Russia under Putin: Titanic looking for its iceberg?

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 209-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilia Shevtsova
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Power System ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
Vladimir Putin

December 2011 protests in Russia, the largest after the collapse of the Soviet Union, shattered the status quo that had taken shape over the last decade and signaled that Russia is entering turbulent waters. Russia found itself caught in a trap: the 2011–2012 elections perpetuate a personalized power system that became the source of decay. The top-down rule and its “personificator” – Vladimir Putin – are already rejected by the most dynamic and educated urban population. However, no clear political alternative with a broad social support has yet emerged to replace the old Russian matrix. In terms of strategic significance, Putin’s regime will most certainly unravel in the fore-seeable perspective. But it is hard to predict what consequences this will have: the system’s disintegration and even collapse of the state, growing rot and atrophy, or the last grasp in the life of personalized power and transformation that will set Russia on a new foundation. One thing is apparent: transformation will not happen in the form of reform from above and within, and if it does occur, it will be the result of the deepening crisis and society’s pressure.

Mythological, Religious, and Philosophical Topoi in the Prose of Valerii Shevchuk

Slavic Review ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 905-913
Author(s):  
Marko Pavlyshyn
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
The Status ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
Party Congress

Liberalized cultural discussion in the Soviet Union after the Twenty-seventh Party Congress in 1985 was concerned in part with the nature of a literature that would be appropriate to the new ideals of openness and restructuring. In Ukraine, as elsewhere, the debate brought forth a list of imperatives that, without challenging the socialist realist principle that literature must serve overarching social and political goals, amounted to a formula for a new kind of literary engagement. Literature must “boldly intrude into contemporary reality,” it must defend the historical, cultural, linguistic, and ecological heritage and must unmask the crimes and abuses of the past and present. It must no longer be bland and inoffensive and must not avoid controversial issues or praise the status quo as a matter of course.

scholarly journals Russia in Nagorno Karabagh Conflict: A Mediator or an Arms Dealer

2018 ◽  
Vol III (I) ◽  
pp. 01-17
Author(s):  
Gasparyan Gevorg ◽  
Wang Li
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Mediation Process ◽  
South Caucasus ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Nagorno Karabagh

In the post-Soviet era, the Nagorno Karabagh conflict has been a major source of tension in the South Caucasus. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia, the United States, and France have all been involved in the mediation process between Nagorno Karabagh, Armenia, and Azerbaijan over the resolution of the conflict. Russia, given its historical ties, economic interests, political clout, and military relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan, appears to be the most influential and vital moderator in this conflict. This dates back to the outbreak of violence in early 1990s. Russia has tried to help the participants in the Nagorno Karabagh conflict to maintain the status quo, and has provided a framework of dialogue for Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia has been the main supplier of arms to both sides, which calls into question Russia's motive and goals in its role as a mediator, and its role is subject of much controversy in the Nagorno Karabagh conflict. This paper argues that Russia's role as a mediator is primarily focused on maintaining the status quo, and ensuring the equilibrium of military capabilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in order to discourage any military escalations between the two states. We assert that despite the fact that this strategy has been successful for Russia in maintaining the status quo, a different approach, which moves beyond military balancing, is required in order to reach a long-term solution for the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno Karabagh.

The Depiction of ‘Orthodoxy’ in Post-Soviet Space: How Vladimir Putin Uses the Church in His Anti-Western Campaign

2021 ◽  
pp. 097359842110351
Author(s):  
Punsara Amarasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Eastern Christianity ◽  
Western Influence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
Global Affairs ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
Spiritual Legacy

This article seeks to examine Russia’s recent interest in uplifting the status of Orthodox church as a pivotal factor in the state. Most importantly, the position of Orthodox Church has grown rapidly during Putin’s administration as a solacing factor to fill the gap emerging from the fall of the Soviet Union. The sixteenth-century doctrine propounded by Filofei called ‘Third Rome’, which profoundly portrayed Moscow as the last sanctuary for Eastern Christianity and the nineteenth-century nationalist mantra of ‘Orthodoxy, Nationality, and Autocracy’, is rejuvenated under Putin as the new ideological path to move away from the Western influence. Specifically, it is an evident factor that ideological movement that rigidly denies Russia’s hobnobbing with the Liberal West is rather intensified after the Crimean crisis in 2014. Under this situation, Putin’s usage of Orthodoxy and Russia’s spiritual legacy stands as a direct political tool, expressing Russia’s uniqueness of the global affairs. This article will critically examine the historical trajectory of the Orthodox Church in Russia as an indicator of its distinctiveness.

Information, Bureaucracy, and Economic Reforms in China and the Soviet Union

1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasheng Huang
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Information Provision ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Central Planning ◽  
Planning System ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Macroeconomic Instability ◽  
The Status

The argument in this essay can be reduced to the following form: the better a planning system is in terms of central planning techniques, the less likely it is to depart from central planning. The author proposes an information approach to explain why China launched economic reforms at a relatively earlier stage of development than did the Soviet Union. The claim is twofold regarding the connections between initiation of reform and information flows in China and in the Soviet Union. First, all else being equal, a bureaucracy better informed about economic conditions is more likely to pursue realistic economic objectives and its policies are less likely to induce macroeconomic instability. To the extent that macroeconomic instability activates a search for alternatives to the status quo, including reforms, a bureaucracy with better information-collection capabilities is less likely to initiate such a search and therefore less likely to initiate reforms.Second, policymakers choose between reforms and the strengthening of central planning as alternative solutions to the status quo. The choice of one solution over another depends on their relative costs. Again, all else being equal, the higher the costs of strengthening central planning (or reform), the more likely is reform (or strengthening of central planning) to be chosen. This essay focuses on one aspect of these costs—the costs of information provision.

The Soviet Union and Nordic Security

1971 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Johan Jörgen Holst
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
European Security ◽  
Oil Drilling ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
System Extension ◽  
Structural Instabilities ◽  
Norwegian Continental Shelf

The author distinguishes between Soviet objectives of system preservation and system extension. Soviet policies vis-à-vis the Nordic area have been conceived primarily in the context of system preservation. Thus the Soviet Union has pursued a policy of no experiments and accepts the status quo as tolerable. The preferred Soviet model is that of a neutralist and fragmented Nordic system. The Soviet naval expansion has resulted in the forward deployment of the Northern and Baltic fleets to the Greenland — Iceland — Faeroe Islands gap. There are several structural instabilities associated with a Soviet naval strategy of forward deployment. It also affects the efficacy and credibility of US reinforcements to Norway. The North European security zone is likely to remain of considerable significance to the management of the Central Balance while oil drilling on the Norwegian continental shelf introduces a new element of uncertainty. In their negotiations with the EC the Nordic states appear to be preserving the regional equilibrium and the Soviet Union has made no serious objections.

Soviet Security Objectives in Asia

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-478
Author(s):  
Marian P. Kirsch
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
European Security ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Center ◽  
The Status ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
Sphere Of Influence

Three momentous events of the 1960's—the war in Vietnam, the steady worsening of the Sino-Soviet dispute, and the Chinese acquisition of nuclear weapons—portend a shift in the political center of gravity from Europe to Asia in the last third of this century. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia only temporarily ruffled Europe's political terrain, and, while it damaged Moscow's international prestige, it never threatened to'escalate into superpower confrontation on the continent. The United States and its North Adantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, in fact, went out of their way to avoid provoking the Soviet Union; the ritualistic tone of their denunciations of the invasion indicated that, as after Hungary in 1956, the West was resigned to Moscow's freedom of action in its Eastern European “sphere of influence”. Emboldened by the Western response, the Soviet Union reiterated with increased vigor its proposal for a European security conference to freeze the status quo in Europe.

From Top-Down Control to Self-Organisation: The “Thaw” and Motor Action Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-156
Author(s):  
Irina Sirotkina
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Mathematical Concept ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Models ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
Moscow School

The period from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union was known as the “Thaw,” a political era that fostered hopes of restoring the rule of law and democracy to the country. In that period cybernetics came to symbolize both scientific progress and social change. The Soviet intelligentsia had survived the hardship of Stalinist repression and now regarded the new discipline, which brought together the natural sciences and the human sciences, as a pathway to building a freer and more equal society. After decades of domination by Pavlovian doctrine, a paradigm shift was under way in physiology and psychology. Cybernetics reinforced the new paradigm, which put forward ideas of purposive behavior and self-organization in living and non-living systems. The conditioned reflex and a simplistic one-to-one view of connections in the nervous system gave way to more sophisticated and complex models, which could be formalized mathematically. Previous models of control in living organisms were mostly hierarchical and included top-down control of peripheral movement by the motor centers. The new models supplemented this picture with feedback commands from the periphery to the center. By the time cybernetics had made its appearance in the Soviet Union, new models of control had already been formulated in physiology by Nikolay Bernstein (1896– 1966). He termed the feedback from afferent signals “sensorial corrections,” meaning that they play an important part in adapting central control to the changing situation at the periphery of movement. The new paradigm emphasized horizontal connections over vertical ones, and new models took hold based on less “totalitarian” and more “democratic” principles, such as the idea of automatic or autonomous functioning of intermediate centers, the mathematical concept of well-organized functions, the theory of “the collective behavior of automata,” etc. This line of research was carried out in the USSR as well as abroad by Bernstein’s students and followers who formed the Moscow School of Motor Control. The author argues that this preference for less hierarchical models was one expression of the Thaw’s trend toward liberalization of life within the USSR and greater involvement in international politics.

Cold War consumption and the marketing of childhood in the Soviet Union and the United States, 1950-1960

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
The Cold War

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between childhood, consumption and the Cold War in 1950s America and the Soviet Union. The author argues that Soviet and American leaders, businessmen, and politicians worked hard to convince parents that buying things for their children offered the easiest way to raise good American and Soviet kids and to do their part in waging the economic battles of the Cold War. The author explores how consumption became a Cold War battleground in the late 1950s and suggests that the history of childhood and Cold War consumption alters the way we understand the conflict itself. Design/Methodology/Approach – Archival research in the USA and the Russian Federation along with close readings of Soviet and American advertisements offer sources for understanding the global discourse of consumption in the 1950s and 1960s. Findings – Leaders, advertisers, and propagandists in the Soviet Union and the USA used the same images in the same ways to sell the ethos of consumption to their populations. They did this to sell the Cold War, to bolster the status quo, and to make profits. Originality/Value – This paper offers a previously unexplored, transnational perspective on the role that consumption and the image of the child played in shaping the Cold War both domestically and abroad.

scholarly journals POZNAŃSKI „OKRĄGLAK” ORAZ WARSZAWSKI PAŁAC KULTURY – IDEOLOGICZNE PARADOKSY ARCHITEKTURY PO II WOJNIE ŚWIATOWEJ

1970 ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
HANNA GRZESZCZUK-BRENDEL
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Department Store ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Communist Country ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The Soviet Union

A – department store commonly referred to as “Okrąglak” (“The Rotunda”) in Poznań and the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, both completed in 1955, represent features of two opposing styles. This leads to further reflections on modernism and socialist realism as demonstrated by the – two buildings. The modern features of the tower of the Palace of Culture and Science have been outshined with the national form and communist contents clearly reflecting Poland’s subordination to the Soviet Union. References to the pattern, the Palace of the Soviets, defined the top-down accepted model of progress. The department store (“Okrąglak”), designed in 1948, was also meant to demonstrate modernity of commerce in a communist country. However, its form designed by Marek Leykam represents a more universal concept of progress free from any designations.

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