BASEES Annual Conference 2-4 April 2011
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge UK
Abstracts A - B
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Abrahamyan, Karine and Nazaretyan, Narine
Cognitive - comparative analysis of English, Russian and Armenian verbs of speech activity
The paper deals with the material of the English, Russian and Armenian languages
- languages mostly spoken in the Republic of Armenia today.
In the paper under study the semantics of English, Russian and Armenian verbs of speech activity is analyzed within the framework of cognitive-comparative paradigm.
The latter is considered to be very productive as it sheds light on many linguistic as well as extralinguistic phenomena revealing peculiarities of national mentality, culture, traditions. The analysis carried out proves that according to their semantic structure verbs of speech activity may be classified into different groups and subgroups, for example, verbs expressing vocal sounds, verbs denoting sound characteristics of only animals and so on.
To sum up features common to all the three or at least two languages, which may be considered to be cognitively relevant phenomena, and peculiarities of world image segmentation in different languages are revealed.
Sovereign democracy and transnational community formation
Since Perestroika, Russian political discourse was dominated by the idea of the necessary transition from totalitarian regime towards democratic polity. 'Transitology' was the predominant paradigm not only in Western but also in Russian political sciences throughout 1990's. The recent implementation of the doctrine of 'sovereign democracy' has challenged this idea and resulted with the rise of several questions. The question arose whether there can be an alternative to western interpretations of democracy. Could it be that democratisation is just a continuation of Western expansion or a new form of 1960's modernization theory and cultural imperialism? Russian official discourse even claims that it can export sovereign democracy to countries whose cultural foundations do not fit Western conceptions. After all can 'sovereign democracy' guarantee successful integration of Russia into the rest of the world or perhaps 'democracy with different adjectives' is an old-fashioned and delegitimised concept that should be replaced by the new political principles of transnational community formation.
Aksenova, Galina
Valeria Gai Germanica: Lost between Melodrama, Black Comedy and Tragedy
Neo-realistic docudrama is very popular among young Russian artists, whereas genre films are completely alien to what is important to the younger generation of independent cinema directors. Valeria Gai Germanica started as a neo-realist documentary director with her films Girls (2005), Sisters (2005) and Boys (2005), but moved to melodrama in her recent serial "The School". Why and how did this happen? The paper will examine the reasons for why and how docudrama became a "tear-jerking" serial.
Alekseeva, Galina
Leo Tolstoy's Treatise What Is Art?: Dialogue of the Translator and the Author
Finishing his work on the treatise What Is Art? in summer of 1897, Tolstoy was concerned about "passing it on to the people" in Russia and abroad. The question of translation of the treatise was under discussion among Tolstoy's friends and associates. Aylmer Maude, Tolstoy's English biographer and translator, expressed his definite intention to translate the treatise "thoroughly and free of charge". Tolstoy sent him the first two chapters and convinced Chertkov to "leave the translation for Maude". Maude started his work on the treatise immediately: in two weeks Tolstoy received his letter with numerous questions. In the history of Tolstoy's translations Maude-Tolstoy's correspondence is a unique example of creative collaboration of the translator and the author. Maude wrote 23 letters to Tolstoy with numerous questions, remarks, notes, comments. Their correspondence is indicative of high degree of responsibility of both writer and translator for the quality of the text of the treatise. Tolstoy replies to Maude's questions in detail, he takes his remarks and recommendations seriously, sometimes he corrects even the text of the original version. Through this correspondence we appreciate Maude not only as the translator but also as the editor and even as the co-author as Tolstoy is very attentive and responsive to his questions and comments. In their correspondence both the translator and the author carry on professional, productive dialogue, agree and disagree for the sake of high quality of the English version of the treatise.
Aliev, Baktygul
The Public Sphere in Dostoevsky's "Demons"
This paper examines to what extent and in what way some of Fedor Dostoevsky's (1821-1881) major novels ("A Raw Youth," "Crime and Punishment," "Demons" and "The Brothers Karamazov") sustain the political notion of the public sphere. A synthesis of literary criticism and the political philosophy of the public sphere will help to reveal the nature of the representations of the public sphere in Dostoevsky's novels. The representations of the public sphere in Dostoevsky's novels can be revealed by analyzing the events and characters described in them from the standpoint of Jurgen Habermas's philosophy of the public sphere. A major philosophical strand that runs through Dostoevsky's novels is that public debate must be solidly grounded upon a religious foundation in order for it to lead to a genuine consensus of all parties involved. Both Dostoevsky and Habermas are essentially explaining how the public sphere may become a tool of unwelcome domination and are presenting their remedies, in the form of religion and discourse ethics, respectively. The two figures engage the same philosophical question of the open and rational public sphere against the backdrop of different historical contexts and in different forms - novels and philosophy. In the world of Dostoevsky's novels, political debate that does not abide by moral standards results in unrestrained domination which leads to murder. A similar dynamic is found in the Habermasian framework where the public sphere, unrestrained by discourse ethics, turns into an arena of manipulation and control by non-rational sources of domination such as the influence of authoritarian governments or large corporations.
Ambrosiani, Per
Variability in the accentuation of the Church Slavonic infinitive: phonetics, analogy, reanalysis
The variability in the accentuation of the Church Slavonic infinitive that is attested in Medieval Slavic manuscripts and printed books from the East and South Slavic areas (tvoríti vs. tvóriti, stáviti vs. stavíti, etc. - for sample data see e.g. Ambrosiani 2005) has been explained in different ways: as the continuation of Late Common Slavic accentual variability; as the effect of phonetic or morphophonetic "sound laws" (e.g. the so-called East Bulgarian retraction); as the effect of various types of analogy in the spoken languages; as the effect of borrowing or imitation, limited to the written language (e.g. the so-called bookish accentuation in some East Slavic sources); etc. etc. In my presentation I will try to put the proposed explanations within a wider framework of linguistic change and the relationship between spoken and written language.
Andrew, Joe
'I am not the devil, I am simply a sinful woman'. Narrative and Gender in Tolstoy's Father Sergius
Never published in Tolstoi's life-time, Father Sergius is often seen as, in effect, part of a trilogy of works written about 1890 which deal with sex and lust, and devil women (amongst other matters), the other two being, of course, The Kreutzer Sonata and The Devil, the latter also first published posthumously. In all three tales the main male characters are ruined by women. Indeed, while it is true that Father Sergius has many commonalities with the other two works, and shares their bleak, late-Tolstoi assessment of relations between men and women, it is also profoundly different. This is obviously true of the key elements of plot - there is no marriage which leads inevitably to murder or suicide; more broadly it is clearly more redemptive in tone, in that the eponymous hero not merely survives without killing his devil women or himself, but is reborn as a holy man, even if the ending is maybe not as convincing as Tolstoi might perhaps have wished. The purpose of the present paper is to offer a rounded analysis of Father Sergius which will explore these key themes of the late Tolstoi, sex, lust, relations between men and women, and the possibility of human happiness beyond if not within these relations. It will focus in particular on the structural and narrative rolkes of women in the lives of the eponymous hero.
Anikina, Maria
Mass Media Consumption in Russia: New Media and Old Audiences
The changes in the public sphere and in field of mass media consumption
in Russia put old traditional audiences in front of new media challenge. Three
stages of development are possible to fix in the past decades - from the
society of readers at Soviet times when Russians (Soviet people) were seriously
named the reading nation through "the society of TV viewers" [Gudkov, Dubin,
2001] at turning-point of old Soviet and new Russian state to the society of
users which is slowly developing in modern Russia. Each period is provided with
typical social, political, economic, technological and psychological features
and concrete patterns of media use.
The modern situation is caused by rapid penetration of new information
technologies but its complete realization is slowed down by several factors.
That is why nowadays television is still very popular source of information -
94% of Russian population traditionally use it in order to obtain the news
about current events [Russian Public opinion, 2009]. But the specific feature
of contemporary situation is the challenge which the audience faced.
Technical and technological development leads to the development of new
audience group represented by youngsters which demonstrates high level of
computer and media literacy, high adaptability to innovations in information
sphere. Concrete figures obtained during the sociological study conducted at
the Faculty of Journalism (MSU) make this suggestion valid and form the field
for further reflections.
Corporate Governance and Enterprise Restructuring in Southeast Europe - the case of Macedonia
The research in this paper is to be focused on examining governance and enterprise restructuring in Southeast Europe economies and in particular the case study of the Republic of Macedonia. EBRD has governance and enterprise restructuring as basic indicator of economic transition and defines it as effective corporate governance and corporate control exercised through domestic financial institutions and markets, fostering market-driven restructuring. The corporate governance is most often defined in terms of the roles, responsibilities, and interactions of top management and the board of directors.
Using data of South-East Europe i.e. case study of Macedonia, will be examined the interrelationships between governance and enterprise restructuring through set of indicators that influence the governance patterns.
Two basic hypotheses to test governance and enterprise restructuring:
♦ 1st Hypothesis: governance and enterprise restructuring can be observed through set of indicators i.e. gross domestic product; foreign direct investments; listed domestic companies; market capitalization of listed companies; portfolio investment; stocks traded, total value; stocks traded, turnover ratio;
♦ 2nd Hypothesis: governance and enterprise restructuring is positive and grows over the transition time period.
The academic significance of the topic is in determining the factors that influence governance and enterprise restructuring, as well as, its overall significance in the development of Western Balkans transition economies.
Model and Econometrics β
The econometric model that is used in this study is a regression model where we have estimated the following equation:
x = β0 + β1x1i + ... + βri + εi
i = 1...n
Thus, applied to our research this model has the following shape
GOVi,t = β0 + β1GDPi,t + β2FDIi,t + β3LDCi,t + β4MCLCi,t + β5PIi,t + β6STTVi,t + β7STTRi,t + εi,t
-
where the dependent variable, GOVi,t, shows governance and enterprise restructuring;
-
the independent variables are as follows :
1. GDPi,t gross domestic product
2. FDIi,t foreign direct investments
3. LDCi,t listed domestic companies, total
4. MCLCi,t market capitalization of listed companies (% of GDP)
5. PIi,t portfolio investment, equity (BoP, current US$)
6. STTVi,t
stocks traded, total value (% of GDP)
7. STTRi,t stocks traded, turnover ratio (%)
-
β is a ρ-dimensional parameter vector
-
ε is the error term or noise.
Speed and Sequencing of Transition Reforms and Income Inequality. A Panel Data Analysis
An extensive literature has analysed the economic effects of different patterns of transition towards market economy of Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries. The initial theoretical efforts of the early 90s were accompanied by a growing empirical literature, which has provided important, although not conclusive, tests for the various hypothesized channels of transmissions of institutional change to economic performance. The cross country analysis of the effects of different speed and sequencing of reforms has been confined, with few recent exceptions, to economic growth, whereas the impacts on the dynamics of income inequality have received much less attention.
Distributional aspects in transition, on the other hand, have been largely and deeply analysed and discussed, either in theoretical terms or empirically. However, given the highly demanding nature of applied inequality analysis in term of quantitative information, most of these studies have remained general or have focused on patterns and dynamics of single or of limited sets of transition countries.
In this paper we analyse the heterogeneous effects of transition reforms on inequality by explicitly considering their speed and sequencing. To this aim, we assembled a panel dataset covering 27 transition countries of Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries for the period 1990-2006. Using dynamic panel data models, income inequality measures are regressed against a set of control variables and indicators of speed and sequencing of transition reforms derived from EBRD transition scores. Outcomes provide new insights on these aspects which complement existing knowledge on the effects of reforming approaches.
Artemyeva, Tatiana
Children's Philosophy of Andrei Bolotov
A.T.Bolotov (1738-1833) had never been a speculative thinker. He wrote articles on agricultural science, when was engaged in farming in his noble estate, on medicine after treating his peasants and relatives, on garden architecture when he created a "Russian garden". He even became a playwright when he established home theatre.
He wrote a systematic philosophical work "Children's Philosophy..." (1776-1779) to educate his young wife. When Bolotov became a father, he wrote an ethical composition "A guide to the real human happiness..." (1784). When he was quite aged and was thinking about death Bolotov wrote "About souls of dead people..." (1823). In this work he meditate on problem of immortality of the soul and future life.
Bolotov's compositions were exceeded the limits of traditional metaphysical meditations. Russian thinker was not going to create non-contradictional philosophical system, but to work out his own view for the "principal, questions" to help himself in everyday life. He was not looking for a truth, but for the way how to be happy. Bolotov considered happiness to be more important than knowledge. The metaphysical problems were moved into the sphere of axiology to find there their solution.
Autio-Sarasmo, Sari
Reassessing Cold War Europe - does the Eastern point of view bring anything new?
One of the baselines of traditional Cold War studies was that the Iron Curtain appeared as an impermeable barrier that divided the world into two monolithic blocs: the socialist East and the capitalist West. From this bipolar point of view, there were hardly any interactions between the East and West. However, when we focus on activities below the political decision-making level and beyond super power politics, the view is changing. Focusing on local level it is possible to find interaction and cooperation instead of confrontation and unceasing mutual distrust emphasized in traditional bipolar Cold War research.
Although, the Berlin wall was a concrete boundary between Eastern and Western Europe, the ideological dividing line did not penetrate the whole of society, on either side of Europe. This is why Europe is an interesting arena during the Cold War era. Actually, Europe became self-evidently the main arena of interaction in the Cold War era owing to the geographical closeness of the states of opposing blocs and to the memory of centuries-long interrelatedness that survived despite the post-World War Two bloc-arrangements.
Baer, Josette
Vavro Šrobár, an intellectual portrait
Vavro Šrobár (1867 - 1950) was a physician, politician and from 1918 to 1923 the minister plenipotentiary for Slovakia. This position made him the most powerful person in Slovakia, where the new thinking of Czechoslovakism had to be inculcated. My leading question is: Given his many political positions and party affiliations (Agrarians, Party of Freedom, Democratic party) and his support of the Communist government after 1948, what were the main theoretical pillars of his political thought? My paper is based on my latest research in Bratislava, Martin and Prague archives.
Bartlett, Djurdja
The Proletarian Post-war Dandies
This paper covers the subversive dress codes in four socialist countries - the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland - from the late 1940s up to 1960s. The hostility in the media towards the Stiliagi, Pásek, Jampec and Bikiniarze, demonstrated the extent of their deviations from established social norms. The acceptance of western sartorial influences challenged the slow concept of time by introducing fast-changing western trends. The alternative clothes meant for dancing and loitering contradicted the boundaries between the officially divided spaces of work and leisure. Moreover, alternative dress codes were considered subversive because they transgressed the prescribed social norms on gender identities and sexual liberties.
The loud and harsh critique directed at young men, quite out of proportion to the small size of the subcultural groups, reflected the deeper anxieties of the totalitarian society. Drawing on the fears that an interest in clothes and western music was unmanly, and not suitable for serious workers, the young men associated with subcultures were alternatively presented in the media as disturbingly effeminate, and as hooligans who preferred drinking and fighting to building up a new society.
The intensity and duration of official opposition towards youth subcultures kept changing, both topographically and temporally. In the immediate post-war period, they were attacked throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. From the mid-1950s, in East Europe their sartorial difference was mainly absorbed in the mainstream youth cultures, while they were persistently seen as a serious social threat to the more closed Soviet system.
Baumann, Erin
Between Politics and a Hard Place: government structure, influence, and foreign policy behaviour in post-Soviet Belarus and Ukraine
This paper will analyze the role of government structure in shaping the foreign policies of post-Soviet Belarus and Ukraine. The paper will assess the impact of five variables, national sovereignty and security, perceptions of global and regional balance of power and balance of threat, civil society and protest movements, economic dependence, and administrative security, on the foreign policies of these two states and how their impact has been affected by the structure of government institutions, more specifically the structure of the foreign policy executive. Traditional theories and frameworks of International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis assume that the foreign policy of newly independent states, such as Belarus and Ukraine, are largely controlled by exogenous systemic factors, such as national security and global or regional balance of power and threat. While the validity of this assumption has been tested on newly independent liberal democratic states, it has yet to be tested on autocratic or transitioning states. Understanding which factors are most influential in Belarusian and Ukrainian foreign policy and how the particular government structure in these states has prioritized or demoted the influence of certain factors will provide researchers and policy makers alike with a more robust picture of foreign policy formation in these critical post-Soviet states. While, on a broader level, helping us to understand the theoretical underpinnings of post-Soviet Belarusian and Ukrainian foreign policy behaviour.
Beischl, Martin
The convergence to reluctant Europhilia: the Croatian Case of Europeanisation
By carrying out a case study of the political debate on European integration in Croatia, my paper aims to illustrate the current state of Europeanization in the Western Balkan countries, focusing on political parties. Has euro-scepticism really disappeared from the political landscape or has it just assumed another, more subtle shape? And w hat are the reasons for this shift towards pro-European attitudes? The research is based on a content analysis of debates in the Croatian Parliament and the country's two most important newspapers. The key variables used are guided by the question of how debates on national sovereignty and identity are performed by political parties. The results of the research are compared to the patterns of the debate on European integration in Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Serbia in order to determine what conclusions can be drawn from the Croatian example in the general context of the EU enlargement. The analysis shows that in the Western Balkan countries, a reluctant form of europhilia has developed and European integration is perceived as a highly technical process. This can be explained by the specificities of the Stabilisation and Association Process and by the fact that the question of the EU's institutional order is generally perceived as resolved. Euro-scepticism is articulated by political parties, but in an indirect way, for example by their europhilia assuming an instrumental shape, whereas debates on national sovereignty and identity are conducted in areas of secondary importance.
Bekasova, Alexandra
"Conquering Nature": Land Road Communications, Resource Use and National Pride in Russian Public Discourse, 1800-1850
The first half of the 19th century was the time of intensive building of new land road infrastructure and the emergence of important innovations in transportation technologies, which facilitated travel and were accompanied by crucial changes in public perceptions of nature, space and time.
Analyzing the travel guidebooks, the articles published in popular and professional journals and the travel accounts of the period, this paper attempts to establish prevailing understandings/'knowledges' about nature, efficient land use, and landscapes. More broadly, the paper explores the link between the processes of knowledge production and nation building.
Bergland, Krista
Russophobia According to Igor Shafarevich
Igor Shafarevich, a well-known dissident and human rights activist of the Brezhnev era and a world-famous mathematician, is notorious for his samizdat pamphlet Russophobia, which he wrote some ten years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. When, during the years of perestroika, this text was eventually published, it created an enormous storm. In 1990 The Washington Post wrote that "no essay has drawn more attention among the Soviet intelligentsia this year than Igor Shafarevich's 'Russophobia'."
My proposed paper, which is based on my dissertation on Shafarevich, discusses Russophobia's "prehistory" which originates in the intensive samizdat and tamizdat quarrels from the late sixties onwards, its basic ideas and the most essential arguments of its critics, most of whom loudly claimed that Shafarevich was an anti-Semite and a dangerous ideologue of Russian extreme nationalism.
I conclude that Russophobia was judged very hastily and on flimsy grounds. Another important conclusion is that contrary to common claims, Shafarevich actually managed to effectively "neutralise" the message of many of those obsessed with the Jews among his Russian contemporaries and contributed to the fact that anti-Jewish sentiments have been a great deal less popular in post-communist Russia than so many had feared and expected.
Bergmann, Hubert
"Behold the Cossack boy!" - Russophilia in the German Youth Movement
The paper aims at highlighting the phenomenon of a widespread russophilia in several groups of the German Youth Movement (the latter being a collective term for a very complex and heterogeneous cultural and educational movement that started around 1900). It focuses on the interwar years and the strong impulse in this regard given by a group called Deutsche Jungenschaft vom 1. 11. 1929 (short d.j. 1.11) that was founded by the charismatic and controversial Eberhard Köbel (1907-1955). Köbel enriched the musical tradition of the Youth Movement by introducing the balalaika and Russian folk songs; the uniform he created borrowed inspiration from Russian sailors. Cossack choirs of that time, founded by Russian émigrés, gained great popularity among the d.j. 1.11 and similar groups and contributed to their interest in Cossacks, who also served as objects of projection for their aspiration and romantic ideal of an elitist, free, soldierly male community. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 the numerous groups of the Youth Movement were banned and forced to integrate into the Hitler Youth, now the one and only central youth organisation. While some groups of the politically heterogeneous movement embraced this integration, others tried to offer resistance, amongst others by clinging to their russophilia which ran contrary to Nazi ideology. When prosecuting these opponent groups the Nazis repeatedly referred to their russophilia, accusing the young oppositionists of cultural bolshevism.
Berman, Anna A.
A Breach in the Kinship Network: Rethinking Family in Anna Karenina
While family has been at the center of Anna Karenina scholarship, most work has focused on nuclear families in their generational dimension (husband, wife, children), leaving under-explored an equally vital kinship network of siblings and siblings-in-law essential to the structure and central message of the novel. The relationship and parallels between Anna and Oblonsky highlight the importance of siblings but are only a piece of Tolstoy's vision. The sibling network unites almost all the primary characters in one ever-expanding family and provides a powerful source of love, support, and trust. Even Vronsky, outside of the main Shcherbatsky/Oblonsky/Levin clan, has a sister-in-law to care for him after his attempted suicide.
Countering traditional readings of Anna's suicide, I will argue that what finally pushes her under the train is the feeling of isolation she experiences after the perceived loss of her sisterly bond with Dolly. On her final day, running to Dolly in desperation and finding Kitty visiting, Anna is literally left standing in the entry hall as the two true sisters converse within. Shut out of this larger family, Anna finds herself alone with a self that has no interlocutors she can trust. My paper will explore this sibling-kinship network and its role in shaping both Anna's personal tragedy and Tolstoy's philosophy of human connection. I will close by examining Part VIII, where the idea of kinship is raised to a national scale to question filial duty to "brother Slavs" and the Serbian War.
Beumers, Birgit
A Day in photos and on film: Den' novogo mira (1940) vs. A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union (1987)
This paper compares Roman Karmen and Mikhail Slutskii's 1940 documentary film Den' novogo mira with the photoalbum A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union (1987). Both projects brought together a large number of photographers/cameramen to document a day in the life of an emerging Soviet nation - and a collapsing Soviet state. The paper explores whether there are differences in the themes and locations chosen, and whether any conclusions can be drawn about changes in the approach to the documentary medium.
Bieliekhova, Larysa
Imagery Space of Russian Poetry: A Cognitive Perspective
This paper focuses on revealing the nature of verbal poetic image from a cognitive perspective and aims at building an original typology of images in contemporary Russian poetry. It highlights cognitive mechanisms that lead to the emergence of novel poetic images which cause a possible breakthrough in the conceptualization of the world. In the framework of cognitive linguistics a poetic image is viewed as a textual construal and a cognitive structure which has two planes - conceptual and verbal.
Conceptual analysis of rich empirical data obtained from contemporary Russian poetry suggested figuring out two groups of verbal poetic images: the old (archetypes and stereotypes) and novel ones (idiotypes and kainotypes). Archetypes descend to archetypal image-schemas: "Господи, ты светишь таким светом /Что я не вижу тебя" (Л. Аранзон) - GOD IS LIGHT. A poetic image acquires a status of stereotype due to the frequency of its use in a cultural community and the well-established identity of its authorship: река жизни, море бед, очи ясные, лес дремучий, красна девица. The cognitive operation of specification leads to deviation from the stereotype, to emergence of a new poetic image - idiotype. It is a complex image which reflects idiolect and idiostyle of the author, his/her peculiarities of world perception. Kainotypes like: "Иго - благо, Бремя - рай" (А.Королев); "The imperfect is our paradise" (W.Stevence), - are formed as a result of clashing the frames of knowledge entrenched in human's conscience and those verbalized in a poetic expression. Such poetic images challenge or change our understanding or views of things, events, or phenomena of life.
Biletskaya, Tatsiana
The Role of European Union 'Partnership and Cooperation Agreements' (PCAs) in the Legal Reform Process and Economic Growth of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
The paper studies the role of the EU's legal and economic assistance in the legal reform process of the CIS countries which took place after the demise of the USSR - and consequently in the development of institutions and economic performance of the CIS countries. This assistance was facilitated by the EU's Partnership and Cooperation Agreements (PCAs), which were regarded as the first formal agreements between the EU and CIS countries, and have also been viewed as one of the key elements which helped to initiate the legal reform in the CIS. Another impact of them was that they created the opportunity for introducing the process of legal transplantation (legal borrowing) into post-Soviet legal systems.
The comparative dimension of the analysis is brought by comparing the effects of European Agreements (EAs) and PCAs in the development several post-Soviet states (Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria). The methodology framework applied is new institutional economics, together with the economic analysis of law.
The paper argues that PCAs embody not only components of legal harmonization and a promotion of economic cooperation, but also a component of political factors. In this way, PCAs had a mixed effect on the legal and economic development of the CIS countries with two positive and one negative component which were discovered at this stage of the analysis. Legal and economic development indicators show positive growth while indicators of rule of law and corporate governance did not grow significantly.
Bill, Stanley
Saying No to the Material World: Czeslaw Milosz's Gnostic Reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky
In one of his several essays on Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) remarked that Dostoevsky's artistic failures, even more than his successes, were an indication of "the permanence of the dilemma which, some eighteen centuries ago, emerged in the guise of a quarrel between the early Christian churches and the Gnostics." This paper explores Milosz's "Gnosto-Manichean interpretation" of Dostoevsky's works and their subsequent significance for Milosz's own poetic project to reestablish a place for the religious imagination in the secular age. Czeslaw Milosz shared a common ground with Dostoevsky in a certain kind of world negation, which he believed bore a strong relation with earlier Gnostic and Manichean varieties of Christianity. In Dostoevsky's novels, this world negation was expressed through some of his most memorable characters, including the Underground Man, Ippolit Terrentiev from The Idiot, and Ivan Karamazov. Milosz's intuition was that this world negation, as much as it ultimately constituted a form of blasphemy, was necessary to any attempt to regain a ground for transcendence in the modern age. In other words, it is no coincidence that we must first pass through Ivan Karamazov's rejection of God's world before we can arrive at Father Zosima's ecstatic world affirmation. Milosz's poetry often appears to follows a similar dialectical pattern. This paper will test Milosz's theory that a despairing, though committed, world negation is in some measure essential to the expression of religious faith in modern times, forming a response to the tyranny of what Charles Taylor has called the "immanent frame." Moreover, this exploration of Dostoevsky's powerful influence on Milosz's poetry and thought will point to the Russian novelist's continuing relevance for contemporary writers and religious thinkers
Bjork, James
Timing is the Art of Life: Serial Nationalization after the Upper Silesian Plebiscite
Frontier plebiscites, such as the one held in Upper Silesia and other German border regions after the First World War, would seem impeccably democratic mechanisms to determine where borders between states should be drawn. But as democratic exercises go, they are actually quite peculiar. Whereas most elections presuppose mutable preferences, requiring the periodic holding of new ones to see how preferences have changed, plebiscites defiantly follow the model of 'one person, one vote, one time'. The implicit assumption, of course, is that nationality is not really a 'preference' at all but rather a fixed quality, presumably one reliably passed on to future generations, making plebiscite results more like those of a census than a 'normal' election. In my paper, I will be how this assumption about the stability national identity ran up against recurring evidence of national instability and flux in Upper Silesia in the years following the First World War. Census statistics, internal church estimates, election results, and other indices of national orientation fluctuated enormously in both the German and Polish portions of Upper Silesia in the interwar period, during the Second World War, and in the years after the war. While migration accounted for some of this fluctuation, most of it was due to repeated, sweeping re-categorizations of the resident population. Was this national re-labelling deceptive, masking deeper and more persistent national identities? Or was it, in many ways, self-fulfilling, encouraging serial affiliations to different nationalities as circumstances changed?
Bjørnflaten, Jan Ivar
Predicative Participles in Russkaja Pravda
The category of gerunds in Slavic emerged as the predicative participles lost agreement with their matrix words. In East Slavic, the earliest recordings of agreement loss have been dated to the 13th century. In the present paper it will be demonstrated that the loss of agreement in the predicative participles is a much more fine-grained process than traditionally assumed. The attention will be directed to instances in the Russkaja Pravda (1282) in which the matrix word of the predicative participle is in the dative. In these cases the expected agreeing form of the predicative participle in dative is replaced by one apparently in MNomPl, e.g., a onomu (MDatSg) kuny imati rotě chodivъše (MNomPl) jako ne vědaja jesmъ kupilъ, 'and it is for him to take the money (having) sworn that I have bought not knowingly'. It will be demonstrated that agreement loss in terms of shift from an expected dative form to MNomPl is observed in Old Church Slavic texts like Codex Suprasliensis as the outcome of a reanalysis occurring when the two semantic roles as agent and patient are combined, e.g.,'povelě voinomъ svoimъ (MDatPl) šъdъše (MNomPl)/*šъdъšemъ i rešti piskupu sisiniju' (MDatPl), 'ordered his warriors (having) gone to say to bishop Sisinnios'. If this particular outcome of a reanalysis in Old Church Slavic texts is transmitted and recorded in Russkaja Pravda, it will be argued that this text hardly is as indigenous and independent of the Old Church Slavic tradition as repeatedly maintained in the scholarly literature.
Blaive, Muriel
Changing generational identities at the Hungarian-Slovak border
This presentation is concerned with the Hungarian-speaking minority in the Slovak town of Komárno. Since the end of the Second World War and the final defeat of Hungary, this minority has been confronted by the dialectics of integration and exclusion, alternating between forced, legitimate and faked loyalty to the (Czecho)Slovak state - depending on the circumstances and generations. On the basis of oral history interviews recorded in 2008 within the Border Programme at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres, this paper will try to deconstruct and analyze the generational differences between today's Hungarians in their approach to their common life with the Slovaks in their hometown, their loyalty to Slovakia and Hungary, their cultural and linguistic heritage and the ways of preserving it, and their relations with Slovaks in general and with Hungarians from Hungary. It will a) emphasize the territorial identity construction that seems to have evolved since 1993 from the communist cultural autonomy, which had been acquired at the price of political support or at least tacit acquiescence, and b) question the future of the cohabitation.
Blomberg, Franziska
Civil Society and Ethnic Diversity
This paper discusses the issues of ethnic fragmentation and external democracy promotion.
Bocale, Paola
Trzy bedroom house. Piękne, w pełni umeblowany i odnowiony.
What Polish ads in the UK tell us about the gender assignment of loanwords.
olish ads in the UK often disregard consistency in gender assignment of loanwords.
This suggests that the orthographic and phonetic form of English-origin nouns is not the only criterion for determining the gender assignment of loanwords.
Gender assignments seem to vary even within the idiolect of individual speakers. We witness cases of competing criteria which tend to trigger different gender assignments, with an outcome which is by no means certain. Lack of systematicity in gender assignment of loanwords becomes more noticeable in longer ads containing a higher number of targets controlled by head nouns.
The incidence of non agreement between the information conveyed phonologically, graphically or morphologically by the controller and the target increases with the linear distance between the head and its targets.
The farther targets are from the head the higher the chance that they will show semantic gender agreement. The closest to the head, the more gender agreement will tend to follow phonological, graphical and morphological criteria.
Thus most English loans, which by reason of ending in a consonant or in -e resemble Polish masculine and neuter nouns, will tend to show formal gender agreement (i.e. masculine or neuter) in the targets closer to the head, but semantic (i.e. that of the Polish next lexical equivalent) the farther targets are from the head.
This suggests that oscillations in gender assignment of loanwords are closely related to the existence of a linear distance effect during the process of grammatical encoding of the sentence.
Braun, Matthias
Soviet Public Health in Global Perspective: Malaria Control in the Soviet Union, 1917-41
In early 20th century, malaria posed a challenge to public health experts throughout the world. Although
representing a global threat, malaria constituted a problem that needed to be addressed on the local level. The disease's causative agent, which was distributed worldwide, induced different control policies in different political and cultural contexts. Thus, national malaria control agendas emerged in a transnational environment.
Firstly, the paper investigates malaria control in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s by focusing on the republic of Azerbaijan. It describes the construction of an image of malaria portraying the disease not only as being vector-borne and of southern origin, but also as rooting in culture. The paper shows that malaria control in the Soviet Union placed reliance on an interventionist approach towards communicable diseases despite propaganda claims about long-term strategies to transform man and nature.
Secondly, the paper compares malaria control in the Soviet Union with malaria prevention efforts elsewhere. It contrasts the Soviet agenda to similar programs in Mussolini's Italy and Ataturk's Turkey assuming that the three countries mentioned represented different versions of modern mobilization states. The paper argues that cultural and political context as well as epidemiological and geographical patterns influenced the emergence of distinct prevention policies.
In a broader sense, the paper seeks to open threads for an understanding of inter-war Soviet Russia in an European context.
Brentin, Dario
"The Bearers of National Dignity" Sport and Nationalism in post-socialist Croatia
The disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia and the following Homeland War were an initiation for essential transformations of Croatia's political and ideological cornerstones. The deep societal changes were expressed in a troublesome nation- and identity-building process that (re-)produced Croatian statehood in a number of different social, political and cultural fields. Within this process sport proved to be a highly politicized realm of post-socialist Croatian national expression in which narratives of nation, identity and culture were intensively articulated. Moreover, sport can be described as a unique source of social knowledge contributing greatly to the formation, establishment and conservation of the newly emerging Croatian national identity.
While the nationalist regime under the first president Franjo Tuđman openly used sport for propaganda reasons to enhance prestige, secure legitimacy and to compensate for deficiencies in other areas of everyday life, the change of power in 2000 resulted in sport taking a more ambivalent role. Despite the political liberalisation sport remained a realm of nationalism detached from official politics and therefore a powerful distributor of discursive battles over questions of race, nation, ethnicity or gender. In my paper I will examine the dominant narratives expressed within the field pointing out how the ideological contents transmitted through sport events, media reports and fan culture have changed in the last two decades and what the lasting effects on Croatian national identity were.
Briggs, Jane
The female protagonist in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: A comparative study of Tolstoy's Family Happiness (1859) and Dostoevsky's Netochka Nezvanova (1849)
I chose these stories for a number of reasons: First, both are told from the point of view of a young female protagonist and first-person narrator; and represent the attempt of a male writer to enter into the female consciousness. Second, they appeared relatively early in the oeuvre of both writers, before they were married or had any daughters of their own. The works were separated in time by about 10 years - 1849 to 1859 - and Dostoevsky was about seven years older than Tolstoy. Third, both works are mercifully short - although Family Happiness is shorter, 90 pages, as opposed to 170 - but short in relation to the later great works; and have more specific focus on the lives of women. Last but not least, they illustrate the contrasts between the two writers in the presentation of their female characters: in this case, girls who lose their mothers at an early age, and come under the influence of older men.
Previous works:
Dostoevsky's Netochka Nezvanova (1849) was one of the first novels centred on a child, and predates both Dickens's David Copperfield (1850) and Tolstoy's Childhood (1852). Both these novels were about boys, whereas Dostoevsky had already published Poor Folk (1846), which includes the letters and childhood reminiscences of Varvara.
For Tolstoy, his trilogy Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (1852-7) represents fiction rooted in reality and in autobiography. Rosemary Edmonds observes that 'Tolstoy produced no work which did not contain a portrait of himself'.
He married Sonya in 1862. Does this mean that Family Happiness (1859) contains a portrait of himself as an older man trying to decide whether to marry a younger woman?
Brüning, Alfons
"Orthodox Communism"? Visions of Church and Society in the Writings of Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) of Leningrad
Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) of Leningrad and Novgorod is usually seen as the spiritual father and intellectual predecessor of several among the outstanding hierarchs of the present Russian Orthodox Church, among them Patriarch Kyrill, and Metropolitan Juvenali of Moscow. In a way, even long after his early death in 1978, his ideas seem to be at the outset of a development that step by step led to a greater engagement of the church in society, to concepts of "Christian patriotism" and to an ecumenically inspired search for collaborators even outside the inner circle of Orthodox believers. While his writings truly reveal a modernizing approach towards the Orthodox tradition, his ideas equally often differ from the governing ideals of a liberal Western society. His partial readiness for cooperation with the Soviet regime - against inner Church dissidents, and on the diplomatic scene of the World Council of Churches, or the Christian Peace Conference - made him as much a controversial figure as did his ecumenical attitudes. However, the tasks, threats, but even challenges and eventually possibilities he saw for church life under the atheist Soviet regime are still far from being completely understood. One of his quotations that gained some popularity in recent times sounds as follows: "An objective examination of atheism shows the necessity of a strict distinction of the motives which may lead to an atheistic world view. We know that the Communist atheism forms a certain system of convictions, including moral principles, which do not contradict to Christian norms [...]." Was this the base for an attempt to reconcile Christian teaching with Soviet social life? And which specific view on the Orthodox tradition guided him in his activities and the convictions behind them? These are basically the questions the paper is going to explore.
Bryzgel, Amy
Limit Cases: Artistic Controversies in Postmodern Art East and West
In 1914, Natalia Goncharova was charged with heresy against the Orthodox Church for her combination of secular motifs with the formal style and colouring of icons in her paintings. Nearly one-hundred years later, in 2010, curators Andrei Yerofeyev and Yuri Samodurov were convicted of blasphemy and offending religious sentiment, for their organisation of the exhibition, "Forbidden Art 2006," which featured, among other things, Aleksander Kosolapov's 1989 Caviar-Icon, an icon cover with the central figure of Mary replaced by caviar. Similarly, in 2003, Polish artist, Dorota Nieznalska was sentenced to 6 months of community service for the exact same crime. Her offending photograph consisted of a close-up of a penis in a cross-shaped frame.
While restrictions over artistic production might be associated with repressive, totalitarian societies, democracy has not prevented similar art controversies from appearing in the 'West.' In 1999, then Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, sued the Brooklyn Museum of Art for displaying Chris Ofili's 1996 work, The Holy Virgin Mary, which was made using elephant dung and cut-outs of male and female genitalia. In this case, however, the court ruled against Giuliani, upholding the rights of freedom of expression.
This paper will explore artistic controversies that have occurred since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and their relation to the emerging democracies of the former Eastern Bloc. I will juxtapose these cases with similar events that have occurred in the West, and estimate the role that democracy indeed plays in the access to or restriction of artistic freedom.
Buzarovska, Eleni and Mitkovska, Liljana Expression of the vertical dimension: South Slavic vs. English prepositions
The goal of this paper is to investigate the properties involved in coding the verticality dimension in South Slavic languages (Macedonian, Bulgarian and BCS). We apply a cognitive semantics approach as advocated by Talmy (2000) in considering features which specify geometries, perspective point, and distribution of attention of prepositions that divide up the vertical domain. More specifically, the analysis focuses on how these features are distributed in the lexical meaning of particular spatial prepositions in South Slavic languages and the way these prepositions relate to each other and to their English counterparts.
Earth-based orientations (vertical and horizontal) play a significant role in structuring spatial relations expressed in lexical items. The earth-based vertical axis as a secondary Reference Object is incorporated in a number of prepositions (such as nad, iznad, vrz and pod, ispod in South Slavic). The central senses require an alignment of the Figure and the primary Reference Object (Landmark) on an axis perpendicular to the ground, whereas in less central senses this requirement is relaxed. Our analysis attempts to tie conceptualization to lexicalization by: (a) determining the features that combine with verticality in the central senses of the considered prepositions, (b) isolating features responsible for the variation of their semantics, and (c) demonstrating how this variation is reflected in South Slavic languages compared to English. We examine these mechanisms of topological extension in an attempt to establish cross-linguistic regularities in semantic variation.
Byakovskaya, Nadezda Verbs of thought as propositional attitudes in Russian
The paper deals with verbs of the Russian language that refer to the act of thinking by introducing a proposition or several propositions into the discourse (verbs of thought as propositional attitudes). The act of thinking implies a transition from the absence of a proposition to its presence in the mind of a "thinker".
In the paper, semantic and grammatical characteristics of verbs of thought are compared with those of verbs of thinking, which denote the process of thinking. The paper also suggests a method of determining what verbs can be included into the group of verbs of thought and differentiates between several groups of verbs of thought. It is revealed that verbs of thought are characterized by unconventional distribution of aspectual meanings inside aspectual pairs. The paper proceeds with verb phrases of thought in the Russian language and analyses their semantic peculiarities.
Finally, the ways to translate Russian verbs and verb phrases of thought into English are analysed.
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