Article
“Do It the Russian Way”: Narratives of the Russian Revolution in European History Textbooks
The article presents the results of narrative analysis of contemporary European history textbooks’ coverage of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The sample consists of 101 textbooks from 22 European states, published between 2000 and 2015 and currently in use in secondary and high schools. The results show that the Russian Revolution, unlike most other events in Russia's history, is narrated as a story not about Russianness, but about shared European historical experiences and social issues. The article discusses the implications of this way of narrating the Russian Revolution for the perceived logic of European history.
In the book, the proceedings of Conference ‘Revolutions in the modern world: science – culture – society’ (7–8 November 2017, Philosophy Department of Moscow State University) time to one hundredth anniversary of October Revolution in Russia. The endeavour is made to study the phenomenon of revolution from different viewpoints: from a riot and bloody tragedy in the society to re-making the world attempt under novel religious slogans, from art vanguard revolution to the revolutions in science and technology in the twentieth century
The article analyzes the practice of political use of the symbol of the Great Patriotic War by the Russian officials in the 2000-2010s basing on rhetoric of presidents V.Putin and D.Medvedev. It argues that Putin’s attempt to rehabilitate the Soviet past as a part of “the thousand years old Russian state” opened new opportunities for political use of the symbol of the Great Victory than Yeltsin’s formula “the victory of the people, but not of the Communist Party and the Soviet State”. The Victory over the German fascism and USSR’s development into a world superpower became the central elements of the new narrative of the Russian history. As a result of this transformation the symbol of the Victory was “divorced” from the tragic memory of Stalin’s regime. It makes possible its semantic inflation that is revealed by frame analysis of the presidents’ speeches in the Victory Day. But at the same time it hampers an integration of this symbol into a consistent narrative of the national past. Besides, in the context of a radical transformation of European memory regimes it makes the “apologetic” version of the Great Victory vulnerable before challenges from abroad.
This volume presents a series of essays from leading international scholars that expand our understanding of the Russian Revolution through the detailed study of specific localities. Answering the important question of how locality affected the revolutionary experience, these essays provide regional snapshots from across Russia that highlight important themes of the revolution. Drawing on new empirical research from local archives, the authors contribute to the larger historiographic debates on the social and political meaning of the Russian revolution as well as the nature of the Russian state. Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective highlights several important themes of the period that are reflected in this volume: a multitudinal state, the fluidity of party politics, the importance of violence as an historical agent, individual experiences, and the importance of economics and social forces. We reconceptualize developments in Russia between 1914 and 1922 as a kaleidoscopic process whose dynamic was not solely determined in the capitals.
The article attempts to examine the background of the problematization of narrative in historical knowledge. It explores the transformation of narrative in situations of postmodern and postpostmodern. The problem of narrative is analyzed in correlation with the types of rationality / models of science and given the gap between historical science and socially oriented historical writing. The potential of the source studies approach to the analysis of narrative is demonstrated. Structural method of the source studies is proposed as opposed to a narrative logic in historical wtiting.
Students' internet usage attracts the attention of many researchers in different countries. Differences in internet penetration in diverse countries lead us to ask about the interaction of medium and culture in this process. In this paper we present an analysis based on a sample of 825 students from 18 Russian universities and discuss findings on particularities of students' ICT usage. On the background of the findings of the study, based on data collected in 2008-2009 year during a project "A сross-cultural study of the new learning culture formation in Germany and Russia", we discuss the problem of plagiarism in Russia, the availability of ICT features in Russian universities and an evaluation of the attractiveness of different categories of ICT usage and gender specifics in the use of ICT.
The results of cross-cultural research of implicit theories of innovativeness among students and teachers, representatives of three ethnocultural groups: Russians, the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingushs) and Tuvinians (N=804) are presented. Intergroup differences in implicit theories of innovativeness are revealed: the ‘individual’ theories of innovativeness prevail among Russians and among the students, the ‘social’ theories of innovativeness are more expressed among respondents from the North Caucasus, Tuva and among the teachers. Using the structural equations modeling the universal model of values impact on implicit theories of innovativeness and attitudes towards innovations is constructed. Values of the Openness to changes and individual theories of innovativeness promote the positive relation to innovations. Results of research have shown that implicit theories of innovativeness differ in different cultures, and values make different impact on the attitudes towards innovations and innovative experience in different cultures.