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This article focuses on the evaluation of recent research on post-communist political regime diversity in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It offers a snapshot of the literature which looks for explanations for this diversity in four sets of factors: pre-communist and communist legacies, transitional institutional choices, political leadership, and foreign influence. The findings are based on the political evolution of three countries: Slovakia, Belarus, and Macedonia. They are representative for all post-communist countries both in terms of regime trajectory and regional location. The author concludes that post-communist political regime diversity can best be explained when the political leadership in general and the top politicians’ ideology, in particular, are placed at the centre of the analysis. This explanation correlates well with all types of post-communist regime, whether democracy, dictatorship, or intermediate regime. The other factors – legacies, institutional choices, and foreign influence – at best, may act only as reinforcing variables in some cases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This work identifies and discusses developments in language policy and language education in Crimea since the peninsula’s incorporation into the Russian Federation in March 2014. Working on the assumption that post-Soviet reforms and changes in language and education policies cannot be understood outside their historical context, the article starts by briefly outlining some of the defining features of the historical and sociolinguistic situation of Crimea until March 2014. It then presents the changing linguistic situation of the peninsula since its accession into Russia and discusses present developments in light of the broader context of post-Soviet language ideologies, policies and practices. It suggests that the new Crimean authorities are following a double strategy: the imposition of monolingual educational and linguistic policies, accompanied by largely symbolic concessions to the demands of local ethnic communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the 1920s, a large influx of immigrants from Czechoslovakia came to Canada in search of industrial work and available land for agriculture. Interwar ethnic associations were predominantly led by individuals of Slovak origin. Czechoslovakia maintained contact with its nationals in Canada through its diplomatic officials. Their consular offices promoted loyalty to Czechoslovakia’s policies in the hopes that Slovaks and Czechs would adopt their home government’s pro-“Czechoslovak” ideology, and eventually defend their homeland in the event of a war. The Czechoslovak Consulate General in Montreal oversaw all diplomatic activity between Prague and its nationals in Canada. With Slovakia’s declaration of independence and Germany’s occupation of the Czech lands in March 1939, the Czechoslovak Consulate General in Montreal used its local diplomatic discretion in an attempt to unite Slovaks and Czechs as a “Czechoslovak” national community. However, although nationalist Slovaks supported Canada’s war effort, they opposed the Czechoslovak Consulate General’s pro-Czechoslovak agenda. Czechoslovak diplomats lobbied the Canadian government for political recognition of the Edvard Beneš-led Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London to legitimize their efforts to re-establish a postwar Czechoslovak Republic. After British recognition, Canada became the last Dominion to recognize the London government-in-exile. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most literature on ideology in the late Soviet period notes the progressive de-ideologization of Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) politics under Mikhail Gorbachev. Looking specifically at the legitimating functions of ideology, the article contests this generalization. In doing so, it proposes the concept of ideological interpellation to clarify the relationship between doctrine and regime legitimation. The author argues that interpellation – the construction of the ideal Soviet subject, in a way that sustained therelations of domination and production– was a consistent goal throughout the last decade of communist rule. However, while the party approached interpellation in different ways, it was unable to resolve official ideology’s rigidity and narrowness of appeal. These conclusions are supported by a discourse analysis of the 26th, 27th, and 28th CPSU congress proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An index is presented for volume 57 of the journal.

This article discusses Romania’s relationship with the communist past. It is structured around three themes: official forgetting and belated condemnation, the pervading discourse of NGOs which focuses on the victims of communism, and the resurgence of nostalgia in opinion polls, seen as an expression of the problems of living in a democracy. In this context, the author examines visible forms of cultural memory which have appeared in recent years (the 2000s), in particular the role played by the nostalgic gaze. We find thus different types of nostalgia: social, commercial and tourism. We can then question the role played by this nostalgic gaze in works by Romanian contemporary artists and filmmakers who produce memory art. As a specific form of cultural memory, memory art seeks to sketch out an image of the past which is more comprehensive. The article describes the different forms nostalgia has taken in Romania in recent years and juxtaposes this with the most important works of art, following three themes: the obsessional portrait of Ceaușescu, personal, even autobiographical memory, and the residues of communism as depicted inProjet 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although Russia does not yet have a widespread term like the GermanOstalgie, it has witnessed an extensive social and cultural longing for its Soviet past, which we can define by the term “Back in the USSR”. This expression has taken on a vast range of meanings, becoming a multi-purpose label for disparate phenomena, such as online stores selling Soviet memorabilia, websites dedicated to Sovietbyt, and nostalgia-based marketing strategies. Nostalgia for the Soviet past has inspired a host of Russian writers and film directors. The author attempts to determine the main features of “Back in the USSR” via the analysis of two nostalgic texts, namely Andrei Strel′nikov’s novelBack in the USSR. A Nostalgic Novel(2001) and Valerii Rozhnov’s television seriesBack in the USSR(2010). As the author demonstrates, nostalgia is mobilized in these texts according to the principle ofpars pro toto, examples of which include the citation of official Soviet discourse, the dissemination of “relics” from the Soviet past (everyday objects, food, etc.), and heterotopia. Representing Soviet space as an existing place within modern Russia, both works pulsate with “new romanticism”. The author’s reading of these texts reveals that while post-Soviet Russia has yet to deal with its past, it is seeking to do so via new forms of artistic expression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes nostalgic narratives of railway workers in a provincial town in Serbia. It grounds its analysis in a particular theoretical understanding of neoliberalization, focusing on dispossession and its consequences in post-socialism. It provides an account of the specific historical context of socialist Yugoslavia and Serbia after the breakup of Yugoslavia within the wider capitalist system. It views this context as a field of force in which the hegemonic process takes place, and which circumscribes the possibilities for contestation and consent. Finally, it develops a conceptual distinction between the nostalgia of the aspiring middle class on the one hand, and working-class nostalgia on the other, and presents the interlocutors’ narratives as part of the latter. The author argues that nostalgia should be seen as a protean form that should always be studied in connection with the material and social location from which it is uttered. He aims to show that nostalgic narratives in present-day Serbia function as a technique of the self, understood as a practice through which specific kinds and capacities of thought are cultivated, forming a type of adaptable subjectivity against the backdrop of post-socialist neoliberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A guest editorial introduction is presented for the issue, highlighting its central theme of nostalgia surrounding Soviet culture in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, including contributions by Oleg Gorbachev, Ognjen Kojanic, and Caterina Preda.

The termnostalgiawas initially coined to describe a newly recognized form of homesickness so acute it was considered often fatal. Over time, the medicalized origins of nostalgia have disappeared and it would be unthinkable today to find medical professionals diagnosing patients with this condition. Nonetheless, contemporary usage of the term continues to reverberate with negative overtones, often suggesting suffering, melancholy or loss. This article presents a counter-case of nostalgia, considering the possibilities of nostalgia as a mode of therapeutics. Focusing on Czech trampers’ re-enactments of the imagined environments, personas, and activities of the American “Wild West”, the author argues that Czechs’ nostalgic re-enactments of so-called “Indian” or “cowboy” ways of life open up an imaginative horizon conducive to promoting physical and mental well-being. Much like drama therapy, these enactments enable participants to momentarily embody foreign personas and experiment with forms of masculinity and relations to nature that might otherwise be foreclosed to them. Such acts of nostalgic play are indicative, the author argues, not of an unhealthy detachment from the present but of an agentive and highly creative means of using imagined pasts to recast one’s sense of self in the present and future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the end of the 1990s, post-socialist nostalgia has been a powerful trend in Czech film and television. This article focuses on the examples of Filip Renč’s 2001 musical comedyRebelové(The Rebels) and the Czech television seriesVyprávěj(Tell Me a Story, 2009–2013), which both portray the period around the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Through an analysis of the visual style of the film and television series, as well as a discussion of the way the texts recontextualize the popular culture of the period they portray, the article proposes that Czech post-socialist nostalgia is more fruitfully viewed as “retro”, which is here differentiated from non-nostalgic depictions of socialism through a comparison with the mini-seriesHořící keř(Burning Bush, directed by Agnieszka Holland, 2013). Although retro’s concern with surface and style can be interpreted as apolitical, the author argues that the political agenda of Czech retro texts needs to be understood by the ways they combine a fetishization of the aesthetic trappings of the period with a condemnation of the political system of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the formation of nostalgic sentiment in contemporary Russia. Nostalgic emotions which idealize the Soviet experience are typical of Russian society today. To a great extent, they are a natural consequence of the forming of historical memories concerning the recent past. However, to a greater extent, they must be viewed as a socio-cultural phenomenon formed in the context of the social catastrophe that accompanied the collapse of the USSR. Nostalgia is amplified by political practices. Nostalgic sentiment is also sustained and cultivated by the mass media, which responds both to consumer demand and to political trends. Nostalgia for what was lost in the aftermath of a social catastrophe transforms a psychological reaction, typical of the older generation, into a nostalgia of catastrophes. It is the particular condition of a society that has lived through complicated historical periods, when dramatic changes resulted in the loss of the behavioural models and values which used to define people’s lives. The nostalgic mindset facilitates the mythologization of certain intervals of Soviet history as a “golden age”, one that is not completely lost. The period of the 1950s to 1970s is particularly actively mythologized. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the evolution of nostalgic sentiment in Russia over the past 25 years. Unlike in the 1990s, the nostalgic perception of the Soviet past in the 2000s was transformed under the influence of a new government ideology. Leonid Parfenov’s projectNamedniin both its forms – a television program and a book anthology – is an example of reflexive nostalgia for the Soviet period of 1946–1991. Reflexive nostalgia as expressed by liberal intellectuals presumes a freedom of interpretation. Thus,Namednidoes not reflect the official “patriotic” discourse. The article discusses the specifics of the television and book versions, the significance of visual and literary imagery, and the relationship between history and historical memory. BecauseNamedniexhibits signs of an autobiographical text, the article concludes that memory takes a higher priority than historical science in Parfenov’s project. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An interview is presented with the German artist Ursula Spannhake. Questions address topics such as her experiences visiting East Germany and its nostalgia for the communist regime, how Germans use customized automobile license plates to express their personal and political views, and how she has engaged these two themes together in her installation art works.

While scholars of Russian orientalism have diverged somewhat in their interpretation of Aleksandr Griboedov, they have in the main viewed him as a supporter of Russian expansion and seen in his works a justification of Russia's conquests in the East. This essay seeks to complicate that view. By taking a comprehensive look at Griboedov's Eastern-themed works (including his poems "There, Where Flows the Alazani", "Kal'ianchi", and "Predators on the Chegem", the play Georgian Night and a series of editorials, letters, and travel notes written from the Caucasus and Persia) and situating them in the context of contemporary literary and political debates, the author argues that Griboedov undercuts rather than supports the orientalist conception of the East's alterity. By portraying "Eastern" ways as possibilities latent within all humans and by pointing out the Russian past in the Persian present, Griboedov is able to question Russia's role in the Caucasus and to explore the costs of Russia's progress towards European-style civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Russian Orthodoxy in the late imperial period faced new pressures for freedom and democratization in society, the state, and the Church, Orthodox churchmen sometimes looked to the West -- its culture and its religious confessions -- as either cautionary tale or inspiration. This article examines how clergy and ecclesiastical academy scholars in the borderland diocese of Kyiv analyzed the West in the diocesan press. Their views of the West and of Russia helped to shape the Church's varied responses to modern culture, political change, and calls for Church reform. Some contributors praised Western political freedom and law, but many experienced a fraught relationship with modernity. The Slavophile ideal of communal wholeness, which contrasted with Western impersonal legalism and atomization, and a reluctance to cede authority constrained the Orthodox response to modernity's pressures. Retaining the Church's role in society while addressing Western material vitality, modernist influences, and demands for freedom of conscience proved challenging. Some cautiously welcomed the Duma as a brake against bureaucracy but only as a consultative body, lest it curtail the tsar's autocratic power. Rejecting the divisive individualism of Protestantism, they sought to soften Church hierarchy through conciliarism but stopped short of radically laicizing authority in the parish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A guest editorial introduction is presented for the issue's special section dedicated to the history of Orthodox Christianity in Russia and Eastern Europe during the 20th-century, including featured contributions by Jan Surer, Aileen Friesen, and Joel Brady.

In July 1916 Vladimir Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaia left on their annual holiday in the Swiss Alps. For eight weeks they stayed in the remote Kurhaus Tschudiwiese, high in the St Gallen Oberland south of Zurich, in a region now known as Heidiland. Lenin's interest was in hiking, certainly not in Heidi, nor in plotting the revolution that was to topple Tsar Nicholas II less than six months after his return to civilization. As a result, this episode was ignored by virtually all Soviet writers and by most Western biographers. This article seeks to fill that lacuna by discussing Lenin's little-known holiday pursuits and the limited work he pursued in his mountainous retreat. Particular attention is given to his extensive but often divisive and partially suppressed correspondence with Grigorii Zinov'ev, Inessa Armand, Roman Malinovskii, and Nikolai Bukharin. The picture that emerges is of a more human, non- geometric individual than that found in his Western and Soviet biographies. Visitors to Heidiland today will see many reflections of the fictional orphan and her idyllic stay in these mountains but none of the authentic Russian revolutionary who was to become the first leader of the new Soviet state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1920s and 30s, mass conversion movements to "Russian" Orthodoxy emerged among Greek Catholics in Czechoslovakia and Poland, comprising a new chapter in a continuing saga of conversion which began in the late nineteenth century, in what was then Austria-Hungary. Pre-1914 conversion movements arose in large part due to transatlantic migration -- especially return migration -- between Austria--Hungary and the Americas. Americanists have generally treated the 1920s and 30s as the era when transnational migration's impact waned owing to US immigration restrictions, while East Europeanists have minimized or ignored the impact of transnational migration upon East European regions. Interwar Catholic-to-Orthodox conversions, however, are not merely attributable to historical legacy: transatlantic migration continued to influence the dynamics of conversion as an active, contemporary force. As had been true prior to World War I, returning migrants and their families comprised the most significant constituency of the movements after the war; migrants remaining in the Americas supported the East European movements with economic and social remittances, and activists on either side of the Orthodox/Catholic divide treated the conversions as transnational phenomena. This essay analyzes the impact of transnational migration upon shifting ethnoreligious identifications, in the context of shifting social, national, and geopolitical circumstances, 1918-1939. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of twentieth-century Russian Orthodoxy has been written largely in terms of the Church and state, martyr and oppressor, all within the traditional paradigm of ineluctable, ubiquitous secularization. This article shifts the focus from Bolshevik and bishop to believer, framed within the more recent model that emphasizes "believing without belonging". While that new paradigm fits the Russian case, the latter certainly had unique specifics: it was precisely the coercive disestablishment of the Church that empowered parishioners and inadvertently laid the foundations for the post-Soviet religious revival. While the depth and meaning of that revival is open to dispute and calibration, it has unquestionably posed a dramatic contrast to contemporary Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the example of Archpriest Ioann Vostorgov, this article analyzes how during the final decade of the Russian empire, the colonization of Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East, as well as the state's engagement in East Asia, created new opportunities for Orthodox clergymen to participate in Russian imperial aspirations in the region. Asia had captured the imagination of Vostorgov, providing him with a backdrop for articulating the pivotal role that the Orthodox Church would perform in forging the future empire and a new world order. Facing an environment of porous borders, hostile neighbours, along with dizzying religious and ethnic diversity, Vostorgov supported the resettlement of Orthodox peasants and the intensification of missionary work, both inside and outside of Russia's borders, which he believed would secure the future of the empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, based on documents from a Kyiv archive, explores the preconditions of famine in Ukraine through the 3rd All-Ukrainian Party Conference of July 1932, convened to discuss the grain crisis in the republic. It discusses recent historiography on the subject and the findings of Ukrainian historians. It argues that the causes of the famine may need to be broadened and that the argument that the famine should be regarded as genocide based on ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians is too narrow. Other factors that need to be considered are ignorance of local conditions, based in part on administrative restructuring during the time of the grain procurements campaign, lack of farming experience on the part of plenipotentiaries sent to the villages, overuse and misuse of land, a dramatic drop in livestock prior to 1932-1933 linked to collectivization, and above all the incompetence of Soviet party and government leaders at all levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]