Опубликовано в журнале Неприкосновенный запас, номер 4, 2004
Debates on politics and culture
NZ No. 36 opens with an article by Australian scholar Kanishka Jayasuriya on September 11, Security, and the Postliberal Politics of Fear. Jayasuriya discusses the ways in which discourse about security before and after 11 September 2001 has presented a challenge to politics, understood as an area of open debate and power struggles, even in the most advanced liberal democracies. The Russian leadership has of course profited from this new international context. By publishing this essay we hope to start a debate on the ways in which the language of security has been used to destroy Russia’s fledgling public sphere and democratic culture, and on possible alternatives to the ▒liberties/security’ tradeoff.
The Culture of Politics section features an article by Sergei Asmanov, prompted by recent statements by Vladimir Putin, on the ways in which the current Russian head of state may try to establish a system of ▒inheritance’ of the presidency. The Japanese, Mexican (PRI) and other more authoritarian/monarchic patterns of succession are considered as possible models for engineering such a system (Putin and his Successors: an Experiment in Democratic Construction).
Topic 1 is devoted to Soviet and Russian youth from the 1950s to the present day. It opens with an article by historian Kristin Roth-Ey entitled Who’s on the Pedestal, and Who’s in the Crowd? Stilyagi and the Idea of Soviet ▒Youth Culture’ in the Thaw, which tries to broaden our understanding of the so-called ▒stylish youth’ in the 1950s and 1960s beyond the positive stereotypes popularised by numerous recent memoirs. Bella Ostromoukhova analyses the making and evolution of a popular TV show called ▒Club of the Cheerful and Resourceful’, or KVN, which was considered an expression of youth creativity in the 1960s and 70s (KVN: ▒1960s Youth Culture’?) Sociologist Boris Gladarev discusses different approaches to the study of youth culture, with reference to the Life Worlds of the ▒Special’ Leningrad Youth, a milieu of young people which originally formed around an archaeological club in the 1970s. Ethnologist Tatyana Shchepanskaya analyses the symbolic role of the road in the culture of 1980s hippies and hitchhikers. Finally, sociologist Elena Omelchenko gives an overview of Russian youth subcultures (though she prefers to speak of ▒cultural strategies’) in the 1990s, ranging from skinheads through role players to clubbers.
Our columnist Alexei Levinson links this topic to the next one by presenting recent findings on young people’s image of Russian history. He concludes that the youngest generations are most prone to phasing out those periods of history that are potentially the most traumatic.
Under the Politics of Culture rubric, historian Igor Dolutsky, author of a recent school history textbook which was banned for allegedly criticising Putin, reflects upon his experience as a history teacher and argues that the teaching of history should aim to instil a spirit of critical analysis and immunity to manipulation rather than just teach facts or foster patriotism.
His article introduces Topic 2, which takes up the issue of history textbooks. Anton Sveshnikov discusses the ways in which politicians, textbook authors and the public have tried to shape the content of course books since Perestroika. Maria Ferretti reviews a recent two-volume textbook on Russian history edited by the director of the Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Russian History, and shows how the extreme nationalism and methodological positivismof the work serves to prop up Russia’s new ▒official history’ promoted by the current regime. Finally, Ukrainian historian Andrei Portnov examines The Image of Russia in Ukrainian School History Textbooks since 1991.
Yevgeny Saburov devotes the latest instalment of his Humane Economics to a discussion of the state-sponsored attack on YUKOS and the recent crisis at several Russian banks as examples of De-Institutionalisation.
Topic 3 deals with contemporary Russian prisons and their place in society. Sociologist Anton Oleinik reviews a recent book by ethnologist Ekaterina Yefimova on the prison as a ▒marginal’ subculture, and argues that contemporary Russian mainstream culture is so infused with elements of the peculiar culture of Russian penitentiary institutions that it hardly makes sense to speak of a prison ▒subculture’. In a reply to Oleinik, Yefimova defends the semiotic approach used in her study, and explains the way in which she uses the concept of ▒marginality’. Sociologist Asmik Novikova reports on the results of a recent large-scale study of religious sentiment and practice in Russian prisons, and shows how attendance at religious ceremonies has once again, as in Tsarist times, become an element of conformism and a requirement of ▒good conduct’ rather than an expression of genuine religious feeling.
In the Morals and Mores sections, old NGO hand Alexei Tokarev argues that the oft-scorned vestiges of Soviet-era organisations such as veterans’, women’s or trade unions continue to play a more important role than is generally supposed, and should be counted among the building blocks of civil society in contemporary Russia. The New Institutions rubric features the Ulyanovsk-based Youth Resource Centre which strives to strengthen links between NGOs, government agencies and academic specialists dealing with youth issues. The Journals Review section includes a review of recent Russian journals in politics, the social sciences, and the humanities as well as a survey of the landscape of Slovak intellectual journals by Alexander Bobrakov-Timoshkin. Finally, this issue’s New Books section focuses on recent books about the methods of historical scholarship.