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The article discusses racial discrimination against Eastern and Southern Soviets residing in Leningrad and Moscow during the 1970s and 1980s in the Soviet Union. During the period of decolonization, dark-skinned and dark-haired migrants became the target of racial epitaphs based on their "blackness." The study is based on oral histories of migrants from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and eastern regions of the Soviet Union taken in 2012 and 2013.

The research is focused on the image of the Soviet Union and that of its successor – the Russian Federation – in the minds of the Russian student youth. The concept of collective memory, being interdisciplinary and highly debatable, has been used in the given paper in its broad socio-cultural sense meaning the attitudes of interconnected social groups regarding the past and the present. The participants of the poll were 100 students from the leading Moscow universities. They had been born after the Soviet Union collapse, so, the majority of them have a very obscure idea of the Soviet reality, simultaneously feeling nostalgia for the Soviet political past. The results of the research show that the image of the Soviet Union drastically differs from that of Russia in the young people's minds being positive and negative, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writers were among the most publicly recognised intellectuals in the USSR. They actively participated in indoctrination practices that reflected strict mechanisms of control and censorship and provided prestige and authority in society. This article analyses how local writers in Lithuania who were part of the establishment during late socialism developed a multi-faceted relationship with the system. The perspective of different generations reveals the rise of ethnic (local) interests and the disconnection of everyday life from official goals. It also shows that writers who worked in official channels reduced their participation in indoctrination processes and significantly influenced the mobilisation of national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relationship between domestic living space and identity in the Russian film "Elena," which made use of two separate apartments that represents distinct socio-economic and historical aspects of Soviet and post-Soviet life. Topics discussed include the application of Marc Auge's theory of non-place in exploring the role of domestic living space and its connection with identity.

There is a great deal of uncertainty over the levels of, and trends in, infant mortality in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. As a result, the impact of the break-up of the Soviet Union on infant mortality in the region is not known, and proper monitoring of mortality levels is impaired. In this paper, a variety of data sources and methods are used to assess levels of infant mortality and their trend over time in one Central Asian republic, Kyrgyzstan, between 1980 and 2010. An abrupt halt to an already established decline in infant mortality was observed to occur during the decade following the break-up of the Soviet Union, contradicting the official statistics based on vital registration. Infants of Central Asian ethnicity and those born in rural areas were also considerably more at risk of mortality than suggested by the official sources. We discuss the implications of these findings, both for health policy in this seldom studied part of the former Soviet Union and for our understanding of the health crisis which it currently faces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Life as a student in the USSR during the Brezhnev years yielded experiences that, in the long run, illuminated both the origins and the collapse of the Soviet system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of corruption after 1991 was probably unavoidable. The privatization of the state economy created favorable conditions for corruption, which did not exist before. The feudalization of a society, with its weakening of the state and the high autonomy of its office holders, was another major factor behind the outburst of corruption. However, while these "objective" factors account for a great part of corruption's growth, the transformation of the leaders of the country to people who encouraged corruption for their own benefit–one of the major elements of feudalization–also played an extremely large role in spreading corruption inside the country. Corruption poses greater concerns to society in the long term. Russian corruption undermines labor ethics, particularly among younger generations. Russian youths firmly believe that bribes and connections are the best and perhaps only way to become successful. Widespread corruption creates a parallel, semi-feudal chain of command that competes with the official hierarchy. The weakness of law enforcement agencies, as well as the army–now almost totally demoralized–is, to a great extent, the product of corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late Soviet liberal discourse in both academe and society saw men as biologically, pyschologically, and demographically weaker than women-engaging in risky behaviors that indicated a "crisis of masculinity" because of their inability to perform their traditional roles as family breadwinners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A report from an October 7-8, 2011 conference in Bielefeld, Germany about socialist European governments after 1945 is presented. Topics of presentations given included political cartoons of Yugoslavia, news media in East Germany, and the social structures of Soviet society based on radio channel preferences.

The present paper explores the role images of masculinity play in the work of the contemporary Russian poet Sergei Gandlevskii. Gandlevskii's treatment of masculinity, the paper argues, serves as a vehicle for commentary on the historical situation of the late Soviet era, as well as providing an outlet for the poet's reflection upon his own life path and, at times, for an implicit moral self-judgment within the context of a general condemnation of Soviet society. Gandlevskii's poetry, the paper attempts to show, reflects what the sociologists Elena Zdravomyslova and Anna Temkina have termed a 'crisis of masculinity' characteristic of late Soviet society: it associates a masculine life-path with the notions of futility, moral failure and existential impasse. At the same time that Gandlevskii treats Soviet-era paradigms of masculinity with skepticism and distance, however, he also does engage to some extent in fantasies of masculine autonomy and agency as possible even within the context of Soviet society. This ambivalence is preserved in Gandlevskii's work through the poet's use of various masculine personae (some more distant than others from his biographical self), as well as by the abundance of quotations from other poets and from official Soviet discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In supposedly postideological times, late Soviet propaganda seems to epitomize the futile practices of a moribund regime. Instead, the material practices of ideological transmission in the 1960s and 1970s Soviet Union urge us to reconsider how ideas gain mobilizing force in a variety of political settings. This article looks at the use of handmade artifacts and personalized performances in Soviet cultural work to argue that personal reproduction is a crucial mediating factor between counterintuitive, utopian ideas and lived experience. As comparisons between the Soviet case and post-Soviet movements show, semiotic slippages that take documented activity as evidence of broader social dynamism remain key to the sense of agency of mobilizing networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on social justice in the Christian communities in Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church which has been regarded as the official national religion and its ambivalence toward other religious groups is discussed. The interfaith initiatives involving the collaboration of Christian congregations that are Orthodox and non-Orthodox, the succession of the Russian Orthodox patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Aleksei II by Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kalingrad, and religious tolerance in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation are also discussed.

The article discusses the Soviet Union in the last three decades of its existence, presenting a "cultural biography of things." Particularly, the author examines the life span of underwear and outerwear in Soviet society. Topics of discussion include a sociology of everyday things, the gap that existed between the producers of items and the consumers of items, and the probability that every Soviet family had a Singer sewing machine. Also discussed are attempts of Soviet consumers to adapt to material shortages in Soviet society.

The article focuses on the perception of politically institutionalized anti-Semitism in elite Soviet Russian universities and the impact this had on Jewish identity of those who were among the Soviet Russian intellectual elite. Using the narrative biographic enquiry model, the personal reminiscences of 22 Russian academic emigrants who held Soviet citizenship regarding discrimination against Soviet Russian Jews in the 1970s and 1980s in colleges and universities in Moscow, Russia are explored. Other objectives of the author's research include illustrating details of elimination and comparing institutionalized anti-Semitism with that of folk-anti-Semitism.

The psychological factors surrounding the Chernobyl disaster include the sudden trauma of evacuation, long-term effects of being a refugee, disruption of social networks, illness, separation and its effects on families, children's perception and effects on their development and the threat of a long-term consequence with an endless future. Added to this was the breakdown of the Soviet Union with consequent collapse of health services, increasing poverty and malnutrition. These complexities made necessary new individual and social treatment methods developed in UNESCO Community Centres, within which some positives have resulted, such as the development of individual and group self help and the professions of counselling, social work and community development, practices which did not previously exist in the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the writings of Russian novelist Leonid Borodin that were translated in English which contain Christian themes. Background of Borodin; Information on the punishment suffered by Borodin at the hands of the Soviet Union government; Religious belief in the Soviet Union during the 1970s which was the theme in Borodin's novel "Partings"; Rejection of violence found in "The Options"; Guilt and forgiveness contained in "The Story of a Strange Time."

The article presents information on the proliferation of private violence in the Soviet Union following the reform measures adopted by the government in 1987. When the Soviet Union started showing signs of fragmentation the Soviet society was pervaded by unprecedented violent groups including, criminal fraternities formed in the Soviet prisons, racketeer gangs formed out of sport teams, organizations of Afghan war veterans, Cossack unions, and segments of the state coercive agencies acting as autonomous protective associations.

This article explores the social problems in the Soviet way of life during the 1970s. The way of life is the totality of the forms of the life activity of the individual, of the social group, and of society as a whole. Circumstances permit an individual, or even compel him, to behave in one way and not in another. This is why, in considering people's way of life, one must also take into account their lifestyle and their mode of life. Under the conditions of the revolution in science and technology and its socioeconomic consequences, the economic category of level of living proves to be inadequate. The principal aspects of way of life are work, life off the job, civic and political activity. Scientific problems are resolved not merely for the sake of satisfying the need for new knowledge, but to facilitate the solution of social problems. The socialist way of life is opposite to the capitalist way of life. And the social problems associated with the socialist way of life differ fundamentally from social problems under conditions of the capitalist system. In order to survive, each tribe, people, and nation worked out its special social mechanism for the reproduction of new generations.

Presents the author's impressions of life in the Soviet Union under the reform policies of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Life in Lithuania; Poor quality of service and workmanship; Writers' Union; Refusenik Yuli Kosharovsky.

The article explains the patterns to be found in the changes taking place in Eastern Europe and to discuss the accompanying divisions within the ruling group and society in general. The author points out that the outcome of factional struggles in Eastern Europe would depend upon the success of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev's crisis-oriented government, his competition with the military vision of order, and the durability of his coalition with Russian politician Yegor Ligachev. Moreover, he also believes that the coalition weakens both the populists and the globalists and slows the pace of reform.

The article focuses on the melding of Islam and Marxism and the status of females in Soviet Central Asian Nationalities and its implications for population increase. According to the 1970 Census of the Soviet Union, approximately 15 percent of the total population belong to nationalities which traditionally had adhered to Islam. Persons of these nationalities are mostly concentrated in the five Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Krgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikstan and Azerbaijan. The attitude of Islam toward women is in great contrast to that of Marxism. Muslim culture is characterized, by a traditionally sanctioned institutional structure noted for its strong patriarchalism, a tradition of male supremacy, and the subordination of the women in the social structure. The burden of child dependency is considered to be an important indicator of female status in its own right, and also because it is assumed that the power of wives relative to their husbands is reduced the larger the number of their children. The institutionalization of Marxist ideology has served to depress the fertility of the Soviet Islamic nationalities relative to that of the Islamic nations of the Middle East and North Africa. However, to do so it must also postulate that the fertility-reducing effect of Marxist ideology is counteracted by other unmeasured influences which act to reduce fertility in the Middle East and in North Africa more than among the Islamic nationalities of the Soviet Union.

Analyzes the economic development of the Soviet Union in the first four years of the government's Twelfth Five-Year Plan, which covered the period 1986-1990. Statistics on the growth rates of basic indicators of economic and social development during the period; Social consequences of perestroika; Performance of technical development indicators; Inability of the country's agro-industrial complex to address the food problem.

Focuses on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's draft guidelines for economic and social development for 1981-1985 and the period up to 1990, which emphasizes the improvement of the people's well being to promote consumer demand. Reason for the emphasis on consumer demand; Requirements for the implementation of the socialist principle of distribution; Correlation between supply and effective demand.

Social planning involves the determination of the basic aims of the development of society as a whole and its elements (social communities classes, social groups and work forces; socio-occupational, sector and regional groups) and also the ways and means of achieving these aims. It does not involve a special sociological theory and does not form a special branch of sociology but rests on the theoretical principles and inferences of sociology and the results of sociological research. The planned direction of social development is a most important feature of socialist society. The range and methods of social planning advance in step with the development of socialism. At the start of the 1920s the first state plan for the electrification of Soviet Union was drawn up according to the instructions of V.I. Lenin for the solution of basic social tasks. In more recent times social planning in Soviet Union has taken on several new features. Planning has been extended over a longer time scale so that long-term plans must be accompanied by medium-term (five-year plans) and short-term (annual plans).

The article focuses on sociological research into problems of spiritual life in society. The study of sociological problems of education has had a long tradition in Soviet Union. The commencement of scientific research in this field was called for by V.I. Lenin in pre-revolutionary Soviet Union. After the revolution, V.I. Lenin, N.K. Krupskaya, A.V. Lunacharskli, and other public figures in the Communist Party and Soviet state, worked out in detail the social aspects of the operation of a system of education in the Course of constructing the first socialist society in history. Several investigations into problems of education were conducted during this period with valuable results. The relatively independent discipline of the sociology of education was, however, only established in the 1960s. At the end of the 1950s a major piece of sociological research was carried out in industrial undertakings and construction sites in the Urals into the growth of the technical standards of the working class in Soviet Union, the merging of the workers with the engineering technical intelligentsia, and the training of young recruits to the working class.

The main social task of the Soviet people is the construction of a classless communist society. Therefore investigation of the social structure of Soviet society and of trends of change in it in present day conditions is of primary theoretical and practical, applied importance. In the past ten years (1966-75) about 2,000 works have been published in Soviet Union devoted to this subject. In this review these publications will be classified in the following main groups as general problems of change in the social structure of Soviet society; problems of the social structure of the working class; and sociological research into the situation of collective farm. The concept of the social structure of society is used by Soviet sociologists in three senses: the most general sense of the internal organization of society as a whole; in a special but quite wide sense of the system of relations among large groups of people, and in the narrowest and strictest sense the relations between classes and social groups. No society in the history of mankind can be satisfactorily characterized concretely without an analysis of its social class relations.