Post Soviet

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

В статье проанализированы основные проблемы киргизстанской историографии советского и постсоветского периодов по теме восстания 1916 года. В круг использованных источников входят новые архивные документы, научные и публицистические публикации на русском и киргизском языках.

This collection of studies by social anthropologists describes the complex and often controversial processes of religious change occurring in the postsocialist world. By critically examining the influx of missionaries, the adoption of ‘new’ faiths, and the reactions to these unanticipated shifts in religious landscape, the authors offer valuable insight into the fate of state supported secularism as well as providing fresh critiques of anthropological studies of conversion.

Kotlomanov A.O. Twilight Biennale: Russian art life as if it mattered. Vestnik SPbSU. Arts, 2018, vol. 8, issue 2, pp. 320–324. (In Russian)
Котломанов А.О. Сумерки биеннале: российская художественная жизнь, как если бы она имела значение // Вестник СПбГУ. Искусствоведение. 2018. Т. 8. Вып. 2. С. 320–324.

What the world is now witnessing in Ukraine is the cumulative effect of history and memory in the lives of the people of the region—and this book helps readers to understand those subjects. Centered in Kharkiv, a Russian-speaking city in eastern Ukraine, this is an oral history of a group of military colonels, their families, and their contemporaries, covering their lives from the 1960s through the post-Soviet transition. During this period, these military families went from comfortable economic circumstances, professional prestige, and political influence to destitution and disgrace in the 1990s. Based on the 3,000+ pages of Westrate’s interview transcripts and supplemented with materials gleaned from unprecedented access to personal, family, and institutional archives, this book investigates how families endured shifting social, cultural, and political realities. By analyzing the lives of individuals in context, Westrate provides insights from the grassroots level. He reveals how ideological, professional, gender, religious, ethnic, and national imperatives—as developed and transmitted by elites—were internalized, transformed, or rejected by the rank and file. In the process, he shows what those experiences have to offer the study of Soviet, post-Soviet, and transnational history. This study bridges the new boundaries created by the collapse of the USSR and examines the foundations of conflict in twenty-first century Ukraine.

Статья посвящена теме зарождения и развития идеологии русскоязычного джихадизма, предшествовавшей той стадии джихадистского движения, которая связана с ближневосточными событиями последних нескольких лет. В статье развивается идея, что тему джихадизма в России необходимо рассматривать не столько в контексте исламской проблемы или как результат влияния из-за рубежа, сколько как пример постсоветского радикализма, который формировался на отечественной идейной и интеллектуальной базе. В работе утверждается, что зарождение и развитие этой содержательно довольно разнообразной идеологии происходило под большим влиянием советских и постсоветских интеллектуальных традиций, которые и сделала эту идеологию такой эффективной в российском контексте.

This article is devoted to the origin and development of the propagandist ideology of Russian-language Jihadism, which is linked with the events in the Middle East over the last few years. It develops the idea that the jihadism in Russia should be considered not so much in the context of the Islamic issue or as a result of the influence of foreign countries, but rather as an example of post-Soviet radicalism, formed on a native ideological and intellectual base. The article states that this meaningfully diverse ideology originated under the influence of Soviet and post-Soviet intellectual traditions, which made this ideology so effective in the Russian context.

In the Western context the post-Cold War perception of Russian culture and history is routinely propagated as pejorative. Based on the political motivations of the US this political hangover is manifested in numerous, complex ways, from the popular culture of this dominant world power, to its mass media. This narrow, linear view serves to diminish and undermine the complexity of the post-Soviet context in not only our Western contemporary popular culture, but also in art, denying the optimism that was inherently a part of this revolutionary moment in world history.

My research is situated amongst artists with a Russian background who oppose this presiding narrative and in a post-Soviet era my research engages with a return to Soviet aesthetics and utopianism, as well as the construction of a shifting cultural identity. Theorists such as Alexei Yurchak, Mikhail Bakhtin, Boris Groĭs, Ekaterina Degot and Svetlana Boym, investigate the various ideologies and theories that surround the polemical nature of Soviet culture and history. They discuss the subjectivities of artists whose identity has been formed in the post-Soviet time, and their manifestation of a new a Soviet romanticism.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukrainians and Russians have been living peacefully in two separate and independent states for nearly a quarter of a century. Much has been said about the cultural and historical links between these two ‘brotherly’ countries, but also about the tensions between the two countries’ different perspectives on nation building and democratisation processes (Jakubanecs, Supphellen, and thorbjørnsen, 2005; Janmaat, 2000; laba, 1996; Prizel, 1998; Puglisi, 2003; Shulman, 1998; Szporluk, 2000; Velychenko, 1992). Although Russian leaders, in the manner of an older brother, have consistently labelled Ukraine as the central element of Russia’s ‘near abroad’ (cameron and orenstein, 2012; Rywkin, 2003; trenin, 2006), the citizens and their foreign policies preferences have historically (i.e. on gas, on the Georgian War, on the EU and nAto) converged and diverged several times over the course of the last twenty-plus years.
Yet, even though there were sensitive moments during the last twenty-plus years of Ukraine-Russia relations (october 1996 crisis, 2004 orange Revolution, gas crisis of January 2006, gas crisis of January 2009), the events of 2014 (the Euromaidan Protests, the annexation of Crimea, and the ongoing conflict in the Donbas3) are predicted by social scientists to not only sour formal relations between the two states, but also between ‘ordinary’ citizens. While there are many ‘myths’ about the way brother Russians and Ukrainians view the ‘other’ state and its people, the reality is much more complex, permeating with conflict, competition, and ideological disagreements, as in any other family. in such critical times, we must stop and ask: do Russians and Ukrainians view the events of the last year differently? or are there points of convergence? do these events affect the way Russians see Ukraine and Ukrainians see Russia? if so, how? And can we identify any shifts in views overtime from before the 2014 crisis to today? Data on the topic is difficult to find and even more difficult to assess. This is specifically the case when so many contextual variables are in flux and when little, if any, of the available data consists of either a repeated and duplicated schedule of questions, or a panel (following citizens and their views) tracking preferences over time.
Thus, we must scour a variety of polls conducted at different times, by different institutions, to map out the views of Ukrainians and Russians.

"Representations", N. 129, Winter 2015.

The essay analyzes the project of maintaining the body of V. I. Lenin in the Mausoleum in Moscow for the past ninety years, focusing on the unique biological science that developed around this project, and the unexpected political role this body has performed.

""During the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe came close to a violent break-up similar to that in neighboring Moldova, which witnessed a violent secession of the Transdniestria region. Numerous elections, including the hotly contested 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine, and surveys of public opinion showed significant regional divisions in these post-Soviet countries. Western parts of Ukraine and Moldova, as well as the Muslim Crimean Tatars, were vocal supporters of independence, nationalist, and pro-Western parties and politicians. In contrast, Eastern regions, as well as the Orthodox Turkic-speaking Gagauz, consistently expressed pro-Russian and pro-Communist political orientations. Which factors ? historical legacies, religion, economy, ethnicity, or political leadership ? could explain these divisions? Why was Ukraine able to avoid a violent break-up, in contrast to Moldova?
This is the first book to offer a systematic and comparative analysis of the regional political divisions in post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. The study examines voting behavior and political attitudes in two groups of regions: those which were under Russian, Ottoman, and Soviet rule; and those which were under Austro-Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak rule until World War I or World War II. This book attributes the regional political divisions to the differences in historical experience. This study helps us to better understand regional cleavages and conflicts, not only in Ukraine and Moldova, but also in other cleft countries.""

Н ачиная с периода поздней перестройки и по сей день судьба тела Ленина, хранящегося на протяжении почти 90 лет в мавзолее на Красной площади, не перестает вызывать яростные споры. В последние годы в попу лярных и академических публикациях это тело все чаще сравнивают с мощами христианских святых. Сравнения эти обычно проводятся в довольно приблизитель ных терминах, поскольку особого знания о том, что из себя представляет материальность этих тел -особенно тела Лени на, -у пишущих нет. Вместо обсуждения конкретных фактов обычно просто высказывается мысль, что советский режим с самого начала подразумевал провести аналогию между те лом Ленина и телами православных святых, поскольку такая аналогия якобы была режиму выгодна с идеологической точки зрения. А далее следует известный, но не слишком подтверж денный фактами аргумент: в малообразованной стране с силь ной православной традицией нетленное тело Ленина должно было автоматически восприниматься населением как тело коммунистического святого. И это якобы добавляло режиму легитимности 1 . Аргументы эти, казалось бы, сами собой на прашиваются, но именно их кажущаяся очевидность вызывает сомнение. Как уже было сказано, эти аргументы не основаны на глубоком знании того, что же из себя в действительности представляет тело Ленина и как именно «режим» пытался его сохранить.

open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API Pro-Russian separatists stand guard at the site of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash, near the village of Hrabove in Ukraine's Donetsk region. (Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

As you will see, one photo shows Oleg Tyahnybok, alleged here to be the leader of the Svoboda party, giving what appears to be a fascist salute. In other pictures, Oleg is shown standing beside, amongst others, U.S. Senator John McCain (former Republican presidential candidate), U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and the new prime minister of Ukraine. First of all, have you seen these pictures before and can you in any way authenticate them (particularly the notion that Oleg really IS giving a fascist salute)? I have asked U.S. officials about this already but haven't received any replies so far.

This study analyzes policies and public attitudes concerning the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) after the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. The issue of the political rehabilitation of these nationalist organizations, which relied on terrorism and were involved in Nazi genocide and ethnic cleansing of Poles during World War Two, became one of central political issues in this post-Soviet state. The question is which factors determine attitudes towards the OUN and the UPA in contemporary Ukraine. The hypothesis is that regional factors are the main determinants of the public opinion concerning these organizations. This paper uses analysis of historical studies and archival data to examine policies and controversies concerning the OUN and the UPA. It employs comparative and regression analyses of the 2009 Kyiv International Institute of Sociology survey to determine effects of regional factors, compared to other factors, such as ethnicity, language, and age, on attitudes towards the Stepan Bandera faction of the OUN and the UPA. The paper shows that that regional factors and perceptions of the involvement of the Bandera faction of the OUN and the UPA in mass murder are strongest predictors of views concerning these nationalist organizations.

Museutopia. A Photographic Research Project by Ilya Rabinovich
will be of great interest for a large audience of people from the lovers of photography, museums, history or Moldova‘s cultural life to the consecrated scholars studying visual arts, philosophy, ethnography, museology or memory and identity through the investigation of complex interrelationship between ‗gaze,
diaspora, trauma‘ (p. 15). The impact of dramatic transformations happened between the last decade of socialist period and the first two decades of post-soviet Moldova history still constitutes a disputable topic among specialists from different fields, as well as the emerging public history discourses on memory, identity
and nation-building. Along the lines of Benedict Anderson work on nationalism and identity (Anderson 1991), the specialists in cultural
heritage Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius consider, in terms of imagination, national museums are uniquely placed to illuminate that which is actually imagined with reference to an emerging,re-emerging or fully formed nation‘‘(Aronsson, Elgenius 2011, 5).

This study refers to which dynamics should history be built on while
structuring a state. In this sense, function of history in building a state has been tried
to be determined through historiography that has been carried out in Azerbaijan for
the last two centuries. Thus, role of history, as a constructive element, in building a
state has been pointed out both theoretically and practically.
Azerbaijani historiography on which a feudal historiography tradition limited
to eastern Mohammedanism was prevailing methodologically in the 18th century
could make progress only after the Russian occupation in the 19th century.
Azerbaijani history started to be considered as a part of Turkish history under the
nationalism idea in early 20th century while it has been written in line with Russianguided
Marxist-Leninist views and on the basis of dialectic materialism as the Soviet
regime became prevailing on Azerbaijani life. In this time period, some subjective
approaches to Azerbaijani historiography had been seen and historical realities had
neglected. In particular, several subjects such as history-writing, history training and
establishing national identity had been tried to be re-formed in a Sovietic point of
view in order to be able to damage socio-cultural and political bonds between
Turkish-speaking populations. Azerbaijani historiography was also affected by these
policies designed especially for Turkish-speaking region.
Azerbaijani intelligentsia captivated by nationalism movement with the
dismemberment of the Soviet Union attempted to construct a new nation. The
principle of being national for Azerbaijan has come into existence together with
becoming free from Sovietic elements. On the other hand, duality experienced in
determining the context of nation concept leads to discussions on sincerity. The
national identity that was based on Turkish ethical structure in Elçibey period was
tried to be constructed on a cosmopolite population in Aliyev period which was
similar to the Soviet point of view.
The said fact has affected historiographical activities inevitably. Azerbaijani
history that is still tried to be formed depending on understandings from Soviet
period is now under construction through a cosmopolite structure limited to a
geographical area which is heritage of Soviet historiography. In conclusion,
Azerbaijani historiography suffers from not being able to draw away from Soviet
historiography. Despite all these complications, mission fastened on history in
nation-state construct of the Republic of Azerbaijan holds its validity.

This paper deals with the background, role players, sequence of events, geopolitical considerations and history of the Angolan War which took place from 1975 to 1990 between the Soviet Union and its allies & proxies on the one hand, and the Republic of South Africa and its allies on the other. It also has a section presenting a rebuttal of previously published material on this subject, and a section on disinformation techniques used in and by the Soviet Union.

This paper contextualizes a brief moment in the development of Russian right-wing intellectualism in a volatile transition period of the Putin System. It briefly introduces three new far right circles the appearance of which, it is argued, signified a novel stage in the development of the Russian extreme right within the peculiar conditions of Russia’s post-Soviet neopatrimonial regime. The paper focuses on the personae of Aleksandr Dugin – one of post-Soviet Russia’s most prominent fascist ideologues and the prime proponent of “neo-Eurasianism.” The paper also briefly touches upon the significance of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine for the radicalization of Putin’s authoritarian rule and its resulting rapprochement with the Russian extreme right.

This article examines the ways in which Azerbaijan’s energy abundance and the energy diplomacy the latter made possible—combined with inherent weaknesses attending the state’s young post-colonial polity—conditioned the limits of the desirable by which the country’s post-independence elite was guided and, as such, limited the range of directions—cognitive and spatial—in which Azerbaijan’s foreign policy evolved during the first decade following independence.  The study then examines how energy-induced growth in state capacity on the one hand, and the perceived failure of the state’s previous practices to help resolve outstanding security problems on the other, coupled with the effects of a number of endogenous and exogenous shocks (particularly, the colour revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine; Kosovo’s recognition by the West; the Russia-Georgia 2008 war; global economic crisis; and Turkey’s short-lived attempt at rapprochement with Armenia) and the perceptual shifts those shockwaves worked to engender, served to broaden the spatial and conceptual boundaries within which Azerbaijan’s foreign policy practices were conceived and effected, including by virtue of the energy resources the country has got in possession.  The paper concludes by tracing the particular ways in which the broadening and deepening of the country’s foreign policy practices have occurred.

Профессор кафедры антропологии Калифорнийского университета в Беркли ПО СЛЕДАМ ЖЕНСКОГО ОБРАЗА Cимволическая работа нового рекламного дискурса В сборнике: «Женщина и визуальные знаки », ред. Анна Альчук, М.: Идея-Пресс, 2000 Это эссе посвящено анализу того, как новая реклама успешно использует в своих целях идеи заимствованные из критического анализа традиционных общественных стереотипов и отношений. При этом заимствованные идеи, преломляясь в рекламе, часто работают на воспроизводство тех самых социальных стереотипов, которые эти идеи первоначально критиковали. Конкретнее, здесь рассматривается как реклама, заимствуя идеи из дискурсов критикующих социальное неравенство полов («гендерное» неравенство), преломляет эти идеи в своих интересах так, что они воспроизводят это неравенство на новом уровне. Мы начнём с теоретической части, рассмотрев в каком смысле можно анализировать идеологическую функцию рекламы вообще, затем перейдём к анализу новой «активной» рекламы, и в заключении рассмотрим на примерах как российская активная реклама воспроизводит гендерные стереотипы.

This essay focuses on a paradoxical transformation that happened within Soviet ideological discourse at the very end of perestroika, around 1990-91. The Party's attempts to revitalize Soviet ideology by returning to the original word of Lenin unexpectedly produced the opposite result. The unquestionable external Truth from which Soviet ideological discourse drew its legitimacy-and that had always been identical with Lenin's wordsuddenly could no longer be known. This shift launched a rapid unraveling of the Soviet communist project. At the center of this unexpected transformation was the search for the true Lenin-a kind of Lenin that Soviet party theorists, bureaucrats, historians, and scientists hoped was still hidden in the midst of his unpublished texts and unknown facts of his biology, life, and death.

This study analyzes changes in regional electoral behavior and foreign policy attitudes in Ukraine after “Orange Revolution.” The research question is whether the public support for major groups of political parties and presidential candidates and attitudes towards principal foreign policy issues in regions of Ukraine have changed after the “Orange Revolution.” This article employs comparative and statistical analyses of voting results of the 2007, 2006, and 2002 parliamentary elections, the 2010 local elections, and the 2004 and 2010 presidential elections, and survey data to examine effects of regional political culture, compared to other factors, on support for pro-nationalist/pro-Western and pro-Russian/pro-communist political parties and presidential candidates. This study also uses survey data to analyze changes in attitudes towards NATO, the European Union, and a union with Russia in regions of Ukraine and a change in separatist preferences in Crimea. The analysis shows that Ukraine after the “Orange Revolution” remained divided along regional lines in terms of support for political parties and presidential candidates and attitudes towards foreign orientation.

Historiography During the Soviet Nation and State Building Process
The concepts of nation and state embody in themselves both normality and artificiality. It is firmly established by historical experience that the human, as the subject of the former as well as the object of the latter, frequently interferes with the content of these concepts. If this intervention stems from ideological reasons, the implication is that the mechanism for providing legitimacy is involved with its focus on historiography. At this stage, the engine of historiography becomes an office for the approval of political power.
Within that context, the fictionalization of history transforms the knowledge of the past to a reproducible product. This understanding means a neglect of the motive to attain the reality of the past; instead, the aim is to become the social engineering required for the continuity of the ideology. In this concise text, alongside the ongoing philosophical debates as to what history is and how it should be laid out, the instrumentality of history in practical terms will be examined with a special focus on the Soviet Union paradigm.
Keywords: Soviet historiography, Soviet nation-state, Territorial historiography, Soviet nationalism.

Have there been changes in political institutions, parties, leaders, and regional political orientations in Ukraine after the "Orange Revolution"? If so, are the changes revolutionary or evolutionary? Most previous studies refer to the 2004 presidential elections and mass protest actions as a revolution. To test this claim, this article analyzes political changes in Ukraine. Survey data are used to compare changes in pro-Russian and pro-Western orientation, support for major parties in the 2002, 2006, and 2007 parliamentary elections, and support for leading presidential candidates since the 2004 presidential elections. The implications of these changes for development of democracy in Ukraine are also considered.

En las dos últimas décadas muchos autores y cineastas residentes dentro o fuera de Cuba se han referido al contexto del Período Especial en sus creaciones artísticas. En este ensayo quisiera reflexionar sobre las modalidades de la representación del hambre, su exploración e incluso explotación. El análisis de un corpus de películas y novelas que se relacionan con el Período Especial me ha llevado a proponer cuatro «estrategias» que se alejan cada vez más del mundo referencial marcado por la penuria: estereotipo, contraste, relegación al segundo plano, metonimia (en el sentido de desplazamiento). Ilustraré cada una de estas «estrategias» comentando brevemente películas como Alicia en el Pueblo de Maravillas (Díaz Torres), Suite Habana y Madagascar (Fernando Pérez) y novelas como El hombre, la hembra, el hambre (Daína Chaviano), Te di la vida entera (Zoé Valdés), Las Bestias (Ronaldo Menéndez), El Rey de La Habana (Pedro Juan Gutiérrez), Silencios (Karla Suárez), La sombra del caminante (Ena Lucía Portela). Terminaré con el estudio de Las comidas profundas de Antonio José Ponte que reúne y rebasa las estrategias propuestas. Mis análisis revelan que estas diferentes « estrategias » sirven objetivos específicos en el campo de la ética, la estética y la poética de estas expresiones artísticas.

Котломанов А.О. Паблик-арт: страницы истории. Современное русское искусство в общественном пространстве. Часть 1. Монументальная скульптура. Вестн. С.-Петерб. гос. ун-та. Сер. 15. Искусствоведение. 2015. Вып. 4. С. 55—65.
Kotlomanov A.O. Public art: the pages of history. Contemporary Russian art in the public space. Part 1: Monumental sculpture. Vestnik SPbSU. Series 15. Arts, 2015, issue 4, pp. 55–65 (In Russian).
The article continues the series of publications on the topic of public art. It looks at some trends of Russian art life, the key subject is monumental sculpture of 1990–2000s. The article presents a comparative analysis of the strategies of the Western public art and public art of the Soviet Union. It highlights the work of Zurab Tsereteli that characterizes the situation of the traditional monumental sculpture as a whole. The author also focuses on some of the works of Ernst Neizvestny, Mihail Chemiakin and Rezo Gabriadze representing an alternative method of expressing ideas in the sculpture material. The final conclusions of the article are connected with the analysis of the possibility of development in Russia new forms and methods of public art.

On its way to becoming a nation-state, Belarus faced challenges similar to those experienced by other post-Soviet countries, but in many respects it became an exception to the dominant scripts for both exiting socialism and constituting a new nationhood. Unlike many other post-Soviet nations that have dismissed their socialist past, the Belarusian official discourse asserts the active agency of Belarusians in Soviet achievements, which it recognizes as milestones on the route to becoming a nation. Some of the state's recent initiatives, however, have also sought to reappropriate ethno-cultural and pre-Soviet history and tradition, shaping a new politics of identity.

While it is common wisdom that “identity matters” in Ukrainian politics, we still lack a robust understanding of precisely when and how it matters. Reflecting challenges facing the broader interdisciplinary field of comparative identity politics, authors frequently bring to their analyses very different notions of the nature of identity itself, skipping a rigorous examination of these notions in an effort to get right to documenting the effects of identity. Similarly, identity is frequently operationalized in quantitative studies without much discussion of the implications of selecting one particular measure over another or of what precisely each measure is reflecting, not to mention what might have changed over time. While we do have nuanced research on Ukrainian identity, it tends not to address the evolution of identity over time or the moments and conditions of identity change. Such issues are particularly important for current research since identities and their associated meanings may shift or “harden” during severe crises or conflicts like those that unfolded in Ukraine during 2013–14. The five original articles that make up this special issue1 all address these challenges, with important implications for how we understand Ukrainian politics after the EuroMaidan.

Defining and measuring happiness has been a major topic for many generations of scholars. The contemporary discussion tackles upon the main predictors of happiness and their influence on the subject. This paper focuses on the influence of democracy and economy towards happiness, using the fifteen post- Soviet countries as cases. The data for the research has been collected from 1995 to 2014 and has been analyzed both on aggregate and individual level. The results show that on individual level both the economic status and the satisfaction with democracy have significant influence towards happiness. However, on aggregate level the income inequality appears to be the only predictor of happiness in both cases where the democracy factor is controlled for or not.

In Russia, civil society engagement with the petroleum sector is surprisingly rich and varied for a country that is ranked low on most democracy-related indicators. This chapter finds that there is a lively and varied public debate, with business associations, research institutes, independent experts, indigenous organizations and the few surviving independent media actively and often competently analysing and commenting on a broad range of issues related to the oil and gas sector. Russians were early users of social media, which occasionally also function as a platform for discussion of petroleum policy issues. However, the real impact of civil society on decision-making and policy formulation in the petroleum sector is not as great as the diversity of actors and discussion might imply. One key reason is the tight government control over mainstream media outlets. The situation for free speech and civil society worsened steadily from around 2004 to 2016. As in neighbouring Kazakhstan, the Russian population puts a high premium on stability over freedom. While a central concern in this book is whether the media and civil society have any influence on the petroleum sector, in Russia the paradoxical situation is that the relationship is often reversed: the gas company Gazprom, rather than another organizational vehicle, is used by the government to control key mass media; and the oil company Yukos played a central role in promoting civil society until its main owner Mikhail Khodorkovskiy was arrested and the company was carved up.

In this meditation, Anya Bernstein and Alexei Yurchak discuss Yurchak's essay, " The canon and the mushroom: Lenin, sacredness, and Soviet collapse, " which is published in the current issue. They elaborate on some points in the essay that are central for the understanding of the figure of " Lenin " and its role in Soviet history, take them in new directions, and link them to other topics that are relevant to anthropology. The themes discussed include sacredness and blasphemy; death, resurrection, and immortality; language, intentionality, and responsibility; voice, ventriloquism, and truth; and more.

This article explores diversity, belonging and representation in the city of Ulan-Ude, Buryatia (Russian Federation). In particular, it looks at their discourses and practices as they take spatial forms in the fast-changing post-Soviet urban environment. Through case studies of two central locations in the city – a statue of Lenin and a Buddhist prayer wheel – the article reveals recent tendencies of “indigenization” (Szmyt 2014) in Ulan-Ude’s material and discoursive space, exploring them as instances that would suggest an image of a “contested city” (Low 1996). However, this article aims at complicating the latter concept, demonstrating that seeming contestations should be read in their particular context, taking into consideration local ideas and practices of accommodating diversity.

Od początku lat siedemdziesiątych w Charkowie działały liczne grupy fotograficzne, zbierające się w nieformalnie działających klubach, zjawisko zwane dziś potocznie charkowską szkołą fotografii. Działali w opozycji do tego, co proponowała radziecka propaganda, w tym czasie „jedyna i słuszna”. Grupa fotografów spotykała się, aby rozmawiać o sztuce, też tej poza granicami ZSRR. Jednym z nich, krytycznym komentatorem sowieckiej rzeczywistości, jest Boris Mikhailov (ur. 1938), którego fotografie dryfują na pograniczu dokumentu, fotografii społecznej i sztuki konceptualnej. W latach siedemdziesiątych był członkiem grupy Vremya (ros. Czas), do której należeli też Yuri Rupin i Evgeny Pavlov. Charkowska tradycja pracujących wspólnie grup fotograficznych stała się inspiracją dla grupy Shilo, założonej w 2010 roku przez Sergiy’a Lebedynskyy’ego, Vadyma Trykoza i Vladyslava Krasnoshchoka; naukowca, inżyniera i chirurga. Młodzi twórcy znaleźli rok wcześniej pamiętnik Rupina, prywatne notatki o fotograficznym życiu Charkowa w latach osiemdziesiątych, co było na tyle inspirujące, że postanowili ożywić umarłe po rozpadzie ZSRR charkowskie środowisko fotograficzne.