Опубликовано в журнале Неприкосновенный запас, номер 2, 2003
As this issue goes to press, NZ launches its new web site, www.nz-online.ru, featuring the entire content of this issue, a complete archive of past numbers, expanded versions of several articles published in this issue, and a number of pieces written especially for the web version of NZ as well as pre-publications of articles that will appear in future editions. Very soon, NZ Online will also feature English versions of selected articles, as well as a number of texts in French, German, Polish, Serb, Spanish, and other languages.
Another novelty is that from now on, NZ will devote part of every issue to Debates on Economics, as we explain in the editorial introduction to the Liberal Heritage section, whose main feature is the translation of a chapter from Tony Lawson’s seminal book Economics and Reality. Lawson discusses the status, possibilities, and limitations of economics as a social science, using what he calls a ▒transcendental realist’ approach to the philosophy of science.
This issue also introduces our new columnist, Yevgeny Saburov, a poet, economist, and former politician (he was, briefly, Russia’s Minister of the Economy in 1991, and, in 1994, Head of Government of the Crimean Republic). In the first instalment of his column entitled Humane Economics (which could also be translated as Economic Humanities), Saburov discusses the economic implications of modern mass education (Economics on the Playing-Field).
Our first thematic focus is on Economic Imperialism — the tendency of contemporary economists to impose their methods on all areas of social studies, and even social life more generally. The section opens with an article by economist Yury Latov, who is rather optimistic about the possibility of analysing political life with the help of economics, and discusses various ways of doing so (Politics: Exchange or Fraud?). In a more sceptical vein, sociologist and economist Anton Oleinik (Market Totalitarianism?) draws attention to what he calls the totalitarianism of the market in post-Soviet Russia, whereby economic incentives have come to dominate spheres of life originally remote from market-oriented behaviour, such as academic research. Oleinik argues that unless different areas of social existence, each with its own set of values, are clearly differentiated, Russian society will have left behind its totalitarian past only to fall prey to a new kind of totalitarianism. The section is closed by an article by Paris-based economist and historian Jacques Sapir entitled The Imperialism of Economics: Reflections on the Current State of Economic Thought and its Relations with the Social Sciences. Sapir discusses what he calls the ▒autism’ of contemporary economic orthodoxy — i.e., among others, its persistence with clinging on to philosophical premises proven to be out of touch with reality.
The Morals and Mores section features a correspondence between two sociologists, Moscow-based Boris Dubin and his Kiev-based colleague Volodymyr Kulyk, headed Russia and Ukraine: Public Discourses and Expectations for Change. Kulyk and Dubin exchange views on differences and similarities between the media’s and politicians’ discourse in Russia and Ukraine, and the ways in which the public sphere reflects and shapes people’s aspirations for democratisation in the two countries, or rather the absence of such aspirations.
The second focal point is devoted to Civil Society — a fashionable topic in Russia until very recently, interest in which dropped, however, soon after the hotly contested Civil Forum in November 2001. In order to rekindle the debate, we publish a lecture by Berlin-based historian Jürgen Kocka, a well-known theoretician of civil society, entitled European Civil Society: Its Historical Roots and Contemporary Perspectives in East and West, given in Moscow earlier this year. Kocka’s approach, which defines civil society as an autonomous social sphere located between the state, the economy, and private life, is heavily contested by Moscow-based scholars Boris Khlebnikov and Vladimir Yakimets, in a conversation published under the heading Civil Society: In Search of a Definition. Drawing on a wide range of specific examples from Russia, Germany, and other countries, both argue that the reality of civic activity is much more complex, and more entangled with both the state and the economy, than most contemporary theories of civil society would seem to allow for. This is followed by an article by Sergey Tsirel, a political writer from Saint-Petersburg, who asks Which Forces Can Build Civil Society in Russia?, and comes to the conclusion that this is a task for the generation he calls the ▒new workaholics’. Finally, legal scholar Nina Belyaeva, president of a Russia-wide network of civic initiatives and one of the co-organisers of the Civil Forum, takes stock of What Remains After the Civil Forum, arguing that it would be false to see the event solely as a Kremlin-steered PR stunt, although some of the blame for the chaotic organisation of the Forum undoubtedly lies with officials from the presidential apparatus.
A different angle on the same topic is presented by historian Laurent Coumel, writing in the Politics of Culture rubric. In his article Education Under Khrushchev: A Pedagogical ▒Thaw’?, he portrays Soviet academics’ reactions to Khrushchev’s attempted educational reform of 1958, showing the ways in which, from the late 1950s onwards, parts of Soviet society were able to contest political decisions as long as these didn’t touch upon core ideological issues.
This issue’s third thematic debate is about National Self-Determination. It opens with an article by sociologist and political scientist Alexander Tarasov, who argues for The Right to National Self-Determination as a Fundamental Democratic Principle. Based on a quantitative study of press and journal articles disputing this principle, Tarasov takes the most commonly used counter-arguments and challenges them one by one. A competing perspective is developed by Sergey Kovalyov, a prominent human rights activist and Duma member, in an interview entitled National Self-Determination and the Future World Order. Kovalyov argues that the idea of national self-determination is theoretically flawed and will wither away as the current political world order, based on US supremacy and an ineffectual UN, is superseded by a new framework of international law. However, addressing specifically the question of Chechnya and other regions of the world where national self-determination movements are violently suppressed, Kovalyov concedes that until then, secession may be the only practicable solution to some of the most pressing conflicts of our time. The debate is rounded off by Sergey Zavyalov, a Saint-Petersburg poet whose roots lie in Mordvinia in Central Russia, who highlights the dilemmas of belonging to an ethnic minority and the peculiar perspective that this identification entails (So What Are We to Do? A Mordvin View of Russia).
NZ’s columnist Alexei Levinson devotes his Sociological Notes to the recent 50th anniversary of Stalin’s death (to be followed by his 125th birthday later this year). Levinson examines different attitudes towards Stalin in contemporary Russian society (admiration, respect, sympathy, indifference, dislike, fear, and hate), and gives a personal comment on the implications of each of these stances.
The topic is taken up by historians Hans-Heinrich Nolte and Pavel Polyan in their article Hitler and Stalin: Who is Better, Who Makes You Happier? On the Comparison of the Communist and National-Socialist Dictatorships, published in the Culture of Politics section (the article’s title refers to a famous Soviet propaganda song of the 1930s). Polyan and Nolte argue that now that the crimes of both the Nazi and the Soviet regime have been thoroughly studied, the time has come to compare the two using stricter criteria than has hitherto been possible, and report on some first results of this comparison.
The New Institutions section presents the Civil Society European Academy, a Moscow-based think tank devoted to fostering civic dialogue within Russian society and across national borders.
The Review of Journals features an overview of Russian-Language Periodicals Abroad by Maria Byalko, editor with the Russky Berlin wekly. This is followed by our customary review of Russian intellectual journals, which has expanded to include a number of publications not previously reported upon, such as Pro et Contra and the Russian version of Index on Censorship.
Finally, the New Books section includes a review of recent ethnological literature on rites of passage, by Vassily Kostyrko, and reviews of twelve recent books and CD-ROMs in Russian, German, and English linked to two of this issue’s topics: civil society and the Nazi and Communist dictatorships.