Petrushevskaia’s novel Number One, or In the Gardens of Other Possibilities. (2004) For Bakhtin, Bobok is a quintessence of Dostoevsky’s art; in the carnivalesque underworld of this work humanity is naked and spied on by the writer-protagonist. “Why, will you ever be sober, Ivan Ivanovich?.. A strange requirement.” These words take us into Dostoevsky’s underworld in Bobok, where everything is permitted. Despite the superficial trend towards fantasy, realism in the depiction of the afterlife in Petrushevskaia’s Number One rivals that of Dostoevsky. The nineteenth century in Russia, is, according to Vetlovskaia, the mercantile age, showing the influence of the bourgeois West. (“Dostoevsky and Pushkin,” Dostoevsky on the Thresholds of Other Worlds) This social context may partly explain the incapability of the writer-protagonist in Dostoevsky’s short fiction. The Underground Man types refuse to accept the new commercial reality, or fail to do so. This also rings true for Petrushevskaia’s researcher in Number One and the time period of renewed capitalism in Russia in 2000s. Similar social circumstances for the protagonists in Bobok and Nomer Odin echo the ugliness of the undead, who have no fear of God. There could be no further punishment: characters display amoralities after their death. In this paper, I argue that Petrushevskaia uses a Dostoevskian poetics of disorder, as well as his humour, to address the current state of humanity as life after death. She demonstrates that one has to switch souls with an illiterate thief, or fall through the ice of ancient “entti” (others) to remind oneself of being made in God’s image. A strange requirement.

Tomovska, Ivana
Aspects of Human Security in FYR Macedonia
The paper shall examine the aspects of human security in the Republic of Macedonia. Shift of understanding the 2001 conflict's causes is necessary in order to generate a long-term, viable resolution. The current solution, the Ohrid Framework Agreement represents termination of violence; however it does not fully address the issue of minority and human rights necessary to produce sustainable, ‘positive’ peace and development. The following argument is that a shift in understanding of the conflict's causes, from ethnic conflict to ‘human security’ paradigm, is necessary in order to generate a long-term, viable resolution. The theoretical framework will be taken from two groups of political science literature: general literature on ethnopolitical and group conflict in order to assess the situation in Macedonia prior to the 2001 armed conflict; and literature on ‘securitization’, as a discourse used in order to identify something as a threat and attach a label of urgency upon that issue. The topic possesses contemporary relevance due to its implications for security, both for Macedonia and the wider region. It likewise addresses the spill-over effects of further conflict and their possible consequences at regional and European level. The circumstances are suitable for assessing the level of minority protection and minority governance in Macedonia. Namely, there is a reasonable time interval between the 2001 conflict and present time. Furthermore, the processes of Euro-Atlantic integration in Macedonia are at detrimental stage of implementation, which enables to place the research focus on less visible aspects of security – such as human security.

Gasparishvili, Alexander and Tumanov, Sergey
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)/Eastern Partnership (EaP) and Russia: threat or opportunity?
The EU-Russia relations have seen varied progress in their development. The consequences of the Russia-Georgia war and a continuing conflict in Russia-Ukraine relations have seemingly led to the formation/embededdness of a rather hostile image of ‘the other’ in both parts of the world. Research based on a nation-wide survey, focus-groups, elite interviews and school essays conducted in Russia during 2008-9, investigates the underpinnings of such a discourse especially in the light of the EU’s recent attempt to enhance cooperation with its Eastern neighbours, which traditionally have been an area of strategic importance for Russia itself. The paper will proceed in four sections. Section one provides a brief historical overview of the Russia-EU relations, accounting for various difficulties and milestones in the process of mutual partnership-building. Section two examines cultural perceptions – elite and public – to establish the nature of commonalities and differences in Russia’s view of ‘the other’ (competing) power. Research seems to indicate that the EU is not as a norm associated with the image of a foe, or the ‘enemy’. Instead, there is a tendency, in common perception, to view a prospect of a united Europe as an appealing zone of stability and prosperity. Section three will discuss practical problems and difficulties – from the geopolitical perspective – in the EU-Russia relations especially related to their contested abroad. In conclusion the prospects for strengthening cooperation and dialogue between the two powers, especially over ‘democracy promotion’ in the ‘near abroad’ are considered, premised on the project’s findings and cross-time examination of the EU-Russia relations.

Turbine, Vikki
Women’s Use of Legal Claims in Contemporary Russia: Securing Welfare in a Context of Individual Responsibility?
The processes of democratization and marketisation taking place over the post-Soviet period challenged state-based provision of welfare both structurally and ideologically. The reduction in state provision and increasing privatisation of employment, childcare, healthcare and education has had gendered effects that have impacted most visibly on women who have taken on increasing responsibility for care work and the securing of welfare for themselves and their families. This paper re-considers the ways in which these changes have created a reality and rhetoric of individual responsibility and how this impacts on the means by which women attempt to secure welfare. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews conducted with women living in the provincial Russian city of Ul’ianovsk in 2005 and 2009, this paper shows that some women are using legal claims as a means to access rights to secure welfare when alternative forms of support from the state or family and friends are unavailable. However, attempting to secure welfare individually via the legal process is fraught with structural barriers and was often undertaken at a time when material and emotional welfare was most insecure, for example when experiencing the breakdown of the family. These findings suggest the need for a critical reflection on claims about the role of law for increasing individual empowerment for women a context where the gendered nature of economic reform has drastically reduced the enabling factors necessary for women to access individual forms of securing welfare and where engagement with them may even increase insecurity.

Marsh, Cynthia, Turbine, Vikki, Chmielewska, Ella, Kosmala, Katarzyna, Kay, Rebecca, Stella, Francesca and Swain, Geoff
'Ideas that Never Meet': Navigating InterDisciplinary Knowledge and Practice Within Slavonic and East European Studies
Area studies have traditionally embodied a range of disciplinary and methodological practices in order to explore the multiplicities of social, cultural and historical phenomena characterising Slavonic and East European societies. As such, they provide a potentially stimulating intellectual context within which to consider the ways in which different knowledges and understandings might be exchanged, combined and transformed in order to generate innovative approaches to understanding the region more deeply. In recognition of this, the roundtable aims to further debate around two main themes:

(i)east/west ‘knowledge exchange’ with a specific focus on the interpretation/use/reworking of particular western concepts in the ‘eastern’ context as well as reflections on comparable east-west movements and the ways/means of facilitating/assessing such exchanges.

(ii)the nature and character of knowledge exchange and dissemination in the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences with a view to facilitating innovation in these areas.

Tyulenev, Sergey
Social-Systemic Role of Translation in the Westernization of Eighteenth-Century Russia
I will apply Luhmann’s social systems theory to considering the social role of translation in eighteent-century Russia. I will show how Russia as a social system used translation as a means of its interaction with the environment in order to change the intrasystemic communication. Translation is a boundary phenomenon of the system introducing new elements affecting the intrasystemic social discourse. In eighteenth-century Russia, translation made the knowledge sought by the system available to it. The significance of translation for importing the aspired Western-European technological know-how and social values was appreciated by the collective action of the system (the political leadership). Translation as a social subsystem greatly influenced other subsystems (law, economy, etc.). Translation provided elements for modifying internal communications of these subsystems. I will adduce examples from the legal and literary subsystems. However, a question of assessment of translation's social role may be asked: What was the influence exerted by translation in the process of the westernization of the system upon the system? Obviously, it was an indispensable channel for transfers (a sine qua non conditio) which enabled the system not only to survive in a changed environment, but also to assume a high international (intersystemic) position (Russia became part of the European Pentarchy). Yet, translation was a means of imposing a new social discourse upon the system, and this new discourse literally changed the system beyond recognition. Based on my case study, I will conclude that translation was a 'double-edged sword': both rejuvenating the system's autopoiesis and endangering it.

Back to Top of Page

Webpage maintained by
Tricia Ellis-Evans
last updated
11 March 2010