Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1807105
L. Kalashnikova, L. Yarova
The functioning of society is associated with a variety of threats and risks, which, in turn, determine the emergence of anxiety, anxiety, and fear. Tracking the dynamics of quantitative and qualitative indicators of such conditions during periods of economic crises, political and military conflicts, natural and man-made disasters, and pandemics is especially relevant. This article presents the authors’ theoretical substantiation of fear as a sociopsychological state of the individual. Also, based on the systematization of the results of empirical sociological research, analysis of the state, structure, and dynamics of collective and individual fears of the population of Ukraine in the period of independence 1992–2021 was carried out.
{"title":"Social and Personal Fears of the Population of Ukraine","authors":"L. Kalashnikova, L. Yarova","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1807105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1807105","url":null,"abstract":"The functioning of society is associated with a variety of threats and risks, which, in turn, determine the emergence of anxiety, anxiety, and fear. Tracking the dynamics of quantitative and qualitative indicators of such conditions during periods of economic crises, political and military conflicts, natural and man-made disasters, and pandemics is especially relevant. This article presents the authors’ theoretical substantiation of fear as a sociopsychological state of the individual. Also, based on the systematization of the results of empirical sociological research, analysis of the state, structure, and dynamics of collective and individual fears of the population of Ukraine in the period of independence 1992–2021 was carried out.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1892358
Austin S. Matthews
Who comprised the political bureaus of the Eastern Bloc? There exists a wealth of literature on the former communist party elites, studying their personal biographies and group dynamics. However, we still lack an accessible resource cataloguing these individuals and documenting their personal and professional histories. This research note introduces new individual-level data on 787 candidate and full members from the ruling politburos of nine communist regimes across Eastern Europe. Along with compiling a centralized roster establishing who made up the politburos and at what times, I also code a range of descriptive variables for each elite, opening for better study of their comparative traits within and across space and time. These data are an important step toward more accessible documentation of the histories of ruling party elites in communist regimes, centralizing valuable information for future scholars to study, reference, and utilize.
{"title":"The Politburos of Communist Eastern Europe","authors":"Austin S. Matthews","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1892358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1892358","url":null,"abstract":"Who comprised the political bureaus of the Eastern Bloc? There exists a wealth of literature on the former communist party elites, studying their personal biographies and group dynamics. However, we still lack an accessible resource cataloguing these individuals and documenting their personal and professional histories. This research note introduces new individual-level data on 787 candidate and full members from the ruling politburos of nine communist regimes across Eastern Europe. Along with compiling a centralized roster establishing who made up the politburos and at what times, I also code a range of descriptive variables for each elite, opening for better study of their comparative traits within and across space and time. These data are an important step toward more accessible documentation of the histories of ruling party elites in communist regimes, centralizing valuable information for future scholars to study, reference, and utilize.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1823993
Nikolay Zakharov, Aliaksei Lastouski, S. Mudrov
This article analyzes the position of the Christian churches on the protests in Belarus in 2020. This study contributes to the research on the state-society relationship in autocratic regimes by nuancing the thesis that civil society is either marginalized or fully co-opted by the authoritarian state. The protest wave showed that the initiatives of religious groups fostered collective action in a state system that is punitive of any dissent. The article identifies churches as an ambivalent space: one where the state can exercise social control, but where potential resistance to the repressive state might also occur since they enjoy a greater degree of freedom than other organizations in authoritarian Belarus. Moreover, our study argues that religion can be seen as a privileged arena of protest within existing legal frameworks of the “contract” between the state and the church. By looking at the societal engagement of different religious confessions campaigning for their rights and promoting their visions of desirable political development on the grassroots level, this article addresses a range of opportunities to engage in civic activism in Belarus.
{"title":"Religion and the Protest Movement","authors":"Nikolay Zakharov, Aliaksei Lastouski, S. Mudrov","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1823993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1823993","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the position of the Christian churches on the protests in Belarus in 2020. This study contributes to the research on the state-society relationship in autocratic regimes by nuancing the thesis that civil society is either marginalized or fully co-opted by the authoritarian state. The protest wave showed that the initiatives of religious groups fostered collective action in a state system that is punitive of any dissent. The article identifies churches as an ambivalent space: one where the state can exercise social control, but where potential resistance to the repressive state might also occur since they enjoy a greater degree of freedom than other organizations in authoritarian Belarus. Moreover, our study argues that religion can be seen as a privileged arena of protest within existing legal frameworks of the “contract” between the state and the church. By looking at the societal engagement of different religious confessions campaigning for their rights and promoting their visions of desirable political development on the grassroots level, this article addresses a range of opportunities to engage in civic activism in Belarus.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1817401
Matthew Blackburn, Daria Khlevnyuk
It is often asserted that the values and attitudes of Homo Sovieticus, marked in the rising “popularity” of Stalin, live on in contemporary Russia, acting as a negative factor in social and political development. This article critiques the argument that attitudes to Stalin reflect unreformed Soviet values and explain Russia’s authoritarian regression and failed modernization. Our critique of this legacy argument has three parts. First, after examining the problematic elements of the Levada Center approach, we offer alternative explanations for understanding quantitative data on Stalin and the repressions. Second, we examine interview data showing that, for those with a pro-Stalin position, “defending Stalin” is only a small part of a broader worldview that is not obviously part of a “Soviet legacy.” Third, we consider survey data from the trudnaia-pamiat’ project and find common reluctance to discuss much of the Stalinist past, which we argue represents an agonistic stance. Thus, we interpret attitudes to Stalin within a broader context of complex social and cultural transformation where the anomie of the 1990s has been replaced with dynamics toward a more positive identity construct. On the one hand, the antagonistic mode of memory is visible in statist and patriotic discourses, which do not seriously revolve around Stalin but do resist strong criticism of him. On the other hand, we find many more in Russia avoid the Stalin question and adopt an agonistic mode, avoiding conflict through a “de-politicized” version of history.
{"title":"Escaping the Long Shadow of Homo Sovieticus","authors":"Matthew Blackburn, Daria Khlevnyuk","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1817401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1817401","url":null,"abstract":"It is often asserted that the values and attitudes of Homo Sovieticus, marked in the rising “popularity” of Stalin, live on in contemporary Russia, acting as a negative factor in social and political development. This article critiques the argument that attitudes to Stalin reflect unreformed Soviet values and explain Russia’s authoritarian regression and failed modernization. Our critique of this legacy argument has three parts. First, after examining the problematic elements of the Levada Center approach, we offer alternative explanations for understanding quantitative data on Stalin and the repressions. Second, we examine interview data showing that, for those with a pro-Stalin position, “defending Stalin” is only a small part of a broader worldview that is not obviously part of a “Soviet legacy.” Third, we consider survey data from the trudnaia-pamiat’ project and find common reluctance to discuss much of the Stalinist past, which we argue represents an agonistic stance. Thus, we interpret attitudes to Stalin within a broader context of complex social and cultural transformation where the anomie of the 1990s has been replaced with dynamics toward a more positive identity construct. On the one hand, the antagonistic mode of memory is visible in statist and patriotic discourses, which do not seriously revolve around Stalin but do resist strong criticism of him. On the other hand, we find many more in Russia avoid the Stalin question and adopt an agonistic mode, avoiding conflict through a “de-politicized” version of history.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1787801
D. Pietrzyk-Reeves, Aleksandra Samonek
One of the main motivations for measuring the weakness or strength of civil society is to obtain a reliable basis for understanding the dynamics of its development as well as its social and political potential. In this article, we argue that the paradox of the “weakness of civil society” in Central and Eastern Europe can be explained by insufficient methodologies involved in what we call the static approach to the strength (or weakness) of civil society. We present a more appropriate alternative, called the dynamic approach, in which weakness or strength is not an inherent property of a civil society and consequently cannot be measured by a set of indicators collected for a single point in time. Moreover, in a dynamic approach, the weakness or strength of civil society is a derivative of the dynamics of its development over time along multiple axes of indicators. In other words, we propose that the weakness or strength of civil society ought to be conceived of as the ratio of its development over time and that it must be evaluated inside a data-rich environment where comparison over time is possible.
{"title":"Measuring Civil Society","authors":"D. Pietrzyk-Reeves, Aleksandra Samonek","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1787801","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1787801","url":null,"abstract":"One of the main motivations for measuring the weakness or strength of civil society is to obtain a reliable basis for understanding the dynamics of its development as well as its social and political potential. In this article, we argue that the paradox of the “weakness of civil society” in Central and Eastern Europe can be explained by insufficient methodologies involved in what we call the static approach to the strength (or weakness) of civil society. We present a more appropriate alternative, called the dynamic approach, in which weakness or strength is not an inherent property of a civil society and consequently cannot be measured by a set of indicators collected for a single point in time. Moreover, in a dynamic approach, the weakness or strength of civil society is a derivative of the dynamics of its development over time along multiple axes of indicators. In other words, we propose that the weakness or strength of civil society ought to be conceived of as the ratio of its development over time and that it must be evaluated inside a data-rich environment where comparison over time is possible.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66884781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1818445
A. Semenov, Elizaveta Popkova
In this article, we study the subnational variation in the deployment of the politically motivated coercion during Aleksei Navalny’s 2017–18 presidential campaign in Russia. We posit that the strategic consideration behind the use of coercion helps to explain why some subnational authorities relied heavily on repressive tactics while others abstained from it. As regime agents aim at preventing mobilization from escalating, in resource abundant localities they must be more proactive. Also, they have to develop organizational capacities and overcome political constraints. Hence, we expect higher intensity of repression in the cities where propensity and capacity to repress are higher, and constraints are lower. We test these propositions against the data on the incidents of coercion in 159 cities and find some tentative support for this theory.
{"title":"Subnational Coercion during Aleksei Navalny’s Presidential Campaign in Russia","authors":"A. Semenov, Elizaveta Popkova","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1818445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1818445","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we study the subnational variation in the deployment of the politically motivated coercion during Aleksei Navalny’s 2017–18 presidential campaign in Russia. We posit that the strategic consideration behind the use of coercion helps to explain why some subnational authorities relied heavily on repressive tactics while others abstained from it. As regime agents aim at preventing mobilization from escalating, in resource abundant localities they must be more proactive. Also, they have to develop organizational capacities and overcome political constraints. Hence, we expect higher intensity of repression in the cities where propensity and capacity to repress are higher, and constraints are lower. We test these propositions against the data on the incidents of coercion in 159 cities and find some tentative support for this theory.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1798853
Michal Šimane
This article focuses on the realization of official government regulations of egalitarianism policy in secondary technical schools, especially on the informal practice that was “quietly” tolerated by the communist regime. The research is based on the historiographical approach of the history of everyday life. The primary research method is the oral history method based on interviews with witnesses—teachers who worked at secondary technical schools in the period under review. Research using the oral history method is further supplemented by the study of period legislation, periodicals, and the study of archival materials obtained in the National Archives in Prague and the Brno City Archives. The study provides a unique illustration of the application of the policy of egalitarianism in the everyday life of secondary technical schools in the normalization period in Czechoslovakia. In particular, the witnesses’ recollections reveal a practice toward some students that went beyond government regulations and influenced their studies in various ways, including admission procedures, dealing with disciplinary offenses, graduation, and obtaining a school-leaving certificate.
{"title":"Socialist Egalitarianism in Everyday Life of Secondary Technical Schools in Czechoslovakia during the Normalization Period (1969–89)","authors":"Michal Šimane","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1798853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1798853","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the realization of official government regulations of egalitarianism policy in secondary technical schools, especially on the informal practice that was “quietly” tolerated by the communist regime. The research is based on the historiographical approach of the history of everyday life. The primary research method is the oral history method based on interviews with witnesses—teachers who worked at secondary technical schools in the period under review. Research using the oral history method is further supplemented by the study of period legislation, periodicals, and the study of archival materials obtained in the National Archives in Prague and the Brno City Archives. The study provides a unique illustration of the application of the policy of egalitarianism in the everyday life of secondary technical schools in the normalization period in Czechoslovakia. In particular, the witnesses’ recollections reveal a practice toward some students that went beyond government regulations and influenced their studies in various ways, including admission procedures, dealing with disciplinary offenses, graduation, and obtaining a school-leaving certificate.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1822939
A. Zenz
This study traces the evolution of systemic state-sponsored coercive labor in the cotton harvest in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The recent situation in the XUAR is compared to Uzbekistan, which implemented forced labor in cotton picking until 2021. Both regions create structurally coercive labor environments through a centralized authoritarian state apparatus that deploys human resource–intensive local grassroots mobilization efforts. The article finds that while both regional entities’ coercive labor dynamics are in many ways comparable, the resulting labor settings are not easily captured through static standard measures such as the ILO forced labor indicators. Instead, state-sponsored forced labor is characterized by pervasive state-induced and systemic dynamics of coercion that are deeply embedded within sociocultural contexts. Whereas Uzbekistan’s coercive labor practices were primarily driven by economic considerations, Xinjiang’s labor transfer program pursues some economic aims but is predominantly designed to achieve Beijing’s wider ethnopolitical goals in the region.
{"title":"Coercive Labor in the Cotton Harvest in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Uzbekistan","authors":"A. Zenz","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1822939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1822939","url":null,"abstract":"This study traces the evolution of systemic state-sponsored coercive labor in the cotton harvest in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The recent situation in the XUAR is compared to Uzbekistan, which implemented forced labor in cotton picking until 2021. Both regions create structurally coercive labor environments through a centralized authoritarian state apparatus that deploys human resource–intensive local grassroots mobilization efforts. The article finds that while both regional entities’ coercive labor dynamics are in many ways comparable, the resulting labor settings are not easily captured through static standard measures such as the ILO forced labor indicators. Instead, state-sponsored forced labor is characterized by pervasive state-induced and systemic dynamics of coercion that are deeply embedded within sociocultural contexts. Whereas Uzbekistan’s coercive labor practices were primarily driven by economic considerations, Xinjiang’s labor transfer program pursues some economic aims but is predominantly designed to achieve Beijing’s wider ethnopolitical goals in the region.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1811813
N. Tung
This article analyzes Chineseness in premodern Vietnam and its influence on Vietnam’s foreign policy toward China and Southeast Asia both past and present. The term Chineseness refers to the practice and preservation of Confucian ideas and values in Vietnam, which arguably consists of the Mandate of Heaven and Confucian Orthodoxy concepts and their subsequent orthodox lineage issue. Being considered culturally closer to China than Korea and Japan, Vietnam, throughout history, has relied on these concepts to position itself strategically and navigate its relations vis-à-vis China and other smaller countries in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese courts used to question the legitimacy and orthodox lineage of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty because they imagined themselves as part of the Sinic world. The sense of superiority over Manchus and of being the guardian of Sinic civilization reached a climax during the Nguyen dynasty, in part shaping Vietnam’s foreign policy toward China and other Southeast Asian countries at that time. In addition, this deep-seated Chineseness also helps Vietnam’s decision-makers to understand contemporary China, and subtly guides the creation of Vietnam’s foreign policy today.
{"title":"History Repeating Itself","authors":"N. Tung","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1811813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1811813","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes Chineseness in premodern Vietnam and its influence on Vietnam’s foreign policy toward China and Southeast Asia both past and present. The term Chineseness refers to the practice and preservation of Confucian ideas and values in Vietnam, which arguably consists of the Mandate of Heaven and Confucian Orthodoxy concepts and their subsequent orthodox lineage issue. Being considered culturally closer to China than Korea and Japan, Vietnam, throughout history, has relied on these concepts to position itself strategically and navigate its relations vis-à-vis China and other smaller countries in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese courts used to question the legitimacy and orthodox lineage of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty because they imagined themselves as part of the Sinic world. The sense of superiority over Manchus and of being the guardian of Sinic civilization reached a climax during the Nguyen dynasty, in part shaping Vietnam’s foreign policy toward China and other Southeast Asian countries at that time. In addition, this deep-seated Chineseness also helps Vietnam’s decision-makers to understand contemporary China, and subtly guides the creation of Vietnam’s foreign policy today.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1525/cpcs.2023.1984663
V. Gel’man, Anastassia V. Obydenkova
According to elite and mass surveys, the late-Soviet sociopolitical and economic order was largely perceived as the only viable alternative to domestic political and economic status quo in Russia before 2022. Political elites invested significant efforts and funds into deliberative promotion of a complex of ideational legacies through different tools (including cinematography). This complex, labeled a “Good Soviet Union,” is an imagined sociopolitical and economic order, which somehow resembles that of the late-Soviet past, while lacking its inherent flaws. Elements of the Soviet legacy were selectively chosen for the sake of preservation of the politico-economic status quo. They include the hierarchical mechanism of governance, low circulation of elites and their privileged status, state control over media, and repressions toward organized dissent. Meanwhile, other elements of the late-Soviet past, such as relatively low inequality and certain state social guarantees, have been discarded. A “Good Soviet Union” model includes not only market economy and no shortages of goods and services, but also a lack of institutional constraints on rent-seeking and legalization of wealth and status of elites. In this article, we consider a “Good Soviet Union” as a socially constructed legacy of the past and focus on mechanisms of translation of this legacy into Russia’s current agenda through the use of modern Russian cinematography and analysis of policy preferences on the part of political elites. We further consider its effects on politics and policy-making, as well as its limitations and constraints. Some implications of the social construction of Soviet legacies are discussed in the conclusion.
{"title":"The Invention of Legacy","authors":"V. Gel’man, Anastassia V. Obydenkova","doi":"10.1525/cpcs.2023.1984663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.1984663","url":null,"abstract":"According to elite and mass surveys, the late-Soviet sociopolitical and economic order was largely perceived as the only viable alternative to domestic political and economic status quo in Russia before 2022. Political elites invested significant efforts and funds into deliberative promotion of a complex of ideational legacies through different tools (including cinematography). This complex, labeled a “Good Soviet Union,” is an imagined sociopolitical and economic order, which somehow resembles that of the late-Soviet past, while lacking its inherent flaws. Elements of the Soviet legacy were selectively chosen for the sake of preservation of the politico-economic status quo. They include the hierarchical mechanism of governance, low circulation of elites and their privileged status, state control over media, and repressions toward organized dissent. Meanwhile, other elements of the late-Soviet past, such as relatively low inequality and certain state social guarantees, have been discarded. A “Good Soviet Union” model includes not only market economy and no shortages of goods and services, but also a lack of institutional constraints on rent-seeking and legalization of wealth and status of elites. In this article, we consider a “Good Soviet Union” as a socially constructed legacy of the past and focus on mechanisms of translation of this legacy into Russia’s current agenda through the use of modern Russian cinematography and analysis of policy preferences on the part of political elites. We further consider its effects on politics and policy-making, as well as its limitations and constraints. Some implications of the social construction of Soviet legacies are discussed in the conclusion.","PeriodicalId":51623,"journal":{"name":"Communist and Post-Communist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66885679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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