How to get from Soviet studies to Russian studies (original) (raw)
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A Return to the Past: Teaching Russian and Soviet History from a Eurasian Perspective
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, those who teach Russian history have faced a conundrum now that the convenient bipolarity of the Cold War is over fifteen years departed. I feel that I can use such a term as “convenient” comfortably at this time since for many scholars, including myself, the Cold War can now be thought of as a time of relative stability in comparison to today’s uncertain times. In this era of the eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union, nations and territories which were under Russian or Soviet influence for most of the twentieth century are now orienting themselves away from Eurasia. Many regions that were once part of the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or COMECON, are now a part of the decidedly Western institutions of NATO and the EU. We as educators in Slavic studies must approach the history of Russia in a manner that underscores its importance while at the same time emphasizing Russia’s relevance in a world which appears more interested in lands outside of the former Soviet Union. It is my view that a pedagogical approach that utilizes the rubric of Eurasianism, among other perspectives, can drive home for students, especially undergraduates, the notion of Russia’s continued viability and importance in a multipolar and insecure world.
One of the important and multifaceted areas of modern Russian and international humanities is so called “Russian studies”. The conceptual formation of the domestic Russian studies (“otechestvovedeniye”) refers to the 1990s. In that period researchers turned to the study of Russian civilization as an integral and independent scientific object. Russian studies explore the socio-cultural, political, economic and many other aspects of “civilization portrait” of the country, thereby forming a multidisciplinary knowledge of the Russian different historical eras. The article is devoted to the analyses of prospects and problems of “Russian Studies” and “Russian regional studies” as disciplines in the Russian system of higher education. In addition, the authors tried to define transformations of the concept “Russian studies” during the past two decade. Institutionalization of Russian studies as a new research direction was at the turn of 20th and 21th centuries. It was connected with the organization of scientific centers of Russian studies and the implementation of higher education discipline “Russian studies” which is taught within the master’s programs. The authors concluded that objectives and educational results of “Russian studies” and “Russian regional studies” as academic disciplines are still not clearly marked, as well as not determined definitively the status of these courses and programs. Nowadays there is no bachelor or master educational programs on “Russian studies”, and the corresponding center in the Russian State Humanitarian University trains masters in history, political science and philology. Keywords: Russian studies, higher education system, regional studies, multidisciplinary knowledge, international humanities, civilization approach.
Russia and the US in the Mirrors of Academic Research
Arei: Journal for Central and Eastern European History and Politics. 2022. V.1. # 1. P.68–91., 2022
The article offers a comparative analysis of Russian and American scholarship on each other states and society. the author overviews the study of us history in Russia, the study of Russian history in the us, the study of the history of Russian-American relations, and the discourse of each country on the contemporary political reality in the other. Both Russian and the US research agendas demonstrated some degree of dependence of the other country’s policies, they were engaged in a limited dialogue, but most heavily they were influenced by domestic politics. the author claims also that the image of russia in the united states and the image of America in Russia play important roles in the home debates making it difficult to separate foreign policy from domestic disputes. such a vantage point calls for the use of the social constructivist approach to the study of the US – Russian relations with its heavier focus on identity construction and nation-building.
Frontiers of Education in China, 2015
This study conceptualizes the internationalization of higher education as a legacy-bound response driven by geopolitical, cultural and economic dependencies. It examines the Russian case, and considers how Russian academics deal with complex sets of dependencies and rivalries, while sorting European, Asian and Soviet drivers in university positioning and partnership-building. The paper re-evaluates the path dependence perspective in the higher education literature by arguing that, notwithstanding the constructs and conveniences they are predisposed to select, academics have a choice to either comply with, or defy the governmental and institutional legacies imposed on them. The prevalence of one choice over the other, as well as an inconsistency of choices, shapes a complicated trajectory that can be referred to as "hybrid" development. This paper illustrates the progression of "hybrid" development by reflecting on the Russian legacy of imperial ambitions affecting the fragility of the global architecture of knowledge, policy development, cooperation and rule of law.
Russia, Eastern Europe and the West
Romanian Journal of Sociological Studies, 2009
Nowadays, many geopoliticians underline the fact that Russia has become a great power, with great resources and a great role in the international relations. It is a revival of old imperial supremacy, a revival of super-ethnos and what Lev Gumiliov named, “passionarity”. Stanislav Secrieru proposes a new vision of post-sovietic Russia, using the concept of “strategic identity”. The strategic identity is a way of geopolitical representations about Russia, the construction of Russia’s cognitive map; it may be seen as a way of the restoration of Russia’s internal and external supremacy, as Stanislav Secrieru says. In this way, Putin tried to monopolize the decisional processes and to stress the importance of geo-economical aspects in Russia’s relations with the West. Euro-Atlantic integration of ex-soviet countries from the eastern border of the European Union depends on the relations between Russia and the West, the Russia’s influence upon them and depends on their internal stability. But the eastern border of European Union seems “to suffer” from geopolitical instability. The ex-soviet countries (Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia) have still many problems related to economic, political and decisional instability. The geopolitical picture in this area is still unclear and vague.