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Soviet State (soviet + state)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Privatize your name: Symbolic work in a post-Soviet linguistic market

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 3 2000
Alexei Yurchak
This paper analyzes the new names given to Russian private businesses that have appeared after the collapse of the Soviet State in 1991. By naming new private ventures their owners members of the new business class attempt to privatize public space not only legally but also symbolically and linguistically. They strive to construct their particular new version of social reality, to represent it as positive and meaningful, and to impose themselves publicly as legitimate authors, owners, and masters of this new reality. This paper proceeds on several distinct levels of analysis. First, it analyzes a number of discourses, representing various subcultures and periods of Soviet and Russian history, from which new business names draw their complex meanings. Second, it considers concrete linguistic and semiotic techniques that are employed by the new names in this process. Third, it examines the cultural and social implications of this process of nomination for post-Soviet developments in the Russian society. [source]

The Myth of the Strong Soviet State

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 3 2002
Judyth L. Twigg
Studies of state-society relations continue to assume that the Soviet Union was the quintessential "strong" state, able to dominate a weak society at every stage of the policy process. Evidence gleaned from the former Soviet defense industry, however, reveals that the Soviet state, at least since the Brezhnev era, had difficulty implementing some of its highest priority objectives. While the Soviet state may have possessed considerable despotic power, its infrastructural power was lacking in many areas. Soviet authorities never managed to construct policy levers that could consistently influence defense industrial managers to behave in the ways they desired. [source]

Anarchism, Internationalism and Nationalism in Europe, 1860,1939

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 3 2004
Carl Levy
This article is part of a broader project on the social history or histories of anarchism. The standard accounts of anarchism (Nettlau, Joll, Woodcock, Marshall etc.) have been combinations of the histories of ideas and political/social movements. A larger project I am engaged in uses another methodology and is reliant upon the vast outpouring of published and unpublished academic writing on social history that has been produced since the 1960s. I will cover only several interconnected themes here: anarchism, internationalism and nationalism in Europe. This article will give a synoptic overview of the internationalism of the European anarchist and syndicalist movements during the "classical" period of anarchism (1860,1939). It focuses on the First and Second Internationals and the birth of the Third. It examines the ideology and culture of Internationalism, which was the nursery of the modern anarchist movement. The linkage between federalist and regionalist republicanism is stressed and the legacy of the Paris Commune of 1871 is highlighted. The desire to secure a global level playing field in labour markets promoted labour internationalism during the First International and a revival of this strategy by anarchists and syndicalists during the era of the Second International. The mismatch of industrial development and union density between industrialised Britain or Germany and artisanal and industrialising France and southern Europe limited internationalism in the 1860s and the 1900s. Equally the patriotic legacy of the Commune of Paris undermined the internationalism of anarchists and syndicalists when war broke out in 1914. In 1917,1918 anarchist and syndicalist internationalism seemed to be revived as Europe entered a period of revolutionary discontent. But very quickly the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union channelled this wave into the Third International and ultimately the interests of the newly born Soviet State. Anarchist and syndicalist internationalism had little effect on the fortunes of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War in a world of nation-states and state-centric political parties and movements. [source]

The Myth of the Strong Soviet State

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 3 2002
Judyth L. Twigg
Studies of state-society relations continue to assume that the Soviet Union was the quintessential "strong" state, able to dominate a weak society at every stage of the policy process. Evidence gleaned from the former Soviet defense industry, however, reveals that the Soviet state, at least since the Brezhnev era, had difficulty implementing some of its highest priority objectives. While the Soviet state may have possessed considerable despotic power, its infrastructural power was lacking in many areas. Soviet authorities never managed to construct policy levers that could consistently influence defense industrial managers to behave in the ways they desired. [source]

Covers, volume 26, Number 1, 2010

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 1 2010
Article first published online: 2 FEB 2010
Front and back cover caption, volume 26 issue 1 POST-SOVIET RUSSIAN ORTHODOXY The last 20 years have seen a striking revitalization of Orthodoxy in Russia. This is remarkable considering that for more than 70 years following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 the Soviet regime imposed ,scientific atheism' on its citizens. Russian Orthodoxy, institutionally dominated by the Russian Orthodox Church, has emerged as a crucial source of morality and identity. The personal dimension is intertwined with politics and the co-operation between the Church and the Russian state has strong symbolic implications. The close association between religion and the army is evident in this religious procession. For millions of Russians of different social backgrounds and ages, the fall of the Soviet state still leaves a bitter taste, stemming from the feeling of loss of territory and of superpower status. The Russian Orthodox Church offers an avenue for retrieving a sense of power and moral righteousness. However, the prominence of the Church and its symbols does not necessarily mean that young soldiers acquire religious knowledge and observe the rules of the Church in their everyday behaviour. Soldiers are no different from teachers, businessmen, or impoverished urban residents in general who, in the face of post-socialist uncertainties, turn to Orthodoxy for healing, protection and as an insurance against an unclear future. Orthodoxy also contributes to the construction of a harmonious and idealized narrative about the recent past, obscuring the memory of violence of the state against Orthodox believers under the Soviet regime. An anthropology of the Russian case , and religion in the postsocialist world generally , can shed new light on debates about religion in the public realm, secularization, individual morality and identity in the contemporary world. [source]