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Articles by Katri Pynnöniemi

1. “Szmalcownicy” blackmailing of the Jews in Lviv as a social phenomenon during the Nazi occupation (1941–1944)

   This article focuses on the blackmailing of the Jews during the Nazi occupation of Lviv, Galicia. Despite a considerable amount of attention from historians to the Shoah in Lviv, this issue is still one of the few unstudied problems. Based on the carefully collected source materials, the author reconstructs the main features of this phenomenon, its evolution, its local specifics, and the main types of blackmailers and the methods of their activities.

2. Ksenia Sobchak and the visibility of female politicians in the Russian public sphere

   After announcing her presidential campaign in October 2017, Sobchak, perhaps unsurprisingly, was represented in mainstream Russian media as an “unruly woman”19 who was transgressing the existing patriarchal norms and rules, and she was explicitly reminded by male journalists and TV anchors of the “real” and “traditional” role a woman is supposed to play.

3. Putin 4.0. Post-Crimea elite conflicts and the future transition of presidential power in Russia

   Professor Olga Kryshtanovskaya comments on the current situation around the future presidential successor in Russia and the potential political upheavals connected to this issue. Olga Kryshtanovskaya is a professor at the State University of Management in Moscow and a leading Russian sociologist with a specialization in elite research

4. In Pursuit of Kairos. Ukrainian Journalists Between Agency and Structure During Euromaidan

   In less than 15 years, activist journalists have enjoyed a vertiginous career in Ukraine, from a persecuted and marginal minority to one of the most influential social groups and key actors in the political field. This was certainly facilitated by the technological shift that made media work more cost-efficient and less resource-demanding. But the transformation could also only happen because the culture had a long tradition of journalists taking a stand against authorities, and the idealized figures of an honest publicist, a passionately engaged writer, and a resistance fighter were familiar and readily accepted by the public.

5. “FEMACT is led by an ethos of feminism-across-borders”

   The academic community is international, and this solidarity crosses borders. Angelika Sjöstedt-Landén is one of the founders of the network FEMACT, that aim to fight the limiting space for academic freedom. We asked her to explain more about the initiative.

6. The disappearance of social anthropology

   The Constitution for Science aims to flatten the structure of Polish science. This can result in easier management, both in economic as well as in political terms, but what is actually at stake is a restriction of academic freedom.

7. Measuring academic freedom in a regional and global perspective

   Democratic backsliding has been an abiding and pervasive concern across the post-communist region for almost a decade. Data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset corroborate this phenomenon and show that one of the contributors to this decline is a narrowing of freedom for academic and cultural expression.While not being the sole driver of this recent backsliding trend, the opportunity for open academic and cultural exchange does remain an important principle of basic electoral democracy.

8. Student protests against neoliberal reforms in higher education

   Student protest as a form of mobilization from below, excluding categorically political organizations like opposition parties and NGOs, has changed the perception in Albanian society about protesting and decision-making. Public opinion regarding the protest in December of 2018 has had the same value as the student movement in 1990—1991 when the system changed, and Albania became a democratic country, and the students are once again bringing hope to Albania!

9. Reiner Frigyes Park: A Reflection on current events in Hungary

   Inaugurated in October 2012, the statue was one of the first publicly-funded right-wing monuments to adorn a public square in postwar Hungary, and only one example of the current Hungarian government’s determined campaign to reformulate public discourse and memory politics.

10. Expulsion of students as a tool of control

    In order to silence dissident voices within Belarusian higher education, students with uncomfortable political views are often expelled. International critique has resulted in a decrease in the number of expulsions, but the repression continues. The university administration merely has changed methods and nowadays focuses on the students with a capacity to lead others.

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