By analyzing the usage of the word “market” (rynok) in the Russian press since 1990, the author shows how the keyword takes on new meanings, reflecting and relates to the different social and political roles of the press outlets in an evolving, modernizing environment.
By
Katja Lehtisaari
October 20, 2014
The author argues that the equation of culture and natural resources has become a fundamental metaphor of the official patriotic discourse of identity in contemporary Russia. This conceptualization of the past frames nation building and state construction, the “nostalgic modernization”.
By
Ilya Kalinin
October 20, 2014
In an attempt to bring Russian articulations of Russian religiosity into a dialogue with the American sociologist Robert N. Bellah’s theory on secularization the author argues for a Russian model of civil religion.
By
Elina Kahla
October 20, 2014
Focusing on the role of the Soviet legacy the author conducts a detailed analysis of the restoration work, as well as the official discourse surrounding it. The aim is to uncovering the ideological ambiguities of Russia’s most recent top-down modernization, a modernization based on values claimed to be “conservative”.
By
Irina Kotkina
October 20, 2014
The Russian media system today is a hybrid composed of the main public sphere — that is, state-owned mainstream media — and a parallel public sphere or counter-sphere, consisting of mainstream media relatively disloyal to the Kremlin, and social media. The present study is based on an analysis of one hundred journalist’s blogs maintained on the LiveJournal platform in during the 2012 presidential election in Russia.
By
Elena Johansson
October 19, 2014
The nationally organized camp Seliger All-Russia Youth Forum gathers tens of thousands of young Russians every year. Here a report from the inside of the camp, observations in contemporary nation-building.
By
Kristiina Silvan
October 18, 2014
The Russian researcher Olga Kryshtanovskaya discusses Russian political elites and their role in the political process in Russia. According to Kryshtanovskaya, a new class of rich people is emerging, a hereditary aristocracy which has yet to be legitimized in the Russian collective consciousness.
By
Ilja Viktorov
October 18, 2014
Whether comic, violent, brutal, or burlesque, Bakhtin’s explorations of cultural communication today appeal to linguists and literary theorists; but also to artists, musicians, and scholars in education, Slavic languages, postcolonial studies, and many other fields.
By
Charlotte Bydler
October 9, 2014
The purpose of the conference was to establish new points of contact between the actively developing traditional Bakhtin studies (in literature, language, and cultural theory), on the one hand, and those new directions in research that have discovered the importance of Bakhtin’s ideas in new applications in the humanities, social sciences, education, artistic research, and art practices.
By
Irina Sandomirskaja
October 9, 2014
Many postcommunist countries have large numbers of stray dogs. In several localitites in Russia poisoned meat has been put out to keep the number of strays down. Before major events, such as the Winter olympics in Sochi, mass culling has been announced. Dog rights activists rather suggest sterilization programs and animal shelters.
By
Ninna Mörner
April 30, 2014