Search

This paper explores the case of Barents Pride, an event organized collaboratively by Russian and Norwegian LGBT+ activists located close to the Norwegian–Russian border. The idea of the Pride is to bring LGBT+ people and activists from Russia, where state pressure limits possibilities of organizing prides, to Norway and to express solidarity across borders. We use this case to investigate pitfalls and promises of queer transnational solidarities, to contest notions of center/periphery, the North/South–East/West division and to analyze how sexuality simultaneously enforces and destabilizes these dichotomies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disgusted by political institutions, many activists around the world are rejecting normal politics in favor of hands-on, tangible local action. This looks similar all over the world, including in the two countries on which the paper focuses, Russia and the United States. Is it? Scholars and activists alike compare one society's activism to another; this paper suggests ways of asking useful questions in cross-national ethnographic research. Controlling the variables of cultural, political/legal, social, and spatial conditions is impossible. With so many "out of control variables", can comparison make any sense? Activists have varied "styles" (Lichterman & Eliasoph The American Journal of Sociology, 120(4): 798–863, 2014) of coordinating local activism in any country. Each style encounters different frictions, depending on a nation's specific cultural, political, social, and spatial conditions. Local, interest-based, grassroot activism is a typical American "style" and is also venerated in American cultural narratives that celebrate local democracy. American activists encounter friction when trying to enact this style, when, for example, they realize that money brings power. For Russian activists, the very same style is a "surprising discovery". Russians encounter different frictions when trying to enact this style. Examining continual, recursive pragmatic tests shows how activists move towards more, towards less, or towards different kinds of politicization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borshch (also spelled as borscht and borsch) has lately become heavily contested as the intangible heritage of both Ukraine and Russia. Media reports trace the roots of the dispute to a 2019 tweet by the Russian Foreign Ministry describing the soup as part of Russia's significant heritage. In response, Ukrainian cultural activists have moved the traditional beet soup from intimate vernacular settings into the political spotlight. Borshch contests, workshops, and festivals are now organized in Ukraine at the highest state levels involving top-ranking politicians and activists--all meant to legitimize borshch as a Ukrainian, not Russian, dish. This paper focuses on the complex political trajectories of borshch in Ukraine. I show that the fight over the ownership of the dish, while it may appear humorous to outsiders, communicates "unlaughter" [Billig 2005] to those who reside in close geographical and emotional proximity to the real problems that the dispute communicates. This seemingly innocent dish has come to symbolize the serious matter of resistance to external threats in the context of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia crisis, simultaneously serving as a unifying tool within Ukraine. In other words, external gastroanimosity shaped by the crisis is directly related to the efforts of internal "gastrodiplomacy" [Ruddy 2014]. Additionally, unlike many other forms of traditional culture discussed in resistance and protest-related literature, borshch in Ukraine follows a cyclical trajectory. A dish that found its way from intimate family tables to the large international political arena returns to vernacular domains, transformed by politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive linguistics pays particular attention to the interrelations between language, subjective conceptualisations and intersubjective manifestations of knowledge, providing descriptive tools for the analysis of how the choice of linguistic means is determined by individual, as well as by culture-specific conceptual patterns. In this paper we analyse the linguistic construal of Ukrainian Maidan activists in six German, Polish and Russian daily newspapers. The analysis focuses on culture-specific differences between the linguistic strategies used in the Western and Middle European media discourse in the EU member states, as well as the Eastern European discourse in Russia. The research is based on two theoretical frameworks: cognitive ethnolinguistics and cognitive grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Russian opposition activists negotiate online visibility--their own and that of their messages and campaigns--and the security concerns brought on by the pervasive digital surveillance that the state resorts to in order to reinstate its control over the online discursive space. By examining the internet-based presence and activity of the members of Alexey Navalny's FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) and other opposition activists, the paper traces connections between everyday security practices that these activists engage in online and the resistance tactics and repertoires they enact in an environment where the free and open exchange of information on the Russian internet is becoming increasingly difficult. The analysis finds that Russian opposition activists place a high value on digital, media, and security literacy and that navigating the internet using security tools and protocols such as VPN, two-phase authentication, and encrypted messaging is increasingly seen as the default modus operandi for those participating in organised dissent in Russia to mitigate growing state surveillance. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that Russian activists have to balance the need for security with growing visibility--a key factor for entering the mainstream political and social discourse. The tension between being secure and being visible emerges as a key aspect of resistance practices in an environment of near-constant state surveillance, as activists concurrently manage their safety and visibility online to minimise the risks posed by government spying and maximise the effect of their dissent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When new discourses appear, they can cause a certain pressure to search for new meaning of past actions and therefore even change recollection. During a period of discursive transition, these processes of memory evolution can cause serious social rifts. These insights from oral history theories are applied in this paper to the Sámi people in Russia, who all too often are seen by outsiders as a homogeneous community. I seek to correct this distorted image by analyzing the several interconnected rifts crisscrossing the Russian Sámi society. The following social fault lines are identified: the generational, the gender, the siyt, and the Lovozero-and-therest rifts, as well as a rift of worldviews, which I describe through two conceptual poles called "activists" and "sovkhoists." Thus, the article contributes to raising awareness about the potentially differing interests of the individuals who constitute what is usually called the Russian Sámi "community" and increasing the critical distance of outsiders towards generalizing claims about "the" Russian Sámi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post-Soviet context liberal publics in Russia often see the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate as a satellite of the state and its collaborator. Attempts by Church representatives, sometimes self-appointed, to enlarge the Church's presence in public space are perceived by secular publics as violating certain principles fundamental to the functioning of the public sphere: individual membership and independence from the state. Consequently, individual religious activists and associations of believers – Orthodox brotherhoods and sisterhoods, charity projects and other initiatives affiliated with the Church – function as counterpublics which feel excluded from the common public sphere and form alternative public spheres. This contribution focuses on the public actions of a female religious activist in a big city in the Urals who presents herself as speaking on behalf of the church people, often aiming to establish or defend visible religious symbols in the city landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds light on Andrei Danilov's political asylum case. Danilov is a Sámi activist who left Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine. His asylum case seems to have created a precedent; it is being processed in Norway because of his connection with the Norwegian part of Sápmi. The article also casts light on the impact of the war on the relationship between the Sámi people in Russia and the Sámi of Norway, Sweden and Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian revolutionary movement was not well known in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Connections between Finnish political activists and Russian revolutionaries started only in the first years of the twentieth century. This article investigates Swedishspeaking author and activist Konrad Zilliacus's relation with the Russian revolutionaries. It analyzes how Zilliacus's understanding of revolutionary Russia was constructed. Based on the close reading of his book Det Revolutionära Ryssland and the Finnish and English translations of this book, this study analyzes Zilliacus's perceptions of Russia, sources of his information, and the reception of the book and its impact on general knowledge of revolutionary Russia in Finland. The article illuminates Zilliacus's connections abroad and with the Russian socialist revolutionaries. It provides an insight into the topics of the book and discusses how this information was obtained and how the experts of the book were related in the network of the revolutionaries. The article discusses the impact of the book and draws a synthesis of the Russian expertise in Finland and abroad of that time. The article demonstrates how the socialist revolutionaries, who had also sought support from abroad, influenced Zilliacus's thinking on Russian opposition and the future of Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schenk's book is elucidating in terms of its coverage of Russia's migration management bureaucracy. As a Tajikistani migrant political activist in Russia noted in a TV debate, Russia is the official heir to the Soviet Union: "we [migrant workers] are former Soviet citizens." Many of the "migrants" in Russia today are former Soviet citizens living in countries impregnated with structural economic problems laid out for them by the USSR. [Extracted from the article]

This article offers a case study of the Russian-American pro-family organisation the World Congress of Families, explaining its emergence, strategies, and religious and political agenda from 1995 until 2019. The article adds to a growing body of research that sheds light on transnational networks of conservative and right-wing political and civil society actors. It zooms in on Russian pro-family activists as connected to such networks and thereby takes an innovative perspective on the Russian conservative turn as part of a global phenomenon. The article also makes the argument that a specific Russian Christian Right movement, comparable to and linked with the American Christian Right and conservative Christian groups in Europe, is taking shape in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Przeglad Socjologiczny is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe 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.)

The article explores the history of Russian intelligentsia, a status class of educated people engaged in the complex mental labours that guide, and lead in shaping the culture and politics of society. Topics discussed include Russian intellectuals and political activists' work; role of intelligentsia in societies in Russia and America; and ways in which intelligentsia members can make a decisive contribution to the unification of humankind.

In this article, Ann Komaromi reads late Soviet Jewish culture in Leningrad in terms of the “two worlds” Jewish activists negotiated: official and unofficial, Soviet/Russian and Jewish, present and past, etc. While the public rhetoric of the struggle for Soviet Jewry suggested dramatic binaries of death and salvation that resonate with the eschatological extremes of the “Petersburg text,” Komaromi argues for a more prosaic approach to the imaginative and cultural project of reconstructing Jewish identity by people in this context. The article features the recollections of former Jewish activists taken from interviews and memoirs to reveal the range of endeavors in which they engaged, including Hebrew learning and teaching, seminars, demonstrations, Jewish soccer teams, local history walking tours, unofficial book collections, and ethnographic expeditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the engagement of Ismail Gasprinskii (İsmail Gaspıralı), the famous Crimean Tatar activist, with the Central Asian provinces of the Tsarist Empire. Based on an analysis of Gasprinkii’s Russian writings, it argues that the dichotomy between Orient and Occident as proposed by Edward Said does not suffice to describe Crimea’s ambivalent position in the Russian Empire. Even though Gasprinskii was himself deemed an alien and an Oriental by Russian nationalists, he held markedly ‘Orientalist’ views and described the population of Turkestan, Bukhara and Khiva as backward and ignorant. However, departing from conventional Orientalist discourse, Gasprinskii presented the alleged backwardness of Central Asia as part of not only the general backwardness of Russia’s Muslim societies, but also of the need of reform in Russia generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]