Viljanen, Elina
“Muzyka Kazakhstana” – Soviet Nation-Building in Music 
O Narodnoj Muzyke, collection of articles written by the famous Soviet musicologist Boris Asaf’ev (1884-1949) was published in Leningrad in 1987. The introductory chapter dealt with Asaf’ev as an ethnomusicologist. Asaf’ev, once a romantic symbolist, author of a “proto-semiotic” theory of intonation and keen enthusiast of Western modern music was actually a logical choice for the post of an ideological leader in the field of Soviet music. The reputation of Asaf’ev’s image as a ‘great’ Soviet musicologist parallel to Vladimir Stasov continued long time after Asaf’ev’s death. Asaf’ev’s concepts on music still constitute an integral part of Russian musical thinking. My paper focuses on the lasting legacy of Asaf’ev’s philosophical writings on music and the development of Soviet musical aesthetics. By placing O Narodnoj Muzyke in context I will give some answers to the questions: Who was Asaf’ev, and what was he after? What do his writings have to offer us besides the expression of official Soviet nationalism? How were his texts used in the Soviet Union and how is he perceived in current Russian musicology?   Asaf’ev is a good example for viewing the former Soviet intellectual culture, the overlaps between the official and the unofficial. In addition his philosophy on music is multi-faceted. However, it is understandable that his close Eurasian-minded friend Pjotr Suvchinskij wrote to pianist Maria Yudina in 1961: “Thank God! Supposedly the influence of Asaf’ev came to an end.”

Vladimirova, Vesela
Analysis of the Communicative Discourse of Bulgarian Native Speakers in Czech Linguistic Surroundings
How do people from one ethnicity communicate with each other in the conditions of foreign linguistic environment? And what kind of influences does the foreign linguistic environment have on the communicative discourse of bilinguals? These are the questions that the paper will discuss and will try to give answers to. It is all known that the speech of bilinguals is distinguished by plenty of interferences on all language levels. However some extralinguistic factors influence the speech act of bilinguals who have competence in two language systems – their mother tongue (acquired as first, L1) and foreign language (acquired as second, L2). Their communication is contextually connected with the speech situation and the communicative spheres on one hand and with some psychological factors on the other hand. All these factors together influence their speech and cause the emergence of a new communicative code, distinguished by code-switching and code-mixing. Our conclusions are based on a material delivered from a sociolingustic research of Bulgarian native speakers, members of the Bulgarian immigrant community, settled permanently or temporarily in the Czech Republic.

von Zitzewitz, Josephine
Poetry of the 1970s “Religious Renaissance”: The Group “37”
The subject of my paper is the interplay between religious, specifically Orthodox Christian, ideas and the poetry of a group of unofficial 1970s Leningrad poets who frequented the “Religious and Philosophical Seminar” (1974-1980) organised by Tatiana Goricheva and the poet Viktor Krivulin. This seminar attracted names such as Krivulin, Sergei Stratanovskii, Elena Shvarts, Oleg Okhapkin and had its own written organ in the form of the Samizdat journal “37” (21 issues between 1976-1981), a publication that united literary texts, essays on religious and philosophical topics and materials from the seminar’s sessions.  A heightened interest in religious questions was characteristic of large parts of the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1970s and found its way into many literary works, e.g. “Village Prose”. The uniqueness of the “37” group consists in the quasi-identification of religion, culture, and creativity, which was partly a consequence of an intense engagement with Silver Age literature and culture and found direct expression in the group member’s poetry. This approach to religion sets the group off against nationalist currents for which Orthodoxy was primarily an element of the Russian national heritage, or new converts focusing exclusively on the study of religion.  My paper analyses the occurrence of religious motives in the work of Viktor Krivulin and other member of the group and traces the origin and significance of religious-philosophical ideas in 1970s unofficial urban culture on the example of materials published in the journal “37”.

Waldstein, Maxim
The Culture of drugoe kino: Understanding the Contemporary Russian Independent Film Scene
This paper examines the emergence and development of the contemporary Russian independent cultural scene, with the emphasis on the culture of Other Films (drugoe kino, kino ne dlya vsekh), or the independent film production, exhibition and consumption.  I focus on studying two sites of the independent film-oriented “taste culture,” the digital cinema The World of Art and the ArtKino club in Moscow, by means of in-depth interviews, participant observations, and textual analysis of various (including on-line) publications. Both organizations specialize on “exhibiting, discussing and learning about world film classics;” both of them support low-budget productions, and provide the social milieu in which producers and viewers encounter each other and merge into a single “creative public.”  Based on studying these sites, I argue that the contemporary Russian independent film scene is not just an extension of the Russian/Soviet traditions of “intellectual” and “unofficial” cinema.  Due to the market (rather than state socialist) environment, new electronic technologies, global contacts, and postcommunist social mobility, the emerging alternative film industry has a distinctive content, social basis and organization. In particular, I demonstrate that the ArtKino Club-sponsored social events and outings help to create a sense of community among increasingly alienated and competitive young people.  The paper also argues that the emphasis of the club and the cinema on formal techniques and cinematic artistry reflects the depolitization of the Russian civic life, which is as a result of and a reaction to the consolidation of the current authoritarian regime.

Walker, Charles
Space, networks and youth transition in provincial Russia: negotiating urban-rural and inter-regional migration
This paper draws upon qualitative research amongst graduates of vocational colleges in the Ul’ianovsk region of Russia (n=95) in order to explore the ways in which young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds negotiate urban-rural and inter-regional migration. As elsewhere, domestic transitions across space are central to other important transitions in young people’s lives, particularly in the education system and the labour market, such that ‘getting out’ can be crucial to ‘getting on’. However, the underdeveloped nature of the rental sector in post-Soviet Russia, alongside the degradation of social housing and student/workplace accommodation, have caused the young people in the research increasingly to depend on kinship networks for possibilities of moving away. Although such networks can be an important factor in young people’s mobility elsewhere in the world, in the present case they have become the primary means of negotiating the housing transitions necessary for migration. The paper explores the consequences of this ‘embedding’ in social and kinship networks for the respondents’ geographical – and therefore social - mobility. It is argued that, while in some cases such networks provided ‘bridges’ to opportunities elsewhere, in the majority of cases they were simply lacking. In addition, the ‘bonding’ effect of locally-based networks – underpinned by a range of family interdependencies in a variety of spheres – meant that even where respondents had the possibility of moving away, they were unlikely to do so. As such, the embedding processes which have accompanied Russia’s wider transition to a market economy have further limited the respondents’ life chances.

Weichert, Bettina
“As for whether he's a saint or not - that's for God to decide.” The influence of popular “cults” on the canonisation of saints in contemporary Russia.
The come-back of Orthodox traditions since the fall of the Soviet Union has made its mark; that much is certain. Beyond the obvious – restored and resurrected churches and monasteries, ubiquitous church-stalls offering their wares and firmly re-established and widely celebrated religious holidays – there are the many Russian Orthodox saints, both ancient and contemporary that are revered.  This paper will leave aside the question of whether these saints are worshipped fervently or employed for mere talismanic purposes. Instead, it will look at the formation and development of “cults” around certain personalities (whether famous, infamous or none of that) and suggest that the sheer popularity and apparent power of these figures has influenced the Russian Orthodox Church in its decisions to canonise them.  The discussion will focus on three cases: Tsar Nicholas II, St. Matrona of Moscow and Yevgeny Rodionov, and an attempt will be made to demonstrate the similarities of these very different personalities and their popular appeal. “As for whether he's a saint or not - that's for God to decide,” Rodionov’s mother once said to a journalist. The argument in this paper, however, will revolve around the role of popular pressure and popularity of a saint’s “cult” (pre canonisation) in the ROC’s decision to sanctify a much revered individual.

Wheatcroft, Stephen G.
Consumption levels in the USSR in the 1930s in comparison with previous periods
This paper is based on an analysis of consumption data including peasant and worker budgets in the USSR in the early and late 1930s, and in comparison with earlier periods. The paper argues that the system of collecting consumption data that had been worked out in the 1920s, as part of the programme for work on the balance of the national economy was extremely advanced for its time, and that contrary to many assumptions the statistical recording system was far less seriously compromised in the 1930s than is presumed. The standard Soviet procedure was to declare these investigations secret rather than to disband them or distort their results. There was some disruption in the early 1930s, but TsUNKhU moved quickly to overcome this in 1932, before the worst stages of the famine. We consequently have an unrivalled set of data by which peasant and worker living standards in different parts of the country can be traced as Soviet society passes through famine, recovers and then faces further strain in the late 1930s. Both food consumption and consumption of other produce will be considered, together with structural aspects of the changing population patterns. The paper will review other works that have recently been carried out in this area, and will address the question of relative consumption levels in different sections of the population and in different regions, during the famine of 1931-33 and following the drought of 1936/37. This will include a study of consumption levels during the great terror of 1937-38.

White, Duncan
Classifying Nabokov: Ink and Indeterminacy
There is a tendency for literary criticism to subject authors to calcification and Nabokov’s encrusted case is particularly intriguing: here is a writer who foregrounded the formation of a coherent artistic self, but whose work is never introspective without being refractive. Despite Nabokov’s disdain for biographical criticism and his intense privacy, many words have been expended with the banal aim of trying to formulate a coherent, likeable Nabokov. In this paper I will attempt to elucidate the way Nabokov tried to negotiate the complexities of transferring versions of the self onto the page. What we mean by ‘Nabokov’ is in fact a fluid  (auto)biographical nexus, the mass of projections, reflections and refractions that circle around the unknowable gravitational centre of what Nabokov actually ‘was’. I will argue that the embodiment of these projections in printed language, in books, offers a shadow of the consciousness at work. This mimicry of the transitions of thought (through both memory and imagination) is perhaps the closest Nabokov gets to self-inscription and the closest the reader can get to Nabokov’s consciousness. I will conclude by arguing that the critical creation of an over-determined ‘Nabokov’ is in turn in danger of calcifying critical approaches.

Whyman, Rose
Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov, Michael Chekhov and the actor’s imagination
Evgenii Vakhtangov and Michael Chekhov were both taught and directed by Stanislavsky and esteemed by him for their acting abilities and their grasp of his developing system. Both began forming their own ideas about acting from the time when they were working in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre in the context of changing views in the revolutionary period. They were among the first to write about the system and both continued to experiment in their own studios. Vakhtangov developed his own key concepts in acting including transformation, the imagination, justification, and improvisation to the point where he developed the overarching theatrical concept of fantastic or imaginative realism. Chekhov was involved in many of Vakhtangov’s experiments, which were of great importance in the development of his own method, the value of which is becoming increasingly recognised. This paper will consider the conflict in ideas about acting between Stanislavsky, Chekhov and Vakhtangov and will suggest how important it is for the contemporary actor/director to have a clear understanding of the work of each man, in theory and in practice.

Wilson, James
Developing a Russian for Reading/Research Course
This paper reports on initial research carried out at the University of Sheffield to develop a Russian for reading/research course for graduate students researching aspects of Russian history, culture, politics, economics, etc. The language needs of researchers are fundamentally different from those of undergraduate students. However, an effective methodology for delivering a Russian for reading/research programme has not yet been developed. Existing courses differ minimally from undergraduate programmes – they typically require intensive training involving several contact hours for up to two years before graduate students with little or no prior knowledge of Russian attain competency in reading original texts. Such intensive language training is impracticable at institutions where the number of graduate students is too small to merit a language-training programme, or where tutor availability cannot be guaranteed on a yearly basis. The principal aim of our research is therefore to develop a module that can be shared across institutions, with special emphasis on distance learning. Initial work has been devoted to researching the need and market for a Russian for research programme, identifying the problems researchers encounter in reading original texts, and looking towards developing an innovative and effective mode of delivery that can be later applied to other Slavonic languages such as Czech and Polish. In the long term, the proposed project is expected to lay the basis for the production of an online publication.

Wojtowicz, Dominika
The determinants of effective absorption of EU’s structural funds by Polish local governments
Remaining under influence of Soviet Union for more than 40 years, Poland was deprived of possibility to lead autonomous policies what resulted in significant gaps in socio-economic development level comparing to west European countries. Polish accession to European Union in 2004 is considered as one of the most important event of great consequences for Polish economy. The main advantages derive from becoming a part of common market based on free trade, free mobility of production factors and coherent fiscal and monetary policy within Member States. Nevertheless joining European Union had another very important aspect – Polish regions have become a subject of EU’s cohesion policy.  Structural funds - instruments of cohesion policy – are aimed to support local and regional development and to speed up regional convergence. For the last few years they have been the main source that enable realization of different activities and investments on local level in Poland. In the light of systematic extension of financial resources provided within structural funds effective absorption of those funds becomes a matter of great importance.  This paper presents the results of research conducted within Polish local governments (2005-2006). The author focused on three main questions:
-          if local entities are equally prepared for absorption of EU’s structural funds?
-          what are the determinants of effective absorption of EU’s structural funds?;
-          what are the perspectives and possible results of different absorptive capacity within local governments?
Experience of previous implementation period gives some clues on the perspective of use of structural funds provided for Polish regions in 2007-2013 period. The results of research showed that effective absorption of pre-accession and structural funds depends on many both material and untouchable factors (e.g.. financial resources, social and human capital of entities, regional public institutions and their environment, capacity of building solid partnership with other organizations). Significant disparities of absorptive capacity within local governments delimit possibility of real convergence of Polish regions’ growth level. Access to large resources allocated for Polish regions may hence reinforce marginalization process of less developed entities and ipso facto intensify existing disparities.

Wulf, Meike
The Bronze Soldier in post-Soviet Estonian Society: Context and Significance
In this paper I attempt to contextualise the recent course of events surrounding the ultimate relocation of the Bronze Solider (Est. Pronkssõdur) in Estonia this April. Hereby the spatial context of this Soviet era lieux de memoire in Tallinn’s cityscape is carefully considered, i.e. the position of the monument in relation to other urban sites of political significance and the different plans for and stages of its redesign since 1991. I then discuss the Bronze Soldier monument in relation to four important landmarks of contemporary Estonian historical culture, such as the Maarjamäe memorial complex, the Estonian Occupation Museum, the historical documentary entitled the Battle of the Blue Mountain, and the sc. Lihula controversy (which marks the pretext for its relocation). Secondly I pay attention to the significance that each of the competing group memories, i.e. Estonian Legionnaires, Soviet veterans, and Russian speaking youth attribute to the Pronkssõdur - or Alyosha, while concentrating on urban cultural practises attached to the site (this also includes the significance of certain dates, such as May 8, 9, and September 22 for each group).  I argue that the Bronze Soldier became a fiercely contested terrain as it is intrinsically linked to publicly performed and voiced identity claims of these different groups. In a wider context then, I demonstrate how the Bronze soldier is a focal point at which different interpretative frameworks of understanding the Second world war clash (Estonian, West European, Russian, etc.). The paper is based on an a close reading of the contemporary Estonian discourse on the recent past and on qualitative interviews with historians, politicians, architects, and city planners (conducted in Estonia between 1996 -2007)

Yaroshevski, Dov
Badmaev and Russian Medical Establishment, 1898-1911
Petr Aleksandrovich Badmaev ( 1851-1919)  entered historiography in the 1920s (via Soviet publications on the fall of the Tsarist regime ) as an extreme ambiguous political figure and medical quack. In post-Soviet Russia, Badmaev's name has had a revival-his books on Tibetan medicine have been reprinted, and his role as a pioneer of Tibetan medicine re-assessed. However, Badmaev's strained relationship with the imperial medical establishment, as demonstrated in his 1911 diatribe against the Medical Council [of the Ministry of Interior, the highest imperial authority in the field of medicine, after the latter's refusal to recognize Tibetan medicine as a science] requires special exploration. [1] It is impossible to understand Badmaev as an historical personality without insight into the discourses, pragmatics, and contexts of this controversy.  To comprehend this nexus, one needs to find answers to following basic questions: What kind of ideas concerning the empire's health system was guiding the Medical Council in 1886-1914 that might have contradicted Badmaev's project? How had the antecedent of 1906 Medical Council decision influenced the one in 1911? (Buriat Buddhists petitioned St. Petersburg to permit the opening of traditional medical schools of Tibetan medicine by monasteries but were turned down.) Did Badmaev's suggestion to educate Buriats at Russian medical schools to become both physicians and experts of Tibetan medicine contribute to a positive attitude of his interlocutors?  This paper will argue that the highest echelons of medical bureaucracy visualized reforms in health care in the empire as focusing on protection from epidemics, and within this approach for the first time paid attention to the planning of medical services in colonial areas. In contrast, the Buriat modernists and Buddhist hierarchs saw Tibetan medicine not only in terms of health protection but also as symbol of cultural, religious and national autonomy. Between these polar representations, Badmaev's claim to construct "the science of Tibetan medicine" and provide " double education" to its practitioners was seen suspiciously as creating dangerous hybrid medical and political heresy.
[1] P.A.Badmajew, Erwiderung auf die unbegründeten Beschuldigungen der medizinischen Wissenschaft Tibets seitens der Mitglieder des Medizinalrats (St. Petersburg, 1911).

Yastrebov, Gordey
The Reproduction of Real Social Inequality in Contemporary Russia
It was an astonishing result to prove, that Weber-based stratification models, which are popularly used in explaining real social inequalities across Europe, have no ground in Russia. By means of entropy analysis of our data we have shown, that it is, above all, level of authority (power) and property endowment that can be used to demarcate the real social groups, whereas socio-occupational status plays a significantly lesser role in determining the social differentiation between individuals. This paper would be an attempt to model and explain the process of social reproduction with respect to the real social groups we have gained. It would further lead to a better understanding of the nature of socio-economic inequality in post-Soviet Russia.

Young, Sarah
Reconciling dualities: gaps, reversals and contradictions in Shalamov's Kolymskie rasskazy
The paper discusses the use of silence in Varlam Shalamov’s six short story collections, Kolymskie rasskazy. It proposes that the author creates a poetics of silence, which involves not only to a set of techniques foregrounding absence and silence that is central to the transformation of witness testimony into fictionalized form, but also the challenges this poses to interpretation, which must likewise begin from what is absent. This poetics has many facets, such as the silences created by the architectonics of the collections, which are carefully structured to emphasize and expose the gaps of untold stories between the stories. However, the main focus for the paper is the ethical implications and aesthetic of the gaps within Shalamov’s own discourse on the Gulag and his approach to representing it, as he repeatedly, both within his stories and in his essays, memoirs and letters, juxtaposes contradictory elements and ideas, which negate each other and create irreconcilable voids at the centre of his texts. The paper demonstrates how this process of reversal and contradiction, and the appearance of these voids, relates to the fundamental concept of truth-value; by taking this approach, Shalamov’s works explicitly reject the cult of suffering adhered to by much of the Russian intelligentsia, in order to suggest instead a positive ethical dimension for art of fidelity to the moment of the event.

Yudin, Oleksiy
Святые в магическом фольклоре восточных славян
В восточнославянских народных магических текстах (заговорах и неканонических молитвах, а также имеющих магическую функцию календарных песнях, например, колядках) можно обнаружить более ста имен известных православной Церкви или фиктивных (фольклорных) святых. Они выступают в функциях магических помощников и защитников произносящего заговорный текст, помогая ему во множестве практических бытовых ситуаций, давая благополучие и процветание дому и хозяйству (также колядки), защищая его скот, исцеляя его и скот от болезней, защищая от демонических существ и непосредственно вступая с последними в борьбу. Предлагаемое сообщение представляет одну из возможных моделей словарного этнолингвистического описания образов святых в заговорах и календарных песнях при помощи набора заданных рубрик (фасет, тезаурусных функций), близкую подходам С.Никитиной и Е.Бартминьского. В дефиниции учитываются имена святых, их функции, локусы, атрибуты, а также персонажи, с которыми святые выступают в одной или сходных функциях, их противники, и др. В качестве документации приводятся исчерпывающие выборки репрезентативных контекстов упоминания святых в фольклорных текстах