2025-12-24
Iskender Yasaveev
This article examines search work in Russia—the search for and identification of the unburied remains of soldiers fallen during World War II—as a lieu de mémoire u ndergoing transformations during the Russia-Ukraine war. The study focuses on statements obtained during semistructured interviews with Russian searchers ( poiskoviki ) who in one way or another support the war with Ukraine about these two wars, their similarities and differences, the memory of World War II in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, the motives for supporting the war with Ukraine, and the prospects for searching for and exhuming the bodies of those killed in this war. The memory of World War II formed by pro-war participants in the search movement is characterized by the glorification of all Red Army soldiers and the reconstruction of the heroic circumstances of their death. The fact that the Red Army soldiers were left unburied is justified by the postwar devastation. Pro-war searchers accept Kremlin’s framing of the war with Ukraine as a fight against Nazism, which resonates with their negative attitude toward Nazism in relation to World War II. From a site of tragic memory, associated with the idea of injustice toward soldiers who were left unburied, the search work turns into a site of heroic memory, quasi-religious worship of soldiers’ remains, and glorifying reconstructions. The memory of World War II, formed by pro-war searchers, conveys the values of self-sacrifice, duty, and patriotism in the meaning of loyalty to authorities and the need to fight for the country, which corresponds to the interests of the Kremlin. Text in English
2025-12-24
Roman Iordosopol
Монография Джамиля Поладхана оглы Гасанлы, одного из ведущих специалистов по внешней политике Азербайджана и истории советского Востока, представляет собой плод многолетней исследовательской и преподавательской работы. Биография автора – редкий случай сочетания серьезного академического опыта с политической деятельностью высокого уровня, что создает условия для более чувствительной исследовательской позиции, но не переходящей в публицистику или политические программы. Автор работает в Бакинском государственном университете, он доктор исторических наук и является одним из лидеров Национального совета демократических сил Азербайджана (НСДС). Text in Russian
2025-12-24
Ekaterina Demintseva
In this article, I present the results of a study aimed at understanding how women from Central Asia are becoming active participants in elder care in Russia today. Due to negative attitudes toward Central Asian migrants, Russian families almost never hired women from this region as domestic workers in the past. However, amid the shortage of personnel due to the outflow of migrants from Ukraine and Moldova before and during COVID-19, as well as after February 2022, potential employers have been forced to consider their candidacies, and agencies have begun to actively offer the services of Central Asian migrants. I analyze the relationships between employers, intermediaries (agencies), and domestic workers and show how all participants in this sector of the labor market—care for the elderly—are responding to the changes associated with the need to attract migrant women from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to work as caregivers. I show how agencies manipulate this sector of the labor market to make Central Asian migrants attractive workers for Russian families, how the migrants themselves create their own social networks to improve working conditions and increase pay rates for their services, and how the relationships between employers, those who receive care, and migrants change through constant interaction in the caregiving process. The central theme of the study is ethnicity. I analyze why ethnicity is important for employers and at what point it becomes irrelevant for all participants in the labor market. Text in Russian
2025-12-24
Maria Kucheryavaya, Anastasia Lukina
The article explores the processes of self-transformation represented in the narratives of agents operating within the subfield of contemporary self-help related to personal growth. In contrast to reflexive approaches to construction of the modern self, we acknowledge nonreflexive tools involved in the process of self-creation. To consider self-transformation from this perspective, we draw on the concepts of rites of passage and liminality. Transforming the self is thus conceptualized as a ritual of changing the status associated with the arising inner conflict. Drawing on qualitative analysis of social media messages published by personal growth experts and their audiences, we reconstruct the symbolic structure of self-transformation by identifying metaphors and binary oppositions employed to describe this process. Four consistent metaphors of self-transformation are identified: healing, renewal, tune-up, and quest. This set of metaphors is united by the idea of symbolic death, which suggests that transformation is interpreted in terms of rebirth and implies intense emotional experiences. Text in Russian
2025-12-24
Nikolay Mitrokhin
Национальная – и националистическая – мобилизация в трех современных странах Балтии (Латвии, Литве и Эстонии) в эпоху перестройки, стартовавшая для массовой аудитории с участия в песенных фестивалях народной музыки, танцев и традиционного костюма (в них участвовали десятки тысяч человек) и получившая наименование «песенной революции», является для авторов рецензируемого сборника поводом обсудить, какую роль играл фольклор в СССР (и у некоторых его партнеров по Варшавскому блоку, или стран-сателлитов) во второй половине ХХ века. Text in Russian