Article
Buryat, Mongol and Buddhist: Multiple identities and disentanglement projects in the Baikal region, 1917–1919
The Baikal region in Siberia had long been a zone of interactions between various European, Asian and global actors. Numerous relational spaces which were produced by the interactions were reconstructed in a geographic information system (GIS) and analysed jointly. The fall of the Qing and Russian empires resulted in energetic attempts to redraw administrative and international boundaries. Between 1917 and 1919 several disentanglement projects were developed and implemented by different actors, including indigenous intellectuals and Buddhist monks. These were the Buryat Autonomy proclaimed in 1917; the Buddhist theocracy created by a dissident Buddhist monk Lubsan Samdan Tsydenov; and the pan-Mongolian federation of Inner, Outer, Hulunbuir and Buryat Mongolia supported by Japanese officers and a regional Cossack leader Grigory Semenov. Each project underlined a certain group identity and claimed particular relational spaces. The article explored how the conflicts between overlapping identities were resolved, and why all three projects failed.
The problems of formation of organizational and economic mechanisms necessary to strengthen the position of Siberia in the economic space of the country were reviewed. The proposals refer to the reformation of the state regional policy and modernization of the regional strategic planning, provision of the implementation of the “Strategy of Socioeconomic Development of Siberia” and breakthroughs innovations in Siberian regions, and economic mechanisms of production development in this macroregion. A special emphasis is placed on measures for the fundamental modernization of Siberia’s mineral resource complex.
Until a method is found in Russia for generating a non-Soviet (different from the restoration of the pre-Soviet) central system of values, democratic institutions and practices will remain weak. Moreover, the vectors of movement for post-Soviet polities, which twenty years ago were labeled as a “democratic transition” in a burst of overly audacious hope, will remain forking paths.
“Empire Speaks Out” is a result of the collaborative international research project whose participants aim to reconstruct the origin, development, and changing modes of self-description and representation of the heterogeneous political, social, and cultural space of the Russian Empire. The collection offers an alternative to the study of empire as an essentialized historical phenomenon, i.e. to those studies that construe empire retrospectively by projecting the categories of modern nation-centered social sciences onto the imperial past. It stresses dynamic transformations, adaptation, and reproduction of imperial patterns of sociability and governance. Chapters of the collection show how languages of rationalization derived from modern public politics, scientific discourses of applied knowledge (law, sociology, political economy, geography, ethnography, physical anthropology) and social self-organization influenced processes of transformation of the imperial space.
The diverse and contested nature of the contemporary skinhead scene makes it impossible to identify a single common body regime, or set of gender norms, characteristic of the skinhead (sub)culture. This chapter explores one example of how these fraternal bonds and spaces are constituted. It pays particular attention to practices of the body (individual and collective) within the group and how these practices were enacted to confirm its skinhead identity while shaping a particular regime of closeness and intimacy. It considers, firstly, the group as a particular form of fraternity based on homosocial bonds of friendship, closeness and (dis)trust. Secondly, the aesthetics and the ethics of intimacy within the group are discussed. In particular practices of displaying the – naked and bare – body of the skinhead are considered as well as tests of, and conflicts over, the meaning of the intimacies that these practices forge. Finally, the chapter explores these practices in the context of the wider and competing masculinities through which they are enacted.
We address the external effects on public sector efficiency measures acquired using Data Envelopment Analysis. We use the health care system in Russian regions in 2011 to evaluate modern approaches to accounting for external effects. We propose a promising method of correcting DEA efficiency measures. Despite the multiple advantages DEA offers, the usage of this approach carries with it a number of methodological difficulties. Accounting for multiple factors of efficiency calls for more complex methods, among which the most promising are DMU clustering and calculating local production possibility frontiers. Using regression models for estimate correction requires further study due to possible systematic errors during estimation. A mixture of data correction and DMU clustering together with multi-stage DEA seems most promising at the moment. Analyzing several stages of transforming society’s resources into social welfare will allow for picking out the weak points in a state agency’s work.
The application of «protective reservations» is a fundamental principle of modern codifications of the private international law. The post-graduate student of the Private International Law Department, Faculty of Laws, National Research University «The Higher School of Economics», the advocate E.A. Kruty (e-mail: ekrutij@yandex.ru) minutely analyses provisions about the reservation about the public policy and mandatory rules which are included in the international acts and ten national codifications of XXI centuries (Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Estonia, Mongolia, Russia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Macedonia, Turkey). Despite the apparent prevalence of the negative construction of the reservation about the public policy the lawmaker prefers in some situations its positive variant. An appeal to codifications allows to identify the certain conditions on which protective reservations take effect. Their most detailed description is contained in the Belgian and Bulgarian codes. Not less interesting is a regulation of the legal consequences coming as a result of application of these legal institutions for private legal relations with a foreign element including in the international civil procedure.
Thematic volume of the Gosudarstvo, religija, cerkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom (2/33, 2015) entitled “Hristianskij Vostok: gosudarstva i mezhkonfessional'nye svjazi” [Christian Orient: The States and Interconfessional Relations]; edited by Dr. N. Seleznyov.
Russia’s Skinheads: exploring and rethinking subcultural lives provides a through examination of the phenomenon of skinheads, explaining its nature and its significance, and assessing how far Russian skinhead subculture is at the “lumpen” end of the extreme nationalist ideological spectrum. There are large numbers of skinheads in Russia, responsible for a significant number of xenophobic attacks, including 97 deaths in 2008 alone, making this book relevant to Russian specialists as well as to sociologists of youth subculture. It provides a practical example of how to investigate youth subculture in depth over an extended period – in this case through empirical research following a specific group over six years – and goes on to argue that Russian skinhead subculture is not a direct import from the West, and that youth cultural practices should not be reduced to expressions of consumer choice. It presents an understanding of the Russian skinheads as a product of individuals` whole, and evolving, lives, and thereby compels sociologists to rethink how they conceive the nature of subcultures.
The article concerns the problem of the Russian absolutist monarchy of the XVIII - the beginning of XX-th centuries in a comparative perspective. The social function of absolutism consisted in national integration, cultural unification and social transformation of traditional society by using of legal and coercive measures. The crucial problem is the changing role of the bureaucracy which could be the main protagonist of reforms or, just the opposite – its main opponent. From this point of view the author summarizes positive and negative aspects of absolutist reforms making outlook on the comparative experience of other absolutist empires of Europe and Asia.
This article is talking about state management and cultural policy, their nature and content in term of the new tendency - development of postindustrial society. It mentioned here, that at the moment cultural policy is the base of regional political activity and that regions can get strong competitive advantage if they are able to implement cultural policy successfully. All these trends can produce elements of new economic development.