{"title":"Myself and the Other: Competitive Narratives of Georgians and Abkhazians","authors":"Kristina Khutsishvili","doi":"10.1353/REG.2018.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2018.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article is a case study framing the issue of alienation and othering between Georgians and Abkhazians. The underlying assumption is that a possible solution of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict can be based on identity research. At this point, the theoretical framework of identity studies merges with the methodological standpoint of discourse analysis, with identity presented through the \"winning\" discourse, being a result of a competition of different flows, including the Golden Age of independence, imperial Russian and Soviet past, experience of the 1990s, religion, traditions, and so on. Respondents of the study are Georgians and Abkhazians active in thematic groups in social networks. Asking them about their self-perception and perception of \"the other,\" we are facing narratives of an imaginary nature based on reconstruction and over-construction of the past. This suggests that we look for a possible solution of the conflict through direct negotiations between the parties, starting from a \"zero\" point of current interests. A supplementary finding, which gives space for optimism, indicates the low level of hate in our respondents' narratives toward each other, although these narratives are still highly emotional.","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121441969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906–1931 by Per Anders Rudling (review)","authors":"Matthew D. Pauly","doi":"10.1353/reg.2018.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/reg.2018.0007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124237701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The State and Ethnic Minorities: The Case of Georgia","authors":"Mikheil Shavtvaladze","doi":"10.1353/REG.2018.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2018.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article analyzes interethnic relations in post-Soviet Georgia seen from the perspective of political stability and peaceful democratic consolidation. Approaching the question through theories of conflict management in divided societies, the paper traces the degree of state accommodation of minorities under Gamsakhurdia, Shevardnadze, Saakashvili and Georgian Dream. This article argues that the ethnonationalistic, centralizing, majoritarian, and arbitrary approaches employed in various degrees and intensities by the state contributed to the escalation of ethnoterritorial conflicts, political instability, and insufficient accommodation of minorities in post-Soviet Georgia.","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131875405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interethnic Communication on the Russian-Chinese Border: Its Past and Present","authors":"K. Fedorova","doi":"10.1353/REG.2018.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2018.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article deals with the situation in the Russian-Chinese border area, with a special focus on the process of interethnic communication, both now and in the past. Two sets of data are used for analysis: written sources on the Russian-Chinese pidgin, which was in use in the region in the 18th and 19th centuries and until the end of the 1930s, and the author's field work materials gathered in 2008–10 in the Zabaikalskii territory of Russia and in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. The article reveals a similarity in the communicative strategies used by Russian and Chinese speakers in everyday communication at present with those reflected in the sources on the Russian-Chinese pidgin, a fact which implies the stability of linguistic (as well as ethnic) stereotypes.","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"756 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132780492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Architecture at the End of the Earth: Photographing the Russian North by William Craft Brumfield (review)","authors":"S. Smith-Peter","doi":"10.1353/REG.2017.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2017.0022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128418464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–2015 ed. by Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud (review)","authors":"Yulia Krylova","doi":"10.1353/REG.2017.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2017.0020","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129114877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Envisioning Imperial Space: P. I. Rychkov’s Narratives of Orenburg, 1730s–70s","authors":"C. Leckey","doi":"10.1353/REG.2017.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2017.0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article analyzes the construction of cultural identity in the 18th-century Volga-Ural region through the works of the historian and geographer Petr Ivanovich Rychkov (1712–77). Rychkov produced a variety of works that collectively offer a valuable perspective on the interplay of provincial and imperial narratives on Russia’s southeastern frontier. Central to the analysis are his three major works: Orenburg History (1744); Orenburg Topography (1762); and Chronicle of the Siege of Orenburg (1774). This article examines Rychkov as a settler, whose close involvement and vested interest in the colony’s success inspired local loyalties that coexisted alongside his imperial sentiments.","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134174676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War by Robert Blobaum (review)","authors":"M. Wilczewski","doi":"10.1353/REG.2017.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2017.0018","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"147 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121252739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Snowmobile Revolution, Market Restoration, and Ecological Sustainability of Reindeer Herding: Changing Patterns of Micro- vs. Macromobility among Komi Reindeer Herders of Bol´shezemel´skaia Tundra","authors":"K. Istomin, A. Popov, Hye Jin Kim","doi":"10.1353/REG.2017.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2017.0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Like all other groups living in Russia, nomadic reindeer herders of the Russian north had to adapt to the tremendous social changes of the 1990s. This paper draws on data from extensive fieldwork among the Izhma Komi reindeer herders of the northeasternmost part of European Russia to analyze the changes in their economy and way of life that occurred in the last decade of the former and the first decade of the current century. Izhma Komi reindeer herders have more or less successfully re-established the market-oriented reindeer herding they had in the late 19th–early 20th centuries. However, this changed their pattern of winter mobility: their macromobility decreased (seasonal sedentarism), while their micromobility increased considerably. The latter has been made possible by the introduction of snowmobiles as a new herding tool. Despite being necessary for the development of market-oriented reindeer herding, this change of mobility rendered Komi reindeer herding less sustainable from the ecological point of view.","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129980159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Tale of Two Reindeer: Pastoralism and Preservation in the Soviet Arctic","authors":"Andy Bruno","doi":"10.1353/REG.2017.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/REG.2017.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This paper explores the parallel histories of two institutions in the Soviet north: the Lapland Nature Reserve just west of Lake Imandra on the Kola Peninsula and the neighboring Red Pulozero collective farm. Both created in the throes of Stalinism in the early 1930s, the former aimed to restore wild reindeer on a protected parcel of land and the latter sought to turn a small Sami community into practitioners of socialist reindeer herding. Over time the relationship between these reindeer pastoralists and preservationists vacillated from mutual assistance to mutual antagonism. Sami herders provided essential knowledge for the conservation program but later found their domestic reindeer roaming on the territory of the reserve. Conservationists hired Sami staff but later accused them of poaching wild reindeer. In the end these tensions contributed to the closure of the collective farm in the early 1960s and appropriation of Pulozero reindeer by veterinary scientists.","PeriodicalId":307724,"journal":{"name":"Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125735393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}