Suchergebnisse

The author and journalist Morten Jentoft reviews the book Herring in Fur Coat – 20 Years in Putin's Shadow, written by Kristoffer Lieng.

Author and journalist Halvor Tjønn reviews Erik Kulavig's book, Face to Face with the Russians: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Pantheon, 2020).

Abstract in English:Fragments of the Past – History's Role in Russian Contemporary Literature Fragmenter av fortid – Historiens rolle i russisk samtidslitteratur is a thorough analysis of the utilisation of history in post-Soviet Russian literature. The author argues that literature functions as a 'place of reflection' that can produce vital alternatives to the monolithic understanding of history promoted by the authorities, and as such, literature has regained its traditional influence in Russian society following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Små russiske hverdager är norsklektorn Torunn Berntsens oredigerade minnesbilder av livet i det sena 1990-talets Ryssland. Navet i berättelsen är köket hos Berntsens hyresvärdinna i Sankt Petersburg, där en stor del av vardagen försiggår och funderingar uppstår. Författaren grubblar mycket över Rysslands väsen och framtid.
Små russiske hverdager (An Average Day in Russia) are Norwegian lecturer Torunn Berntsen's unedited memoirs of life in late 1990s Russia. The hub of the story is the kitchen at Berntsen's landlady in St. Petersburg, where a large part of everyday life takes place and thoughts arise. The author ponders a lot about Russia's essence and future.

Rysk november. En intervjuresa i nordvästligsta Ryssland er en reiseskildring fra Kola-halvøya og Karelen i Russland, der forfatteren beskriver egne møter underveis med representanter for både sivilsamfunnet og det offentlige. Boka er lettlest og engasjerende, og egner seg for alle som er interessert i samfunnsutviklingen i Russland og arktiske spørsmål.
Rysk november. En intervjuresa i nordvästligsta Ryssland is a travelogue from the Kola Peninsula and Karelia in Russia, where the author describes his own meetings along the way with representatives of both civil society and the public sector. The book is easy to read and engaging, and suitable for anyone interested in the development of Russian society and the Arctic.

Abstract: A tragedy of the Galician diversity: Murder and commemoration of Polish professors killed in Lviv during WWIIIn popular imagery, the former Habsburg province of Galicia and its capital city Lemberg/Lwów/Lviv have been acclaimed for their unique mixture of religions, cultures and nationalities. However, there are also darker sides of this Galician diversity, as became evident during the wars and crises of the first half of the twentieth century. It is instructive to explore how the entanglements between collective and individual choices, cultural genealogies and political aspirations looked in practice in this part of Europe, and how historical events of the twentieth century have reflected this complexity. This article explores one such event: the murder of a group of eminent Polish academics during the Nazi occupation of Lviv/Lwów. After the war, this tragic episode was commemorated quite independently in the two parts of Galicia now divided by the redrawn Polish–(Soviet)Ukrainian border. The episode remains controversial due to the contradictory interpretative frameworks and agenda-setting of various actors involved into the memorialization. The author draws on Michael Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory to highlight how reverberations of Galician diversity can be approached from an anthropological perspective, focusing on meaning-making and agency.

I boken Urban Protest: A Spatial Perspective on Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow utvecklas och testas ett teoretiskt ramverk för att kartlägga hur massprotester påverkas av den plats där de utspelar sig och den politiska kontexten. Modellen är gedigen och utan tvekan ett bra verktyg för att förstå hur en specifik plats bidrar till att möjliggöra eller begränsa protesters utveckling. Författaren borde nöjt sig med detta och inte strävat efter att modellen också ska förklara varför protester »lyckas» eller »misslyckas». En sådan kausalitet framställer, felaktigt, massprotester som någon slags demokratisk »quick fix» trots att politisk förändring i de allra flesta fall i stället är resultatet av en lång utvecklingsprocess.
Urban Protest: A Spatial Perspective on Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow develops and tests a theoretical framework for mapping how mass protests are affected by the political context and the space in which they take place. This model provides a useful tool for understanding how a specific location contributes to facilitating or impeding a protest. However, the author should have stopped here, and not additionally tried to use the model to explain why protests 'succeed' or 'fail'. Such causality depicts mass protests as some kind of democratic 'quick fix – but, in the vast majority of cases, political change comes about as the result of a longer-term process.