Hasil untuk "History of Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics"

O. Kalishchuk

The article presents and analyses the opinions of domestic and foreign politicians and experts on the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war on Ukraine’s European integration progress. On 24 February 2022, Russia escalated its conflict with Ukraine by attacking Ukraine on several fronts, which was the largest military attack on a sovereign state in Europe since World War II. Experts point out that in the case of the Russian-Ukrainian war (and the creation of frozen conflicts in the former Soviet republics in general), one of Russia’s motives is to prevent European and Euro-Atlantic integration. An analysis of experts’ opinions has shown that the Russian-Ukrainian war has an impact on both Ukraine and the EU. According to domestic and foreign authors, the current foreign policy dialogue between the EU and Ukraine is focused on the issue of Russian aggression. Experts identify the main areas of Brussels’ involvement: attempts to resolve the conflict with Russia through diplomatic instruments, the application of sanctions and the provision of financial, military and humanitarian assistance. The process of European integration is mutually beneficial for both sides, and understanding this is important for its success. The article identifies the challenges and tasks for Ukraine and the EU countries to develop dialogue and formalise interstate relations, as outlined by experts. The political and strategic approach that should have underpin the EU’s policy towards potential EU member states from the outset, has been sidelined over the years in favour of an overly bureaucratic and technical process that favours form over substance. It is stated that expert assessments and analytical studies are applied in nature and analyse regional and global security challenges. The issue of updating the methodological tools and changing value strategies.

Anton Lavrouk, Tarek Naous, Alan Ritter et al.

The culture of the Post-Soviet states is complex, shaped by a turbulent history that continues to influence current events. In this study, we investigate the Post-Soviet cultural food knowledge of foundation models by constructing BORSch, a multimodal dataset encompassing 1147 and 823 dishes in the Russian and Ukrainian languages, centered around the Post-Soviet region. We demonstrate that leading models struggle to correctly identify the origins of dishes from Post-Soviet nations in both text-only and multimodal Question Answering (QA), instead over-predicting countries linked to the language the question is asked in. Through analysis of pretraining data, we show that these results can be explained by misleading dish-origin co-occurrences, along with linguistic phenomena such as Russian-Ukrainian code mixing. Finally, to move beyond QA-based assessments, we test models' abilities to produce accurate visual descriptions of dishes. The weak correlation between this task and QA suggests that QA alone may be insufficient as an evaluation of cultural understanding. To foster further research, we will make BORSch publicly available at https://github.com/alavrouk/BORSch.

Federico Spada

Loeb & Cloete (2025) intriguingly suggest that the near-Earth object 2005 VL$_1$ could be the lost Soviet probe Venera 2. Here I evaluate the plausibility of such a claim against the available data. I have re-determined the orbit of 2005 VL$_1$ (including a non-gravitational acceleration component) using the astrometric observations retrieved from the Minor Planet Center (MPC) database. By propagating the orbit of 2005 VL$_1$ over the period of the Venera 2 mission, I compare this object's distance from the Earth and from Venus at the times of the probe's launch and flyby with Venus, respectively. My analysis, which takes into account realistic uncertainties on both the orbit of 2005 VL1 and the position of Venera 2, decisively rules out the proposed identification. My approach relies entirely on open-source software and publicly available data, and could represent a viable method to assess similar claims in the future.

Mikhail G. Katz

Infinitesimals have seen ups and downs in their tumultuous history. In the 18th century, d'Alembert set the tone by describing infinitesimals as chimeras. Some adversaries of infinitesimals, including Moigno and Connes, picked up on the term. We highlight the work of Cauchy, Noël, Poisson and Riemann. We also chronicle reactions by Moigno, Lamarle and Cantor, and signal the start of a revival with Peano.

A. Kalimullin, Roza Valeeva, Tatiana Baklashova

ABSTRACT Teacher education in Russia has become the subject of considerable reform over the past 50 years. It is today a complex system of continuous training which gives students a chance to enter the profession in a number of different ways, as well as maintain their professional skill set throughout the course of their careers. This paper offers a comprehensive overview of the history and the state of art initial teacher education in Russia during the last 50 years. It aims to draw on scholarly expertise in Russia and will locate the policies and practices that are discussed within the context of teacher education reform. The main themes of the paper are the history and current practice of Russian initial teacher education. The paper will consider the relationship between policy and practice and examine the respective influences of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and processes of wider reform in the Russian Federation since the 1990s.

Thomas L Bradley, Paul B Eberle

The disintegration of the Soviet Union was certainly one of the most incredible events of the 20th century. Excluding wars, one of the greatest upheavals of any major country in modern times took place in the former Soviet Union. There was no place in history in which such a large scale change had come from political, economic, and social collapse without armed conflict. The impact of the social, economic, and political changes on both Russia and the rest of the world is still being felt even thirty years after the breakup. However, it was almost impossible to analyze the Russian market during the transition because so much was in the underground economy and not reported. Much of this paper relies on the authors’ first-hand, experience while doing research and conducting seminars during the transition period in Russia and former Soviet republics. The authors, having experienced first-hand the changes and the failures of various reforms, foresaw that Russia would return to its cultural tendencies of authoritarian rule and that this would prevent a real market economy from being created. This research was unique at a time in which the future of Russia was at stake. It allowed the authors to understand the dynamics of Russia at the time. It gave insight into the two worlds of Russia, the official Moscow impressions of reality as well as the real thoughts, opinions and feelings of the people of Russia. Because of the timing, it was perhaps the only definitive research of this nature done at the time inside Russia by a foreigner, but also outside the official channels. The analysis in this study, as well as the background information it contains, provides a unique perspective on the real conditions and concerns inside Russia during the breakup of the Soviet Union and the transition period.

Kiun Hwang

This article explores the significance of memorial plaques in Russian cities as sites of history, memory and aesthetics that create a new sensorium of the urban sphere. The plaques, affixed to historic buildings, serve as tangible markers that commemorate significant events and figures from the past. Taking the case of the historic center of St. Petersburg, the article examines how these plaques create a sense of historicity and contribute to the formation of a shared cultural background within the urban sphere. The plaques evolve from simple inscriptions to more elaborate and visually appealing designs. It also highlights the controversies surrounding the selection of individuals to be materialized and remembered and the aesthetic concerns raised by some residents. Meanwhile, the two contemporary projects challenge traditional commemorative practices and their aesthetics: Last Address, which commemorates victims of political repression through individualized plaques, and the Gandhi artist group’s street art interventions. These projects offer alternative approaches to memorialization and engage in dialogue with existing monuments and plaques. These micro-interventions show grassroot resistance within memorializing practices and aesthetics. The article emphasizes the contested nature of public space and the role of memorial plaques in shaping collective memory and historical narratives in Russian cities.

Ivan Boldyrev

What are the effects of authoritarian regimes on scholarly research in economics? And how might economic theory survive ideological pressures? The article addresses these questions by focusing on the mathematization of economics over the past century and drawing on the history of Soviet science. Mathematics in the USSR remained internationally competitive and generated many ideas that were taken up and played important roles in economic theory. These same ideas, however, were disregarded or adopted only in piecemeal fashion by Soviet economists, despite the efforts of influential scholars to change the economic research agenda. The article draws this contrast into sharper focus by exploring the work of Soviet mathematicians in optimization, game theory, and probability theory that was used in Western economics. While the intellectual exchange across the Iron Curtain did help advance the formal modeling apparatus, economics could only thrive in an intellectually open environment absent under the Soviet rule.

M. V. Tamm, M. Oiva, K. D. Mukhina et al.

Cultural data typically contains a variety of biases. In particular, geographical locations are unequally portrayed in media, creating a distorted representation of the world. Identifying and measuring such biases is crucial to understand both the data and the socio-cultural processes that have produced them. Here we suggest to measure geographical biases in a large historical news media corpus by studying the representation of cities. Leveraging ideas of quantitative urban science, we develop a mixed quantitative-qualitative procedure, which allows us to get robust quantitative estimates of the biases. These biases can be further qualitatively interpreted resulting in a hermeneutic feedback loop. We apply this procedure to a corpus of the Soviet newsreel series 'Novosti Dnya' (News of the Day) and show that city representation grows super-linearly with city size, and is further biased by city specialization and geographical location. This allows to systematically identify geographical regions which are explicitly or sneakily emphasized by Soviet propaganda and quantify their importance.

M. Almazán-Gómez, Carlos Llano, Julián Pérez et al.

History shows that wars can be enormously disruptive of economic activity, especially international trade, national income, and global economic welfare. This article analyzes the impact on the European regions the Russian invasion of Ukraine using the largest and most updated multiregional input‐output model for Europe. Two shocks, trade and inflation, and four alternative scenarios are simulated. The scenarios are considered regarding the number of countries applying a trade embargo, the exemption of oil and gas, and the potential trade diversions with third countries such as China. We obtained a significant fall in GDP (−1.7%), 3.7 m lost jobs and 3% raise over the prewar inflation rate. For trade shock, large indirect effects are obtained, indicating the high relevance of the sectors and countries exposed to the war and the sanctions. The republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as the satellite countries of the former communism, face the harshest adverse impacts. This work shows the importance of breaking Russia's colonial economic ties to the countries in Eastern Europe.

Leonid I. Gurvits

Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry is a radio astronomy technique distinguished by a record-high angular resolution reaching single-digit microseconds of arc. The paper provides a brief account of the history of developments of this technique over the period 1960s-2020s.

H. Blakkisrud

Abstract Russia’s post-1991 nation-building project has been torn between competing interpretations of national identity. Whereas the other former Soviet republics opted for nation-building centered on the titular nation, Russia’s approach to national identity was framed by the fact that the RSFSR had been defined not as a designated national homeland but as a multi-ethnic federation. This, coupled with Russia’s definition as the legal successor of the Soviet Union, suggesting continuity and a history of uninterrupted statehood, has enabled a range of rivaling understandings of how to define the “nation.” Focusing on top-down official nation-building, this article examines how, against a backdrop of shifting political contexts, structural constraints, and popular attitudes, the Kremlin has gradually revised its understanding of what constitutes the “Russian nation.” Four models for post-Soviet Russian nation-building are identified – the ethnic, the multi-national, the civic, and the imperial. Over time, the correlation of forces among these has shifted. The article concludes that, despite some claims of an ethno-nationalist turn after 2014, the Kremlin still employs nationalism instrumentally: National identity has undoubtedly become more russkii-centered, but, at the same time, the Kremlin keeps the definition of “Russianness” intentionally vague, blurring the boundaries between “nation” and “civilization.”

V. A. Fedotova

The study aims to identify peculiarities of sociocultural adaptation (factors, coping strategies and anticipatory competence) of students from India, China and Arab countries. The research is based on the data obtained from the first-, second- and third-year students from India (73 respondents), China (45 respondents), Arab countries (64 respondents). The “Russian language proficiency” factor shows more significance for students from India and China, compared to students from Arab countries. Students from China, India and Arab countries tend to start and maintain relationships, to participate in academic activities, to have hobbies and interests and interact with other students. The prosocial coping strategy is predominant for Arab, Indian and Chinese students, regardless of their culture of origin, which proves  universality of the strategy. Representatives of a polychronic culture (students from Arab countries and India) lack temporal anticipatory competence,with Arab students showing the lowest value of this parameter. Chinese  students differ from representatives of a polyactive culture (Arab students) or a reactive-polyactive culture (Indian students) as they can hardly predict how a person they know would act in a certain situation.

Лидия Танушевска

Проект NEWSLA — это проект, получивший поддержку программы ERASMUS MUNDUS. Включает в себя универсальную подготовку современной формы второй ступени высшего образования по славистике, подготовлен тремя университетами (Силезский университет в Катовицах, Остравский университет в Остраве, Университет имени Св. Кирилла и Мефодия в Скопье). Программа обучения, разрабатываемая в рамках этого проекта, будет содержать также курс на тему «Город в литературе и культуре» этих трех стран, охватывающий следующие темы: город как центр мира, город как мифологическое место, геокультурная символика города, феномен «потерянных» городов, отношение человека к городу, фланирование или искусство прогулки по городу и город как переводческая проблема. В статье представлены различные аспекты и примеры из указанной программы обучения. Статья поступила в редакцию 17.01.2022. Цитирование Танушевска Л. Топос города — широкое поле для создания курса лекций в рамках проекта NEWSLA // Славянский альманах. 2022. No 1–2. С. 293–303. DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2022.1-2.3.06

Emily Chen, Emilio Ferrara

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. In the days that followed, reports kept flooding in from layman to news anchors of a conflict quickly escalating into war. Russia faced immediate backlash and condemnation from the world at large. While the war continues to contribute to an ongoing humanitarian and refugee crisis in Ukraine, a second battlefield has emerged in the online space, both in the use of social media to garner support for both sides of the conflict and also in the context of information warfare. In this paper, we present a collection of over 63 million tweets, from February 22, 2022 through March 8, 2022 that we are publishing for the wider research community to use. This dataset can be found at https://github.com/echen102/ukraine-russia and will be maintained and regularly updated as the war continues to unfold. Our preliminary analysis already shows evidence of public engagement with Russian state sponsored media and other domains that are known to push unreliable information; the former saw a spike in activity on the day of the Russian invasion. Our hope is that this public dataset can help the research community to further understand the ever evolving role that social media plays in information dissemination, influence campaigns, grassroots mobilization, and much more, during a time of conflict.

L. Rybakovsky, V. Savinkov, N. Kozhevnikova

The article provides a brief history of the emergence of demographic forecasts, shows their use by the United Nations, the range of countries for which forecasts were made and are being drawn up, considers demographic forecasts that were carried out during the Soviet era and provides a detailed analysis of demographic forecasts for Russia. In contrast to the forecasts of the population of the Soviet Union as a whole, for Russia they initially began to focus on the downward dynamics. It is concluded that over two decades (1996-2015) in countries with a predominance of the Slavic ethnos (excluding the former republics of Yugoslavia), the population as a whole has decreased to 95.5%, while in countries with a predominance of the Anglo-Saxon ethnos — it increased to 123.8%. The forecasts given in the article are compared with the actual size of the population that has already taken place. Everywhere in countries with a predominance of the Slavic ethnos, the actual population is higher than the predicted, and in countries with a predominance of the Anglo-Saxon ethnos, on the contrary. Comparing the forecasts with the actual population dynamics, the conclusion is substantiated about a noticeable change in the ratio between the two groups of countries united by ethnicity, a decrease in the demographic potential of the Slavic group and its increase in the group with a predominance of the Anglo-Saxon ethnos. In the final part of the work, it is said that the presented rates of change in the population size in 35 years and then in another 50 years, arising from the UN demographic forecasts for 2050 and 2100, as well as the demographic dynamics in the 90s of the twentieth century and in the first 15 years of the new century, indicate that if Russia, like other Slavic countries do not make radical efforts and, accordingly, do not consistently take effective measures to change the demographic trends, then the same thing can happen to Russia as has happened in different centuries to many countries such as Assyria, the Hunnic Empire, etc. The current geopolitical situation in which Russia is, its status as a great power, the country's largest territory in the world, favorable geographical position and colossal natural resources, dictate the need to increase its economic, defense and, naturally, demographic potential.

Marat Kappasov

Introduction. The article, based on the “Materials on the Kyrgyz (Kazakh) Land Use Collected and Developed by the Statistical Parties of the Turgai-Ural Resettlement Region”, examines the crafts of the nomads of the Lbischensky, Uralsky, Turgai, Irgiz, Temir uyezds in the early 20th century. Temir, Lbishchensky and Ural uyezds belonged to the Ural region, Turgai and Irgiz uyezds to the Turgai region. Methods and materials. Using the mathematical method, the method of comparative analysis and content analysis, the author shows how much income per person came from crafts in the studied uyezds and proves that crafts were only additional industries and could not compete with nomadic cattle breeding. The article examines the crafts that brought the greatest income. Farmhands, transportation, groundhog hunting, fishing, etc., were well-known crafts; the Muslim spiritual cult and its servants was an unusual craft. Analysis. Our article shows that the studied uyezds had their own craft specializations. For example, a significant number of nomads in Lbischensky uyezd were engaged in transportation, in Turgai uyezd in hunting groundhogs, in Irgiz uyezd in hunting and fishing. Results. At the end of the article, the author concludes that the majority of nomads were primarily engaged in crafts as farmhands due to their poverty.

Elena Glavatskaya, Elizaveta Zabolotnykh

Феномен этнической мобилизации, развернувшейся на всем постсоветском пространстве, невозможно понять без изучения форм сохранения и трансляции этнической идентичности в советское время. При всей обширности историографии, посвященной изучению еврейской идентичности в советский период, сюжеты, связанные с религиозностью, редко становились объектом исследований. Цель работы – выявить религиозные практики, которые продолжали существовать в среде еврейского населения Свердловска до 1961 г. – времени закрытия синагоги. В качестве источников использованы отчеты уполномоченного по делам религиозных культов и данные, полученные в ходе полевых исследований среди жителей города. Авторы постарались выяснить, насколько сохранялась и в какой форме помнится календарная обрядность, а что ушло из повседневной жизни свердловских евреев. В результате проведенных исследований было установлено, что численность религиозной общины в 1950‑е гг. достигала 500 чел., что составляло около 3 % от всего еврейского населения города. При этом еврейская религиозная община Свердловска являлась самой крупной и активной во всей области. В синагоге большее число прихожан собиралось на Песах, Йом Кипур, Рош ха-Шана и Суккот. Меньше верующих приходило на Хануку, а Пурим вообще остался незамеченным для уполномоченного по делам религиозных культов. Особенность воспоминаний информантов о праздниках (в основном о Песахе и Пуриме) – то, что все они связаны с описанием угощений. Это объясняется рядом факторов: обстоятельствами послевоенного голодного времени; возрастом информантов – все они были детьми, для которых вкусная еда являлась важнейшей составляющей любого праздника; уходом традиции в приватную сферу домашних застолий; стремлением старших родственников оградить детей от угроз, связанных с возможными обвинениями в религиозности. Полученные результаты позволяют утверждать, что праздничная обрядность, продолжая сохраняться даже в нерелигиозных семьях, хотя и в ограниченном виде, на протяжении 1940–1950‑х гг. подпитывала еврейскую идентичность.

Alexandr Romensky

Introduction. The article discusses the motive of a “miracle in a fiery furnace”, based on the story of the Three Holy Children in the Book of Daniel. Methods. The study provides a comparative analysis of the Biblical topos about the trial by fire in Byzantine, Western European and Eastern sources. A semiotic approach of textual study is used. Analysis. In Byzantine hagiography and hymnography, the plot of the “Three Holy Children” was interpreted as a prototype of the Incarnation, so, the sacred situation was reproduced in new historical conditions. In the Lives of Bishops of Cherson, the plot about miracle in the furnace is used for construction the local sacred history. Similar motives are found in the narratives about the baptism of Rus, such as Vita Basilii (the fifth book of Theophanes Continuatus), Vita beati Romualdi by Petrus Damiani, Historia de predicatione episcopi Brunonis. In narrative about conversion of Özbeg Khan to Islam, literary plot was connected with shamanistic representations about the holy fire. Results. The Biblical topos of the “fiery furnace” underwent a semantic transformation within the framework of various discourses. It was used in Byzantine texts for constructing the Christian Identity, while was enhanced by Turkic mythology in Muslim tradition.

Alexandre V. Borovik, Serguei D. Karakozov, Serguei A. Polikarpov

This paper is an introduction to our ongoing more comprehensive work on a critically important period in the history of Russian mathematics education; it provides a glimpse into the socio-political environment in which the famous Soviet tradition of mathematics education was born. The authors are practitioners of mathematics education in two very different countries, England and Russia. We have a chance to see that too many trends and debates in current education policy resemble battles around mathematics education in the 1920s and 1930s Soviet Russia. This is why this period should be revisited and re-analysed, despite quite a considerable amount of previous research. Our main conclusion: mathematicians, first of all, were fighting for control over selection, education, and career development, of young mathematicians. In the harshest possible political environment, they were taking potentially lethal risks.