Publications

The chapter highlights constitutional and institutional antecedents in Ukrainian law and politics since independence in 1991 which have been overlooked in conventional explanations about the conflicts in Ukrainian territory since 2014, and without which it is impossible to understand the dynamics at play in each of them. 

Introducing previously neglected primary sources and suggesting an alternative approach to researching history of art during the Cold War, in this article, I rethink Soviet Thaw- and post-Thaw fate of cubism. In doing so, I acknowledge the movement's major constituting role within Soviet art discourse. In a first step, I analyze an unknown strategy of apology of cubism designed by seminal Kulturträgers Igor Golomstock and Andrei Sinyavsky. This is to challenge dominant scholarly accounts paying overly attention to Soviet negative criticism of cubism while ignoring the actual complexity of debates within the allegedly monolithic totalitarian discourse. Analyzing results of the apology, I argue that the attempt to rehabilitate cubism caused an intensification of negative criticism characteristic of novel anti-modernist patterns such as by Mikhail Lifshitz, a prominent Soviet philosopher. This re-actualization of debates on cubism had both domestic and transnational premises. Ultimately, situating Soviet discussions of cubism within relevant European debates on modernist art, I nuance interpretations of Soviet art discourse as that of an isolationist.

Over the 20th century, there were significant changes in children's health and enormous gains in pediatric healthcare because of systematic healthcare development including public health interventions. This study reviews children’s morbidity and mortality at the end of the 19th century by examining historical medical records of the Children’s Clinic of Tomsk Imperial University (Western Siberia, Russian Empire). We reviewed the official books of the inpatient department`s records between 1893 and 1899 as well as outpatient department’s records for the one-year period of 1899. The study confirms that mortality due to infectious diseases remained in first place among all other causes.

This chapter familiarizes Western readers with recent developments in the history of drugs in modern Russia and the Soviet Union. The field is just beginning in terms of its achievements, problems, new archives, and interpretations, and its uncharted territory for future research. The chapter starts by describing the main trends in the historiography of drug use and drug policy in twentieth-century Russia (both before and after 1991). It further sketches crucial points in both the social history of drugs and the evolution of a repressive governmental response between about 1900 and 2000, with a special focus on the early Soviet period. Open discussions of the drug problem (including cocaine) were prohibited in the Soviet era, but can be discerned via medical debates. Finally, the chapter closes with problematic aspects of “new drug history” in the Russian context and avenues for further research.

This article examines the phenomenon of Soviet industrial and technical creativity (promyshlennoe i tekhnicheskoe tvorchestvo) from the late 1950s to the 1980s. It particularly focuses on invention and rationalization movement at industrial enterprises via the lens of Soviet industrial policy. It emphasizes creativity as a labor resource and incentive developed into the oversized system and shows its structural elements and encouragements. The paper argues that beginning in the 1950s onwards, the Soviet state placed labor creativity into the center of industrial development and own vision of progress seeing it as a resource for technological competitiveness from Khrushchev`s aim to reach communism to perestroika. The Soviet leadership, however, overemphasized creativity as workers` ability to come up with new ideas and find rapid technical solutions to industrial problems in addition to their main duties to show the creative nature of socialist labor. As a result, it developed a formalized branched system of numerous institutions and nominal awards which made creativity not only an industrial necessity but to a large extent a performative product.This article examines the phenomenon of Soviet industrial and technical creativity (promyshlennoe i tekhnicheskoe tvorchestvo) from the late 1950s to the 1980s. It particularly focuses on invention and rationalization movement at industrial enterprises via the lens of Soviet industrial policy. It emphasizes creativity as a labor resource and incentive developed into the oversized system and shows its structural elements and encouragements. The paper argues that beginning in the 1950s onwards, the Soviet state placed labor creativity into the center of industrial development and own vision of progress seeing it as a resource for technological competitiveness from Khrushchev`s aim to reach communism to perestroika. The Soviet leadership, however, overemphasized creativity as workers` ability to come up with new ideas and find rapid technical solutions to industrial problems in addition to their main duties to show the creative nature of socialist labor. As a result, it developed a formalized branched system of numerous institutions and nominal awards which made creativity not only an industrial necessity but to a large extent a performative product.

The arctile uncovers Soviet biopolitics of respiratory safety. 

This article examines the history of socialist collaboration in Comecon through the lens of a large industrial project in Soviet Siberia. It examines the construction of the Ust`-Ilimsk forest industrial complex which was conceived as a collective effort of six socialist European countries. On the one hand, the project formed part of the Soviet Union’s strategy of technological colonization of Soviet Eastern lands, and on the other, it aimed to enhance socialist collaboration and integration efforts through the exchange of material goods and expertise, as prescribed by the project agreements. The paper focuses on the interplay between ideological implications, national interests and material shortages when completing the project, showing the contradictory nature of socialist collaborative construction. It argues that the Soviet central government sought material resources for the construction from ‘brother’ socialist countries with an ideological emphasis on how important it was for further cooperation in the Eastern bloc. In fact, the project exposed difficulties, ranging from material shortages typical of state socialism and the predominance of national economic interests, with the result that this socialist project was compelled to also make use of Western equipment and expertise, transforming Ust`-Ilimsk from a socialist to a far more international construction site.

The paper discusses prefiously unknown story of the first documented international voyage of the Russian whaling vessel throught the perspective of the early experience of interaction between the Russian seafarers and the foreign judicial system.

The article is devoted to the conceptual analysis of the term «workmanship» in the labor of industrial workers. Based on a critical reading of Tim Ingold's «taskscape» theory, an attempt is made to answer a number of questions: Can industrial workers be creative? Do you need to have workmanship in order to work with industrial equipment? What is the role of equipment wear and tear in the industrial labor process? This paper uses an ethnography of labor at the Iriski candy factory. It is concluded that due to the wear and tear of the equipment, the labor of the operators of the candy factory requires more involvement and the use of their creative skills («living knowledge» according to Andre Gorz). Thus deterioration of equipment stimulates the creativity of the operators and makes their skills more unique. Their workmanship in the work process is determined by how skillfully they are able to «cope» with wear and tear and maintain the continuous operation of the packaging cycle. All this makes them, on the one hand, more involved in labor, but, on the other hand, and more «exploited», since their «workmanship» remains invisible to management, as well as the widespread equipment deterioration of the factory infrastructure.

This article explores a repertoire of interactions between Alexei Sidortsev, a tenacious

Soviet worker defending his rights, and the Soviet legal bureaucracy up to the

Supreme Court. Using the Sidortsev case as an example, I plan to demonstrate the

judicial logic of interpreting the parties’ various arguments and evidence. This case

allows us to describe and analyze the range of rights and legal opportunities available

to the Soviet worker under interwar law. I also focus on the rhetorical transformations

of Sidortsev’s arguments, changing from ideological to pragmatically bureaucratic.

Although Sidortsev was skilled in ideologized Soviet language, it was the material argument

that was decisive in courts interpretations of the facts of the case. On this basis,

I argue that material truth in the socialist legal consciousness is not determined by the

discursive political language of denunciation that we have come to regard as defining

in the Soviet system.

The Empire, as one of the political forms of state systems, existed at all times and on all continents. Its main feature has been the unification of numerous ethnic groups with different cultural, political and economic characteristics under a Center. Usually this unification led to the establishment of domination over the subjugated peoples with the help of imperial practices. One of these is the botanical garden. The imperial garden idea expressed many concepts of Empire: ideological, political, cultural, educational, etc. This institution was primarily intended to underline the Empire greatness through metaphors of center, paradise, prosperity, unity of different parties, etc. This was evident in the Modern history Empires, which arose because of the West's special interest in plant resources or their accompanying commodities: spices, sugar, silk, cotton, and others. The imperial garden in this time was designed to serve the Metropolis interests and at the same time for the colony development, which was carried out in accordance with the Center interests. The formation of this institution in Russia took place simultaneously in the Center and on the Frontier. The Astrakhan case shows well how this institution was formed in the region in the 18th century according to national trends. While some regions made progress during this period, the Center exhibited the opposite trend. After the breakthrough in the Petrine era, the development of this institution was not in line with the Empire objectives. In the 19th century, a tendency to realize the importance of this institution appeared again.

is chapter examines the diering opinions between industrial and scientic institutions over the use of the waters of Lake Baikal in the context of Soviet development policies in Siberia, beginning in the 1950s. It argues that institutions and people experienced Baikal as a place of contradiction, clearly illustrating that Soviet industry posed the risk of harm to the natural environment. In dierent professional layers of Soviet society, Baikal became an arena of conict over water (and nature more broadly) and the lake’s own, natural ability to purify chemical waste discharged into the waters. Employing new archival sources, such as institutional and individual correspondence and reports, this chapter discusses the role of Baikal in the interplay between industry and environment at the institutional level and contributes to the scholarship on Soviet postwar environmental history.

Aleksandr Turbin looks at the ethnically diversified merchant communities of the far east of Russia, investigating the means with which Russian citizenship was acquired, and their evolution, within the dynamics of inclusion animating the Priamurye region during the thirty years preceding the war. He pays particular attention to the rhetoric of the discourse concerning the inclusion and exclusion of individuals on the grounds of local, national, racial and other forms of classification. To understand more fully the nature and role to be attributed to Russian citizenship, the author made a comparison not only of local or regional contexts, but also of global processes, by considering the relationship between elements present within the empire and by measuring them against those of other empires of the time. This approach reveals the constant search for alternative languages with which to discuss the relationship between sovereignty, political community and individuals, bringing into question a teleological narrative on the transformation of Russian citizenship.

Although nation and empire – as well as the organicist and universalist visions mirroring them – are usually put in opposition to each other, this article argues that the two can create synergistic alliances. The attempt of the Danish dynastic union proposal to Sweden in 1810 sheds light on the repertoire of rhetoric and arguments the state could harness to substantiate its potential to rule over diverse populations. First, the paper demonstrates how the trope of Scandinavian kinship was formulated in the Danish public debate during the transitional period, or what Koselleck calls Sattelzeit. Then, the article shows how this language was embedded into power relations and configured to reinforce the imperial aspirations of the Nordic amalgamation, meaning the fusion of the Scandinavian nations. The core sources I consult are the pamphlets published to advertise union-building and the documents stored in the folders of the Royal Archive in Copenhagen (Rigsarkivet).

This paper discusses several ethical issues related to clinical trials within the Soviet system of drug development and testing, which reflected larger ideological principles of healthcare organization in the ussr, with its focus on eradicating market elements from drug development. The centralized state-controlled system was thought to combat such drawbacks of free-market drug development as high prices and aggressive advertising; also to discourage the duplication of research by numerous independent actors that was perceived to be common in capitalist countries. Another significant ethical issue was the Soviet emphasis on the unity of scientific research and clinical treatment. Their strict separation, introduced to support normative standards defined by the U.S. pharmaceutical drug testing system, was rejected in the ussr where knowledge of new treatment options came from treatment practice, not laboratory-like experimental conditions of randomized controlled double-blind trials. The Soviet design was closer to so-called ‘pragmatic trials’ that focus on solving ‘real-life’ problems in clinical practice. Not all ethical problems were successfully addressed in the Soviet model, where there were always significant gaps between neatly postulated theory and messy clinical practice. The unity of scientific research and clinical practice was difficult to achieve. Archival research shows potential ethical issues related to geographic disparities in carrying out clinical trials, and the importance of personal and informal connections in the Soviet model.