The present article analyses the so-called ‘crime of denial’ recently established in Article 1702 of the Lithuanian Criminal Code. It describes how this crime was introduced in the Lithuanian Law, and the reasons for its present form and challenges. The crime has been applied in two instances (Stankeras case and Paleckis case). The author discusses these two instances of application, critically reviews the arguments of the Prosecutor’s Office and of the court of first instance and shows that at least in (...) the first cases of application of this crime, its objectives and particularities are misunderstood. (shrink)

Rapidly changing estimates on the Soviet régime''s ability to survive show how difficult it is for American Sovietologists to grasp what is going on.

Rapidly changing estimates on the Soviet régime's ability to survive show how difficult it is for American Sovietologists to grasp what is going on.

The Soviet authorities applied the most rigid model of state–confessional relations—segregation—to the Russian Orthodox Church. They emphasized the complete exclusion of the church from public life and its subsequent liquidation. By 1919 the Church was already publicly avoiding conflict with the Soviet authorities; its attempts at adaptation, however, were unsuccessful. By 1939, the church organization in the Soviet Union was practically eliminated, though the majority of the population still believed in God. This fact, as well as foreign-policy (...) interests and the loyalty to the state exhibited by the majority of believers during the war, led to a softening of the segregation model and to the church’s adaptation to operating within the Soviet state. (shrink)

The present article is a subjective commentary on the case Kononov v. Latvia dealt by the European Court of Human Rights, in particular drawing attention to the Courts intention not to regard context of the case as important for the substantial issues. Author considers this approach in a bigger picture of clash of historical and legal paradigms of the heritage of the Second World War in different countries (namely, Western Europe, Russia, the Baltic States). Author also discusses what impact Kononov (...) case might have on Soviet crimes prosecution in the future. (shrink)

The present article discusses the broadening of the concept of genocide in Lithuanian national criminal law with regard to the principle of nullum crimen sine lege. The broadened definition, which includes two groups, social and political raises serious problems when the national provisions on genocide are applied retroactively. However, in the case of Lithuania, such a broadening of the definition may be interpreted not as an introduction of distinct independent groups, but of groups that closely overlap with the groups defined (...) by the UN Genocide convention of 1948. The article suggests that potential problems with the principle of nullum crimen sine lege may be avoided by qualifying crimes against the Soviet regime as crimes against humanity. (shrink)

"Memorial" of Metropolitan Joseph Slipyj is an important document of the confessional history of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. It is also a valuable source for anyone interested in the history of religion, the spiritual culture of Ukraine, the course of Orthodox-Catholic and church-state relations in the Soviet era. The author himself calls himself "a silent witness of the Silent Church". In this confession, there is an indescribable tragedy of the personal destiny of the Metropolitan, as well as the (...) fate of his Church. When I wanted to scream the world over the crimes of the Soviet regime against the Church, I had to remain silent, only to pray. The persecuted Church could not tell the world what was happening, her voice did not break through the "Iron Curtain". But she survived and lived - in catacombs and prisons, in the hearts of simple believers and confession museums. (shrink)

Texts and interviews from the period that saw the publication of Deleuze's major works. People tend to confuse winning freedom with conversion to capitalism. It is doubtful that the joys of capitalism are enough to free peoples.... The American “revolution” failed long ago, long before the Soviet one. Revolutionary situations and attempts are born of capitalism itself and will not soon disappear, alas. Philosophy remains tied to a revolutionary becoming that is not to be confused with the history of (...) revolutions.—from Two Regimes of Madness Covering the last twenty years of Gilles Deleuze's life, the texts and interviews gathered in this volume complete those collected in Desert Islands and Other Texts. This period saw the publication of his major works: A Thousand Plateaus, Cinema I: Image-Movement, Cinema II: Image-Time, all leading through language, concept and art to What is Philosophy?. Two Regimes of Madness also documents Deleuze's increasing involvement with politics. Both volumes were conceived by the author himself and will be his last. Michel Foucault famously wrote: “One day, perhaps, this century will be Deleuzian.” This book provides a prodigious entry into the work of the most important philosopher of our time. Unlike Foucault, Deleuze never stopped digging further into the same furrow. Concepts for him came from life. He was a vitalist and remained one to the last. This volume restores the full text of the original French edition. (shrink)

Organised crime is chameleonic in nature. It is transnational, dynamic, overlapped criminal activities and pervasive in nature. In the same way, money laundering is the predicate offence and it is naturally linked to other organised crimes. After the cold war, this nexus culminated during the occurrence of 9/11 in particular which was a lethal combination of money laundering and terrorist financing. This combination is currently being experienced by Pakistan; where various terrorist groups are involved with direct and indirect support (...) of proceeds from drug trafficking, assassination, land grabbing, arms smuggling and various other organised crimes routing through the abusage of financial and non-financial channels and support to terrorism. This has left serious socio-politico and economic consequences in the south Asian region and global as well. The researcher found very limited evidence of money laundering characteristics in the existing research literature on Pakistan. Thus to carry out research work on the subject was need of the hour in Pakistan. This led the researcher to find out root causes and existing weaknesses at the regime’s end in countering financial crime and financing of terrorism. (shrink)

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the (...) socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist -- should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism. (shrink)

In his review of The Neo-Stalinist State, Luke reproaches me for neglecting both “the new importance of the USSR's and Eastern Europe's niche in the world economic system” and the use of the East-West economic exchange by the Soviet regime to “sustain its ‘neo-Stalinist’ state.” These criticisms are well taken. Yet, I deliberately concentrated on the inner workings of the Soviet state in its mature form without going into the problems of the Soviet position in the (...) global system. After pointing to these weaknesses, Luke suggests his own interpretation of Soviet developments in the past decades. They can be summarized as follows. (shrink)

The institution of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg in 1945 was an event which marked the birth of cosmopolitan law as a social reality. Cosmopolitan law has existed as an abstract idea at least since the writings of Kant in the late eighteenth century, but Nuremberg turned the notion of humanity from a merely regulative idea into a substantial entity. Crimes against humanity differ significantly from the traditional categories of international law: war crimes and crimes against (...) peace. While the latter generally treats states as subjects of right and upholds the principle of national sovereignty, the former treats individuals as subjects of right and encroaches on national sovereignty. I focus here on the writings of Hannah Arendt on the Nuremberg trials, the Eichmann trial and the actuality of crimes against humanity perpetrated in totalitarian regimes. I explore her relation to the optimistic and naive cosmopolitanism of Karl Jaspers, as well as to the two prevailing forms of critical thought: the cynical realism towards the law adopted by many of the defendants, including Carl Schmitt, and the deconstructive attitude to humanism and technology adopted by Martin Heidegger. I maintain that Arendt's rugged cosmopolitanism, tested against its critics, remains exceptionally revealing on the issue of crimes against humanity now that this issue has re-emerged, after many years of silence, as arguably the most important question of our own day. (shrink)

This article examines the Stalin regime’s treatment of the ethnic Germans in the USSR during the 1940s as a case study in racial discrimination. After 1938, Soviet definitions of nationality became racialized. Systematic repression against certain nationalities in the USSR after this time clearly fit the definition of racial discrimination formulated by scholars in the post-war era. This article examines the separate and unequal institutions of the special settlement regime and labor army imposed upon the ethnic Germans (...) in the USSR during World War II in the context of race as a category constructed along lines of primordial and essentialist views of culture. It also compares the construction of racialized groups and the practice of racial discrimination in the USSR with South Africa during the apartheid era. (shrink)

In September 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that sparked controversy due to its equation of Nazism and Communism. The document made the USSR jointly responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War and accused the Russian government of whitewashing communist crimes and glorifying the Soviet totalitarian regime. This article presents the resolution as the latest expression of a broader discursive process that started with the accession process of the Central and Eastern European countries. To (...) support this hypothesis, I examine the genealogy of the resolution, namely the documents that originally outlined the stances expressed by the latter, as well as the debates at the EU Parliament that preceded its adoption. This analysis highlights in particular two fundamental tendencies, i.e. the entanglement of history and memory characterising the recent discourse on European integration and the frequent identification of the Central and Eastern European member states as victims. In the final paragraphs, I suggest that the construction of a shared ‘historical memory’ may represent a legitimising framework for the implementation of specific sets of political and economic ideas, but I also note that processes such as the one described in the article may ultimately damage the cohesion among the member states and the ability of the EU institutions to address relevant internal and external issues. (shrink)

Based on qualitative analysis of the Soviet press and official state documents, this article argues that the Communist Party was, counter intuitively, an agent of capitalist dispositions in the Soviet Union during 1970s-1980s. Understanding the spirit of capitalism not simply as an ascetic ethos but in broader terms of the cult of individualism, I demonstrate that the Soviet party-state promoted ideas and values of individuality, self-expression, and pleasure seeking in the areas of work and consumption. By broadening (...) our conception of the spirit of capitalism, tracing the formation of capitalist dispositions as well as institutions, and showing that the culture of capitalism can come from within the old regime, I further the agenda of neoclassical sociology of studying varieties of origins, paths, and destinations of modern capitalisms. (shrink)

The article explains why Soviet dissidents and the reformers of the Gorbachev era chose to characterize the Soviet system as totalitarian. The dissidents and the reformers strongly disagreed among themselves about the origins of Soviet totalitarianism. But both groups stressed the effects of totalitarianism on the individual personality; in doing so, they revealed themselves to be the heirs of the tsarist intelligentsia. Although the concept of totalitarianism probably obscures more than it clarifies when it is applied to (...) regimes like the Nazi and the Soviet, the decision of the dissidents and the reformers to use the term enabled them to clarify their own values and the reasons they felt compelled to criticize the Soviet Union and to call for its radical reform. (shrink)

People tend to confuse winning freedom with conversion to capitalism. It is doubtful that the joys of capitalism are enough to free peoples.... The American "revolution" failed long ago, long before the Soviet one. Revolutionary situations and attempts are born of capitalism itself and will not soon disappear, alas. Philosophy remains tied to a revolutionary becoming that is not to be confused with the history of revolutions.--from Two Regimes of MadnessCovering the last twenty years of Gilles Deleuze's life, the (...) texts and interviews gathered in this volume complete those collected in Desert Islands and Other Texts. This period saw the publication of his major works: A Thousand Plateaus, Cinema I: Image-Movement, Cinema II: Image-Time, all leading through language, concept and art to What is Philosophy?. Two Regimes of Madness also documents Deleuze's increasing involvement with politics. Both volumes were conceived by the author himself and will be his last. Michel Foucault famously wrote: "One day, perhaps, this century will be Deleuzian." This book provides a prodigious entry into the work of the most important philosopher of our time. Unlike Foucault, Deleuze never stopped digging further into the same furrow. Concepts for him came from life. He was a vitalist and remained one to the last. This volume restores the full text of the original French edition.The philosopher Gilles Deleuze published twenty-five books, including five in collaboration with Félix Guattari. (shrink)

In the second half of the 80s of the twentieth century communist omnipotence that prevailed in the Soviet Union during the seventy years put the country regularly in the framework of the system of social and economic crisis. In making efforts to keep the pro-government monopoly the Central Commitee of CPSU dares to introduce redecorating of the economic mechanism of the Soviet Union in implementing the policy of acceleration. However, its negative results made the Communist Party elite resort (...) to deepen innovations and apply reforms in the political system of the Soviet Union, known at that time as reconstruction perestroika. Having caused the general public democratization, it called to a policy of openness, which brought out the numerous communist crimes of the past decades that greatly weakened the Communist Party regime. This led to the revival of democracy, and eventually the national liberation movement in the western regions of the USSR, especially in Halychyna and its components - the Pre-Carpathians, where the state-forming bases have deep historical roots. The speaking trumpet of establishment of the communist regime was the Communist Party press, which in this period has launched a massive advertising campaign for undeniable expediency of reconstructive innovations. However, the rapid growth of the national liberation movement led openly to opposing the Communist Party media at all levels, trying to stop a national renaissance in Pre-Carpathians. The opposing range included both promotional measurements and intimidation pressure of power structures. The opposition at that time consisted of illegal anticommunistic publications and periodicals of newly appeared Soviet institutions. Objectively covering events they were promoters of striving patriotic-oriented public of the land to restore the state independence of Ukraine. (shrink)

The present article deals with different Marxist theories on the Soviet experience, which emerged in post-Soviet Russophone Marxist or neo-Marxist scholarship (concurrently with some reference to Marxist traditions in other former Eastern Bloc countries). The article demonstrates that these theories – if we leave the remaining ‘Marxist-Leninists’ of the classical Soviet type aside and focus on critical, post-Soviet Marxism – may be classified as either ‘fundamentally rejectionist’ or ‘Thermidorian’. The former, in line with the seminal criticisms (...) of K. Kautsky and other early opponents of Lenin, reject the socialist nature of the October 1917 Revolution outright. The latter mostly define the Revolution as at least socialist-oriented, but further bifurcate into different varieties of the ‘state capitalism’ thesis with a number of theorists defining Stalinist societies as special varieties of post-revolutionary industrialism essentially different from orthodox capitalism. Most critical post-Soviet Marxists agree, however, that the main vector of Soviet-type regimes’ evolution indeed pointed towards increased class stratification. However, it should be remembered that Soviet-type bureaucracy was a class-in-the-making rather than a class-in-itself or a class-for-itself, and this point is further elaborated in the works of those theorists who prioritise the differences rather than similarities between Soviet-type industrialism and orthodox capitalism. (shrink)

Organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ transplantation are recognized as significant international problems. Yet these forms of trafficking are largely left out of international criminal law regimes and to some extent of domestic criminal law regimes as well. Trafficking of organs or persons for their organs does not come within the jurisdiction of the ICC, except in very special cases such as when conducted in a manner that conforms to the definitions of genocide or (...) class='Hi'>crimes against humanity. Although the United States Code characterizes trafficking as a transnational crime with national implications, (22 U.S.C. § 7101(b)(24) (2010)), trafficking is rarely prosecuted in domestic courts. It has thus functioned in practice largely as what might be judged a stateless offense, out of the purview of both international and national courts. Yet these forms of organ trafficking remain widespread—and devastating to those who are its victims. In this article, we begin by describing what is known about the extent of organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for the purpose of removal of organs. We then critically evaluate how and why such trafficking has remained largely unaddressed by both international and domestic criminal law regimes. This state of affairs, we argue, presents a missed chance for developing the legitimacy of international criminal law and an illustration of how far current international legal institutions remain from ideal justice. (shrink)

Thirty or even fifty years ago, the apology on the Left for the Soviet Union was direct. Today no one can read what the Webbs wrote in the '30s or what Sartre wrote in the early ‘50s without laughing, though we should recall the seriousness of the crimes they managed to represent — and, for the relevant audience, successfully. We have come a long way from all that, or so it seems. Actually, left-wing writing these days on the (...) whole is still apologetic — even if in indirect forms. Of the two major types of exercises in mystification, the one postulates an essential parallelism between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as forms of domination, as centers of imperial systems, in one recent version as “exterminist” social formations. (shrink)

Johns and Johnson analyze the invasion of Panama in order to explore the ways in which the War on Drugs has been used as an ideological justification for a projection of U.S. state power into Latin America. They characterize the Bush Administration's reasons for the invasion as cynical ideological rhetoric which covered up strategic interests the United States had in deposing Noriega and replacing him with a more cooperative regime. The authors particularly discuss the role of media coverage, including (...) the demonization of Noriega and the immediate adoption by the corporate media of the name Operation Just Cause, in legitimating the invasion and transforming it in popular ideology as a law enforcement operation. Finally, they examine the aftermath of the invasion in the United States--Bush's popularity ratings, the distortion of civilian casualty information, the macho celebration of the war--and in Panama--the destruction of the labor and independence movements, the puppet Endara government, and the increased drug trafficking through Panama. (shrink)

The international community has yet to develop a broadly accepted philosophical rationale for the extraterritorial adjudication of war crimes. Instead, several justifications exist in a state of tension that produces uncertainties in the applicable legal doctrines and policies. This article explains how the competition between the “atrocities” approach on the one hand, and the statist and humanitarian rationales on the other, causes instability in the regime. It advocates for increased attention to the philosophical grounding of extraterritorial war (...) class='Hi'>crimes trials, particularly in light of the increasing frequency of such trials before international courts as well as national courts exercising universal jurisdiction. (shrink)

What is the meaning of perestrojka? There is no doubt that it led to the end of the Cold War and had a huge impact on the international situation. Nevertheless, there is no consensus as to the outcomes of perestrojka. Perestrojka brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. This fact might be interpreted positively: it opened the possibility to restore historical truth and to create independent democratic states. From another perspective, it can be conceived negatively as a destruction (...) of the integrity of the Soviet Union and the loss of a part of the territory as well as the economy of Russia (according to the President of the Gorbačev Foundation, Viktor Kuvaldin, during the conference “Revisiting Perestroika—Processes and Alternatives”). Perestrojka has no one definite general meaning, but it has a very specific one for Lithuania. In this paper I ask: What is the meaning of perestrojka for contemporary Lithuania and for post-Soviet life? Was perestrojka a failure or a success? I approach perestrojka from a moral point of view, suggesting that the perestrojka made possible a fundamental choice between several alternatives. Once the choice was made the specificity of future goals and evaluation of the past opened up. I concentrate on the moral value of the act of accommodation (and resistance) to the Soviet regime, on the conflict of values represented by the “nation’s own” and the goodness of the political order, and on the role of freedom and determinism in history. Immanuel Kant’s conception of duty and the categorical imperative is used as a model for the analysis of the situation of choice. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of Russian literature, culture, and thought gives for the first time an extensive and detailed examination of the development of Russian thought during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic account of Russian thought in the second half of the 20th century. In doing so, he provides new insights into previously ignored areas such (...) as Russian liberalism, personalism, structuralism, neo-rationalism, and culturology. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy and culture has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian philosophical thought and cultural theory, now freed from the bonds of totalitarianism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of Russian thought, but also an opportunity to rethink our own intellectual heritage. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show the activities of the non-governmental organization ‘Memorial’ that are aimed at building historical memory and developing civic awareness of state terror and crimes committed by the communist regime. ‘Memorial’ also aims to show the politics of memory pursued by the Russian authorities after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The article addresses the puzzling silence of the Foucaldian studies of biopolitics about Soviet socialism by revisiting Foucault’s own account of socialism in his 1970s work, particularly his 1975–6 course ‘Society Must Be Defended’. Foucault repeatedly denied the existence of an autonomous governmentality in socialism, demonstrating its dependence on the techniques of government developed in 19th-century western Europe. For Foucault Soviet socialism was fundamentally identical to its ideological antagonist in its biopolitical rationality, which he defined in terms of (...) racism. This article challenges Foucault’s reading, demonstrating that his notion of racism is ill-suited to describe the governmental rationalities of Soviet socialism during both the formation and the consolidation of the Stalinist regime. While the Soviet project was paradigmatically biopolitical in its ambition to transform the forms of life of the population in line with the communist ideology, its biopolitics was fundamentally different from the security-oriented logic of racism, focusing instead on the exposure of the population to the violent transformation of their forms of life. Revisiting Foucault’s genealogy of racism, we argue that the point of descent of this biopolitics lies in the 19th-century split of the ‘counter-historical’ discourse of the struggle of the races into the discourses of state racism and class struggle. While Foucault’s genealogy focuses on the development of the former into liberal and totalitarian biopolitics as we know them, it leaves class struggle out of the history of biopolitics and is therefore unable to account for the biopolitical specificity of the Soviet project. (shrink)

This chapter places the exodus of Russian scholars in the context of the country's turbulent twentieth-century experience of ‘three revolutions, two world wars, civil strife, and several changes of political regime’. It presents an account of the plight of Russian academics in German occupied territories who were caught ‘in the dead space between two tyrannies’. For some the price of survival in the 1940s involved temporary collaboration with the Nazi invaders, which is illustrated in the morally ambiguous wartime experiences (...) of Nikolas Poppe, Professor of Oriental Studies in Leningrad University, a leading expert of the languages and literatures of northern inner Asia; and of Ivan Malinin, professor and head of the department of pathology in the Krasnodar Medical Institute. Both found a way of resisting the communist state through temporary ‘collaboration’, and thus, reaffirmed ‘the right of the individual to make choices’. The chapter concludes by noting the change in Soviet policy towards the emigration of scientists after perestroika and its double-edged effect: ‘On the one hand, emigration impoverishes home institutions, but, on the other, the free migration of scientists has become one of the most effective mechanisms for integrating the country into the global scientific community’. (shrink)

The subject of this book is the relationship between the Soviet regime and the Soviet middleclass citizen.

The subject of this book is the relationship between the Soviet regime and the Soviet middleclass citizen.

What is the meaning of perestrojka? There is no doubt that it led to the end of the Cold War and had a huge impact on the international situation. Nevertheless, there is no consensus as to the outcomes of perestrojka. Perestrojka brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. This fact might be interpreted positively: it opened the possibility to restore historical truth and to create independent democratic states. From another perspective, it can be conceived negatively as a destruction (...) of the integrity of the Soviet Union and the loss of a part of the territory as well as the economy of Russia · Perestrojka has no one definite general meaning, but it has a very specific one for Lithuania. In this paper I ask: What is the meaning of perestrojka for contemporary Lithuania and for post-Soviet life? Was perestrojka a failure or a success? I approach perestrojka from a moral point of view, suggesting that the perestrojka made possible a fundamental choice between several alternatives. Once the choice was made the specificity of future goals and evaluation of the past opened up. I concentrate on the moral value of the act of accommodation to the Soviet regime, on the conflict of values represented by the "nation's own" and the goodness of the political order, and on the role of freedom and determinism in history. Immanuel Kant's conception of duty and the categorical imperative is used as a model for the analysis of the situation of choice. (shrink)

A study of informal networks in Soviet science, this article documents the existence of a complex system of interlocking and overlapping channels ofprofessional communication that cut across the formal, hierarchical chains of command in the USSR Academy of Sciences. Through coauthorship data and career histories, one can identify science schools, research groups, social circles, and professional cliques in the Soviet scientific community during the Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev regimes. There was an expansion and integration of social circles over (...) time and a pluralism of interdependent, but distinct, scientific elites. This structure took on political significance through the persistence of a liberal democratic tradition among scientists in the Academy. (shrink)

In the past few years, a body of ideas based on political economy theory has been built up by North and Weingast, Olson, Przeworski, and Acemoglu and Robinson. One theme that emerges from this literature concerns the transition to democracy: why would dominant elites give up oligarchic power? This article addresses this question by considering a formal model of an authoritarian regime, and then examining three historical regimes: the Argentine junta of 1976—83; Francoist Spain, 1938—75; the Soviet system, (...) 1924—91. We argue that these historical analyses suggest that party dictatorships are more institutionally durable than military or fascist ones. Key Words: democratic transition • authoritarian regimes • rational choice theory. (shrink)

This 1994 pioneering study documents the extent and diversity of the impact of Nietzschean ideas on Soviet literature and culture. It shows how these ideas, unacknowledged and reworked, entered and shaped that culture and stimulated the imagination of both supporters and detractors of the regime.

This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of culture and scholars of Russian philosophy gives for the first time a systematic examination of the development of Russian philosophy during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein provides a comprehensive account of Russian thought of the second half of the 20th century that is highly sophisticated without losing clarity. It provides new insights into previously (...) mostly ignored areas such as late Soviet Russian nationalism and Eurasianism, religious thought, cosmism and esoterism, and postmodernism and conceptualism. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian thought, now freed from the bonds of Soviet totalitarianism and ideocracy but nevertheless dangerously engaged into new nationalist aspirations and metaphysical radicalism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of recent Russian intellectual history, but also the opportunity to rethink our philosophical heritage. (shrink)

This article chronicles the correspondence between Theodosius Dobzhansky and his colleagues in the USSR in the years following his arrival in the United States on what was to have been a one-year fellowship working in the laboratory of T.H. Morgan at Columbia University. These letters chronicle a period during which Dobzhansky not only realized the enormous potential of Drosophila genetics for unlocking the secrets of evolution, but also that con­tinuing this research would require finding a way to remain in the (...) United States longer than either the Soviet Academy of Sciences, or the Rockefeller Foundation, would allow. Dobzhansky’s exchanges during this period with mentors such as Yuri Filipchenko and Nikolai Vavilov, as well as fellow students and colleagues such as Nikolai Medvedev, highlight the precarious game Dobzhansky played as he attempted to appear eager to return to his homeland, while secretly maneuvering to delay it. By the time it was over Filipchenko would die an early death of meningitis and Vavilov—who had originally been urging Dobzhansky to return and contribute to development of genetics in Russia—would now advise him to remain in the USA. Dobzhansky was nearly forced to return to the USSR after a routine trip to Canada to renew his visa, an outcome that would surely have resulted in imprisonment or worse. In the end he was allowed to stay, however Dobzhansky’s defection was so resented by the Soviet regime that even decades later he would remain an “un-person” in his homeland, whose name and contributions were never officially acknowledged during his lifetime, and his attempts at reconciliation were rejected. (shrink)

Since the collapse of the Soviet regime, post-communist states have rapidly learned the modern face of slavery. Slavic women have been trafficked to the sex markets of Western Europe, Asia, and North America. The surge in human trafficking is the result of numerous factors, including the dramatic fall of the economic system and complete deterioration of the social safety net. This paper explores the causes and conditions of the growth of the trade in persons in the region, the (...) profile and typical behavior of the victims, and the public perception of the trafficking problem. It identifies the inefficiencies behind the national and international responses to trafficking and the complications for policymaking associated with the stigma attached to sex workers. (shrink)

The revival of dissidence was one of the paradoxes of the Putin era. During the terminal crisis of the Soviet Union and the early years of the Yeltsin presidency, the dissidents of the 1970s were celebrated as prophets of democracy and Russian nationhood. But unlike their East Central European counterparts, they achieved little political success in the post-Communist era. Despite Boris Yeltsin's pose as a disciple of Sakharov and his courtship of Solzhenitsyn, the most prominent dissidents were at the (...) margins of politics by the late 1990s. To many observers, they were relics of another age. Yet under the increasingly.. (shrink)

During the autumn of 1949, Hannah Arendt completed the manuscript of The Origins of Totalitarianism. On 1 October of the same year, the People’s Republic of China was founded under the leadership of Mao Zedong. This article documents Arendt’s claim in 1949 that the prospects of totalitarianism in China were ‘frighteningly good’, and yet her ambivalent judgment, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, about the totalitarian character of the Maoist regime. Despite being the premier theorist of totalitarian formations, (...) Arendt’s interest in China was half-hearted and her analysis often wildly inaccurate. The concern of this paper, however, is less with the veracity of her remarks, than with a counterfactual question. If Arendt had known what we know now, would she have considered Maoist China to be a totalitarian regime? Put another way: to what extent is our modern picture of Mao’s regime consistent with Arendt’s depiction of the Soviet Union under Stalin or Germany under Hitler? While Arendt got many of her facts wrong, her theory of totalitarianism — as shapeless, febrile, voracious of human flesh, and endlessly turbulent — was in good measure applicable to Mao’s regime, even though she failed to recognize it. (shrink)

The article draws attention to the exceptional importance of the concept of culture in the development of early Soviet models of governance. It proposes an analysis of party cadres’ conceptualization of culture that provided the basis for the creation of the state monopoly on cultural production of the young Soviet regime in the early 1920s. Particular attention is given to Lenin’s differentiation between “bureaucratic” and “cultural” motivations to labour that, after the October Revolution of 1917, allowed to (...) substantiate the shift in the point of view on socialism from a political to a cultural one. The building of the new Soviet statehood required a moderate depoliticization, the renunciation of the radical revolutionary rhetoric of class struggle in internal policy and the reinterpretation of class, social and cultural contradictions. Attention is drawn to the importance of cultural debates for the creation of the unique Soviet mechanism of governance that separated the principal ideological role of the party from the operative administration of the state machinery. At the centre of the analysis there will be no “theories” of culture or doctrinal diversity of Marxist-Leninist approaches but there will be the modes of culture’s problematization within the sphere that was defined by Michel Foucault as gouvernementalité. A group of specific texts is analyzed, in which governmental rationality and problematization of cultural policy were directly presented. This refers to verbatim reports and party congresses’ materials. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url } This part of the Soviet philosophy that corresponds approximately to theoretical philosophy and philosophy of science on the example of Estonia and proceeding from the University of Tartu is discussed. The author concentrates on the period of approximately 1960–1990, when he himself was engaged in the field, i.e. the time before 1960 is not included. The aim of this paper is not to provide an overview of the individual philosophers in (...) Estonia at the time and their works, but to give a more general description of the philosophy of the Soviet era. The Soviet and the East European philosophy of the time have received rather little critical treatment in literature in English. However, a few general overviews trying to prove that this Soviet and East European philosophical legacy is worth studying have still been published. This paper is focused on the question what kind of philosophical researches it was possible to engage oneself in under the abnormal conditions at the time and whether some starting points and problem issues in theseresearches might be viable also today. Estonian experience confirms the general conclusion of these authors who, analyzing the legacy of Marxism, have found that although Marxism is nowadays—not to mention how it existed in the Soviet totalitarian regime—mainly not considered a serious philosophy but rather an ideological basis of a failed political doctrine, it has nevertheless quite something to offer when treated in a more depoliticized manner, in the general context of philosophical quests. Teoreetiline ja teadusfilosoofia Nõukogude ajal: mõned märkused Eesti näitel 1960-1990 Vaatluse all on Eesti näitel ja lähtudes Tartu ülikoolist see osa Nõukogudeaegsest filosoofiast, mis vastab umbes teoreetilisele filosoofiale ja teadusfilosoofiale. Autor peatub ajavahemikul umbes 1960–1990, mil ta ka ise tegev oli, st 1960-ndate aastate eelset aega ei käsitleta. Artikli eesmärgiks ei ole ülevaate andmine Eestis sel ajal tegutsenud filosoofidest ja nende töödest, vaid Nõukogudeaegse filosoofia üldisem iseloomustamine. Nõukogude ja selleagset Ida-Euroopa filosoofiat on ingliskeelses kirjanduses üsna vähe kriitiliselt uuritud. Üksikuid ülevaateteoseid, milles on püütud näidata, etsee Nõukogude ja Ida-Euroopa filosoofiline pärand väärib uurimist, on siiski ilmunud. Käesolevas artiklis on keskendutud eelkõige küsimusele, mis laadi filosoofilise uurimistööga sai tolle aja ebanormaalsetes tingimustes tegelda ja kas mõned lähtekohad ja probleemipüstitused selles on elujõulised ka veel nüüd. Eesti kogemus kinnitab nende autorite üldist järeldust, kes marksismi pärandit uurides on leidnud, et kuigi marksismi tänapäeval — rääkimata sellest, missugune see oli Nõukogude totalitaarses režiimis — enamasti ei peeta tõsiseltvõetavaks filosoofiaks, vaid pigem läbikukkunud poliitilise õpetuse ideoloogiliseks aluseks, on tal siiski nii mõndagi öelda, kui teda käsitleda depolitiseeritumalt, filosoofiliste otsingute üldises kontekstis. Märksõnad: dialektiline materialism, dialektika, ‘eessõna-marksism’, filosoofia põhiküsimus, Nõukogude filosoofia, ‘ontologistid’ ja ‘epistemologistid’, praktika. (shrink)

An informative study of the conditions, the strengths, and the weaknesses of Russian totalitarianism by an expert on Russian affairs. The "Keys" are: the necessity of a struggle for power within the totalitarian regime, the necessity for secrecy and the complete control of all activity, the proscription of labor, the contempt for democratic election, the constant need for colonial expansion, and the subordination of the people to the state.--A. R.

The intellectual movement to interpret fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism as “political religions” has generated lively debates and an intensive publication program for over a decade. The scholarly trend has been closely associated with a revival of the concept of totalitarianism, reconfigured to account for the popular appeal and violent fervor of twentieth-century mass movements of the extreme right and left. As theoreticians of political religion have been preoccupied with arguments about the definition of religion and the problems of comparison, two (...) stumbling blocks have become increasingly apparent. First, historians of Soviet communism, who since the early 1990s have empirically and conceptually transformed the study of Stalinism and Soviet history, have either exhibited “utter neglect” of the political-religion concept or have shunned it due to the scientism and official atheism of the regime. As a result, comparisons in the political-religion mode have generally been carried out by scholars not expert in Soviet history. Second, and closely related to this, even sympathetic critics have found secular religion too blunt a tool and too generic a concept to probe the “novel, supranational, but historically specific... sense of mission” produced by radical interwar regimes. Soviet communism as a project, more than fascism, was deeply invested in viewing its own ideology as genuinely scientific. (shrink)

En Russie, après 1917, « la question des femmes » et la « la question sexuelle » ont fait l’objet de politiques publiques qui se voulaient éclairées par les sciences sociales. Après avoir été décrétées résolues sous Staline, ces questions ont pu être partiellement réouvertes avec le Dégel. Cet article explique comment, sur le temps long, ces sciences sociales supposées « socialistes » se sont distinguées des sciences « bourgeoises » moins par leur épistémologie que par la priorisation ou l’exclusion (...) de certaines problématiques, au gré des évolutions politiques du régime. Ainsi, les recherches sur la sexualité et le contrôle des naissances, avant-gardistes dans les années 1920, sont devenues relativement illégitimes après le dégel. Dans les années 1960-1980, c’était surtout la baisse de la natalité et le « double fardeau » – domestique et professionnel – des femmes qui faisaient problème. Les comportements familiaux semblaient étrangers à la logique de la planification, et les sciences sociales étaient travaillées par la perspective d’un art de gouverner d’orientation plus libérale. Il s’est alors formé un clivage qui est toujours d’actualité, entre une conceptualisation du changement social en termes de « modernisation » – démographique, sexuelle... – à accompagner, ou de « crise » à enrayer. (shrink)

The Soviet government utilized a variety of tactics while attempting to secularize the U.S.S.R. Oppression of the Russian Orthodox Church demonstrates how interconnected faith and the former tsarist regime were. It is ironic that while trying to wipe out religion, the Bolsheviks replacement methods carried religious-type qualities as well.

The Soviet government utilized a variety of tactics while attempting to secularize the U.S.S.R. Oppression of the Russian Orthodox Church demonstrates how interconnected faith and the former tsarist regime were. It is ironic that while trying to wipe out religion, the Bolsheviks replacement methods carried religious-type qualities as well.

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} This part of the Soviet philosophy that corresponds approximately to theoretical philosophy (...) and philosophy of science on the example of Estonia and proceeding from the University of Tartu is discussed. The author concentrates on the period of approximately 1960–1990, when he himself was engaged in the field, i.e. the time before 1960 is not included. The aim of this paper is not to provide an overview of the individual philosophers in Estonia at the time and their works, but to give a more general description of the philosophy of the Soviet era. The Soviet and the East European philosophy of the time have received rather little critical treatment in literature in English. However, a few general overviews trying to prove that this Soviet and East European philosophical legacy is worth studying have still been published. This paper is focused on the question what kind of philosophical researches it was possible to engage oneself in under the abnormal conditions at the time and whether some starting points and problem issues in these researches might be viable also today. Estonian experience confirms the general conclusion of these authors who, analyzing the legacy of Marxism, have found that although Marxism is nowadays—not to mention how it existed in the Soviet totalitarian regime—mainly not considered a serious philosophy but rather an ideological basis of a failed political doctrine, it has nevertheless quite something to offer when treated in a more depoliticized manner, in the general context of philosophical quests. Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Teoreetiline ja teadusfilosoofia Nõukogude ajal: mõned märkused Eesti näitel 1960-1990 (Resümee) Vaatluse all on Eesti näitel ja lähtudes Tartu ülikoolist see osa Nõukogudeaegsest filosoofiast, mis vastab umbes teoreetilisele filosoofiale ja teadusfilosoofiale. Autor peatub ajavahemikul umbes 1960–1990, mil ta ka ise tegev oli, st 1960-ndate aastate eelset aega ei käsitleta. Artikli eesmärgiks ei ole ülevaate andmine Eestis sel ajal tegutsenud filosoofidest ja nende töödest, vaid Nõukogudeaegse filosoofia üldisem iseloomustamine. Nõukogude ja selleagset Ida-Euroopa filosoofiat on ingliskeelses kirjanduses üsna vähe kriitiliselt uuritud. Üksikuid ülevaateteoseid, milles on püütud näidata, et see Nõukogude ja Ida-Euroopa filosoofiline pärand väärib uurimist, on siiski ilmunud. Käesolevas artiklis on keskendutud eelkõige küsimusele, mis laadi filosoofilise uurimistööga sai tolle aja ebanormaalsetes tingimustes tegelda ja kas mõned lähtekohad ja probleemipüstitused selles on elujõulised ka veel nüüd. Eesti kogemus kinnitab nende autorite üldist järeldust, kes marksismi pärandit uurides on leidnud, et kuigi marksismi tänapäeval — rääkimata sellest, missugune see oli Nõukogude totalitaarses režiimis — enamasti ei peeta tõsiseltvõetavaks filosoofiaks, vaid pigem läbikukkunud poliitilise õpetuse ideoloogiliseks aluseks, on tal siiski nii mõndagi öelda, kui teda käsitleda depolitiseeritumalt, filosoofiliste otsingute üldises kontekstis. Märksõnad: dialektiline materialism, dialektika, ‘eessõna-marksism’, filosoofia põhiküsimus, Nõukogude filosoofia, ‘ontologistid’ ja ‘epistemologistid’, praktika. (shrink)