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The article examines Soviet paper reuse as an ideological, economic daily practice, implemented through the advanced, but hitherto undescribed Soiuzutil'waste collecting system by the early 1930s as the reverse side of Stalinist industrialization. It argues that Soiuzutil'waste paper handling attempted to form a new socialist collective by reworking old print while cultivating citizens as classless scrap-collectors, for the sake of an (ir)rational resource optimization. While World War II intensified recycling efforts among the Allied and Axis powers, invasion and evacuation damaged Soviet waste collection to a point where no return of paper into a centralized system was possible. War forced printers and consumers to retreat to local self-supply networks, as paper remained a crucial, yet scarce resource. By analyzing technical-educational literature and correspondence of the reutilization offices, the article demonstrates the changing attitudes in the Stalinist war economy, the industries, and the population towards mobilizing and saving paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is an introduction to and analysis of the article "Literary criticism must be scientific", presented here for the first time in English translation. The original was published by Lotman in 1967 in the journal Voprosy Literatury. The article by Lotman is a part of a wider debate, started in 1963, that saw structuralists and their opponents dispute the validity and heuristic value of structuralist methodology in literary criticism. The aim of the introduction is to explore Lotman's engagements with his intellectual context as they emerge in his 1967 article. The first part of the paper discusses the wider context of the debate, and explores the positions of the opponents of structuralism and the ways in which Lotman relates to them. The second part of the paper analyses how Lotman and his structuralist colleagues related to the official Soviet ideology, the diamat. In both cases, it will be seen how Lotman engaged certain aspects of his opponents' ideas, as well as the official ideology, in order to further his goal of reconciling structuralism and historicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the contest between Canadian American industrialist Cyrus Eaton and the Pugwash scientists' leadership for influence over the early Pugwash scientists' conferences. Eaton's activism has generally been dismissed in the historical literature as ineffective, naive and too uncritical of the Soviet Union. This paper argues that he was genuinely committed to international peace and security, that Eaton shared with Pugwash scientists a belief in the importance of intellectuals to global unity, and that he worked to bring about greater international peace and understanding through both his personal activism and his own conferences held in the town of Pugwash. Eaton, however, favoured a broader push for peace, which included participation by a wider range of intellectuals and a call for rapprochement with the Soviet Union. These differences between Eaton and the Pugwash scientists, I argue, were more than simply about approach: they represented different internationalist visions and manifested in different conceptualizations for the Pugwash scientists' conferences. Eaton hoped to incorporate non-scientists and humanism into the conferences, and integrate them into his own broader conference programme at his Thinkers' Lodge at Pugwash. The scientists, however, wanted to keep their conferences as distinctly scientists' events, tied to science and its authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the years before and after the Second World War, chemical and related industries in a variety of countries experienced a surge in innovation and development. As a result, the pulp industry became a space for considerable innovation. In Sweden, Johan Richter developed the Kamyr digester, a pulp cooker that could run continuously and was adopted by industry within a decade. Prior to Richter, Soviet engineer Leonid Zherebov designed a similar cooker. But after 25 years of experiments, Zherebov’s design failed, and Soviet factories began to produce pulp using imported Kamyr digesters. This article examines the history of continuous pulp cooking in the Soviet Union as a means to understand the nature of Russian technological innovation and its failures. The paper contends that his effort failed because of the technological system developed by Soviet forestry – a system characterized by a lack of open communication among its main institutional actors and a scarcity of resources to facilitate innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers China's economic development and place in the world economy. The People's Republic of China is becoming the most powerful country in the world in terms of GDP. Nowadays, China is an important partner in world trade both as an exporter and importer. Thus far, the United States has been the leading force in managing and coordinating the global economic and especially financial system, but now the economically advancing socialist China is a challenge to the USA. The Chinese model, socialism with Chinese characteristics, is discussed and compared with earlier stages of socialist construction, e.g. the NEP experiment of Soviet Union. The paper ends with notes about environmental and ecological problems, stressing the importance of socialist answers to these challenges. In this regard there are encouraging aspects in the current political program of the Chinese leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication activity of Russian scientists in various fields in chemistry is analyzed. Data on the indexing of articles of Russian Empire chemists in Chemisches Zentralblatt and Chemical Abstracts indicate active development of Russian science at the end of the 19th century and its rapid recovery and competitive ability after the First and Second World Wars. The collapse of the USSR dealt a severe blow to the scientific potential of the country, which was among the top five in all areas of chemical science before 1990. Currently, Russian scientists hold the strongest positions in the field of organic, inorganic, and physical chemistry. The number of publications of Russian scientists in foreign journals exceeds 50% of the total number of papers, and one third of the research is carried out with international cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on higher education regionalism, this paper explores international branch campus (IBC) initiatives undertaken by one of the largest Russian IBC-exporting institutions, the Lomonosov Moscow State University (LMSU). To date, very little is known about higher education (HE) export-import between the post-Soviet countries. This qualitative inquiry critically examines the Soviet legacy of LMSU IBCs to understand their origins, purposes, and utility as a form of HE export. This paper sheds light on (1) the similarities and differences between six LMSU IBCs and (2) discourses used to rationalise the establishment of LMSU branch campuses. The findings from this paper suggest that LMSU IBCs are established (a) to promote the Russian HE model, (b) to strengthen political and cultural ties with neighbouring countries, and (c) to bolster LMSU's image and brand appeal in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines Russia's cultural expansionism that extends beyond the military invasion in Ukraine since 2014. In the first part, I trace Russia's systematic efforts to seize and manipulate Ukrainian heritage, often under the guise of protection. I also touch on the role of museums in this expansion, where they are used to preserve collections through coercive acquisition and to promote a Russian-centric narrative. The second part of the article delves into the historical relationships between Russia and Ukraine, especially in the context of the Soviet era's museum infrastructure. Overall, the text calls for new concepts and international efforts to critique Russia's actions and protect Ukrainian culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the phenomenon of child and youth labour in the post-Stalin era in the Soviet Union. The starting point for the consideration constitutes the analysis of the law adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1958 titled "On the strengthening of the link between school and life and the further development of people's education in the USSR". This law placed great emphasis on combining education with practice and involving pupils from the earliest grades in various forms of both productive and socially useful labour. Subsequently, four categories of labour to which children and young people in the USSR were systemically forced has been distinguished. These included: occasional labours, work and leisure camps, so-called subbotniki and little communal works, as well as compulsory recycling. The paper thoroughly depicts all of them in the light of memoir material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a comparison between Romanian communist counterinsurgency (1944–1962) and similar campaigns fought by Western and Eastern governments in the early Cold War, in particular those waged by the British and French governments in their African, Asian and European colonies and those of the Soviet Union in its borderlands. The comparison focuses on three main components, population control, intelligence and military operations. Highlighting both similarities and differences across different cultural, economic, geographical, ethnic and political landscapes, the perspective laid out in this paper is an argument in favour of systematic and sustained comparative approaches to asymmetric warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As access to an essential part of clozapine research from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) states is very limited, quality aspects have not gained attention so far, and harmonization with modern research standards remains unclear. We performed a systematic search in PubMed, Embase and scientific indexes from former USSR states for articles published in Russian language till January 2023 (PROSPERO Reg. Number CRD42023386737) and assessed their quality using the modified Strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (STROBE)-Checklist. We compared quality aspects for papers published before and after 2000. A total of 60 papers were considered. Conflicts of interests and funding sources were reported in 5 and 3 (8 % and 5 %) studies respectively; ethical approval was warranted in two studies (3 %). Statistical analysis was performed in 57 (95 %) studies, but statistical methods were described in 21 (35 %) studies. When comparing studies before and after 2000, there was a trend towards improvement for several aspects, with the only significant differences being the objectives' specification (43 vs 83 %, p < 0.003) and the reporting of statistical methodology (0.0 vs 46 %, p < 0.001), which were more frequently available in papers after 2000. Clozapine papers in Russian language suffered from severe methodological drawbacks limiting generalizability. Changes regarding standardization, transparency, ethics, and good scientific practice are urgently required. Using reporting checklists and predefining protocols are the first steps towards quality upgrade and accelerate the integration of science from the former USSR states into the world scientific system. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is a global phenomenon and is influenced by complex processes in the society. In Kazakhstan, the formation of towns was based on the implementation of a policy of the Russian Empire, which put in motion the processes of urbanization there. This policy was later continued in the Soviet times too. It began with the discovery of rich deposits of minerals on the sites of small Kazakh vernacular settlements, and their extraction. Gradually, these settlements turned into towns: infrastructure was built; population increased. Invariably, the living conditions of people engaged in industrial production also improved. However, at the end of the 20th century, these small towns are still experiencing a deep social and economic crisis. Although the modern independent Kazakhstan has begun to address them, this issue is still urgent. This paper examines the process of the formation of urban vernacular settlements in Kazakhstan with a case study of East Kazakhstan. The research employs archival documents containing objective information. It uses comparative historical analysis to identify the causes and reveal the processes of transformation of vernacular settlements into towns. It concludes that the emergence of some settlements in East Kazakhstan has been associated with the colonial policy of the Russian Empire. The towns are an important and inevitable part of urbanization. It is easier for the migrants and the villagers to adapt to the towns. This is because towns lack tensions and survival problems of the big cities, but retain all of their symbols and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing the working population is of paramount importance in regions relying on substantial human capital influx. Given the inadequacies in the supply of public housing, some governments are encouraging employer involvement in housing assistance provision. Therefore, it is meaningful to delve into the industrial society in which employer housing was prevalent and examine its evolving dynamics in the post-industrial society, which can offer valuable insights into contemporary policymaking related to employer-involved housing assistance. Informed by the welfare regime theory, this study investigates the provision structures of employer housing driven by specific forces in countries characterized by welfare capitalism (the UK, the US, and Germany) and welfare authoritarianism (the Soviet Union and China) in the industrial society, and discusses the trend in the post-industrial era. The findings indicate that employers under early welfare capitalism exercised substantial control over housing provision primarily for business purposes, whereas employer housing under welfare authoritarianism was profoundly influenced by state power, serving as a tool for state-led industrialization and socio-political governance. Transitioning into the post-industrial society, employer housing under both welfare regimes evolved towards a paradigm of welfare pluralism, with diversified housing aids provided through cooperation among various actors. This paper argues that welfare pluralism represents a more suitable idea for employers' housing assistance in the post-industrial era, addressing the limitations associated with traditional employer housing, such as business burdens, sectoral inequality, and labor exploitation. The research findings can inform the formulation of employer-involved housing policies and contribute to the broader housing support system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Granting the idea that certain theoretical conceptualisations of Marxism broadly represent a political religion, this paper seeks to explore how one can come to understand the function of individual theoretical concepts within the wider theory of Stalinism. In so doing, this approach to political religion will be explored within the confines of Stalin's concept of the Intensification of Class Struggle under Socialism. Assuming that individual theoretical concepts of an ideology that has been labelled a political religion serve the same function as doctrines within traditional religion, this paper argues that the Intensification of Class Struggle under Socialism can be interpreted as having an apocalyptic quality. By doing so, this paper seeks to extend the boundaries of both the study of political religion and the theoretical exploration of Marxism as it relates to the question and role of religion within the social and political sphere. While doing so, this paper also seeks to provide an illustration of what the exploration of political religion in relation to Marxism looks like at the level of specific theoretical elements as opposed to a mere overarching characterisation of the entire theoretical enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines absurdities in contemporary society and workplaces. Absurdity arises from the absence of rationality, where observed human practices paradoxically veer away from official discourse and institutional rhetoric. Absurdity does not exist in a vacuum but is penetrated by and hypernormalized through internalized societal ideologies. Hypernormalization, or the normalization of absurdity, was originally coined by Russian-born anthropologist Yurchak (2003, 2005) to understand the split between ideological, authoritative discourse and practice in the last decades of the Soviet Union. We extend the understanding of hypernormalization to describe how contemporary absurdities are normalized both in society and organizations. Moreover, we explain how hypernormalization unfolds at collective and individual levels through ideological fantasy and internalization. Fantasmatic investment and internalization enable individuals to manage the absurdities arising from the perpetual gap between authoritative discourse (e.g., companies' commitment to climate action) and actual day-to-day practices (e.g., companies' continued investment in fossil fuels). We finish by presenting three interrelated steps through which resistance, as a mechanism to deal with hypernormalization, emerges: problematization, resistance and imagination. We contribute to the literature by showing how these three ways may offer a way out of hypernormalization in society and workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various professional, economic, and personal reasons underpin current migration flows. This article integrated the concepts of lifestyle travelling and lifestyle migration by bringing the tourism-migration nexus to the fore to analyse lifestyle issues of individuals that impact their decisions to be mobile. Sixteen in-depth semi-structured interviews with young Russian migrants, a 'modern' population with different perspectives about opportunities to travel and migrate than their USSR predecessors, were conducted with a focus on their life experiences, mobility 'careers' and starting points of migration. Thematic analysis and iterative engagement with data led to the creation of the Movement Continuum. This Movement Continuum connects different stages of movement ranging from the first trip, long-term travelling, permanent migration, and the final decision to settle down. The paper suggests the continued need for a better understanding of the importance of lifestyle in mobility and migration journeys. It identifies those moments of crisis in the mobility and migration journey that affect an individual's intentions to stay on the move and/or to migrate. The findings complement discourses around the role of personal crisis in migration, mobilities, and tourism and highlight the necessity for further research regarding the better exploration of the relationship between lifestyle travel and lifestyle migration in tourism geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though an individual's right to legal identity has been internationally codified, in certain instances, the legal identity and associated documents may lack widespread international recognition. This is the case in aspirant (de facto) states such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. This paper argues that certain legal identities become liminal due to the nonrecognition of the conferring authority, and/or the associated legal identity documents. The recognition of legal identity documents can change based on where a person is located (territorial jurisdiction), the administrative authority issuing the documents, and the authority assessing the legitimacy of the conferred legal identity documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The livestock sector of the Republic of Moldova has been in a continuous decline since the collapse of the USSR, with sharp reductions in the production of pork meat (by 2.5 times), beef (by 13 times), poultry (-50%) and milk (by 5.2 times). Revitalization of the livestock sector has become of the priorities of the current public policies implemented in the country, new measures of public support like direct payments per head of livestock being implemented in order to boost the sector’s performance. The paper aims to analyse the current state of the livestock sector in the Republic of Moldova, with an emphasize on the subsectors with the most competitive potential that require an improved or additional public support. The descriptive, comparative and analytical research methods have been used in order to develop conclusions and recommendations with respect to the further development of the livestock sector in the Republic of Moldova. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste for the Soviet Economy: Recycling of Rags in Ukraine in the 1920s [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE PRESENT PAPER REPRESENTS A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS OF THE UNITED STATES AND SOVIET UNION IN THE MOMENT OF THE END OF THE COLD WAR, FROM THE THEORETICAL LENSES PROVIDED BY THE NEW INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS MODEL AS DEVISED BY DARON ACEMOGLU AND JAMES A. ROBINSON. THIS PAPER TRIES TO ANSWER THE QUESTION OF WHY THE UNITED STATES PRESERVED THE SUPERPOWER STATUS AND THE SOVIET UNION DID NOT. THIS PAPER ARGUES THAT THE UNITED STATES HAD BETTER POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS THAN THE SOVIET UNION. THEREFORE, THE SUPERIOR CHARACTER OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS MADE THE DIFFERENCE AT THE END OF THE COLD WAR, THE UNITED STATES BEING ABLE TO PRESERVE ITS SUPERPOWER STATUS, WHILE THE SOVIET UNION COLLAPSED AND DISAPPEARED AS A STATE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This critical interpretive paper deploys Walter Mignolo's geopolitics of knowledge concept to examine higher education internationalisation in Kazakhstan. Amidst growing concerns about economic and environmental sustainability, elitism and cognitive justice, among other critical issues, internationalisation remains a vital government policy. By tracing Kazakhstan's development since independence from the Soviet Union and focusing on key higher education development policy frameworks, the paper argues and illustrates that: (1) the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan promotes a specific representation of the world that is considered universal and modern; (2) the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan illustrates the existing hierarchical global higher education system that is dominated by the West as centres of knowledge and learning while allocating other countries peripheral roles; and (3) the geopolitics of knowledge concept enables the reading of higher education internationalisation beyond what is knowledge to who, why and where knowledge is produced. The data for this paper came from a qualitative study that involved 15 semi‐structured interviews with graduates who studied abroad at Western universities through the government‐sponsored Bolashak Scholarship. Three focus group sessions with 21 graduate students at Nazarbayev University complemented the interviews. The qualitative data suggest that Mignolo's geopolitics of knowledge offers a close‐to‐perfect description of the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan. The conclusion drawn from this post‐Soviet study is the universalisation of Western knowledge as nations utilise it for meaningful development, despite decolonial and cognitive justice concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses critical discourse analysis and critical literacy to analyze the first in a series of literacy primers developed with US support for children in Afghanistan in the 1980s, called 'Jihad literacy'. The text is analyzed for its ideological content as related to the themes of religion, violence, and martyrdom in the historical perspective of the Cold War and the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. The paper demonstrates how the notion of 'Jihad' was subverted to promote a holy war against the Soviet invasion. The educational system supported by the US created a radical version of Islam based on violence and martyrdom, shaping the Afghan society to this day. We contend that the same or similar institutions shape current discourses as in the past and that children are the main victims of politico-economic warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Relations & International Law Journal / Seriâ Meždunarodnye Otnošeniâ & Meždunarodnoe Pravo is the property of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Akademik Hassasiyetler is the property of Huzeyfe Suleyman Arslan and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, R. W. Stewart visited the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Moscow for three months, including a side trip to a field station on the River Don. The visit followed on from discussions at scientific meetings on the topic of turbulence in fluid flows. Major theoretical advances had been made in the USSR, while Stewart's group in Canada had conducted a key observational programme in turbulent tidal currents off the coast of British Columbia. During his visit, Stewart was able to show how some Soviet observations were in accord with others after correction for instrument size and, most importantly, with Evgeny Novikov he pioneered a new approach to the theory of turbulence to allow for intermittency. His report contains observations of the style of science in the USSR in that era, as well as interesting comments on food and culture. The visit produced lasting dividends in scientific collaboration, particularly in international programmes related to climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many maps produced in the former Soviet Union have become available. However, researchers have focused on topographical maps or those of Western cities produced by the General Staff for military use, and less on maps created by GUGK, the state mapping agency, for domestic purposes, including tourism. By contrast, this paper focuses on maps produced for tourists, whether travelling by private car or on an organized rail or bus tour. The 42 maps reviewed take three main forms: those covering a single administrative region, ranging from an oblast to a Soviet republic; those of a specific tourist area or associated with a literary hero; and strip maps connecting major cities. The paper considers the general design and symbology used on these maps, tracing some of the stylistic changes and developments in the quarter-century prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Russian industrial heritage and its interactions with society. It focuses on changing identities and the transformation of industrial enterprises from connecters to the future in Soviet times, to bridges to both the past and the future for different social groups in post-Soviet Russia. Based on regional examples from the Russian northwest, this article analyzes the trajectories of industrial enterprises from urban centers to peripheries, and the socio-cultural appropriation they experience. Based on newspaper articles, online comments of citizens, and materials from Internet communities, this analysis explores discussions about the reuse of abandoned industrial heritage in Russia. First, it shows how industrial enterprises have moved from centers of the future to peripheries of the past during the last century, and continue to do so at present. Second, it examines how citizens interact with them today, producing nostalgia for the "lost" Soviet past and using abandoned buildings for stalker adventures. The paper concludes that abandoned enterprises transform from industrial centers to cultural sites, binding past, present and future together in a temporal conjunction where three unique temporalities co-exist and overlap: the socialist past, the modern Russian present, and imagined futures. Abandoned heritage is a dynamic participant in cultural and social activities but simultaneously it signifies disappearing industrial socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism and authoritarianism are intimately connected, as is demonstrated by the existence of a growing body of literature on 'authoritarian neoliberalism'. This article provides a taxonomy of authoritarian neoliberalism and claims that it appears in three varieties – technocracy, populist nationalism, and traditional authoritarianism. Also, it proposes both an overview of the varieties and an analysis of three states as case studies. States are investigated as actors which strongly contribute to the neoliberal project amidst a more complex process of multilocalized and variegated neoliberalizations, which have to be incorporated into the comparative research. First, Italy is studied as a consolidated Western democracy which has been often governed by technocrats, independent, non-party professionals who have recurrently been in power since the 1990s, and within the frame of an increasingly technocratic European Union. Second, the paper concentrates on Hungary, a semi-peripheral Central European country which has become an epitome of a populist nationalism with increasingly authoritarian traits. Third, the paper focuses on Kazakhstan, a former Soviet Union republic with no significant experience of liberal democracy before independence, and a key example of the 'traditional authoritarian' variety. The three varieties, however, are sometimes combined and coexisting, and their evolution will be decisive for the future of capitalism and liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the pressure of global carbon neutrality, it is necessary to study the characteristics of carbon emissions and the trend of "carbon peaking" in countries along the "Belt and Road." Because most of these countries have not yet reached their peak carbon emissions, they still have great potential for growth, and peak carbon emissions are a prerequisite for carbon neutrality. This paper divides the countries along the Belt and Road into 9 country groups according to the level of economic development and industrial structure. Based on the carbon emission panel data of countries along the "Belt and Road" from 1970 to 2018 and environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory, a panel model was established for each country group for research. This paper analyzes the characteristics of carbon emissions and the trend of "carbon peaking" in these countries and analyzes the economic growth and carbon emissions in combination with the Tapio decoupling model. The decoupling relationship changes on the time scale as a supplement. The results show that in the study area, some countries have completely passed the "carbon peak." The reasons for this are as follows: first, the carbon peak is achieved through industrial upgrading; second, the "carbon peak" is caused by the drastic changes in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union and deindustrialization; and third, the carbon peak is caused by poverty and population growth. Most of the remaining countries have not yet achieved the carbon peak. Among them, some countries represented by the Middle East are highly coupled with their economic development and carbon emissions. Middle-income and high-industrial-dependence countries are in the transitional period in terms of the carbon peak. Low-income and medium- and high-industrial-dependence countries are currently still in the stage of barbaric development. From the research on the decoupling situation, the relationship between the economic growth of countries along the "Belt and Road" and their carbon emissions has been improving in recent decades, and it is expected that a more ideal state of decoupling will be achieved in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Sociology: Bulletin of the Yerevan State University / Banber Erevani Hamalsarani. Sots'iologia is the property of Publishing House of Yerevan State University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Georgia, the question of academic freedom emerged only after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and its universities could begin reckoning with a heavy past of ideological pressure, censorship, governmental control and top‐down management. Despite official declarations of the right to academic freedom and its recognition within Georgia's legal framework, actual practice in the country's higher education system tells a different story. The paper draws on qualitative data obtained from sixteen academics representing diverse institutions and disciplines, as well as the secondary data including educational legislation, government regulations, ministers' decrees, various reports from non‐governmental organisations, think tanks and media archives. The findings of this paper reflect how academic freedom is understood in Georgia and two major threats to its exercise in universities, namely, interference from external politics and internal managerialism. We argue that academic freedom as a concept does not yet have its own place in Georgia's higher education system, protected de jure but with different de facto realities. The paper sheds light on how Soviet legacies of self‐censorship, hidden mechanisms of control and a culture of conformity continue to create tensions inside universities and an environment in which academic freedom cannot flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eva Dawes Spinks (1912-2009) was an outstanding Canadian high jumper in the 1930s. The present paper traces her early life, successful athletic career, and her decision in 1935 to join a group of athletes on a goodwill tour of the Soviet Union organized by the Workers' Sports Association of Canada. Upon her return, Dawes was suspended by the Women's Amateur Athletic Union of Canada. She retired from competition and became involved in the Canadian campaign to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Much later, Dawes adamantly denied any political involvement. The purpose of this paper is to examine and possibly explain the incongruity between the historical evidence and Dawes's later denials. More broadly, it is a discussion about the relationship between history and individual memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the three journeys undertaken by the Greek writer and intellectual Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) to the Soviet Union during the 1920s. It also investigates his involvement with communism during the interludes between these journeys and his subsequent activities. By scrutinising the conditions under which these journeys were conducted, this paper sheds light on the influence of communism on Nikos Kazantzakis, his receptivity to communist ideology, and its integration into his distinctive worldview. Furthermore, this examination elucidates the communist movement's strategic planning regarding the travels of intellectuals from Western countries, and the incorporation of these journeys into the cultural diplomacy of the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current psychological tendencies contain using innovative methods in organizing work with children. The adolescent period is often referred to as the most critical part of every individual. The paper gives brief feedback about metaphoric associative cards -- emotion cards, as a modern tool of psychology. Researchers used the combination technique of "Positive Psychology" with emotion cards. The brand new, innovative tool -- emotion cards is a widespread method among psychologists in post-soviet states. Emotion cards can be used for the detection and correction of emotional imbalance, anxiety, depression, school inadaptation, and inter/intra-generational problems. Using the techniques of Positive Psychology can assist to multiply the effectiveness of psycho-correctional work. The researchers and positive psychologists emphasize that positive psychology does not only make the individuals to be at zero but builds resilience. The study includes empirical research with middle school children in Azerbaijan. Ethical considerations were followed by the researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the reception of Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel outside the USSR (England, United States, France). Actually, the censored version of the novel was more critically acclaimed than its full version published after Kuznetsov's defection to the West. The poor reception may be partly due to the fact that Babi Yar did not match the canon of Holocaust literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparative & International Education is the property of Canadian & International Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Higher Education Quarterly is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims at identifying convergence clubs in suicide rates for a sample of 20 of FSU countries during the 1994–2016 period. A novel machine learning approach revels that while the null hypothesis of overall convergence has been rejected at the 5% significance level, there are four convergence clubs in the region. Within these clubs, different countries are on different transition paths and speeds of convergence, suggesting different policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reexamines African socialism, the Ghanaian political economy under Kwame Nkrumah (1957–1966), Nkrumah's intellectual genealogical heritage, and African intellectual history as a genre that transcends the bounds of the Atlantic world. First, I sketch the lives of Black Marxists—Nkrumah, C.L.R. James, George Padmore, and Bankole Awoonor-Renner—from Africa and the Americas, to the Soviet Union, to England and Ghana, to rethink Black bodies not merely as theorists of racial and decolonial questions but also as sites, carriers, and manipulators of political-economic theories. In constructing connected and overlapping histories, I demonstrate how controversial and contested Soviet ideas became key sites of interrogation among global Black Marxists. By reframing travel as an intellectual process, I reconceptualize the movements of Black Marxists to the USSR, the United States, England, and Ghana as critical intellectual and historical processes in their understandings of Lenin's state capitalist ideas. Second, I revisit the Ghanaian political economy under Nkrumah to argue that combining socialist and capitalist development paths was not a contradictory Marxian policy but was embedded within Black Marxist understandings of Lenin's state capitalist ideas. In so doing, I argue that we must situate African political ideologies not solely within a romanticized Afrocentric origin but as ideas that emerge out of contemporaneous global political and ideological struggles. I draw on global Black Marxists' correspondence; newspaper and magazine articles; British and American espionage files; and Ghanaian, American, and British state and inter-state departmental documents in imperial, colonial, and postcolonial British, Ghanaian, American, and Russian archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1950s, the Soviet Union expanded the range of its fisheries operations into international water traditionally fished by American vessels. In the USA, government officials and fisheries experts alike expressed concerns that the Soviets were overfishing Atlantic stocks, or even potentially engaging in off-shore espionage. Despite these fears, members of the US fisheries management community reached out and engaged with their Soviet counterparts directly. This initial communication led to a series of collaborations between US and Soviet scientific agencies aimed at developing a deeper understanding of marine ecosystems and improving the sustainability of international fisheries. The joint US–USSR research efforts beginning in the 1960s laid the foundation for continued cooperative studies through the 1980s and into the post-Soviet era. This paper uses historical records from the US National Archives and data products currently available on the web to examine the legacy of this Cold War cooperative research program. These materials demonstrate how American and Soviet scientists collaborated to generate and describe data on fisheries. It also considers how they negotiated recordkeeping and data management activities across radically different governmental structures, while also navigating the transition to digital recordkeeping and data exchange. This case offers perspective on the preservation of at-risk ecological records and the continued value of these data in our contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1987 when dry-point-contact (DPC) transducers were invented in the USSR, ultrasonic shear wave devices based on those transducers have been commercialized and have become one of the most effective technologies for imaging concrete. That said, the objectives of this paper are (1) to provide a brief review of the historical development of these powerful devices and (2) to provide a comprehensive assessment of their capabilities in imaging internal entities and structural defects. Regarding the former, the paper presents the context that gave birth to DPC technology and different generations of ultrasonic shear wave devices for concrete inspection. For the latter, one of the state-of-the-art ultrasonic shear wave devices (MIRA 3D) was used to collect data on concrete specimens with different built-in flaws/defects. Those data are then visualized with a commonly used data processing algorithm, the so-called synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT). Finally, based on the resulting images, the capabilities of the device are discussed in detail for each concrete imaging problem. A main limitation of ultrasonic shear wave technique for concrete inspection is that it requires a significant amount of time and effort for data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a joint study of the behavior of solutions of the Heavy Ball ODE and Heavy Ball type algorithms is given. Since the pioneering work of Polyak (USSR Comput Math Math Phys 4(5):1–17, 1964), it is well known that such a scheme is very efficient for C 2 strongly convex functions with Lipschitz gradient. But much less is known when only growth conditions are considered. Depending on the geometry of the function to minimize, convergence rates for convex functions, with some additional regularity such as quasi-strong convexity, or strong convexity, were recently obtained in Aujol et al. (Convergence rates of the Heavy-Ball method for quasi-strongly convex optimization, 2020). Convergence results with much weaker assumptions are given in the present paper: namely, linear convergence rates when assuming a growth condition (which amounts to a Łojasiewicz property in the convex case). This analysis is firstly performed in continuous time for the ODE, and then transposed for discrete optimization schemes. In particular, a variant of the Heavy Ball algorithm is proposed, which converges geometrically whatever the parameters choice, and which has the best state of the art convergence rate for first order methods to minimize composite non smooth convex functions satisfying a Łojasiewicz property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the trial production of marine gas hydrate in the former Soviet Union, Canada, North Slope of Alaska, South Sea Trough of Japan and Shenhu Sea of South China Sea, the problem of sand and water production cannot be avoided. The problems of sand production and water production in the process of natural gas hydrate depressurization exploitation have seriously restricted the exploitation efficiency and production of natural gas hydrate. The problems of sand production and water production are some of the main factors that prevent natural gas hydrate being commercially exploited. Therefore, it is urgent to carry out useful, relevant and cutting-edge research on the efficient drainage of sand and water from the wellbore in the process of natural gas hydrate mining. This paper innovatively proposes liquid-carrying and solid-carrying technology under foam circulation purging to address the existing problems of sand removal and drainage technology in hydrate mining. At present, no scholar has used this technology to solve the problem of sand removal and drainage in hydrate mining. Therefore, the research on efficient drainage is imperative. In this paper, We mainly studied the liquid-carrying and solid-carrying of vertical wellbore under the condition of foam cycle purging. We have revealed the relevant the liquid-carrying law and solid-carrying law through the above research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the fifty-eighth annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) which was held at the Hotel Albuquerque in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 8-11, 2015, and it mentions the contributions of event organizers such as Kevin Borg, William Storey, and Lars Heide. Session events addressing topics such as computer hacking, the history of space exploration, and the Soviet Union's technology during the interwar period are also assessed.

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