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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: No public access is forecasted for this work. To request access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / 2031-01-01

This thesis presents an analysis of texts written for a child audience in Russia between 1990 and 2010 and characterized by humorous inversions of common sense, a tendency for jokes, puns and a cheerful narrative tone. These narrative features are associated with the concepts of playfulness and play. This thesis argues that, by addressing the implied child reader of the post-perestroika period in a playful mode, children’s authors tried to cope with profound social and cultural transformations which challenged their identities as adults and intellectuals. The new individual responsibilities concerning the upbringing and the education of children, on the one hand, and the crisis of written culture and of the intellectual as sources of moral guidance, on the other, occurred at the same time as the general structures of trust were collapsing in Russian society. The thesis argues that playfulness allowed children’s authors to explore their own identity, and even to express their own fears and doubts as providers of upbringing and education. At the same time, playfulness was a way to involve the child of the post-perestroika period in an attempt to re-construct culture, an attempt which required a strong pedagogical agency. Divided between the wish to guide younger generations and the need to re-define their own selves, children’s authors found in playfulness a field where these contradictory drives could be negotiated and their authorial personae could be re-worked. In the so-called post-post-Soviet period, which followed the election of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia, playful children’s literature is still engaged in this exploration of the adult self and of the possibility of providing guidance through literature. This exploration is further challenged by a generational gap separating adults with a Soviet background from children. The first chapter establishes the theoretical grounds and methods which inform the thesis, while chapter two provides a historical overview of the way in which play and playfulness, both as cultural phenomena and as concepts, intertwined with specific conceptualizations of childhood in Russian and Soviet children’s literature until perestroika. The last two chapters are devoted to the analysis of texts, and mostly focus on works by children’s authors Grigorii Oster, Artur Givargizov and Natal’ia Nusinova which appeared in the years 1990–2010.

This paper describes and analyses the development of Swedish exports to the Soviet Union during the perestroika period, both in general and with regard to the specific case of the coastal trade between these countries using the Uppsala model's concepts of learning, the liability of foreignness, and the liability of outsidership. During this period the Soviet foreign trade system went through a significant reorganisation, with foreign trade being decentralised and newactorsbeing established, although the source material indicates that this decentralisation was less disruptive to the coastal trade than in general. It concludes that the different outcomes seen in these cases could be attributed to the coastal trade being less affected by the liability of outsidership than the general case. With regard to learning, it concludes that experiential knowledge, both from personal experience and network sources, is necessary in order to evaluate objective knowledge, as this can also be seen in the source material.

One of the great superpowers in recent history experienced a tumultuous final decade, shining a light on several important policies of economic reform known as perestroika, championed by General Secretary of the USSR Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. According to, for instance, Stuart and Gregory, the reforms aimed at renewing making the Soviet economy more efficient. In this essay, the impact of the reform on the economy is subject of analysis.The subject is approached the topic via literature research on the topic of 1980s USSR economic problems, combined with key aggregate data on economic conditions (i.e. grain yield production, GDP per capita pre- and post-perestroika, foreign trade, life expectant pre-and post-perestroika). The thesis concluded that perestroika was unable to salvage the USSR, in fact, conditions only worsened after its administration, following into the 1990s.

O presente trabalho se propõe a refletir acerca da trajetória do pensamento político e econômico de Mikhail Gorbachev durante os anos em que esteve à frente do Partido Comunista da URSS e conduziu as reformas iniciadas em 1985. Não se trata, portando, de um estudo minucioso da perestroika, nem de um trabalho biográfico sobre o último líder máximo soviético. Nosso enfoque se volta para as rupturas e continuidades no entendimento do secretário-geral quanto às políticas adotadas e à própria natureza do regime. O exame crítico pormenorizado das diversas intervenções e publicações de Gorbachev nos permite demonstrar como transitam na sua visão conceitos chaves como a introdução de elementos de mercado na economia, a burocracia partidária e a democratização da sociedade e do sistema político da URSS. Torna-se possível ainda compreender o caminho percorrido na visão do líder quanto à própria ideia de socialismo, que caminha da filiação aos pilares ideológicos oficiais para uma vertente cada vez mais próxima da socialdemocracia, bem como a natureza do regime que conduzia, que ao final seria caracterizado por ele como totalitário. / This paper aims to reflect on the path of political and economic thought of Mikhail Gorbachev during the years he was ahead of the USSR Communist Party and led the reforms initiated in 1985. It is not, in this sense, a detailed study of perestroika or a biographical work on the last Soviet leader. Our focus turns to the ruptures and continuities in understanding the Secretary-General as to the adopted policies and the very nature of the regime. The detailed critical examination of the various interventions and Gorbachev publications allows us to demonstrate how key concepts transiting in his vision as the introduction of market elements in the economy, the party bureaucracy and the democratization of society and the political system of the USSR. It is also possible to understand the path taken in the leader\'s vision about the very idea of socialism, which walks of membership in the official ideological pillars to a shed ever closer to social democracy, and the nature of the regime he led, that in the end he characterized as totalitarian.

O presente trabalho se propõe a refletir acerca da trajetória do pensamento político e econômico de Mikhail Gorbachev durante os anos em que esteve à frente do Partido Comunista da URSS e conduziu as reformas iniciadas em 1985. Não se trata, portando, de um estudo minucioso da perestroika, nem de um trabalho biográfico sobre o último líder máximo soviético. Nosso enfoque se volta para as rupturas e continuidades no entendimento do secretário-geral quanto às políticas adotadas e à própria natureza do regime. O exame crítico pormenorizado das diversas intervenções e publicações de Gorbachev nos permite demonstrar como transitam na sua visão conceitos chaves como a introdução de elementos de mercado na economia, a burocracia partidária e a democratização da sociedade e do sistema político da URSS. Torna-se possível ainda compreender o caminho percorrido na visão do líder quanto à própria ideia de socialismo, que caminha da filiação aos pilares ideológicos oficiais para uma vertente cada vez mais próxima da socialdemocracia, bem como a natureza do regime que conduzia, que ao final seria caracterizado por ele como totalitário. / This paper aims to reflect on the path of political and economic thought of Mikhail Gorbachev during the years he was ahead of the USSR Communist Party and led the reforms initiated in 1985. It is not, in this sense, a detailed study of perestroika or a biographical work on the last Soviet leader. Our focus turns to the ruptures and continuities in understanding the Secretary-General as to the adopted policies and the very nature of the regime. The detailed critical examination of the various interventions and Gorbachev publications allows us to demonstrate how key concepts transiting in his vision as the introduction of market elements in the economy, the party bureaucracy and the democratization of society and the political system of the USSR. It is also possible to understand the path taken in the leader\'s vision about the very idea of socialism, which walks of membership in the official ideological pillars to a shed ever closer to social democracy, and the nature of the regime he led, that in the end he characterized as totalitarian.

In ihrer Monographie widmet sich Sandra Frimmel hauptsächlich zweien der zehn Jahre nach der Perestroika wieder vermehrt vorkommenden Strafprozesse gegen Künstler. Erschienen ist die Studie als zweiter Band in der Reihe: Das östliche Europa: Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte. Frimmel, die selbst auch Kuratorin und Mitbegründerin des Projektraums Art Laboratory Berlin ist, ist in Zürich am Slawischen Seminar wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im EU-Projekt „Performance Art in Eastern Europe“ und Koordinatorin des Zentrums Künste und Kulturtheorie. Es handelt sich bei der hier zu besprechenden Arbeit um ihre am Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte der Humboldt-Universität Berlin verteidigte Dissertation, die von der Kunsthistorikerin Susanne von Falkenhausen betreut wurde.

This thesis discusses the interaction between inflation, living standards, and political change in Soviet/Russian history. It traces the establishment and evolution of the Soviet monetary system, inflationary episodes, and their consequences. The goal of this study is to show how inflation affects the lives of ordinary people and how it has contributed to larger changes in Soviet history. Sources include economic statistics and analysis from articles and monographs, as well as first-hand accounts from interviews and newspapers. The results show that inflation was a factor in both the rise and the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia's first hyperinflation (1917-1923) nearly destroyed the economy, and the Bolsheviks were forced to stabilize prices. The Soviet system of price controls prevented inflation, but it also created persistent shortages of food and consumer goods. Mikhail Gorbachev tried to alleviate these problems, but his efforts resulted instead in Russia's second hyperinflation (1992-1993).

Zugl.: Stockholm, University, Diss., 2008.