Partan, Olga
Evgenii Vakhtangov’s Fantastic Realism On and Off Stage
This paper focuses on the legacy of Stanislavsky’s rebellious, yet favorite, disciple—the theater director, actor and theoretician, Evgenii Vakhtangov (1883-1922).  In his legendary 1922 production of Carlo Gozzi’s The Princess Turandot, Vakhtangov both rethought Stanislavsky’s truthfulness to real life on stage and paid tribute to Mejerhold’s experimental spirit.  As he was dying of invasive stomach cancer, Vakhtangov and his students produced a play for Civil War era spectators that  was an escape from historical reality into the world of artistic imagination.  I argue that Vakhtangov’s fantastic realism became a powerful yet skillfully veiled doctrine and code of behavior that shaped the art and lives, both on and off stage, of Vakhtangov’s disciples as they went on to become the leading Soviet theater practitioners.  Fantastic realism contrasted not only with the Moscow Art Theater’s realism but even with Socialist realism itself, and served as a survival mechanism for the Vakhtangov school during the Soviet era.  Combining scholarly research with my personal recollections (as I grew up in the family of one of Vakhtangov’s pupils), I trace the main elements of fantastic realism, which included the vivid theatricality, fantasy, flamboyance, elegance and, most importantly, life-assuring laughter that became trademarks of the Vakhtangov school in the Soviet performing arts.  A school that, despite its close ties with Stanislavsky’s legacy, has been understudied and is frequently misunderstood.

Paul, Michael C. 
Post-Soviet Veneration of the Bishop-Saints of Novgorod the Great
Novgorod the Great has more medieval bishop-saints (23) than any other Rus’ city.  Indeed Novgorod had more saints than any other Rus’ city except for Kiev (67 compared with Kiev’s 184 in one list).  Many of them were key-players in Rus’ and Russian history: Archbishop Nifont’s answers in the Voproshanie Kirika offer important  insight into the church in twelfth century Rus’; the stories surrounding Archbishop Ilya (Ioann) are important examples of medieval literature; Archbishop Vasilii Kalika and other Novgorodian archbishops oversaw the compilation of important chronicles; Archbishop Evfimii built a number of churches, several of which survive to this day; Archbishop Gennadii fought the Judaiser heresy and oversaw the first complete corpus of the Bible in Slavic; Archbishop Makarii composed the Velikie Menii Chet’ii while in Novgorod and in Moscow he editted the Stepennaia Kniga and convened important church councils that canonized a number of Russian saints (among them Novgorodian bishop-saints) and set down rules the church followed for centuries.  This paper considers how Novgorod’s twenty-three bishop-saints (and perhaps its saints more generally) are remembered since the fall of the Soviet Union.  It considers what these commemorations say about the modern understanding of Novgorod’s bishops and their place in history, in the church, in modern Novgorodian consciousness, and in the religious revival taking place in Post-Soviet Russia.  It looks at the dynamics of that revival – why some saints might be commemorated more than others; why several saints have been paired together, why some rather prominent historic actors may have been forgotten.  If there is a religious revival in Russia, it is worth looking at how this revival takes place at the local level with local saintly cults, in this instance, with Novgorod the Great’s bishop-saints.

Pavlov, Evgeny
Writing in the Past Tense: Allegories of Reading History in Konstantin Vaginov’s “Trudy i dni Svistonova”
The paper proposes examining Konstantin Vaginov’s best-known novel as an exercise in the allegorical reading of modernity. Analysed mainly as a work of metafiction, Trudy i dni Svistonova can be profitably approached in the light of what Walter Benjamin saw as a radical revalorization of allegory in modernism. “Svistonov lay in bed reading, i.e., writing, as for him it was the same. He marked a paragraph in red pencil, and in black, entered its altered version in his manuscript. He did not care about the meaning of the whole and the coherence of all.” The paper will argue that Svistonov’s mode of reading and writing the past constructs a version of history that, far from recovering anything, illuminates the ephemeral status of the writing subject. As such, it also thematises temporality in ways that are most at odds with the nascent Stalinist mythology of time.  

Perron, Catherine
The structural Funds of the EU, a chance for regional emancipation in the Czech Republic?
Drawing on the literature about regional development on the one hand, post-communist transformation on the other hand and last but not least on europeanisation, this contribution aims to examine the impact of the implementation of the structural funds on politics, polity and policies in the Czech Republic.  Even though European conditionality played a major role in overcoming the veto of powerful actors for the implementation of decentralisation and the definition of truly regional policies, the europeanisation process that took place during the accession negotiations had no impact on the power differential between the centre and the periphery. The first programming period of the structural funds 2004-2006 was strongly marked by centralist tendencies, due to the gatekeeper position the governmental actors were able to gather for themselves. The question is whether the continuing process of European socialisation will not in the long run affect this power constellation. How will things evolve during the second period (2007-2013).  Different factors might have an influence : First, the growing awareness of the means at disposal, second the learning process that took place during the first period of programming, third the regionalisation of the programming and the existence of 7 regional development plans in the Czech Republic negotiated by the cohesion regions directly with the Commission. Will these factors be strong enough to induce an emancipation of the regions and regional political elites from the tutelage of the centre? Or will the centre (especially the political parties) be able to keep their seizure on regional politics and policies? The question is the more important, since Czech regionalisation process is marked by a paradox, namely that those who were the most critical and suspicious about decentralisation (the members of the civic democratic party ODS) were elected at the head of the newly established regions in 2000, and even re-elected in 2004. Those politicians who were the defenders of a very critical discourse against the regions and regionalisation and who were the most sceptical about the benefits of integration to the European Union are the ones who implement both and eventually benefit from it.

Petek, Polona
What Price Success? Irony and accent in contemporary Russian cinema
Film industry and scholarship have long upheld a peculiar map of world cinema, where Hollywood, albeit conceived in increasingly deterritorialised terms, stands for popular entertainment, whereas Europe remains synonymous with art cinema. When European films—even if they have an explicitly mass appeal in their home countries—travel abroad, they are promptly “repackaged” to target more limited, elite audiences of art cinemas. I argue that this situation is doubly complicated in film industries of the former Eastern bloc. After the collapse of communism, the production of national as well as global blockbusters is no longer an economic and/or ideological taboo. Yet, this is not the most likely fate of films produced in the former Eastern bloc. And even if they do penetrate the global mainstream market, reviewers often describe them as second-rate imitations of “Hollywood” formulas. Recent Russian productions challenge these assumptions. Films such as Nochnoy dozor (Bekmambetov, 2004) and Okhota na Piranyu (Kavun, 2006) have entered, and conquered, the global film arena on their own, culturally accented and distinctly ironic terms. I discuss the multiple dimensions of this accent and irony by combining textual analysis with an examination of the films’ (national) production, (transnational) distribution, and local and global exhibition and reception. I argue that these films claim a space on the global map of mainstream cinema by embracing the logic of capitalist market; at the same time, however, they critique this model through a tongue-in-cheek appropriation of popular genres, which is not necessarily legible to audiences worldwide.

Pietiläinen, Jukka
Framing of parliamentary elections in Russian newspapers
Elections is a topic with highlights the political role of the media. Political role of the media is important especially for newspapers which have traditionally been formed as part of political power battle. Recently increasing non-partisanship of the media and increasing role of campaign machinery have reduced the role of media in electoral campaign everywhere. Russian legislation bans electoral agitation in media outside paid advertisement and therefore significantly reduces the possibilities of the media to report on elections and to compare parties, candidates and their programmes. The paper pays attention to reporting of elections under Russian parliamentary elections of 1999, 2003 and 2007 in three national newspapers and local elections in Karelia in 1998, 2002 and 2006 in local newspapers.

Piirimae, Kaarel
The Latvian Central Council: a Forgotten Episode in the Second World War
In November 1944 democratic politicians grouped around the self-styled Latvian Central Council planned to emulate the Warsaw Uprising and stage an insurrection on the Courland peninsula which would confront both the German and Soviet Armies. The paper explores this little-studied episode, which contemporary democratic Latvia wishes to rediscover.

Polunov, Alexander
An Image of the Northern Bear: Russian Conservatives and British Journalists (late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries)
The paper is devoted to a fascinating, but virtually ignored by historians topic. I am going to elucidate the activities of English journalists in the Late Imperial Russia, and their perception of the country, of the Tsarist regime, and of its leaders (Alexander III, Nicholas II, Constantine Pobedonostsev and other Tsarist ministers). The most interesting figure here is W.T. Stead who was well acquainted with many Russian statesmen and public leaders. Of a special interest are his relationship with Pobedonostsev which had an ambiguous ("friend-foe") character. As an English Non-Conformist, Stead criticized sharply Pobedonostsev's policy of the persecution of Jews, Baltic Protestant, and especially of Evangelical sectarians. At the same time, Stead tried sincerely to present to an English reader an objective picture of a Russian life. Thus, he organized a publication of Pobedonostsev’s main work “Moskovskii sbornik” in England.  The Russian statesman, by his side, paid a close attention to the English political and cultural life and left many interesting notes on this matter in his correspondence with other Russian conservatives.  Stead's notes on Russian life, Russian Tsars, Pobedonostsev and the religious policy of the autocracy may be compared with those of other English authors, E.J. Dillon ("Contemporary Review"), Charles Lowe ("Times"), Robert Latimer, and others. Of a special interests are English reviews on Pobedonostsev's "Moskovskii sbornik" appeared in  "Times", "Manchester Guardian", "Daily Graphics", "Athaeneum", "Review of Reviews", "Fortnightly Review", and others. These materials permit us to understand what image of Russia emerged at that time in England and how it influenced the relations between two countries.

Porter, Robert
"Comedy Equals Tragedy plus Time": Two Aspects of Solzhenitsyn's Oeuvre
In commenting on Solzhenitsyn's work as he reaches the age of 90 it has been useful to look back at some previous material that has celebrated his earlier key birthdays. It is natural that the bulk of such material should be laudatory. However, some of the comments may possibly be embarrassing. For example, in a piece by Liudmila Saraskina "Kod Solzhneitsyna" we read: "Having concluded in exile his great literary work, Solzhenitsyn has returned to Russia  [...] in order to educate and nurture (vospitat', vyrastit') his reader, his critic, his researcher." Is there an echo here of the statutes of the Soviet Writers' Union? We can discern a lot else in the vast commentaries on Solzhenitsyn. The two aspects examined in this contribution are: 1) his preoccupation with time and history and, much more contentiously, 2) the way in which he has, with the passage of time and like all idols, fallen victim to satire. The conclusion is that the author is more than capable of taking care of himself and, indeed, is not himself immune from the parodic impulse.

Read, Rosie
New perspectives on care , social security and the post-socialist ‘withdrawing state’
Socialist states were characterized by universal, comprehensive and centralized systems of social security, particularly in the forms of guaranteed employment and pensions, education, housing and free health care. As is well known, these extensive forms of provision were subject to significant reform following the end of the socialist era, often regarded within neoliberal market reform ideology as too paternalistic, inefficient and stifling of individual autonomy.  Whether viewed as a positive or negative phenomenon, policy makers and some social scientists alike have often conceived of these transformations in terms of the ‘withdrawal’ or ‘retrenchment’ of the socialist state commitment to care and provide for its citizens. This paper seeks to question and complicate this view, arguing that whilst economic restructuring and the reform of welfare have clearly produced varying degrees of hardship and insecurity in different parts the region, the notion of the withdrawing state is a problematic one in an analytical sense. This notion, it will be argued, promotes a notion of the state as a singular entity with clearly defined boundaries, and makes it difficult to grasp the complex and contradictory nature of reforms in former socialist countries, particularly the ways in which a range of state bodies, actors, and institutions, far from being in retreat, continue to shape social life in the region, albeit in altered form. Related to this, the state withdrawal model provides little analytical purchase on the dynamic post-1989 reconfigurations of public and private spaces, institutions, moralities, and subjectivities. The paper will suggest alternative ways of viewing transformations of welfare and care in the region, drawing on anthropological theories of social security and feminist perspectives on care as discourse and practice.

Rechel, Bernd
Minority Protection in Bulgaria: the Failure of Implementation
This paper explores how key policy changes in the area of minority rights in post-communist Bulgaria have often been confined to the level of legislation or policy formulation, without being followed by implementation.  Many policy changes took on the character of window-dressing, mainly designed to meet the expectations of Western intergovernmental organizations.  In the ensuing “virtual reality” it has often been unclear which legislative or policy changes have taken actual effect.  The paper identifies a number of domestic reasons for the gulf between formal measures for the protection of minorities and their actual implementation.  Key factors were the lack of political will and the lack of public awareness and support.  Additional obstacles to the translation of formal policy changes into practice include the lack of institutional capacity, low levels of budgetary funding, and lacking minority involvement in the design and implementation of policies.  In order to be effective and sustainable, future political initiatives will need to address these challenges and accompany institutional changes with awareness-raising measures.

Reid, Robert
An Axiological Approach to Pushkin’s Narratives
This paper adapts Alexius Meinong’s theory of value to create a model for analysing aspects of characterisation in literary texts. Pushkin’s compact and varied narratives provide a congenial testing ground for this approach. According to Meinong we may distinguish an intrinsic value (or good) by two necessary effects: joy at its presence (Seinsfreude) and sadness at its absence (Nichtseinsleid). I argue that in a fictional context this proof is frequently furnished by plot. Thus in The Bronze Horseman Evgenii’s ‘good’ – married life with Parasha – is shown as both bringing joy in the contemplation of its possibility and sadness when that possibility is definitively removed by the events of the plot.  By contrast, Peter’s joy in the contemplation and realization of his city is nowhere made explicit, nor is it demonstrated that the non-realization of his dream would have brought him sadness. Thus the bearer of value in the plot is Evgenii and it is left to the narrator to bestow value on the city by a lyric intervention. The paper will also examine the interpersonal implications of Meinong’s theory, in particular Schadenfreude (‘joy at another’s sadness’) exemplified, for instance, by Mozart and Salieri and The Shot: a theme which was particularly prominent in romantic narratives.

Reynolds, Susan
Goethe and his `Grandson’: František Ladislav Čelakovský and the Czech National Revival
František Ladislav Čelakovský (born 1799, Strakonice - Prague 1852) collected not only Czech, but Slav folksong and folklore generally: Slovanské národní písně (Slavonic Folk Songs, 1822-27), Mudrosloví národu slovanského ve příslovích (Wisdom of the Slav People in Proverbs).  He contributed  to the  Czech National Revival not only as a poet and collector but through his correspondence and contacts with  writers and scholars throughoutthe wider European literary world, including Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, Sir John Bowring, who included translations of his poems in his  Cheskian Anthology: being a History of the Poetical Literature of Bohemia with translated Specimens  (1832), the first collection of Czech verse in English. Inspired by Herder’s theories of the development of  folk poetry and song as a mirror of the nation’s character, he shared Goethe’s enthusiasm for this genre and like him composed verses imitating Czech and Russian folk-song, emulating him to such a degree that he earned the soubriquet `Goethes Enkel’. The author examines the correspondence between the two, its relationship to the growth of Goethe’s interest in Czech language and literature, and his ambivalent response to the copies of his writings which  Čelakovský sent him.

Richter, Nicole
The role of prosody for argumentation in (quasi)spontaneous dialogues in Russian: an experimental study
In conversations, we do not only communicate factual information but also transfer attitudes and emotions as well. We may do so by using lexical material and/or paralinguistic devices such as nonverbal or vocal cues. To test how certain attitudinal information is transferred in Russian, two types of experiments (laboratory experiments vs. field experiments) were carried out. In the field experiment, the participants conducted quasi-spontaneous conversations on given topics that contained utterances with agreements or disagreements. In the laboratory experiment, twelve untrained native speakers of Russian read dialogues containing evaluative situations. In utterances without evaluative lexemes the attitudinal meaning had to be conveyed via prosody only. For these utterances, we give acoustic analyses measuring phonetic and prosodic characteristics, such as pitch intervals, pitch level, pitch movement as well as speech tempo, segment and syllable duration. Additionally, we link phonetic characteristics to rhetoric strategies.

The experimental results show how the measured pitch parameters (movement, intervals and level) differ in the two evaluative versions. Speech tempo, segment duration and duration of the accented syllables also have an influence on the targeted attitudinal version. Agreeing or disagreeing with someone is one way of stating one’s opinion and possibly convincing a person of one’s views. In Russian, like in other intonation languages, certain pitch characteristics and temporal features interact with lexical items and play an important role in the success of a conversation with attitudinal content.

Richters, Katja
The political culture of the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church
Since the demise of the USSR, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has increasingly made its presence felt in Russia’s political life. Alexei II, the Moscow Patriarch, successfully prevented Pope John Paul II from visiting the country and his Church vigorously campaigned for legal restrictions on foreign missionaries, which came into force in October 1997. My talk focuses on why the concept of political culture can be applied to the ROC. It starts with a definition of the concept, which draws on Archie Brown’s research, excludes behaviour and limits it to the values and standards that are relevant to how an organisation conducts its political affairs. In the next section, I explain why it is possible to apply a political culture approach to the ROC. For this, I will draw on the work of other scholars in the field, including Alexander Verkhovsky and Andrew Evans, who have highlighted the Moscow Patriarchate’s importance in Russian domestic and foreign policies. This is followed by three examples that illustrate the Church’s way of managing its relations with the state. I demonstrate that the ROC is using (and manipulating) numbers to give the impression that it has a large following and that it politicises its problems to make them relevant to the Kremlin. In the conclusion, I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of analysing the Moscow Patriarchate from a political culture perspective. I see this approach as a test for reform within the Church and as a means of assessing how consistent its strategies have been with its aims.

Riedel, Manuela
The impact of the EU’s double standards on minority protection systems in CEEC and the Western Balkans
This paper combines legal aspects of minority protection and integration with observations and “lessons learned” from the accession of post-communist countries to the EU in 2004 and 2007. First, an overview about legal aspects of European minority protection will be given, summing up the impact of the lack of an inherent EU system on EU politics, member states and applicants. The paper than asks in a more general, cross-country perspective whether the EU’s practice of demanding accession countries to improve the life of minorities in various ways without presenting clear guidelines, benchmarks and monitoring mechanisms has worked out for the latest enlargement rounds. The aim of the EU’s “minority protection policy” will be central in this regard. Further, it is questioned if minority integration remained an issue after EU accession. Finally, possible differences and commonalities in the EU’s approach and countries’ responses between the CEEC and next applicants, namely from the Western Balkans, will play a role. In this regard, the paper will search for new developments in the legal sphere and in the political debate.

From a theoretical point of view, the paper will be based on conditionality as a central element of Brussels’ strategy towards applicants. The paper will show that for various legal and political reasons the concept might not be enough. Impacts are to be awaited not only for minorities in the new member states but also for the strategies and tactics of applicants.

Rindzeviciute, Egle
Ambivalent Technocracy: Scientific-technical revolution and Soviet Lithuanian cultural intellectuals
The paper analyses how Soviet Lithuanian cultural intellectuals debated technocracy. Technocracy is defined as the governance of experts, however historically the term accumulated different meanings and attracted different valuations in the Soviet Union. As a result of Stalin’s Industrial Party trial, technocracy was attributed with strong negative connotations. However, since the late 1950s and modern scientific-technical revolution, technocracy was somewhat rehabilitated and powerfully entered Soviet policy and cultural discourses. Seen as an inevitable component of “modern condition” it was perceived as deeply ambivalent. Grounded in a study of how Soviet Lithuanian intellectuals framed technocracy in the pages of the official monthly of LSSR Ministry of Culture, 1965-1989, I will show how the concept mobilised the tensions of Cold War, technology transfer, cybernetic governance, all of which influenced the Soviet mentality of governing culture. In Lithuanian discourses, debates about technocracy also involved specific nationalist dimensions which will be addressed. Finally, the paper suggests seeing the debates about technocracy as a practice which linked post-industrial communist and capitalist states.

Rodgers, Peter
Corruption in the post-Soviet workplace: the experiences of recent graduates in post-Soviet Ukraine
While Ukraine was bestowed market economy status by the European Union in 2005 its labour market still endures many structural problems.  By exploring the experiences of young graduate employees this article highlights the difficultly in obtaining work within Ukraine’s labour market and the problems they face once they have secured employment.  Rather than seeing the development of a transparent labour market the collapse of the command economy has seen a relatively closed system develop.  The article demonstrates how many jobs are secured through the use of connections or the demanding, and payment, of bribes.  The situation does not improve once graduates obtain long-term employment.  Interviewees discuss the lack of job security, the informal payment of wages and the lack of legal protection from corrupt employer practices.  The article has broader resonance outside of the Ukrainian case study as the discussion of workplace corruption highlights how the issue is concerned with much more than simply cash based transactions and how those that endure it are likely to turn to the informal economy for employment.

Round, John
Everyday Tactics and Spaces of Power: the role of informal economies in contemporary Ukraine
Based on 700 household surveys and 75 in-depth interviews, conducted in three Ukrainian cities, the paper argues that individuals/households have developed a wide range of tactics in response to the economic marginalisation the country has endured since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Firstly, the paper details the importance of informal economies in contemporary Ukraine while highlighting that many such practices are operated out of necessity due to low wage and pension rates and high levels of corruption.  This challenges state produced statistics on the scale of economic marginalisation currently experienced in the country.  By exploring a variety of these tactics the paper then examines how unequal power relations shape the spaces in which these practices operate in and how they can be simultaneously sites of exploitation and resistance to economic marginalisation.  The paper concludes pessimistically by suggesting that the way in which these economic spaces are shaped precludes the development of state policies which might benefit the economically marginalised.

Ryazanova-Clarke, Lara
The Counter-discourse of “The Melted Cheese”
The paper deals the discursive construction of an oppositional model of the post-soviet Russian identity in the radio programme Plavlennyi syrok (The Melted Cheese) on the Ekho of Moscow.  In Putin’s Russia, there has been a limited space for competing identity discourses while Vladimir Shenderovich’ s programme  is one of few sections of the media that remains loyal to the fourth estate principles established at the dawn of the post-Soviet era. The paper will examine the linguistic tools used in the programme’s counter-discourse and their correlation with the  normativity issue and the question of the heretic discourse (Pierre Bourdieu).