Samioti, Panagiota
Learning of Agent and Reversible State in Adjectival Participles by Slavic L2 Learners of Greek
The goal of this paper is to explore how the properties of agent and reversible state are realized in Greek adjectival passive participles by Slavic L2 learners of Greek. Differences found between native speakers and learners are explained within the FTFA model. Anagnostopoulou (2003), following Kratzer’s proposal (2000) about the existence of target and resultant state participles, proposes that in Greek these participles do exist with certain distributional differences: the resultant state participles (1) licence by-phrases, thus they involve an implication of event and agentivity (1a), but they do not licence the adverbial akomi, thus they denote irreversible state (1b), contrary to what holds for target state participles (2), which denote reversible state (2a) but lack agentivity (2b):

1.       a. To potiri ine gemismeno apo to Gianni  -  The glass is filled by Gianni.
b.*To potiri ine akomi gemismeno  -   The glass is still filled.

2.       a. To nero ine akomi pagomeno  -  The water is still frozen.
b.*To nero ine pagomeno apo to Gianni  -  The water is frozen by Gianni.

My research, having as a starting point the classification that has been proposed so far, and after systematically applying the former diagnostics, namely by-phrase and adverb akomi, to a corpus of Greek participles, revealed the existence of five classes of adjectival passive participles. The realisation of the aforementioned properties in these five classes of participles is tested through questionnaires given both to native speakers and Slavic L2 learners of Greek.

Seehaber, Ruth
The construction of the “Polish school”.. Self-perception and foreign perception of Polish contemporary music between 1956-1976
The development of Polish avant-garde music after 1956 has often been described by the term “Polish School”, introduced by West German music critics and later employed by both Polish writers and non-Polish writers. At that time, the period of “political thaw” enabled the opening of Poland to the West and the foundation of the international festival of contemporary music, “Warsaw autumn”. There, for the first time after the Second World War, Polish composers came in contact with the West European avant-garde and vice versa Western musicians became acquainted with Polish works. On the one hand the term “Polish school” reflects the Polish composers’ own way of dealing Western techniques. On the other hand it shows the astonishment of the Western critical community at the great number and quality of the Polish composers they had not noticed before. But until today the expression has been strongly criticized as a construct, which is not consistent with reality and ignores the wide spectrum of Polish contemporary music. This paper seeks to explain the “Polish school” as a part of a higher idea or “master narrative” of history, which is also shaped by its cultural, social and political backround. Analysing Polish and West German music literature from 1956 to 1976 the paper will examine how this image of Polish music has arisen, who supported it and which interests might be connected with it.

Shaw, Denis
Nature and Society: Debates among Soviet Geographers in the late Stalin period
The paper considers the theoretical debates which characterised Soviet geography in the period between the end of the Second World War and Stalin’s death in 1953. It is noted that the roots of these debates can be traced back to the early 1930s but that they assumed new forms in the post-war era. Protagonists in the debates related their disagreements to Marxist ideology, no doubt in the hope of securing backing from the party, but underlying those disagreements were some genuine scientific differences. It is also noted that the debates were related to various institutional, political and personal rivalries. The paper seeks to consider some of the broader implications of the differing perspectives on the relationship between nature and society among academics in this period.

Shelton, Joanne
How Putin became President of the USA and other stories
This paper will examine the influence that Russian politics continues to have over Russian culture, namely literature. Since the advent of the Soviet Union, literature was employed both as a tool for propaganda and as a means for praising the regime. In theory, the collapse of the USSR in 1991 signalled the end of censorship and the manipulation of culture by the Soviet leadership. This paper will draw on articles that have recently appeared in the Russian press which discuss the ‘Putin phenomenon’ i.e. the use of the public’s interest in the Russian president to sell literary works. This paper will argue that Putin has encouraged such attention and is promoting his own ‘cult of personality’ not dissimilar to that of Joseph Stalin’s in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Through the use of cultural examples, this paper will highlight the parallels between the public’s perceptions of Putin and the perception of Stalin during his time in power. This paper will conclude that in spite of apparent freedoms, the use of literature by politicians remains, and that Putin’s approach to influencing his electorate is not unlike those methods employed during the Soviet era.

Shkaratan, Ovsey
Social Order and Social Stratification of Contemporary Russia: The New Form of Soviet Etacratism
The collapse of the communist system in Russia has resulted in a new evolution stage of Eurasian particular civilization, which is essentially different from European (Atlantic) model in institutional structure and the system of values. Analysis of post-Soviet Russia development proves the soundness of the path dependency theory. The essence of the path dependency theory is that preconditions of successful transition and development differ between countries and periods of time – which emphasises the role of history on the one hand and culture on the other. Therefore, Russia’s case has demonstrated that there exists no general theory of transition (or transformation), for there is no universal post-communism. It is very important to analyze possible tendencies of the formation of information-based economy along with the preservation of archaic social and political “cover”. Such tendencies are the form of adoption of an alternative set of values and principles of existence with respect to the developing global economy and democratic world community. Countries which develop innovation-based economies with preserving etacratic social institutions inevitably challenge optimistic perspectives of information epoch and humanity. The central question, which we should attempt to answer in the coming discussions, is following: is there any way out from this situation in Russia, are there any social forces capable of changing this situation and bringing Russia to the path leading to information-based market economy and democracy?

Sidorina, Tatiana
The Structure of Russian Society and Challenges for Social Policy
In the USSR the social policy corresponded fully to the ideology of the state and its planned economy. This social policy secured the interests of the nomenclature and provided a minimal level of consumption for the rest of the population. Contemporary Russian society has gone through serious structural transformations over the last two decades. There appeared new strata and phenomena: “the new rich”, “the new poor”, “new financial and political elite”, social exclusion etc. Formally the objects of social policy remained the same. However if formerly the first place among objects of social policy was taken by citizens (households), who could not provide for themselves an adequate level of income (disabled people, invalids, pensioners, families with many children, young people and so on), now this list has been considerably extended. . The process of total marginalization of the population of Russia in 1980-1990-ies resulted in extreme poverty of able-bodied citizens. Alongside with this there appeared in Russia new strata which enter the higher income groups. The representatives of these strata have their own requirements for the new social policy: social stability, opportunity to buy elite housing, modernization of medical care system and system of education, provision of future pensions, creation of reliable savings system. All this is a challenge for the Russian social policy and the Russian state, because it inherited a society which was very complicated in its structure and this situation is becoming more complicated as the social problems of the population have remained unsolved for decades in the absence of a well-founded concept taking into account the specific features of Russia.       

Sikk, Allan & Holmgaard Andersen, Rune
Green politics in a changing country: Estonia 1987-2007
The paper analyses the development of Green politics in Estonia from the Phosphorite War of late 1980s, through the virtual disappearance of ecological dimension from national politics for more than a decade, to the appearance of a new Green Party in 2006. We put the ebb and flow of ecological politics in Estonia into the context of wider social and political changes. Specifically, we argue that both the pre-independence Green movement and the new party may have some similarities to ecological movement in Western Europe, but their placement on political spectrum differs from most European Green parties. We contend that this is due to specific political circumstances during the Phosphorite War, and more recently due to the different context for the rise of post-materialist values.

Smirnova, Maria
Translations of D.H. Lawrence’s novels into Russian: cultural realia
In the report I consider a problem of translating cultural realia in D.H. Lawrence’s novels into Russian. As far as the world of Lawrence’s writings is bound in the reality of Middle England it’s full of every kind of local realia, such as language, the environment, etc. The first translations of Lawrence into Russian date back to the early 1920s. Such a long period of translations provides a variety of translating approaches. In the paper I give a set of representative examples of translations and provide comparative analysis of translations and source texts. The paper aims to represent Russian perception of D.H. Lawrence’s novels via specific aspect of cultural realia.

Smith, Alexandra
Against the Grain: the Poetics of Mourning and Sophia Parnok’s poetry of the 1920s
The paper will examine Sophia Parnok’s highly critical poetic responses to the Soviet project of modernisation in the 1920s. It will be suggested that after the death of Adelaida Gertsyk and Sergei Esenin in 1925 Parnok became more estranged from the everyday life in Russia marked by anti-Semitic trends and hostile attitudes towards  modernist poets.  Although Parnok is known as a  highly talented lesbian poet, the paper will argue that Parnok’s philosophical  poetry of the 1920s-early 1930s awaits its proper evaluation since it highlights Parnok’s growing concern regards the destruction of humanist values and private life in Russia. Parnok’s poetry of this period is not only extremely well crafted but it is imbued with numerous metaphysical ideas that resonate well with the poetry of Pushkin, Derzhavin and Khodasevich. In her quest for creating a new ethical mode of writing Parnok developed a complex symbolic language that incorporates numerous allusions to the works of Pushkin, Tiutchev, Nekrasov, Dostoevsky and Khodasevich. Parnok’s vision of poet as prophet-philosopher and healer in Soviet times is unique. Parnok’s 1920s poetry is full of elegiac overtones that commemorate the deceased friends and émigré authors. As will be argued in the paper, Parnok’s views on subjectivity, death and creative evolution are shaped by the European and Russian philosophical trends of the modernist period as well as by the theosophical ideas popular in Russia during the Silver Age period.

Smyslov, Dmitry
Dynamics and Reproduction of Russian Residential Human Capital in the Context of Social Group and Settlement Differentiation
The paper is devoted to analysis of the dynamics and reproduction of Russian Residential Human Capital in the context of social group and settlement differentiation. Under conditions when many key indicators of living standards show declining dynamics in the post-Soviet Russian history, it is required to ascertain what happens to the dynamics of human capital within social groups. The analysis of human capital as regards various settlement types is becoming specially important since the areas of modern Russia develop incoherently. A study of the human capital of various generations is required due to the changed model of social and economic development which asserted great influence on the status and reproduction of the Russian residential human capital of various generations. We attempt to measure the human capital of social groups, not separate individuals.  It suggests a method of constructing a Human Capital Indicator (HCI) for social groups. An analysis of dynamics of Russian residential human capital broken down by settlement and generation types was carried out with the help of the constructed indicator based on the data obtained from representative surveys held between Russian population in 1994, 2002 and 2006. In the paper the main results of the research are represented.

Soboleva, Olga
‘Homo scribens’ in Zamyatin’s novel “We”
The dystopian features of Zamyatin’s novel We have been widely discussed in literary scholarship. In ideological terms We is commonly regarded as a grim vision of civilization, constructed to a set of predetermined social ideals, and a restatement of Dostoyevsky's discussion with the Grand Inquisitor. Little attention, however, has been paid to the structural analysis of Zamyatin’s writing, which undoubtedly deserves special consideration. This paper will argue that in his novel We, Zamyatin re-invents science fiction as a self-referential experimental genre, and in this sense represents a unique model of utopian fiction. Drawing on Zamyatin’s literary techniques, it will be shown that the text is informed by a commemorative function, referring to the cultural atmosphere of post-revolutionary Russia, namely to Maiakovskii and the so-called literature of ‘social order' that was gaining strength in the political climate of the 20s. This meta-narrative line of the text defines the internal vector of the discourse and becomes one of the mains constituents of the socio-semantic space constructed by the author.

Sokolovic-Perovic, Mirjana
Vowel Duration as a Function of Obstruent Voicing in Serbian
In this paper I will present work-in-progress from my PhD thesis, which investigates the acoustics and perception of the voicing distinction in obstruents in Serbian. Previous research has shown that for word-final and syllable-final position the duration of vowels preceding voiced obstruents is greater than the duration of vowels preceding voiceless obstruents. This durational difference is much larger in English than in other languages. The voicing effect has also been documented for French, Dutch, Russian, and Spanish. There are languages, however, that seem not to exhibit this phenomenon: Saudi Arabian Arabic, and Czech and Polish from the Slavonic family. This topic has not been researched in Serbian, and the position of Serbian in this spectrum remains to be demonstrated. The present paper discusses the following questions: Does this durational difference exist in Serbian? If it does, what is its extent? How does it compare with other languages, especially other Slavonic languages? I will report on the findings from acoustic analysis of this phenomenon in Serbian, based on a sample of controlled speech of twelve subjects. Two word positions (medial and final) were examined, in two experimental conditions: in isolation and in a sentence frame. All three classes of Serbian obstruents (stops, fricatives and affricates) were included in the sample.

Sonevytsky, Maria
On Wildness and Civilization: Examining Symbols of “Ukrainianness” in Ruslana’s ‘Wild Dances’
Since the Orange Revolution overturned the corrupt presidential elections of 2004, the link between music and politics in Ukraine has taken center stage in national and local debates about cultural policy. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more apparent than in the career trajectory of the Ukrainian pop star Ruslana, whose victory in the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest with “Wild Dances” catapulted her to the tops of the European pop charts, and simultaneously sparked her political career: subsequently, she was elected as a representative to the Ukrainian parliament. This paper examines how discourses of “wildness” have circulated in the Ukrainian cultural arena since 2004. Framing the project in terms of the post-colonial critique of otherness, I examine how Ruslana’s depiction of the Hutsul ethnic group of the Carpathian mountains has been received by that population. Following recent post-colonial moves toward breaking open the binary of “colonizer” and “colonized”, I attempt to reveal a dynamic process of post-colonial negotiation that plays out in a local context, in which a caricatured ethnic population – the Ukrainian subaltern – resists the politics of “auto-exoticism” in favor of a legitimizing discourse of “civilization.”  I emphasize the conflict between what I call “civilizing discourses” and “discourses of wildness,” and use these poles to explore the tensions that have typified Ukraine’s tortured political path since the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Stańczyk, Ewa
Double-Voiced Literatures: Mapping Polish Postcolonialism
The recent discussion on the applicability of postcolonial theory to Slavonic/Polish studies has resulted in numerous attempts to acquaint the methodological apparatus of Polish literary criticism with the postcolonial exotic, as Graham Huggan describes it (2001: vii). Dariusz Skórczewski and Aleksander Fiut have both pointed out the duality of Polish literary discourse and collated it with the country’s ambiguous history. The Polish colonization of western Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus has been juxtaposed with the partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century, German and Soviet occupation during the Second World War and the subsequent formation of the Eastern Bloc (see Skórczewski 2006: 111; Fiut 2006: 33-39). This paper examines the twofold character of Polish literary discourse and argues that the historical experience of colonization is preserved in the national literature. Drawing on the postcolonial concepts of space, displacement and identity, it analyses twentieth-century and contemporary texts by Czesław Miłosz, Andrzej Stasiuk and Tomasz Różycki. Focusing on the poetic representations of the Polish eastern borderlands, the paper deconstructs the mechanisms of colonial discourse and discloses its inherent Polonocentrism. Moreover, it tests the literary images of post-Soviet space and demonstrates postcolonial displacement of an individual. To summarize, my discussion of the dichotomy of Polish literature is a contribution to the ongoing debate on East European postcoloniality and an attempt to shed a new light on the problem of interactions between literature, history, identity and space.

Stanton, Rebecca
When the Kitsch Hits the Fan: 5’nizza and the Problematics of Post-Soviet Memory
If, in the Soviet Union, popular culture served both (in its official form) as a tool for promoting ideological conformity and (in its unofficial or “underground” forms) as a means of expressing and transmitting ideological non-conformity with the official culture, in the post-Soviet era it is a rich and unruly testing-ground for ways of reprocessing and rendering “usable” the Soviet past.  Popular music’s relative ephemerality and ubiquity make it especially responsive to the rapidly changing sensibilities and political memories of its audience.  However, today’s high-school students were born between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the storming of the Russian White House in 1993; their political memories and sources of nostalgia differ sharply from those of consumers ten years older, yet they listen to the same music (played, for the most part, by musicians who were alive under Gorbachev if not before). This paper examines the complex interactions among text, setting, performer, and audience exemplified by the work of the wildly popular Russian-Ukrainian duo 5'nizza (Piatnitsa), with particular attention to the ways in which they co-opt and remix  elements of the Soviet past (ranging from Vysotsky to Vinni-Pukh to the old national anthem), often combining them with equally evocative Western borrowings.  It analyses not only the authors’ intentions in appropriating and combining these motifs,  but also the multifarious and ambiguous ways in which these appropriations are taken up by an audience (both in the FSU and in emigration) who for the most part are too young to remember the USSR at all.

Stella, Francesca
“… they approached them and asked them, are you tema?”
Lesbian sexuality, visibility and everyday space in Ul’ianovsk, Russia
While in the literature queer lives, spaces and communities tend to be “located within the major centres of gay consumer culture” (Binnie 2004:4), sexual diversity in provincial areas has been largely ignored as a field of enquiry (Binnie 2004; Knopp and Brown 2000; Knopp 2003; Nartova 1999; Sarajeva, forthcoming). In an attempt to address this gap, my PhD research on lesbian identities and spaces in urban Russia has included two case studies, set in metropolitan Moscow and provincial Ul’ianovsk. While informed by the comparative perspective of the overall project, this paper focuses on Ul’ianovsk, a city of 700,000 with no gay commercial scene or established community venues. The paper focuses on lesbian and bisexual women’s negotiations of everyday space; it explores women’s strategies for navigating across different urban settings, as well as their involvement in informal lesbian/queer networks, thus highlighting the theme of individual and collective agency. The first part of the paper explores the dis/comforts involved in women’s management of their sexual identity across the home, the workplace and the street. Close ties with the local community and a high degree of social scrutiny meant that becoming visible as a lesbian was not always perceived as a viable, safe or desirable option. Although lesbians, as individuals and as a social group, remained largely invisible in the local community, women also lay claims to public space by appropriating specific places as ‘lesbian/queer’. The second part of the paper maps these places, and examines the strategies and practices through which such space is carved out and constructed as ‘lesbian/queer’.

Stephenson, Svetlana and Dmitry Gromov
The Rules of Engagement: Violent Street Subcultures in Russia: 1960s-2000s
The paper analyses the transformation of lyubera (a working class youth subculture from a Moscow suburb) over the course of the 1980s- 1990s. It compares the ideologies and practices of lyubera with those of violent street youth groups in today’s Moscow.  It shows how, like delinquent working class groups in the West, their orientations have been conservative and hypermasculine. It also identifies some important differences in young people’s value orientations between the Soviet and post-Soviet times. From being defenders of socialist morality against degenerate city youth they turned to consumerism and nationalism.

Swain, Geoffrey
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.

Tabachnikova, Olga
Images of Fatherhood in Contemporary Russian Culture
Whilst the themes of women and femininity in the former socialist region, and specifically in Russia, have enjoyed a lot of scholarly attention in the past few decades, research into contemporary Russian men and masculinities still remains very much in its infancy, despite a growing interest in this subject. A particular area of great importance is men’s roles within a family. Recent studies into the theme of Russian fatherhood from a cultural perspective have been marked by increasing voices of concern speaking of a general crisis of fatherhood in contemporary Russian society. This has been linked to the general crisis of masculinity of the post-Soviet period when many men have simply disappeared or degenerated into alcoholism as a result of economic hardship and social disintegration. However, some sociological findings based on recent ethnographic research conducted amongst men in two provincial areas of Russia have shown that Russian men are not the uninterested, distant and ineffective parents so frequently portrayed in the contemporary media and popular discourse. This paper seeks to explain and assess this discrepancy between the negative cultural paradigm and positive sociological findings. It will thus explore the cultural (predominantly cinematic) representations of fatherhood in contemporary Russia through a study of such films as Zviagintsev’s Vozvrashchenie, Sokurov’s Otets i syn and Khlebnikov’s and Popogrebsky’s Koktebel’, all of 2003,  Mashkov’s Papa of 2004 and various others dedicated to this theme. In order to do this, more chronologically distant literary and cinematic materials on Russian fatherhood will be drawn upon, in order to reveal continuity in cultural representations of fatherhood in Russia.

Takiguchi, Junya
Experiencing the Bolshevik Party Congress, 1921- 1924: A Political and Cultural Study of the Delegates and the ‘Architects’
Numerous monographs have focused on the Bolshevik Party Congress in the early 1920s as playing a decisive role for the history of the Party and the Soviet Union. These classic studies have examined “what was decided” and “what the Party leaders said” at the Congresses as well as the process of debating and agreeing on resolutions. New findings from the Party archive and several published memoirs of the Party Congress participants now enable us to examine the roles and functions of the Party Congress from a broader perspective. These sources suggest that being a delegate to the Party Congress represents more than being part of the audience or passively observing the political gathering.  My paper sheds light on the Party Congress in the early 1920s from political and cultural perspectives. In the first place, it focuses upon the delegates’ experiences at each successive Congress from the Tenth (1921) to the Thirteenth Congress (1924). It also highlights how those experiences were articulated (in memoirs), represented (in the media), and interacted with the Party propaganda with which the ‘architects’ sought to imbue the Congress. Exploring the delegates’ experiences also shows how the nature of the Party debate and the Congress itself underwent an essential shift in the early 1920s. The Party Congress - the supreme organ of the Bolshevik Party throughout its history - was remodelled from an arena of debate to become the showcase of the Party unity during the period.

Temcinas, Sergejus
Boleslav I the Cruel of Bohemia from a Kievan perspective: A saintly prototype for the killer of a saint?
Several texts devoted to prince Wenceslas, the first national saint of Bohemia,were written in Kievan Rus. One of these texts, his synaxarion Vita, included into the 2nd redaction of Synaxarion, has a highly untypical incipit, which follows strictly the incipit of the synaxarion Vita of Melchizedek, the righteous king of Salem and the main Christian archetype for Jesus the Christ. These two texts, both of Kievan provenance, have no textual relation, but their stories are clearly related by having the same theme of fratricide in focus. It is logical to assume that the resemblance of these incipits has the same function as the biblical clues, postulated by Riccardo Picchio. If so, the story of Melchizedek (biblical figure) can be viewed as prototypical for the story of St. Wenceslas (historical figure). The result of this comparison is quite unexpected: Melchizedek can be considered a saintly prototype for prince Boleslav I the Cruel, the killer of his brother Wenceslas. This interpretation of the Bohemian conflict is very likely for Kievan Rus, which maintained relations with Bohemia under Boleslav I. We can conclude, that there were two opposite (but not alternative) biblical interpretations of the same Bohemian story in Kievan Rus: the idealistic (ecclesiastical) one, reflected in the Kievan texts devoted to St. Roman (Boris) and St. David (Gleb), viewed St. Wenceslas as an imitator of Jesus the Christ, while the pragmatic (princely) one, implied by the Kievan synaxarion Vita of Wenceslas, considered his killer Boleslav a righteous figure, comparable to Melchizedek.

Tereshchenko, Antonina
Citizenship Identities of Ukrainian Youth and Their Participation in Democracy
Little is known about citizenship identities of the first post-Soviet generation of Ukrainian youth. This paper focuses on how young people living in the easternmost region of Ukraine conceptualize their national and political belonging as evidenced in their writing, group discussions and individual interviews. The sample located in five schools includes 16 to 17-year-old urban and rural male and female youth of different ethnic origin. I address the questions of state-based and culture-based elements in youth national identification narratives, as well as many instances of intra-national differentiation and place-specific identities. Additionally, the study considers how schooling and locality interact with the process of youth civic formation. Overall, I argue, there is little evidence that school curriculum helps students to resolve the national-regional identity dilemma. However, schools declare commitment to raising active citizens and in relation to this I explore what participation means to students.

Thelen, Tatjana
“Care for veterans”: Shifting provision, needs and meanings of enterprise-centred pensioners’ care in eastern Germany
The paper examines how after unification different actors around a large enterprise in eastern Germany incorporate socialist veteran care into the new economic and organizational framework of the trade union, the housing cooperative and the reformed state enterprise itself. The complexities of the different meanings of this care are linked to the rapid socio-economic changes in eastern Germany that have challenged both expectations of the future as well as personal identities. The analysis describes the complex shifts in the source of provision and its regulation, which go beyond simple state/non-state or formal/informal dichotomies. With unification social security practices have lost their previous material significance for former employees, but gained simultaneously in emotional value since they help to assure biographical continuity. These processes (re-)create familiarity and community amidst the profound economic restructuring after socialism.

Titov, Alexander
The Central Committee apparatus – continuity and change under Khrushchev
In the struggle for power which ensued after Stalin’s death among the Soviet leaders, Khrushchev used his position as the First Secretary of the CPSU to present himself as the champion of the party apparatus against his rivals. After his assumption of full power in the Soviet Union, Khrushchev continued to strengthen the role of the party organs in the governance of the Soviet Union, and above all its central organs. The paper looks at the structural changes in the apparatus of the Central Committee in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular it tries to answer questions of what was the structure of apparatus under Khrushchev; how was it different from Stalin’s time; what were the main functions of various departments of the Central Committee; and whether there were any clear trends in the re-organisation of the apparatus while Khrushchev was in power. Finally, the paper looks at Khrushchev’s legacy in the role of the Central Committee apparatus within the power structure of the Soviet Union.

Tremlett, Annabel
Bringing hybridity to heterogeneity: studying ‘difference’ between Roma and non-Roma children
This paper explores and debates the methods used for research within Romani studies, using experience from the 15 months of ethnographic research I carried out in Hungary. A contradiction I faced in my research is the dilemma of rejecting ‘Roma’ as a singular, homogenous people, whilst still keeping some kind of an ‘object’ for study. This paper explores the possibility of using an anti-essentialist stance to ethnography in order to challenge this contradiction. Anti-essentialist theory, when used to inform practical research methods such as ethnography, can provide a means to reflect on the traps of ethnocentrism.  In this paper I demonstrate some results of research using an anti-essentialist approach, in which I asked children from Roma and non-Roma backgrounds to take photographs of their everyday lives using disposable cameras (2005). Comparing the results between Roma and non-Roma children, and contrasting the results to existing literature on Roma identity leads to an unsettling of the assumption that ‘difference from non-Roma’ is necessarily a fundamental aspect of Roma identity.

Turbine, Vikki
Women’s Experiences of Claiming Rights in Contemporary Russia: Empowering or Limiting Agency?
International campaigns aimed at improving women’s lives often focus on the empowerment potential of educating and informing women about their legal rights (Kabeer, 1999; Sharp 2003). However, the ways in which rights and legal approaches to claiming rights are understood is contingent on cultural and socio-economic factors particular to location (Merry & Stern, 2005). Given the fundamental redefinitions of state and society taking place over the post-Soviet period, it is argued that an examination of women’s understandings and experiences of legal approaches to claiming rights in contemporary Russia highlights the multiple ways in which the meanings and provisions of ‘rights’ are negotiated in everyday life. The data presented in this paper was generated through in-depth interviews with women living in the provincial Russian city of Ul’ianovsk in 2005 conducted for a doctoral thesis exploring women’s perceptions of human rights and rights-based approaches in everyday life. Respondents’ negatively perceived legal approaches due to the high financial and time costs involved. Yet, legal rights claims were often cited as a potential means to resolve problems. This suggested that respondents were attempting to exercise their rights in the contemporary period. However, experience of making a legal rights claim demonstrated that respondents often had more to lose than to gain from attempting to exercise their legal rights. This raises questions over the ability of legal rights claims to empower women in the contemporary Russian context where free legal aid is not widely available, and cultural norms constrain the rights that women can legitimately claim.