The aim of this thesis is to examine the changing characteristics of the regional security complex in Central Asia. The thesis focuses on the changes in the roles that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) plays in promoting regional security in Central Asia, especially since the formation of the international coalition against international terrorism in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Contrary to the mainstream literature that focuses mainly on the security concerns of either regional powers or of great powers that considered this region as their own sphere of influence, this thesis argues that Central Asia&rsquo / s security issues that emerged in the aftermath of 9/11 could be explained better by taking the emerging regional security complex in Central Asia as the main unit of analysis. The thesis consists of seven chapters: In Chapter 1, thesis is introduced. Chapter 2 develops a conceptual framework for the thesis by examining the nature of regional security complex theory. This is followed by the examination of the characteristics of regional security complex in Central Asia in Chapter 3. Next, Chapter 4 discusses the foreign policies of the United States, Russia and China towards Central Asia. Chapters 5 and 6 examine the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, its role in the struggle against international terrorism and their reflections on the changes of the characteristics of Central Asian regional security complex. Last chapter concludes the thesis.

This thesis analyzes the role of Ukrainian mythological discourses in the formulation of Ukrainian national identity. The main purpose of the present thesis is to explore the interaction between mythological discourses, which are defined as sets of popular beliefs, presuppositions and the patterns of self-identification rooted in the consciousness of ethnic collectivities, and the process of national identity formation in post-Soviet Ukraine. The main focus of the thesis is on the ways of the use of Ukrainian mythological discourses by post-Soviet Ukraine&rsquo / s political and intellectual elite preoccupied with the task of implementing their nation-building project in Ukraine. This thesis consists of six chapters. Following the introductory first chapter, the second chapter explores the concept of &ldquo / myth&rdquo / in nationalism studies. The third, fourth and fifth chapters discuss the nation-building process of post-Soviet Ukraine by examining cultural, political and social aspects. The concluding chapter discusses the main findings of the thesis.

The image of 'the Jew' in nineteenth-century Russian literary texts is traditionally viewed as a paradigm of anti-Semitic discourse. Critics have typically accentuated the presence and continuity of negative stereotypes of the Jews. Yet anti-Semitic discourse is not the only approach to the representation of the Jews in Russian literature. This study explores the manifold nature of the portrayal of 'the Jew' in the works of three Russian writers of the highest calibre: Gogol, Dostoevsky and Turgenev. Literature at the time was highly politicized and a writer was expected to examine the issues of the day from an ideological stance. This meant that a writer's fictional representation of 'the Jew' was treated by many as an illustration of Jews' qualities in real life. After the partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century, Russia acquired a large Jewish population. These new Jewish subjects were confined to the Pale of Settlement, which restricted their rights of residence in Russia proper. That in itself meant that the majority of Jews were invisible to Russian society. Writers mainly used Western literary patterns in describing 'the Jew'. Nevertheless, in using traditional mythic stereotypes of the Jews they not only applied the familiar framework of Western authors but also created images based on specifically Russian culture. Moreover, at different periods of the century 'the Jew' was endowed with traits uncharacteristic of previous myths. The writers' constructions of 'the Jew' thus became complex and flexible. In order to investigate the complex constructions of 'the Jew' the following matters are discussed: (1) the depiction of 'the Jew' by these three writers in conjunction with their understanding of their own identity, events occurring during their lifetime, and stereotypical frames of reference for the Jews; (2) the degree of controversy in their representations; (3) their use of the image of 'the Jew' to define the essential qualities of the Russian.

The focus of my research is Soviet documentary filmmaker, Elizaveta Svilova (1900-75), most commonly remembered, if at all, as the wife and collaborator of acclaimed Soviet film pioneer, Dziga Vertov (1896-1954). Having worked with her husband for many years, Svilova continued her career as an independent director-editor after Vertov fell out of favour with the Central Committee. Employed at the Central Studio for Documentary Film, a state-initiated studio, Svilova’s films were vehicles of rhetoric, mobilised to inform, educate and persuade the masses. She draws on visual symbols familiar to audiences and organises them according to the semiotic theories – namely techniques of dialecticism and linkage – attributed to the Soviet montage school of the 1920s. On-screen credits indicate that, during the period 1939 to 1956, Svilova was the director-editor of over 100 documentaries and newsreel episodes, yet this corpus of films has received very little critical attention. As my thesis aims to demonstrate, the reasons for the lack of attention to Svilova’s films are partly due to her husband’s eminent status – the rules whereby we construct film history have resulted in Svilova’s contribution being absorbed into Vertov’s – and this is related to the long-standing tendency within film criticism to marginalise the female artist. My thesis also touches on issues regarding curatorial and archival policies, and provides an opportunity to rethink early film history and the modes through which historiographic and filmographic knowledge are transmitted.

The insect society living in oilseed rape is large. Change of the crop characteristics affects both harmful species and beneficious ones. The latter group consists of a lot of members of order Hymenoptera. This work focuses on the evaluation of impact of white oilseed rape cultivation on the insect society in comparison with two yellow winter varieties. Newly bred winter oilseed rape line variety Witt was compared to two hybrid varieties of yellow rape; Sherpa and DK Sensei. The experiment was carried out in 2015 and its plots were placed at Ruzyně at Crop Reserach Institute (VÚRV, v. v. i.) and also at the Experimental Unit of Czech University of Life Sciences (ČZU) in Uhříněves. The insects were collected by sweeping net, soil larvae traps and soil emergence traps. The occurrence of serious pests (pollen beetle Brassicogethes aeneus, brassica pod midge Dasineura brassicae, cabbage seed weevil Ceutorhynchus obstrictus, stem flea beetle Psylliodes chrysocephalus and cabbage flea beetles Phyllotreta sp.) was recorded. Dominant parasitoid species were Tersilochus heterocerus, Platygaster subuliformis, Trichomalus perfectus, Mesopolobus morys and Omphale clypealis. The level of pest mortality was evaluated. Numbers of species identified by key were processed using generalized linear model method in R statistical software. The results confirm suitability of the assessed varieties in the white oilseed rape cultivation system, notably in the combination of Sherpa and Witt. They give an insight into parasitoid community of oilseed rape in Czech republic, which is useful for management of serious pest species.

This thesis attempts to account for post-Soviet Russian national identity and nationalism ‘from below’, employing the ‘thick descriptions’ of the nation reproduced by ordinary Russians across social and generational lines. It examines the current equilibrium in mainstream nationalist hegemonic discourse, shedding light on the vitality of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. In doing this, nationalism is viewed as a set of discursive formations that make claims about how or what the nation is or should be. A central aim in this research is to highlight what discursive constructions are shared or contested across a representative sample of the Russian population. In order to offer a meaningful assessment of nationalist discourse, this research employs ethnographic fieldwork driven by a grounded theory approach. With fifteen months of fieldwork in three Russian cities, this permitted room for exploration and siginificant redirection of the research focus. This helped reveal the interconnections between certain common, foundational elements of national identity and the structure of a dominant nationalist discourse. Previous research has often focused on the challenges of Russian nation-building given the complicated heritage bestowed by the Romanov and Soviet empires. This thesis identifies certain historical and cultural factors vital to the shaping of Russian national identity today. It also identifies a current hegemonic nationalist discourse and unpacks how it is relevant to the majority. This dominant discourse is built on certain myths and versions of normality, much of which takes the late Soviet as ‘normal’ and the wild nineties as ‘abnormal’. The thesis also explores how the above is contested. What is argued is that, at the current moment, the challenge of anti-hegemonic nationalist discourses is, for many people, neutralised by the appeal of a particular geopolitical vision. This research outlines how visions of the nation are weaved into commonly shared notions of identity and underlines how the current status quo is held together.

This thesis examines the social history of female urban prostitution in the final years of the Russian empire (1900-1917). During this period, the tsarist authorities legally tolerated prostitution under a system named regulation (reglemantatsiia) or the medical-police supervision of prostitution (vrachebno-politseiskii nadzor za prostitutsiei). The stated aim of regulation was to reduce levels of venereal disease, yet in practice the system functioned rather to control the movement and settlement of prostitutes by making them known to the authorities. This thesis focuses on the different groups that the rules of regulation directly affected, including prostitutes, their clients, their managers, and wider urban communities. It examines specific urban spaces, the state-licensed brothel, and the lives of registered prostitutes and their clients. This approach allows an exploration of how the system operated in practice and how the regulation of prostitution fitted within wider attempts by the imperial state to monitor lower-class people. In doing so, this thesis contributes to the growing literature on sexuality, on the intersections of gender and class, and on the experiences of lower-class people in late imperial Russia. To illuminate the diversity of both state practice and social experience, this thesis draws on a wide range of correspondence from ‘above’ and ‘below’, including letters between central and provincial government institutions and petitions written by lower-class people to those in authority. This research moves away from focusing solely on the capital of St Petersburg to examine how the regulation of prostitution functioned at a local level, drawing on archival material from Arkhangel’sk, Riga, and Tartu. It argues that responses to the regulation system were rooted in the specific social, environmental and economic circumstances of a particular place and strongly influenced by the socio-economic transformations of the final decades of tsarist rule. In light of this, the thesis maps official and unofficial reactions to regulation onto the shifting social and economic landscape of modernising Russia. It explores how early twentieth-century urbanisation, industrialisation and transportation developments posed further challenges to the ambitions of the tsarist authorities to ‘know’ and monitor all the women who sold sex.

The thesis proposes a comparative textual research on Hungarian and Romanian cinema by setting up a model that informs the implicit cinematic reflection on socialism in film. By establishing two aesthetic categories – horizontal and vertical enclosure –, the thesis argues that the spatial structure of the narratives reveals and alludes to the oppressive policy of the Hungarian and Romanian socialist regimes. The first part of the research scrutinises the space in Romanian cinema, and investigates the birth of the vertical enclosure. The analysis focuses on the spatial representation of Bucharest, that is the claustrophobic illustration of the urban landscape and its space depicted by the tools of notorious surveillance on screen. As argued in the thesis, the architectural forms and their film representations build up a spatial constellation identical to Bentham’s Panopticon discussed by Michel Foucault. The second part of the investigation concentrates on Hungarian cinema and the evolution of horizontal enclosure in film. Through textual analysis of the selected films that are set on the Great Hungarian Plain, the thesis discusses the allegorical use of space during and after socialism. Therefore, while concentrating on the circularity of the location and the mise-en-scène of the films – that refer to the isolation and indefiniteness of space – the author argues that the directors recall the parabolic language of the cinematic corpus of the socialist epoch. As concluded by the work, the contemporary art cinema of Romania and Hungary both reference socialism by using space as the main device for the implicit textual reflections. In this way, horizontal and vertical enclosure also emphasise the revival of the forms of the socialist aesthetics.

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Die Übergangsentscheidung nach der Grundschule erfolgt in der Spannung zwischen dem sozialen Wunsch, dem Kind durch eine qualifizierte Schulbildung möglichst große Lebenschancen zu eröffnen, und dem pädagogischen Besteben, die Persönlichkeitsentwicklung des Kindes optimal zu fördern. Eine möglichst valide Prognose des Schulerfolgs ist ein entscheidender Schritt auf dem Weg zu einer adäquaten Schulwahlentscheidung. Die Bildungsgangempfehlung, die Grundschullehrkräfte ihren Schülerinnen und Schülern zum Ende der Grundschulzeit aussprechen, sollte eine solche valide Prognose sein. In dieser Arbeit werden die Bildungsgangempfehlungen in Berlin mit Daten des Forschungsprojektes SABA/SABA+ von Prof. Dr. Renate Valtin u.a. modelliert. So kann erklärt werden, welche Faktoren die Lehrkräfte in welchem Maße bei ihrer Entscheidung berücksichtigen. Die Bildungsgangempfehlungen hängen im wesentlichen mit den Schulleistungen zusammen. Eine Gymnasialempfehlung bekommen Kinder mit guten, eine Realschulempfehlung Kinder mit durchschnittlichen und eine Hauptschulempfehlung Kinder mit schlechten Schulnoten. Andere Schülermerkmale haben keinen direkten Einfluss. Es gibt jedoch einen deutlichen indirekten Einfluss des Bildungsabschlusses der Eltern auf die Bildungsgangempfehlungen. Kinder aus gebildeteren Elternhäusern haben im Mittel bessere Zensuren und deshalb auch eher eine Gymnasialempfehlung. Ein beachtenswertes Ergebnis ist, dass es bei den Bildungsgangempfehlungen in Berlin deutliche Schulklassenunterschiede gibt. Diese hängen z.T. mit den ehemals getrennten Stadthälften und z.T. mit dem Ausländeranteil im Bezirk zusammen. Es bleibt jedoch ein großer Anteil unaufgeklärt, der entweder von Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen der Lehrkraft oder von individuellen Merkmalen der Schulklasse beeinflusst wird. Für viele Kinder hängt es damit neben den Schulleistungen auch von der zufälligen Schulklassenzugehörigkeit ab, welche Empfehlung sie bekommen. / The decision, which type of secondary school is chosen for a child after finishing primary school, takes place in the tension between two desires: the social desire to open to the child as much as possible chances via a qualified education and the educational desire to promote the development of the child''s personality optimally. A valide prognosis of success in secondary school is an important part of making the parental choice of school as correct as possible. The recommendation, which teachers give their pupils at the end of primary school time, should be such a valide prognosis. In my work this recommendation in Berlin is modeled with data of the research project SABA/SABA+ by Professor Dr. Renate Valtin et al. In this way I explain, which factors are considered by the teacher''s decision. Any recommendations are essentially connected with the school achievement. Children with good school notes get a recommendation for the "Gymnasium", children with average school notes get one for the "Realschule" and children with bad school notes get one for the "Hauptschule". Other pupil''s characteristics do not have direct influence. But there is an indirect influence of the parents'' graduation on the teachers'' recommendation. Children in families with higher education have better marks on the average and therefore rather a recommendation for the "Gymnasium". A remarkable result is that there are differences with recommendations for higher education between classrooms in Berlin. These differences are partly connected with formerly separated parts of the city and partly with the portion of foreigners in the district. A substantial portion remains unexplained, however. This part is either affected by characteristics of the teacher''s personality or of the classroom. Therefore any recommendation depends not only on the children''s school achievement, but also on the coincidental individual class affiliation.