Suchergebnisse

Basic geographical considerations like distance and resource location do influence political and economic processes; yet, focusing on additional geographical concepts such as relative location, relational space, and embedded sociospatial relationships strengthens and deepens analysis to reveal easily overlooked factors and implications of transition. Beth Mitchneck uses the example of survey research on Russia's transition, now prevalent in study of the region, to show that identifying spatial and regional variation is not always a simple or straightforward process and that incorporating nuanced geographical concepts into both the construction and analysis of a survey instrument about local politics reveals regions as settings for social practice. By shifting from a paradigm where regions are containers in physical space to one where regions are settings in which social behavior and action is situated, she suggests that inconsistent experience of transition processes are related to regional or spatial variation.

In advanced capitalist democracies, increased historical referencing has occurred within a context of changing regulatory modes from Fordism to post-Fordism. In post-Soviet Russia, historical referencing differs because of the confluence of three transitions: Fordism to post-Fordism, socialism to capitalism, and Soviet Russia to post-Soviet Russia. This article documents the use of history and culture by the Russian urban government in Yaroslavl' as a means of achieving stability. The author argues that the local government used historical referencing to attract the gaze of the international tourist and investor as well as the gaze of the Russian public.

Der Beitrag wird eingeleitet von stadtgeographischen Porträts der in die Untersuchung einbezogenen russischen Städte Yaroslavl und Petrodvorets sowie des Kreises Leninskii. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden Kontinuität und Wandel in den kommunalen Haushalten in der Phase der postkommunistischen Transformation analysiert. Kontinuitäten werden vor allem in der fast identischen Einnahmenstruktur und in der Bedeutung politischer Beziehungen für den Zugang zu kommunalen Mitteln gesehen. Ein deutlicher Wandel zeichnet sich auf der Ausgabenseite ab. Hier setzen die kommunalen Haushalte Schwerpunkte in den Bereichen Soziales sowie Stadtentwicklung und Wirtschaftsförderung. Vor allem in der ersten Phase der Transformationsperiode zwischen 1991 und September 1993 kam es zu starken Verschiebungen in den kommunalen Haushalten, die den im postkommunistischen Rußland gestiegenen Stellenwert der Kommunalpolitik widerspiegelten. Die Jahre 1994 bis 1996 waren durch einen Prozeß der Stabilisierung und Rezentralisierung gekennzeichnet. Insgesamt weisen die Ausgaben der Kommunen deutliche Unterschiede auf. Damit wird der Wohnort eine wichtige Determinante für die Lebensverhältnisse. (BIOst-Wpt)

Presents case studies of Yaroslavl, a central provincial capital, Leninskii, and Petrodvorets, a district and a satellite town within St. Petersburg, to determine effects of place and politics on local expenditure policy.

The 1980s witnessed a reversal of internal migration patterns in the Soviet Union as factors associated with ethnicity became one of the predominant influences on the character and volume of population mobility. This is one of the recent trends in Soviet migration highlighted in the presentation by Dr. Beth Mitchneck, a post-doctoral Fellow at the Harriman Institute. Dr. Mitchneck based her analysis on the censuses of 1959, 1970, 1979 and 1989, population registers and both Soviet and western estimates.