Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Commons^™

Rational Russia: Decision-Making In A Declining Superpower, J. Haley Tucker

Ex-Patt Magazine

Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia demonstrates that Putin’s state still behaves rationally.

Agriculture And The Food System: A Short History And Country Case Study In Mongolia, Marissa L. Markowitz

Capstone Collection

This paper includes a brief history of the human food system. It includes an exploration of the formation of the food system, the development of the modernized food and agriculture system, and challenges arisen throughout. Additionally, a specific case study into Mongolia and the unique geography of its food system is highlighted. The purpose of providing the case study is to consider challenges of a food system in transition amidst development in one country. Recommendations for Mongolia anent sustainable development are provided.

Adjuration By Alexander Pushkin, J. M. Mcbirnie

Transference

Translated from the Russian with commentary by J.M. McBirnie.

A Nomad’S Progression To The Settled Life By Yuri Vaella, Claude Clayton Smith

Transference

Translated from the Russian by Claude Clayton Smith and Alexander Vaschenko with commentary by Claude Clayton Smith.

After The War By Arseny Tarkovsky, Philip Metres, Dimitri Psurtsev

Transference

Translated from the Russian by Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev with commentary by Philip Metres.

Transference Vol. 1, Summer 2013

Transference

Transference is published by the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Western Michigan University. Dedicated to the celebration of poetry in translation, the journal publishes translations from Arabic, Chinese, French and Old French, German, Classical Greek and Latin, Japanese, and Russian into English verse. Transference contains translations as well as commentaries on the art and process of translating.

Analysis Of Low-Cost Carriers In The Post-Soviet States, Tamilla Curtis, Dawna L. Rhoades

Publications

The research paper provides an overview of low-cost carrier (LCC) development in the post- Soviet states with the analysis of the largest aviation market in Russia. The LCC model seeks to achieve a competitive advantage through the reduction of operating costs below the traditional airline model. Since the post-Soviet states are emerging economies, airlines face a high level of uncertainty and experience a number of unique problems. While the global community enjoys the benefits offered by LCCs, the question remains why this model has not been successful in the 15 newly formed countries, with the exception of the Hungarian low-cost …

Book Review Of, Russian America: An Overseas Colony Of A Continental Empire, 1804–1867, Chia Yin Hsu

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Chia Yin Hsu, Assistant Professor at Portland State University with expertise in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia, reviews Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804–1867. By Ilya Vinkovetsky.

The Russian Gulag: Understanding The Dangers Of Marxism Combined With Totalitarianism, Mark C. Riley

Senior Honors Theses

This study examines the Soviet Gulag, the main prison camp administration implemented in the Soviet Union. The GULAG represents an institution that is not well known, and this paper will explain why it existed and why it remains in the shadows of history. Terror, propaganda, and belief in progress represent the three ideas that directed the Soviet totalitarian system. This thesis will accordingly explore the ideology behind totalitarian government and Marxist practice in order to understand why the Gulag was allowed to exist. Finally, it investigates the reasons why the Gulag has not taken a priority position in human knowledge …

Essays On The Digital Divide - Explorations Through Global, National And Individual Lenses, Maria Skaletsky

2013

The Digital Divide has emerged as an important research and policy issue during the past thirty years. The divide exists at different levels, such as global, regional and individual levels. While extensive research already exists on this subject, the complexity of the issue presents opportunities for further research. In particular, there is ample scope for significantly contributing to the literature by leveraging recent analytics techniques, all the more since most of the literature on the Digital Divide relies on descriptive methods or on simple or multiple regression models. Therefore, the motivation for this study is two-fold. First, the Digital Divide …

Stalin’S Boots And The March Of History (Post-Communist Memories), Roland K. Végső

Department of English: Faculty Publications

I would like to propose here is precisely the invention of a relation to history and the public sphere of sociality that deconstructs the trauma/nostalgia opposition. The theoretical goal is to separate concrete narrative forms from actual political contents. It follows from the previous point that it might be possible to conceive of historical moments or concrete rhetorical situations in which we need to rely on nostalgic rather than traumatic narratives in order to imagine progressive political change. In these situations, the political task could be the development of a certain “critical nostalgia” that does not try to replace trauma …

Europe’S Little Tiger?: Reassessing Economic Transition In Slovakia Under The Mečiar Government 1993-1998, David A. Wemer

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Vladimir Mečiar, the first Prime Minister of independent Slovakia, is often criticized for his suppression of free media, political repression, and the widespread corruption of his government from 1993-1998. Mečiar has also been attacked for his economic policies, which critics suggest slowed down privatization and left Slovakia in a huge debt crisis. A closer look at macroeconomic data, however, demonstrates an impressive economic record for Mečiar, who oversaw several years of strong GDP growth, and relatively low levels of unemployment and inflation. By slowing down the privatization process, retaining control of key industries, and maintaining the social safety net, Mečiar …

Political Culture Of Post-Soviet Economic Change: The Case Of Financial-Industrial Groups, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Beneath the seeming chaos and conflict of Russia's post-socialist experience were structured dynamics of contentious reconstruction of fields (collective relations of power and culture institutionalized as authority and definitions of "normal"). This essay argues that the Russian experience was driven in no small part by contention over remaking core meanings and authority of field relations, practices, and boundaries. Contention over field reconstruction emerged as three groups' interests and taken-for granted meanings of normality collided: those of Soviet-era managers, a new class of financial entrepreneurs and elites, and state elites and officials. Post-socialism has been a story of competing elite culture …

Russia’S Energy Diplomacy In The Baltic States, Zachary Hanson

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, or, “The Baltic States,” are unique in that they are the first and only former Soviet Republics to join institutions aligned with the West, joining both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004. This move was a reflection of clashing cultural and political values that had been present before their integration into the Soviet Union during the Second World War as a result of the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Additionally, after years of Soviet repression, the Baltic States developed a distinctly anti-Russian stance, as Russia was the most dominant country …

Survival In Soviet Gulags: A Secondary Analysis, Kimberly M. Maas, Paul Prew, Elizabeth J. Sandell

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

One of the most common book series on the subject of Soviet Gulags is Evgenia Ginzburg’s “Journey into the Whirlwind” and “Within the Whirlwind.” This paper will use secondary analysis from anthology works with stories similar to Ginzburg's in combination with the works of several other authors like Anne Applebaum (2011) and Geith and Jolluck (2011). It shall also examine extensively Raphaël Lemkin’s definition of genocide and how it fits to what happened in the Gulags. It shall be argued why certain situations that occurred within the Gulags fit this definition. It will also explore the intimate details and lives …

Plucky Little Russia: Misreading The Georgian War Through The Distorting Lens Of Aggression, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

One might expect massed armor crossing an international frontier to constitute the paradigmatic example of aggression — a case perfectly fit to analyze with the rules of jus ad bellum — and in the first flush and shock of the Georgian War in 2008, this is exactly how Western leaders described Russia’s actions. Yet that August, a constellation of circumstances combined to produce an anomalous outcome: an international war without any aggressor or any wrongful violation of territorial integrity. In theory — in doctrine — this is not supposed to happen.

The key to this puzzle is the special regime …

Audience Response To The Nature/Society Binary In Kurosawa’S Dersu Uzala: An Observational Online Ethnography, Laura L. Sharp

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Geographers researching cinema have predominantly been interested in how geographic meaning is constructed and negotiated within film, but have been less productive in accounting for how these constructs are received by viewers. Using the method of observational online ethnography, I therefore investigate how fans in online reviews have interpreted the nature/society binary in the film Dersu Uzala. Working from a social constructionist view of nature I begin by deconstructing the binary as it appears in Dersu Uzala before proceeding to illustrate the way this constitutive absence is made up for by the visuality of the film’s landscapes and techniques of …

A Personal Look At America's Foremost Communist, Laura Browder

English Faculty Publications

There is nothing quite like the experience of being in the beautiful, sunlit special collections reading room on the top floor of Bird Library—especially when one is about to dive into 86 meticulously cataloged boxes of family history. I was there to do research for a documentary about my grandfather, Earl Browder, as well as a joint biography of him and my grandmother, Raissa Berkmann Browder—a task that was almost overwhelming to contemplate.

After all, my grandfather Earl Browder was the head of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) during its most influential period—the Great Depression. He coined the slogan “Communism …

A Study Of Corruption, Foreign Aid, And Economic Growth, Amanda Deerfield

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Foreign aid donors increasingly demand that aid is used efficiently and effectively. This study examines the effect of corruption levels, measured by the Corruption Perceptions Index, within a recipient country on the levels of economic growth. A growing literature outlines the mechanisms through which corruption impedes economic growth and is summarized within. Additionally, as longevity gains may result from foreign aid but are not captured in economic growth, this study computes a variable called the Life Quality Indicator (LQI) that combines such gains with economic growth and examines corruption’s effect on LQI growth. As any windfall, foreign aid has been …

We Came! We Stripped! We Conquered! The Sextremist Feminists Of Femen In Ukrainian Historical Context And Contemporary Controversy, Jayeon Kim

Honors Theses

In 2008, Anna Hutsol, an economist by training, founded feminist organization FEMEN (Megginson 2011). Comprised mostly of university-educated women, FEMEN has received international media coverage, encountered controversy, and received death threats for their topless protests. For their activism, French magazine Madame Figaro ranked one of the founding members Inna Schevchenko on the 13^th position in their list of Women of the Year (Madame Figaro 2012). They have delivered lectures on their movement at international forums and universities. FEMEN now has chapters in Brazil, Tunisia, France and Germany. FEMEN activists attribute their visibility to “sextremism,” their tactic of using the …