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Is a theory of covenantal pluralism applicable to the Armenian case? In order to answer these and other questions, the author makes a comparative analysis of three successive periods, the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet, in terms of conditions, social and political contexts, and cultural specificities of religious coexistence. As a result, she identifies three approaches, classical imperial, Soviet nation-based, and post-Soviet pluralist, which offer different models of coexistence and tries to define whether they have been effective and able to guarantee a real, long-term and dignified peace. According to the author, the current situation in democratic Armenia can be described as an alienating secularism, which offers constitutional equality, legal defense, and freedom of religious choice, but does not interfere in relations between denominations and religious communities, nor does it offer policies or strategies aimed at developing covenantal relations between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation (RF) on March 18, 2014, and the declaration of the People’s Republics in Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine are considered by many international relations experts as one of the most important developments of the post-Cold War era. In this respect, the ongoing RF-Ukraine War, which started on February 20, 2022, after the developments in 2014, can be interpreted as a reflection of the power struggle between the RF-West (Euro-Atlantic Alliance) rather than RF-Ukraine relations in the period from the Post-Cold War Period to 2022. There are many reasons for the RF-Ukraine War, especially the tension in RF-West relations. Richard Ned Lebow’s perspectives on the nature and causes of the war make it possible to address the causes of this war holistically. Therefore, the study aims to understand why the RF wants to go to war with Ukraine within the framework of Lebow’s approach. The study will utilize the process analysis method in this framework through primary and secondary sources.

Oral diseases are among the most common non-communicable diseases around the globe and become a public health challenge that considerably impact general health and well-being in all ages across the lifespan. Oral health is an integral part of general health, where poor oral health and other lifestyle-related chronic diseases have a common risk factor background. The underlying causes of oral health inequalities are often complex and related to country-specific historical, economic, cultural, social, or political factors. For more than a decade, data from the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey showed that tooth brushing rates are very low in post-Soviet countries. The general aim of our study was to focus on a more detailed profile of schoolchildren from post-Soviet countries, who have poor habits of teeth brushing, in terms of their family, social support, physical activity, nutrition, and other health-related behaviors. Data for this study was extrapolated from the Health Behavior in School-aged Children study, a World Health Organization collaborative cross-national study, conducted every 4 years since 1983/1984. For this study, the post-Soviet countries from Eastern Europe and Central Asia were selected: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Data from all countries (some exceptions for Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) were collected within 2017–2018 HBSC study, following international research protocol. The sample consisted of 44,760 schoolchildren, aged 11, 13, and 15 years from 12 countries. Irregular tooth brushing is more common among boys, elder adolescents, and schoolchildren from less affluent families. Low own health measures, low life satisfaction, low physical activity, and low FAS relate to poorer adolescent dental hygiene in post-Soviet countries. Adolescents characterized by irregular tooth brushing were more likely to assess their health as fair or poor rather than excellent or good (OR = 1.22), and also had greater odds of reporting low life satisfaction (OR = 1.36). Individual mental health complaints—feeling low, being irritable, being nervous, and having sleep difficulties—were assessed as a possible outcome of irregular tooth brushing. However, irregular tooth brushing was not associated with poorer mental health outcomes (p > 0.05). Conclusions: Oral hygiene in post-Soviet countries is still a major public health challenge and have to be addressed properly. What is Known: • Oral health strongly affects the overall health of children and adolescents in the future. • Oral diseases often share common determinants and risk factors with other chronic diseases. • The underlying causes of oral health inequalities are often complex and related to country-specific historical, economic, cultural, social, or political factors. What is New: • Irregular tooth brushing was more common among adolescents with low life satisfaction and poor or fair health as well as in less affluent families. • Irregular tooth brushing was not found to be associated with poorer mental health among post-Soviet countries adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can green states exist in a non-Western context? Much research has been focused on environmental politics in advanced industrialized economies, and the associated institutions, policy, and resources available for environmental protection efforts. Outside this narrow context however, we know far less about the progress states have made in developing their national systems of environmental governance. This gap in our understanding is particularly evident when it comes to the post-Soviet context. Using a case study of Georgia, this analysis evaluates environmental governance capacity in a transition state drawing on a framework derived from the green state literature. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Georgia has faced considerable political and economic upheaval, and in the midst of it all, the country has embarked on an ambitious program of environmental reform. The findings suggest that while the basic internal foundations of a green state exist, including considerable policy and legislative development and solid environmental financing, key challenges remain. These are centered on an unstable institutional environment, and weak policy enforcement. However non-state actors such as NGOs and international organizations provide crucial support and are likely to remain essential in building and maintaining environmental capacity in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the influence of historical imprints on attitudes towards volunteering among Lithuanians. Using imprinting theory, we explored how the historically evolved Soviet imprints have influenced modern attitudes toward formal volunteering. Quantitative data analysis (N=358) revealed that some Soviet imprints might have decayed, while some were strong enough to survive until modern times to affect attitudes towards formal volunteering. This study examined three Soviet attitudinal imprints: negative attitudes towards non-governmental organisations, external power primacy, and the authoritarian outlook. The results showed that while some imprints might have decayed, some have survived until today. Our findings underscore the enduring impact of Soviet imprints, and suggest that addressing these historical influences is crucial for enhancing volunteering among citizens of post-Soviet regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My hometown, Minsk, is located some 1000 km and decades away from my current place of residence, and this distance is ever growing. I tried to look into the abyss and explore my feelings I cautiously label as 'nostalgia', which I define more as a complex longing than a mere desire to return home. To navigate this nostalgia, I engage with artistic works, including Artur Klinaŭ's book Minsk: A Guide to the City of the Sun and Tania Arcimovich's multimedia project Belarus 4:33. City of the Sun Point Zero, while incorporating my own, third-generation perspective. Ultimately, it is a journey of collecting and weaving together fragments of transgenerational memory into a cohesive narrative about the place that might have never truly existed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the historical origins and enduring significance of the debates surrounding the color black and the appropriateness of dress length in Azerbaijani society. By combining archival research, fieldwork, interviews, and visual analysis, it was possible to explore the relationship between fashion choices and socio-economic and cultural dynamics. This paper suggests that the preference for black attire and debates surrounding the length of dress are associated with the particular socio-economic and cultural dynamics of the 1990s, set against the backdrop of Azerbaijan's post-Soviet context. This time represents a liminal period in the country's recent history, characterized by ambivalence that enabled a renegotiation of gender roles and dress norms. There is limited existing literature on Azerbaijani dress and this study offers a socio-semiotic ethnographic approach to understanding the complex relationship between fashion, and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the spillover effects of economic sanctions against Russia on research in neighbouring countries. The assumption of the paper is that such effects should take place given the high level of regional integration in the post‐Soviet area. The study uses bibliometric data retrieved from the Web of Science for analysis; more specifically, the data on publications during 2019, 2021 and 2023 from each of the four countries of interest – Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics and graphs. The results clearly point to the potential presence of negative externalities of economic sanctions on research systems of neighbouring countries not directly involved in the war. The paper discusses implications of the effects and recommendations, which can be used by policy makers to alleviate the effects on the neighbouring countries and by scholars to further investigate the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I argue that describing collective memory as a historical collective experience involving the sedimentation of experiences can help us understand the complexities in empirical cases. To demonstrate the explanatory power of this approach, I discuss actual cases of collective memory in post-Soviet European societies and communities, mainly in Estonia and among Ingrian Finns, using the concepts of collective experience and sedimentation. By combining these two concepts, I suggest that the same historical and contemporary political objects may appear very differently to different societies and communities. Therefore, to understand the social and political landscape of our continent, we need to understand the unique experiential nature of collective memory. While phenomenology has allegedly had difficulties in addressing collective memory, rather focusing on individual memory and time consciousness, my analysis demonstrates its potential to clarify the experiential patterns of collective memory and its relevance to historical and political studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on revolution commonly focuses on successful regime transition. While useful for understanding historical change, analyses of positive outcomes tend to select on the dependent variable. This study turns attention to a negative case in the context of Kazakhstan—a polity that had experienced political stability for three decades until a small-scale set of protests against fuel prices spread nationally. Protesters implemented a heterogeneous collection of strategies ranging from civil disobedience to unarmed violence and violence. Key political structures and institutions were taken over including state buildings, police stations, as well as an international airport. In response, the government utilized severe state repression which failed and led to the incumbent calling upon the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to intervene with troops. In spite of achieving tactical advantages and spurring defection, the movement was suppressed by the CSTO which can be attributed to disorganization and a lack of unified leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores post-Soviet power hierarchies which constitute a unique system of vertical stratification in world politics. It does so by analysing relations between two former Soviet states, Tajikistan and Russia, in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. The article investigates the underlying reasons for power asymmetries between the two countries, the ways hierarchies are sustained and enforced, as well as perceived and navigated at political and social levels. It is argued that Tajikistan's relations with Russia are explicitly postcolonial without clear-cut colonial precedents in Soviet times. Postcolonialism did not automatically result from the Soviet breakdown. Rather, it has gradually emerged because of the two countries' very different paths of integration into the global capitalist economy, which subordinated Tajikistan to Russia. In this way, new economic asymmetries exacerbated Soviet-era legacies and reinvented them in a new, hierarchical manner. Overall, the article contributes to the debate on the nature of post-Soviet legacies and what it means to be post-Soviet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Bologna process emerged in the framework of European integration, its objectives are closely linked to the process of voluntary convergence of public policies of members of the European Union. In this context, it can be challenging to understand possible convergence or divergence trends in Bologna member countries that are outside the European Union. In this paper, I develop a theoretical framework based on Acharya's (2004) norm localization theory to analyze the historical and present factors of borrowing and adoption of the Bologna standards in Kazakhstan. While the findings suggest that convergence to the Bologna model will be limited, the identified short-term outcomes of the Bologna process include adopting the Bologna-driven competence-based approach. In the long term, the competence-based approach could replace knowledge-based education in Kazakhstan. The analysis reveals the importance of domestic factors for educational policy borrowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education is the property of Comparative & International Education Society Higher Education SIG 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.)

Gobustan, a prehistoric site 60 km south of Baku, has an impressive collection of rock carvings from different prehistoric eras. Near the site, a national museum presents the prehistoric findings in a narrative that connects them with modern-day Azerbaijan, calling the hunter–gatherer tribes that lived in Gobustan 'our ancient Azerbaijani ancestors'. While many nation-building projects dig deep into the past, reconstruct it, claim ancient civilizations as their own and sometimes even invent historical narratives that never happened, the Gobustan Museum and the narrative it implies (that prehistoric people living in 15,000 BCE were Azerbaijanis) seems like 'overkill', an exaggerated effort to connect the past and the present. The data from the museum points to a larger story: the construction of national identity and collective memory in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. This paper presents some of the author's anthropological field research findings in the museum and explains why the narrative of 'ancientness' is so essential in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that dictators' public rhetoric shapes both elite and mass opinion and behavior. However, the determinants of dictators' strategic communication remain undertheorized and underresearched. Theoretically, we argue that (i) dictators primarily use three key communication strategies ("performance" and "patriotism," which serve to boost legitimacy, and "intimidation," meant to deter opponents); (ii) they substitute between them depending on the situational context. Empirically, we introduce a novel corpus of post-Soviet leaders' legislative addresses and then, employing semisupervised text analysis, test our argument. We find that autocrats legitimize themselves as performance-focused leaders during economic upturns, emphasize patriotism during elections, and turn to the rhetoric of intimidation when facing protests and sanctions. We further validate our theory using a global set of authoritarian speeches, in a different language. The findings support but also contest some established assumptions regarding how and when dictators' communication changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bulletin of Ablai Khan KazUIRandWL: Series 'International Relations & Regional Studies' is the property of Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations & World Languages 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.)

Educators and administrators in secondary and higher education in Kazakhstan have experienced significant reforms since 2010. New policies, curricula, pedagogy, assessment practices, accountability mechanisms, and legislation were implemented in an education revolution, to modernize Kazakh education and build human capital for economic prosperity. The development and use of educational research is a component of these reforms but little is known about practitioners' understanding of and engagement with educational research. This qualitative study employed individual in-depth interviews with ten educational practitioners in secondary and higher education to address the knowledge gap. The findings suggest that practitioner understandings of research remain underdeveloped. While some practitioners both consume and produce research to improve practice and institutional decision-making, issues of access to research, the challenge of time within workload and perceptions of the limited relevance of externally produced research continue to be barriers to more extensive utilization of research. Further research is being undertaken to explore this issue with policymakers and researchers. The findings may be used to improve the mobilization of research to policy and practice, especially in other post-soviet contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I analyse the life narratives of three Estonian women who identify as either lesbian or bisexual. Based on three semi-structured in-depth interviews, I focus on the period when the local LGBTQ+ movement became active, during the 1980s and 1990s, after half a century of Soviet dominance that had crumbled and Estonia regained independence. The process of growing older, combined with the individual's biography, along with added depths of memory and critical reflection, are key elements in interpreting the social significance of their personal experiences. By using thematic analysis, I reveal how these personal experiences can become a shared narrative while letting us focus on the uniqueness of each life history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underrepresentation of female faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines is a globally acknowledged gender equity concern; however, it remains under-researched in post-Soviet contexts. Using a theoretically informed analysis, this paper explores how female STEM faculty members navigate their gender identities in domestic and academic spheres in post-Soviet Tajikistan. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 female faculty members. The results indicated that parental discourses and family circumstances enabled female faculty members to defy the gendered oppositional inscription of STEM, while the performance of non-hegemonic masculinities by spouses, male mentors, and academic supervisors supported their career advancement. However, the gendered micropolitics of higher education institutions significantly undermined the performance of female STEM faculty members' identity and subjected them to discrimination, marginalisation, and isolation. [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]

Addressing the cultural politics of what Mihaela Mihai calls "mnemonic care", this paper considers three questions concerning Jewish identity and testimonial justice that are posed in a recent play (including in its very title) by the Estonian-Russian theatre maker Julia Aug, Mum, is our cat also a Jew? The contrasting claims of and for official and unofficial national histories - both during and after the Soviet period - are explored here in terms of Mihai's invitation for us to consider how such memory politics "make space for the unassimilable". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on gender-specific experiences of Estonian women architects in the late Soviet and post-Soviet Estonia. Architecture has been, and to a great extent still remains, a rather masculinist field, adhering to an image of heroic individualist creative genius and supporting a very demanding and uncompromising work culture. These preconceptions often make it complicated to forge different career paths or to appreciate alternative or more cooperational modes of practice. The article asks if and to what extent the unwritten rules and prejudices have affected Estonian women architects' experiences in studying architecture, establishing their careers, combining the responsibilities of professional and private lives, and building up their image as (women) designers in a general sense. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 professional architects aged 33-92, the article also highlights the differences and similarities of practising architecture as a woman in the Soviet and post-Soviet social and economic contexts, mapping them onto findings of international feminist research in the context of both Western Europe and the former Eastern Bloc. Additionally, the article refers to the productive possibilities of oral history as a method to complement and challenge the conventional architecture historical writing as well as the intersubjective character of the narratives thus constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From ancient times, there are signs of intelligence and counter-intelligence activities whose primary duty is to maintain the stability of the national security of the state of belonging. According to the mentioned directions, as the analysis of the developed processes shows, the stability of the country’s national security is based on the neutralization/minimization of the intelligence influence of foreign countries within the country, and on the international arena, the implementation of the strategic interests of one’s own country. The research topic is related to the organization of state security in the post-Soviet space, the country — Kazakhstan, and the signs of intelligence and counter-intelligence activities used in this process.

Context: The paper studies the possibilities of how the cultural explosion theory and path dependence approach could be used for exploring landscape (change). The former is an approach (not theory) used in humanities and social sciences to study the processes that happen when culture changes rapidly—how new cultural processes are created and how the past ones are integrated or forgotten. The latter is an approach developed also in social sciences, mostly economy, to study how the current decisions are dependent on the past decisions. Objectives: To demonstrate the possibilities the two theoretical approaches might offer. Methods: We discuss the ways landscape change could be analysed using, first, cultural explosion theory and, second path dependence approach, and demonstrate this on the example of the post-Soviet military areas. Results: Both approaches are indeed useful in understanding landscape change. The demo case on military landscapes allows for distinguishing three different development paths for the future of the areas: set-aside, active use, and neglect. Similarly three different ways of relating with the past are found: ignorance and oblivion; acknowledging the past; and making use of the past. Conclusions: Landscapes have time boundaries and these two analytical tools in fact help us to navigate through these boundaries, understand better the trajectories of change and the importance (or the lack of it) of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2000, the prison rate has declined significantly in Kazakhstan. This article demonstrates that the Kazakhstani prison service, counterintuitively, became a key advocate of prison downsizing owing to a coalescence of norms and incentives in the 1980s and 1990s. In the process, the prison service elite maintained the loyalty of rank-and-file personnel through a focus on reform to performative and quantifiable measures of penal performance – such as rankings in the World Prison Brief – while qualitative changes to the service's identity and organization remained unchanged. Prison staff remained militarized and their livelihood and professional culture continued to be independent of the existence of prisons. In conclusion, we argue that the Kazakhstani case demonstrates the need for an integrative theory of penal change that focuses on the interplay of macro-, meso- and micro-level factors in relationally shaping the norms, incentives and opportunities of penal policy actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall processes in the first decade of independent Russian media can be divided into distinct phases. The first phase was characterized by a golden age of political independence in the early 1990s. This was followed by a shift toward partial government control and increased proximity to the ruling elites by the presidential elections of 1999. The final phase saw the transfer of power to Vladimir Putin in 2000. The authors argue that several factors contributed to the loss of independence in Russian media during this period, including the complicated economic realities of a transitional society, the growing interest of new financial tycoons (oligarchs) in media ownership, and the reassertion of political influences. Additionally, the specific understanding of professionalism among most Russian journalists played a significant role in the transformation from independent to controlled journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background In the former Soviet Union (fSU) region, which has the highest rate of institutional care worldwide, ‘social orphans’ —indigent children who have one or both parents living—are placed in publicly run residential institutions to receive education, food, and shelter. Few studies have focused on understanding the emotional effects of separation and life in an institutional environment on children who grow up with their families. Methods Semi-structured qualitative interviews (N = 47) were conducted with 8- to 16-year-old children with a history of institutional care placement and their parents in Azerbaijan. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 8- to 16-year-old children (n = 21) involved in the institutional care system in Azerbaijan and their caregivers (n = 26). Trained interviewers collected narratives about children’s experiences prior to being separated from their families while living in an institution, as well as the impact of institutional placement on their emotional well-being. We applied thematic analysis with inductive coding. Results Most of the children entered institutions around the school entry age. Prior to entering institutions, children had already experienced disruptions within their family environments and multiple traumatic events, including witnessing domestic violence, parental divorce, and parental substance abuse. Once institutionalized, these children may have had their mental health further impaired by a sense of abandonment, a strictly regimented life, and insufficiencies of freedom, privacy, developmentally stimulating experiences, and, at times, safety. Conclusion This study illustrates the emotional and behavioral consequences of institutional placement and the need to address accumulated chronic and complex traumatic experiences that occurred before and during institutional placement, which may affect emotion regulation and the familial and social relationships of children who lived in institutions in a post-Soviet country. The study identified mental health issues that could be addressed during the deinstitutionalization and family reintegration process to improve emotional well-being and restore family relationships.

Italian translation of Sovremennyi anekdot by Aleksandr Belousov.

The professional social work in Azerbaijan started in 2005 with the Master of Social Work degree and it rapidly evolved. The article presents the findings of the study that evaluated the situation of the social work profession since its establishment. The sample size was 39 respondents. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus groups. The study found rapid development, institutionalization, and acceptance of social work by public agencies as achievements, and the wrong image of social work, lack of jobs for social work graduates, uninformed selection of social work by students, and low salaries for social workers as challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent podcast Kateryna Mishchenko asked whether she, as a Ukrainian author, has the right to participate in German discourses, and whether she can do so through the German language. This refers both to the public debate on the 'Krieg in Europa', following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and, inextricably linked to it, memory discourses on the Holocaust and World War II. This article discusses Mishchenko's perspective on the war in Europe in literary and non-literary texts in comparison to that of Katja Petrowskaja. Petrowskaja moved to Berlin in 1999 and made a name for herself with her family history Vielleicht Esther (2014). Both authors can be regarded as prominent voices within a post-Soviet exile community in Berlin. The article asks how contemporary authors from Ukraine who find themselves exiled in Germany are contributing to a politicization of the German literary field, and what role their contribution to a transnational memory of the Holocaust and World War II plays within this process, drawing on Hannah Arendt's understanding of refugees as a transnational avant-garde in her essay of 1943. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the development of Russian actionism through a biopolitical lens. Emerging in the 1990s as a public enactment of post-Soviet society's regression from bios to zoē , actionism became more consciously biopolitical in the twenty-first century as a succession of artists sought to challenge the biopoliticization of life under Vladimir Putin. Focusing on the actions and statements of Voina, Pussy Riot, Pyotr Pavlensky, and Katrin Nenasheva, the author identifies four main tactics of resistance, gradually leading actionism away from its roots in aestheticized violence toward the cultivation of practices of radical care. The article concludes with a brief overview of actions performed in the wake of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of entrepreneurship among people with disabilities suggest that it is necessary to develop deeper insights into the contextual elements that enable or oppose such entrepreneurship. This study problematizes a core premise of the disability entrepreneurship literature that social support, institutional support or both enact disability entrepreneurship. This study modifies the premise by examining a case from the contextual scenario of a post-Soviet country where both societal and institutional attention to disability are largely inadequate and unfavourable. This case study concerns a blind female dancer in Kazakhstan who developed herself into a successful cultural entrepreneur. This inductive study proposes a process model which is labelled resilient tightroping, a model that enables a person with a disability to move towards empowerment and inclusion. The author is well aware that one cannot generalize from a single case. On the other hand, a single case can identify a deficiency in current thinking and point to additional directions where research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional actors in urban areas in Latvia are increasingly concerned about reducing violence on multiple scales and temporalities. Imagining such achievements, however, often too easily focuses on the aesthetics of security and infrastructure in public space that obscure the social causes of violence and effects this has on unequal development and social marginalization. Drawing on fieldwork on practices of domestic violence prevention in three Latvian urban areas during the autumn and winter of 2019, this paper examines how the geographical imagination of where violence resides connects violence prevention and spatial development as projects of European modernisation in post-Soviet space. We identify four spatial fields most often associated with violence: (1) neighbourhoods and infrastructural elements, (2) dark and isolated spaces, (3) spaces associated with intoxication, and (4) private spaces. We analyse the most common individual and institutional strategies for violence prevention in each of these fields, noting the logics of dispossession, surveillance, and connectivity behind them. We show how gendered practices and disciplining are emphasised on an individual level, while spatial fixes to violence in public space often focus on men's violence against men. All in all, we show how violence prevention figures in imagining living in 'European' spatial and institutional infrastructural regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on qualitative and ethnographic field research in the Panfilov District of Almaty Region, Kazakhstan, and selected supportive quantitative data, this contribution explores the dynamics of agricultural transformation along the former Sino-Soviet border since the mid-1990s. It particularly scrutinises path dependency, as well as friction, in cultivation patterns navigated by local agricultural actors in the face of changing irrigation water and infrastructural access, commodification schemes and alternative employment opportunities that are produced by emerging transborder (and increasingly globalised) infrastructures. Therefore, how do agricultural actors in Panfilov District make sense of and negotiate past and current agricultural development at the local level? The article aims to provide a reflection of what the analytical 'post-Soviet' category might still mean from an everyday life perspective in a borderland context affected by socio-political neglect and newly evolving connections alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article starts by anatomising the various strategies used by the Soviet regime to contain and 'disappear' the nuclear weapon test site in Kazakhstan before moving on to outline attempts by the independent Republic of Kazakshtan's National Nuclear Centre (NNC) to be more open—including making much of the site available for commercial and agricultural use, after 25 years of remediation and monitoring. Juxtaposing these strategies with accounts from residents living in the town that hosts the NNC provides far more ambivalent engagements with both town and site. Thus, in what I call a chronotope of expansion, what appears is a resistance to any kind of spatial or temporal containment, a denial of progress and the possibility of moving to a brighter nuclear future by leaving behind the Soviet period and its entailments. I end by discussing the consequences of assumptions that the site can be limited and bounded in terms of radioactive contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Postscriptum Polonistyczne is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego 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 paper analyses the concept of Russian Idea used by Russian nationalists. A concept that is at the core of the identity of the Russian people. Accordingly, the analysis is based on a theoretical framework that draws attention to the controversial concept of the Russian idea that is reviewed considering changes in the history of the Russian state. Whether formulated by church hierarchs, statesmen, philosophers, ethnologists, or contemporary politicians, various stages in its conceptualization have helped build patriotism in the country. Moreover, in addition to the theoretical framework, the paper focus on a case study: the February Revolution, known as February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution or the March Revolution (8-16 March 1917). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important issues is the involvement of the prisoners in labor in jails and the improvement of their professional skills. A number of state programs have been developed and directed to the implementation of the involvement in labor and vocational training of the able-bodied prisoners in the prisons of Penitentiary Service. Involvement of prisoners in labor, as a type of correctional means, occupies one of the important places in their correction. In the presented material, the legal basis of involvement of the convict in labor and education was analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simon Clarke played an unrivalled role in the intellectual trajectory of his former students and significantly shaped the research and the field of sociology in post-Soviet Russia. While his work appears comprised of two distinct lines of inquiry, the essential unity of Simon's intellectual project may be appreciated by zooming in on the factors that motivated the entirety of his work, such as ethical orientation and a desire to understand the mediations of social relations and tensions between capitalism and freedom, autonomy, self-determination and dignity. Whether studying the political economy of 'post-Fordist' global capitalism, the class composition of post-colonial South Africa, the development of workers' movements in post-socialist states, or the relationship between capital as a social relation and the state as a form of contradictory expression of its class character constituted through struggle, there is a unity of purpose in Simon's work. In this article, I reflect on the above through a personal reflection of a former doctoral student. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the work is to analyze Estonian memory policy after 1991 and to attempt to consider its cultural affiliation to the Nordic circle, as well as to indicate the activities undertaken by the Office of the Nordic Council of Ministers in Estonia, thanks to which the Nordic and Baltic regions would be brought closer together. After a short introduction, we get to know the lectures of Sofi Oksanen--an important intellectual of Finnish-Estonian origin. Then, the "orientation towards the North" in Estonian relations with Europe was described and the signs of the identification of Estonians with Nordic culture in cultural life and international politics were analyzed. The issue of creating a new historical narrative in Estonia after 1991 was also discussed. The next part describes the activities of the Office of the Nordic Council of Ministers in Estonia. The work ends with a summary of the conclusions from the text and a map showing the quality of life in individual European countries (as of 2022). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]