Book
Russian Modernization: A New Paradigm
Building on an original interpretation of social theory and an interdisciplinary approach, this book creates a new paradigm in the Russian studies. Taking a fresh view of Russia’s multiple experiences of modernization, it seeks to explain the Putin era in a completely new way.
This book explores the paradoxical and contradictory aspects of Russia, analyzing the energy-dependent economy and hybrid political regime, but also religion, welfare, and culture, and their often complex interrelations. Written by a community of both Western and Russian scholars, this book re-affirms the value of social science when confronting a society that has undergone enormous and costly systematic changes. The Russian elites see modernization narrowly as economic and technological competitiveness. The contributors to this volume see contemporary Russia facing a series of antinomies, which are macro-level dilemmas that cannot be abolished, either by philosophical mediation or by immediate political decisions. As such, they are the tension fields that constitute choices for various competing agencies.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Russian studies, transition studies, sociology, social policy, political science, energy policy, cultural studies, and stratification studies. Professionals involved in energy, ecology, and security policy will also find this publication a rich source
This is an introduction to Chapter 5 "Post-Soviet Russian cultuire: Anony, desecularization and the conservative turn in the book "Russian Moderization: A new pradigm"
Building on contemporary social science, we intend to go beyond current Russian studies by creating a new paradigm in the field. In this chapter, we develop the conceptual starting points of this new paradigm and specify our methodological approach to modernity and modernization. We intend to show that Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory gives us instruments for methodological specifications that broaden the horizon towards more comprehensive research programmes. Previous approaches do not seem to find ways to examine both structures and agencies at the same time. Russia’s development is explained either as an inevitable structural process, or only as a result of the intentions of the actors. We argue that it is essential to be able to study modernization both as a representation and as a broader analytical category referring to basic structural challenges.
The paper discusses some aspects of Russian modernization in the framework of the basic ideas of contemporary educational philosophy. The article analyses the issue of the Russian University and the competence-based education in Russia. The author introduces the notion of «Innovative University» to show a powerful trend in the Russian modernization ideology, its politics of innovation economics and technological “break through”. According to the author, the Innovative University accumulates the social, economical and intellectual resources of the Russian society, and it is both the source and the model of innovative development in Russia.
The subject of this article is the culture of acceleration in present-day world. The author analyzes some of grave social consequences provoked by the cult of speed and by the uncontrolled acceleration of various domains of life, such as “presentism”, i.e. the absorption of the past and future by the present time; social amnesia; superficial character of social changes; growing difficulties of selection of necessary information; danger of loss of culture acquisitions, etc. Some aspects of widespread “Slow Movement”, resisting this uncontrolled and total acceleration are analyzed. Finally, the problems of acceleration are considered in Russian context.
The authors examine how the social status of the university professor has evolved in Russia in recent centuries in light of the historical concepts about the enslavement and emancipation of social groups proposed by Sergey Solovyov and Aleksandr Gradovsky. They use the metaphor of the “slave” [nevol’nik] to describe the dependent position of the professor in the university. The word encapsulates administrative tyranny, the spread of subordinate and submissive mentality in the university environment, and the curtailment of opportunities for professional selffulfillment. The authors present the university administration as the main agent responsible for enslaving professors. Administrators represent bureaucratic power and act to advance their own social ambitions.
Collection of articles dedicated to the new trends of social and cultural change in Korean and Russian companies. It examines the historical background of the formation of the new trends of social and cultural changes in the two societies and the modern problems of democratization and formation of civil society. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of social and economic transformations, as well as the emergence of new socio-cultural practices in Korea and Russia.
The chapter is concerned with questions of civic values and civic identity as they are experienced by Russian people in the context of political-economic transformations of the last years, and especially during global economic crisis 2008-2010. Empirical findings from Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, Levada-Centre, Edelman Trust Barometer surveys are used to outline how tensions, distrust and civic irresponsibility expressed by respondents in the context of financial instability may amplify understandings of ‘citizenship’ and ‘civic identity’. There are several trends characterizing citizenship and civic identity in modern Russian society. The first is transformation of the common sense of ‘we-ness’ in case of individualism’s growth and increasing reduction of trust to economic, political and low institutions. The second is the problem of new values formation: while the ‘official’ political discourse admits more and more inclusive patriotic ideologies, ‘everyday-life’ and ‘network’ discourses develop estimative and ironical judgments of the official discourse. The third is citizens’ emigration intentions and the ‘status of citizenship’ characterizing self-perception of people as ‘citizens’ in relation to ‘non-citizens’, which is particular relevant to labour migration problem.
The paper examines the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2012. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by including banks that are indirectly owned by public organizations. Contrary to some predictions based on the theoretical literature on economic transition, he explains the relatively high profitability and efficiency of Russian state-controlled banks by pointing to their competitive position in such functions as acquisition and disposal of assets on behalf of the government. Also suggested in the paper is a different way of looking at market concentration in Russia (by consolidating the market shares of core state-controlled banks), which produces a picture of a more concentrated market than officially reported. Lastly, one of the author's interesting conclusions is that China provides a better benchmark than the formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe by which to assess the viability of state ownership of banks in Russia and to evaluate the country's banking sector.
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.
The paper examines the principles for the supervision of financial conglomerates proposed by BCBS in the consultative document published in December 2011. Moreover, the article proposes a number of suggestions worked out by the authors within the HSE research team.