Article
“Соотечественники” в сибирской деревне: взгляд из Польши
The article deals with the relations of habitants of the village Vershina (Bokhanski district of the Irkutsk Region), founded by Polish migrants in the early 20th century, with their “historical motherland”. It depicts the main trends in perception the Vershina’s settlers as “compatriots” by the representatives of the state and public structures of the Polish Republic.
This paper is based on a study which compares repatriation policies of Germany, Russia and Kazakhstan The choice of cases is based on a “most similar case design.” The Russian case results in unsuccessful and unsustainable repatriation, the German case exhibits a change from sustainable repatriation to a slow termination of the program, while the case of Kazakhstan is one of sustainable and relatively successful repatriation. The main argument of the paper is that in order for a repatriation program to be sustainable, the program must contain both a practical component and an ideological component. If a repatriation program lacks ideological backing which permeates other aspects of political life in a state, the repatriation program grinds to a halt. If a repatriation program has ideological backing, but is rendered impractical and does not meet the economic, demographic and labor market needs of a state, then the further development of the program stops. The findings of this study merit further reflection on issues of changing national identities, on the transnational essence of migration pathways, and on the “post-Soviet condition” which has set the stage for all of the aforementioned processes and transformations.
This paper analyzes German and Russian ideas of nationhood as conceived by the state through the states’ migration and repatriation policies. Immigration policies at large and repatriation policies in particular are viewed in this paper as symptomatic means of understanding inclusion and exclusion in a nation-state, and evolution of such policies are taken as indicators of changes in idioms of the national self. The main argument of the paper is that German national identity is slowly moving away from an ethno-centric conceptualization of nationhood, while Russia has failed to formulate a conception of the Russian nation-state. The findings of this study merit further reflection the effectiveness of repatriation policies, on the relationship between the state and society, on the transnational essence of migration pathways, and on the “post-Soviet condition” which has set the stage for all of the aforementioned processes and transformations.
The article analyzes the activities of organizational structures of the Russian Federation in the implementation of the strategy of promotion of Russian language in China in the beginning of the XXI century. The author emphasizes that, having entered the new century, the Russian leadership has included the popularization of the Russian language in the list of priorities of its foreign policy. The author shows how the state task to revive and strengthen the position of Russian language in China, lost in the 1990s, has been implemented, what are the new challenges in this area.
Several approaches to the concept of fatherhood present in Western sociological tradition are analyzed and compared: biological determinism, social constructivism and biosocial theory. The problematics of fatherhood and men’s parental practices is marginalized in modern Russian social research devoted to family and this fact makes the traditional inequality in family relations, when the father’s role is considered secondary compared to that of mother, even stronger. However, in Western critical men’s studies several stages can be outlined: the development of “sex roles” paradigm (biological determinism), the emergence of the hegemonic masculinity concept, inter-disciplinary stage (biosocial theory). According to the approach of biological determinism, the role of a father is that of the patriarch, he continues the family line and serves as a model for his ascendants. Social constructivism looks into man’s functions in the family from the point of view of masculine pressure and establishing hegemony over a woman and children. Biosocial theory aims to unite the biological determinacy of fatherhood with social, cultural and personal context. It is shown that these approaches are directly connected with the level of the society development, marriage and family perceptions, the level of egality of gender order.