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Twenty years after communism : the politics of memory and commemoration
\"Remembering the past, especially as collectivity, is a political process, thus the politics of memory and commemoration is an integral part of the establishment of new political regimes, new identities, and new principles of political legitimacy. This volume is about the explosion of the politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, particularly about the politics of its commemoration twenty years later. It offers seventeen in-depth case studies, an original theoretical framework, and a comparative study of memory regime types and their origins. Four different kinds of mnemonic actors are identified: mnemonic warriors, mnemonic pluralists, mnemonic abnegators, and mnemonic prospectives. Their combinations render three different types of memory regimes: fractured, pillarized, and unified. Disciplined comparative analysis shows how several different configurations of factors affect the emergence of mnemonic actors and different varieties of memory regimes. There are three groups of causal factors that influence the political form of the memory regime: the range of structural constraints the actors face (e.g., the type of regime transformation), cultural constraints linked to past political conflict (e.g., salient ethnic or religious cleavages), and cultural and strategic choices actors make (e.g. framing post-communist political identities)\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
A Critical and Theoretical Re-imagining of ‘Victimhood Nationalism’: The Case of National Victimhood of the Baltic Region
There are many arguments to support the idea that the Baltic nations (and other “victimized” areas) adhere to ‘victimhood nationalism’, a form of nationalism that explains the region’s recognition of its history and the related problems. Since the start of the 21st century, memory and area studies experts have used the concept of ‘victimhood nationalism’. However, the framework of victimhood nationalism is critically flawed. Its original conceptual architecture is weak and its effectiveness as an explanatory variable requires critical examination. This paper presents a theoretical examination of victimhood nationalism from the perspective of political and social historiology. Further, the paper criticizes the concept from the perspective of the empirical area studies of the Baltic region. First, it argues that the killing or damaging of one community by another does not automatically transform into a nationalism of victimhood. Unless it has been established that one community was the ‘victim’ and the other the perpetrator of the crime, these events will not be remembered as the basis of victimhood nationalism. Second, the effectiveness of this concept is criticized from two perspectives: “tangle” as an explanatory variable and its doctrinal history. It is tautological to claim that victimhood nationalism explains political issues, as was already being implied in the early twentieth-century collective memory studies. In conclusion, the assumption of victimhood is a preliminary necessity to a community claiming victimhood nationalism. Victimhood nationalism is not an explanatory, but an explained, variable. Therefore, the concept should be renamed otherwise. The alternative framework of collective memory studies framework of “victimhood” is needed. This research argues that Baltic area studies, particularly regarding history recognition, should be phenomenologically reconsidered to reimagine the framework of “victimhood”.
Journal Article
The Politics of Russian-Language Film Showings in Post-Soviet Georgia
A law was implemented in Georgia in 2011 that required all foreign films to be shown with Georgian state language dubbing or subtitling. At that time, Russian was the default language of film showings. A year later, the largest movie theater in Tbilisi was fined for showing films in Russian language without Georgian state language subtitling or dubbing. This fine, however, had little effect on film-showing practices. I describe how media-language politics involved collaboration among social actors in the Georgian Ministry of Culture, the movie theater industry, and the film-dubbing industry. To do so, I develop the concept of dormant law: a mostly unenforced hard law that codifies aspirational conditions. Through the possibility of selective activation, dormant law functions as a latent instrument of politics. In political and popular discourse during President Saakashvili's era (2004-2013), social actors framed Russian as a potentially hazardous symbolic resource embedded in infrastructure, whereas they framed English as either harmless or enriching to \"Georgianness.\" In film-language debates, citizens and politicians reflected on the meanings of \"international\" languages, in contrast with Georgian. The Film Law manifested a hierarchy of social value in which English and Russian were competing codes, iconic of possible future Georgian modernities.
Journal Article
Shrinking Cities in Post-Socialist Europe: What Can We Learn From Their Analysis for Theory Building Today?
In the final decades of the twentieth century, the post-industrial regions of western Europe and the US were hot-spots of urban shrinkage, and this also affected large areas in post-socialist countries. Despite ongoing calls for a better integration of diverse global urban experiences into theorization, post-socialist cities and their trajectories, as well as their experiences with rapid urban change, have been largely disregarded in general theory development.
At the same time, we face a somewhat inconsistent situation in the theoretical discourse on urban development. There are requests for \"new geographies of theory\" or to regard all cities as \"ordinary\", in order to include different types of narratives and experience into overall comparisons and/or theory building.
Set against this background, this paper aims to deal with the case of shrinking post-socialist cities, that is, cities that are \"excluded\" from hegemonic discourses for two reasons: they are post-socialist and they are shrinking. In contrast to this situation, we understand shrinking post-socialist cities as valuable examples for strengthening the debate on current and future forms of, and determining factors for, general urbanization. At the focus of our paper, therefore, are the questions about what we can learn from the analysis of shrinking post-socialist cities for the general discourse, as well as for theory building for cities, and how we can overcome the observed reluctance to integrate the post-socialist experience into general theory development.
The paper draws on an EU 7 FP research project finished in 2012 that comparatively analysed urban shrinkage across several regions of Europe, with a particular focus on post-socialist countries.
Journal Article
Translation and Power in Georgia: Postcolonial Trajectories from Socialist Realism to Post-Soviet Market Pressures
This study examines the transformation of literary translation practices in Georgia from the Soviet era to the post-Soviet and neoliberal periods, using postcolonial translation theory as the main analytical lens. Translation is treated not merely as a linguistic transfer but as a process shaped by ideological control, cultural representation, and global power hierarchies. In the Soviet era, censorship policies rooted in socialist realism imposed direct ideological interventions; children’s literature such as Maya the Bee and Bambi exemplified how religious or individualist themes were replaced with collectivist narratives. In the post-Soviet period, overt censorship has largely disappeared; however, structural factors—including the absence of a coherent national translation policy, economic precarity, and dependence on Western funding—have become decisive in shaping translation choices. The shift from Russian to English as the dominant source language has introduced new symbolic hierarchies, privileging Anglophone literature while marginalizing regional and non-Western voices. Drawing on the Georgian Book Market Research 2013–2015 alongside archival materials, paratextual analysis, and contemporary case studies, including the Georgian translation of André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name, the study shows how translators negotiate between market expectations, cultural taboos, and ethical responsibility. It argues that translation in Georgia remains a contested site of cultural negotiation and epistemic justice.
Journal Article
Post-Soviet informality: towards theory-building
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to suggest that informal practices and institutions of post-Soviet countries differ from informality in other post-socialist regions and, therefore, proposes categorizing it as “post-Soviet informality” – a composite definition that extends beyond the concept of “informal economy” and encompasses, along with economic activities, social and political spheres.
Design/methodology/approach
– The arguments of the paper are based on a comprehensive analysis of secondary sources.
Findings
– This paper shows that, owing to the effects of antecedent regime’s legacies and the problems of post-communist transition, for the proper analysis of informality in post-Soviet countries it needs to be based on an own concept.
Originality/value
– This study, in contrast to the existing literature on informality in post-communist spaces, specifically focuses on the informal sphere of post-Soviet countries, suggesting that the informal institutions and practices thriving across the vast post-Soviet space not only differ from the informal spheres elsewhere in the world, but also from informality in other post-communist regions.
Journal Article
“Sovereign” Islam and Tatar “Aqīdah”: normative religious narratives and grassroots criticism amongst Tatarstan’s Muslims
“Traditional Islam” has emerged in the post-Soviet Republic of Tatarstan (Russian Federation) as a powerful if contentious discursive trope. In this paper, I look at traditional Islam and its conceptual twin, “non-traditional Islam”, as normative governmental tools aimed at defining acceptable or unwelcome form of religious commitment in an environment in which the rapid success of Sunni piety trends after socialism’s end has exacerbated the anxieties of both state institutions and a predominantly secular public. Traditional Islam’s multiple facets are explored, with particular attention given to the aspects of heritage-making, at the local (republican) level, and loyalty-fostering at the national (all-Russian) level. The concept’s genealogy, spanning different phases of Soviet and post-Soviet history, is analysed in detail. In addition, I focus on the reception of the traditional/non-traditional Islam discourse amongst grassroots pious Muslims, highlighting instances of criticism, lampooning, rejection, but also qualified acceptance. The concluding sections of my paper touch on “theological” traditional Islam’s potential and limitations for expanding civil society and harnessing grassroots enthusiasm.
Journal Article
Violence, bribery, and fraud: the political economy of elections in Sub-Saharan Africa
Post-Soviet African democratization has introduced elections into contexts that often lack restraints upon the behavior of candidates, resulting in the emergence of voter intimidation, vote-buying, and ballot fraud. We propose a model of electoral competition where, although some voters oppose violence, it is effective in intimidating swing voters. We show that in equilibrium a weak challenger will use violence, which corresponds to a terrorism strategy. Similarly, a nationally weak incumbent will use repression. However, a stronger incumbent facing local competition will prefer to use bribery or ballot fraud. We discuss the applicability of the model to several African elections.
Journal Article
Political Control, Administrative Simplicity, or Economies of Scale? Four Cases of the Reunification of Nationalized Theatres in Russia, Germany, Austria, and France (1918–45)
In 1917–18, the new republican governments of Russia, Germany, and Austria nationalized their former court property. A monarchic-turned-national heritage of prestigious opera and dramatic theatres weighed heavily on national and regional budgets, prompting first attempts to create centralized forms of theatre governance. In a second wave of theatre reorganization in the mid-1930s, the Soviet government created ‘union theatres’ under a Committee for Arts Affairs; the German and Austrian theatres underwent the Nazi Gleichschaltung (1933–35 and 1938); and France, a ‘democratic outlier’, opted for nationalizing the Opéra and Opéra-Comique under the Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux. These conglomerates have so far been little studied as historically specific forms of theatre management, particularly from a comparative, trans-regime perspective. What balance can be struck between economic, political, and ‘artistic’ costs and benefits? How does ‘Baumol’s law’ of decreasing theatre profitability apply to these very different politico-economic systems, as well as to war economies? Dictatorships reveal an economic seduction power, while this essay argues for confirming a long-term ‘great European convergence’ of state-centred theatre management, internal structure, and accountability, both in peace and war. Here, the stated goals and short-term contingencies yielded to trends originating from the logic of theatre production itself, and the compromises that the state, theatre professionals, and the public accepted in exchange for the capital of prestige. Alexander Golovlev (PhD, European University Institute in Florence, 2017) is a senior research fellow at the HSE Institute for Advanced Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at the University of Moscow. His recent publications include, for New Theatre Quarterly, ‘Theatre Policies of Soviet Stalinism and Italian Fascism Compared, 1920–1940s’ (2019), and ‘Balancing the Books and Staging Operas under Duress: Bolshoi Theatre Management, Wartime Economy, and State Sponsorship in 1941–1945’, Russian History XLVII, No. 4 (2020).
Journal Article
Russia and the Middle East: From 'Honest Broker' to 'Status-Keeper'
Using the framework of social identity theory, the article attempts to explain the main shifts in Russian policy toward the Middle East since the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to this theory, states have three strategies for achieving status: social mobility, social competition, and social creativity. In the 30 years prior to January 2022, Russian policy in the Middle East tested each of these strategies. In the 1990s Moscow's actions in the region acquired a pragmatic character and can be characterized as social mobility. In the 2000s, with the strengthening of the country's position, the Russian leadership employed the strategy of social competition. The events of the Arab Spring and the stagnation of relations with the West led to a crisis of social competition and an orientation toward social creativity. However, social creativity in the Middle East proved too costly for Moscow: Russia needed to be recognized as \"equal\" to other global players and minimize costs. This resulted in Russia's policy of balancing between social creativity and social competition.
Journal Article