Антропология революции

Traditionally, Ukraine’s political scene has been seen as a dichotomy of pro-Western, pro-democracy forces based on the western part of the nation (Ukrainian-speaking, national-democratic and arguably ‘more European’), and pro-Russian forces based on its eastern and southern parts (Russian-speaking and Soviet-nostalgic).

The post-revolutionary years, however, revealed the limits of these cultural-political explanations and related strategies. Ukrainian politicians have begun to look elsewhere for convincing alternatives capable of constructing an imagined community broader than those based on the East/West dichotomy. Their efforts resulted in two political strategies promoted by the above-mentioned political forces (which can be labeled, respectively, ‘defense of stability’ and ‘struggle for justice’). Societal preconditions for both strategies, their main messages, their target audiences, and values embodied are reviewed here in detail.

The article also analyses two quite different tactics of political image-building represented in the public personae of the leaders, Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko. It is argued that these public images are products of mass culture techniques ratherthan of traditional political propaganda campaigns. The leaders, therefore, are indebted much more to the symbolic capital of regional, national and global popular culture for their success than to political meaning of their messages or economic results of their policies.

Viktor Zhivov (Moscow, Russian Language Institute / Berkeley, University of California). «Disciplinary Revolution and the Struggle with Superstitions in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Failures and their Repercussions». The formation of modern state and modern society in various European countries was informed, differently in different cases, by a disciplinary revolution, that is, by the regimentation of the social life originally based on new religious values. The extirpation of superstitions was an important part of this process; «superstitions» could be conceptualized in this process in various manners. The paper describes the peculiarities of this struggle in eighteenth-century Russia and analyzes the consequences of its failure.

Sergey Yarov (St. Petersburg, European University, St. Petersburg Institute of the Russian Academy of Science). «Explaining leaving the RCP(b) in 1919–1922 as a form of expressing political loyalty (on the materials of the State contemporary history archives of the Novgorod region)». The main topic of the article is pressure to conform produced by the revolutionary political institutions. Applications for permission to leave the Party made by the rank and file Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) members had never been used as a primary source before. The author analyses such applications written mostly by former peasants and semiliterate workers that were preserved in the State contemporary history archives of the Novgorod region (Russia). Paradoxically, these documents express more conformism and loyalty to the new, Soviet regime than applications to join the Communist party. This has to do with the fact that leaving the Party could have led to political persecution, so the authors strived to persuade the local functionaries that they support the new regime and that their reasons for leaving the party ranks were not of a political nature. The form of many documents of that kind resemble standard prerevolutionary petitions sent by private persons to various administrative bodies.