{"title":"Alexandr Serebrovskiĭ and the Modernization of the Soviet Oil Industry—1924 to 1929","authors":"Jonathan Sicotte","doi":"10.30965/18763324-BJA10032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-BJA10032","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Baku, the center of the Russian and then Soviet oil industry, represented the raw economic potential of early Soviet industry. At the head of the industry was Alexandr Serebrovskiĭ, head of Azneft, the largest Soviet oil trust, and a pivotal figure in reviving Soviet oil production across the 1920s. His trip to the United States in 1924 and his subsequent plan to restore Baku’s productive capacity via American technology and methodology would not only improve the industry’s output but allow Azneft to directly compete with American oil companies on the international stage, thus demonstrating the latent potential of the Soviet Union for exportation. However, while this project seemed initially successful, it created a difficult fiscal legacy as Azneft became increasingly financially insolvent across the 1920s.","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43279600","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":"Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russia and Soviet History, edited by Nicholas B. Breyfogle","authors":"J. Seitz","doi":"10.30965/18763324-BJA10031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-BJA10031","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46129146","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":"Learning to Become Turkmen: Literacy, Language, and Power, 1914-2014, written by Victoria Clement","authors":"V. Artman","doi":"10.30965/18763324-BJA10030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-BJA10030","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46626473","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":"What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire, written by Madina Tlostanova","authors":"T. Klepikova","doi":"10.30965/18763324-BJA10029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-BJA10029","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47240090","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 House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution, writted byYuri Slezkine","authors":"Deirdre Ruscitti Harshman","doi":"10.30965/18763324-20201379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-20201379","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":"48 1","pages":"129-131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49248869","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":"Migration and Mobility in the Modern Age: Refugees, Travelers, and Traffickers in Europe and Eurasia, edited by Anika Walke, Jan Musekamp, and Nicole Svobodny","authors":"R. Turaeva","doi":"10.30965/18763324-20201378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-20201378","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":"48 1","pages":"126-128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48922763","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":"How the War Began: Conceptualizing Conflict Escalation in Ukraine’s Donbas","authors":"Jakob Hauter","doi":"10.30965/18763324-20201380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-20201380","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article proposes a new theoretical framework based on conflict escalation theory and the concept of critical junctures to facilitate a more transparent analysis of the war in Ukraine’s Donbas. It argues that researchers have proposed a variety of causes of the outbreak of violence in the region. However, in the absence of an overarching theoretical framework, it remains difficult to analyse the interplay of these causes and compare their explanatory power. In response, this article develops a theory-guided escalation sequence model. According to this model, the conflict’s formative phase consisted of an escalation sequence that lasted from April until August 2014 and comprised six critical junctures. This article argues that attempts to explain the conflict should be evaluated and compared in terms of their ability to explain these critical junctures. It concludes that similar escalation sequence models could improve research on armed conflict beyond the case of the Donbas.","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44448595","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":"Is Democracy Possible in Russia?","authors":"A. V. Grinëv","doi":"10.30965/18763324-20201375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-20201375","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article discusses the question of why a Western-style democracy has not been formed in Russia. The prerequisite for the formation of a democracy as a political regime is the domination of small and medium-sized private property and a middle class. Since the middle class has been small in Russia throughout most of its history for a number of objective reasons, the country has hardly known full-fledged democracy, and the current political system only imitates it. Russia’s attempts to enter the trajectory of democratic development—both in the early twentieth century, and since the early 1990s–have failed, and the trend of abandoning the basic principles of democracy has prevailed over the past two decades. The blame for this lies not only on the current Russian leadership but to no lesser extent on the political leadership of the West, which for the sake of short-term self-serving interests or political ambitions has contributed much to the formation of the current Russian regime.","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":"48 1","pages":"58-84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46793674","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 Soviet Ethnic Cleansing? The Polish-Soviet Population Exchange and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1944–1947","authors":"Dmitry Halavach","doi":"10.30965/18763324-20201376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-20201376","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article examines the population exchange between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1944–1947, its role in the shaping of modern Ukraine, and its place in the evolution of the Soviet nationality policy. It investigates the factors involved in the decision-making of individuals and state officials and then assesses how people on the ground made sense of the Soviet population politics. While the earlier scholarship saw the transfer as punitive national deportation, the article argues that it was neither punitive nor purely national nor was it a deportation. The article shows that the party-state was ambivalent about the Polish minority and was not committed to total national homogenization of Western Ukraine. Instead, the people themselves were often eager to leave the USSR because of the poor living conditions, fear of Sovietization, and ethnic conflict. Paradoxically, one of the largest Soviet nation-building projects was not the product of coherent nationality policy.","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44636921","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 Fly in the Soup: Gibberish in Russia as Aesthetic Defiance","authors":"Irina Dzero","doi":"10.30965/18763324-20201374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-20201374","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Unintelligible sequences of letters or words in today’s Russian culture are omnipresent: in slogans, such as “Hair is the best remedy,” “Stop grandma’s merciless feeding!”; on social media, for example #ifnotputinthencat and “LSDUZ and IFIAU9”; in satirical songs and poems; in films by Zvyagintsev, novels by Sorokin, Tolstaya, and Pelevin, etc. The appeal of gibberish and its repression by the Soviet and post-Soviet officialdom is rooted in the belief that art and word have the power to influence people and events. Avant-garde artists who pioneered this belief in the transformative power of art cheered the Bolshevik’s promise to create a new society, but were soon crushed by the Soviet state as dangerous saboteurs. Today, gibberish is again a strategy of aesthetic defiance. Erudite and inventive, gibberish eludes the grasp of state censorship. It builds communities of resistance, and spoils the authoritative discourse like a fly in the soup.","PeriodicalId":41969,"journal":{"name":"Soviet and Post Soviet Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46217843","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}