archives@tulane.edu / Post-Soviet countries in Central Asia are imprinted by a unique historical legacy which continually complicate their development choices. This is a case study of post-Soviet development, as seen through the lens of the Kyrgyz Republic. The Kyrgyz Republic has faced repeated shocks and experienced transitory periods of food insecurity in the recent past. To understand these development phenomena, this research mixed quantitative and qualitative components in a multi-phase design to examine seasonal aspects of staple food price spikes and the impact of dominant Kyrgyz livelihood activities. Concentric elements of Sustainable Livelihoods approaches, New Economics of Labor Migration, and Sustainable Human Development provided a theoretical base for investigation. Phase I examined staple food price patterns and available Kyrgyz household-level survey data via quantitative analysis for links to seasonal periods of transitory food insecurity. Phase II used qualitative surveys and profiles collected within Kyrgyz staple food markets to include multiple perspectives and aid interpretation. Research findings related a need for greater inclusion in Kyrgyz household survey data, resulting in a recommendation to improve targeting of existing survey efforts in ex-urban areas with growing populations of internal migrants. Research findings also pointed to potentially expanding frequency of collection, in order to capture seasonal elements of Kyrgyz livelihood activities currently not reflected in publicly available household level data. Research conclusions discuss potential mechanisms to increase participation in development policy formation at local and regional levels to lower costs and improve the quality of implementation. / 1 / Michael Heaney

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The present study focuses on the current state and developments of social and penal policies in Ukraine. It concentrates on changes brought about in the period of social and political transition, which started when Ukraine became an independent state in 1991. In particular, this study attempts to explain the current failure of reforms as being the result of a lack of social tolerance intrinsic to state officials at all levels, a legacy of previous repressive regimes. The introduction examines the notion of tolerance as a value produced by civil society and its importance for the administration of penal policy. It is argued that the level of social tolerance is heavily influenced by the nature of social and economic relationships. The following section consists of a case study presenting the origins of Ukrainian political, economic and social institutions and the results of an analysis of official media reportage of the current transition towards a market economy - a transition which has formed the precondition for a sharply rising criminality and the corruption of the main social institutions. The third chapter begins with a brief history of the use of imprisonment during the Soviet era, describing the administrative methods of punishment embedded into the system which Ukraine inherited on independence. The next section is a study of the Ukrainian penal system in the transitional period and shows that change has been minimal in terms of ideology, penal structures and the training of personnel. It also reveals findings on the functioning of prison enterprises, which established a deficit between prison production outputs and the sale of prison products, which is theorised as being due to private profiteering by senior prison staff. Finally, the data from an empirical study of social relations in a Ukrainian penitentiary are analysed on the basis of the social tolerance concept. The culture of prison life is seen as embedded in a hierarchy of roles. For these reasons, the existing prison system fails in its aim to resocialise offenders; it fails to respect human rights; and the experience of imprisonment as an exploitative system is related to the privatisation of human resources by the prison authorities.

This paper explores the volatile relationship between the political prisoners and the common criminals in the Soviet GULAG. Lenin's theories on crime and punishment shaped the early Soviet penal system; he implemented policies which favored the common criminals and repressed the political prisoners. He deemed that the criminals, as "social allies" of the working class, were more likely to become good Soviet citizens than the political prisoners, considered "counterrevolutionaries" and "enemies of the state." In the decade after the Bolshevik revolution, the prison administration empowered the criminals in the GULAG by giving them access to the life-saving jobs and goods in the labor camps, while gradually withdrawing the political prisoners' access to the same. From the 1930s to shortly after the end of World War II, the strong criminal fraternity in the GULAG robbed, beat, and killed the political prisoners, while the GULAG administration refused to intervene. Using the testimony of former political prisoners and GULAG personnel, as well as secondary sources, I identify the policies that led to the criminals' "reign of terror," I address theories regarding if and why the administration permitted such violence and disorder in the camps, and I demonstrate that the political prisoners responded to their situation in a range of ways, from holding their tormentors in contempt to forming a tentative friendships with individual criminals who could offer them their protection and a way to survive the camps.

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The question "what does Russia want?" has been asked by politicians, policy analysts, and academics alike. Unfortunately, it has been answered in ways that we in the West have wanted to hear, yet the answers we came up with may not be completely accurate, as reflected by our own academic literature. Analysts like Ivan Krastev have argued that "Russia's foreign-policy goals seem less predictable than ever, designed to provoke the West and control its neighbors ... what does the. Kremlin really want?" He criticized realist and liberal perspectives alike and offered that Russian foreign policy is held hostage by the sense of fragility that niarked the· Russian experience of the 1990s. The position of one senior French diplomat was that the Soviet Union was easier to bargain with than Russia is today. Dealing with the Soviets was difficult, but they had a goal in mind. Putin's Russia is just hostile without a clear objective. My paper challenges such thinking. The purpose behind Russia's belligerence is found in the realist perspective that Krastev so casually dismissed. Much along the lines of Stephen Cohen's work, I use descriptive analysis to look at how the ideologies of the past left Russia and the United States at odds. Now that we essentially agree on market economics (with more or less government control of the markets) we can begin to have a compatible coexistence. I have found that in its search for a return to Great Power status, Russia felt betrayed by the United States and treated like a defeated nation. What some dismiss as "paranoia" in the Kremlin is actually a manifestation of balance of power logic. This is firmly grounded in the concept of Kenneth Waltz's defensive realism.

The recent political and fiscal crises in Kyrgyzstan offer a good opportunity to rethink the objectives and the direction of tax reform. The tax system of the Kyrgyz Republic has changed substantially since 1991 including a shift of the tax structure towards indirect taxation, reduction in a number of taxes, and drastic decrease in tax rates. The thesis aims to identify and describe the main factors influencing tax reform in Kyrgyzstan during the first decades of transition to a market economy using important theoretical model of public management reform. So, it will critically review the applicability of a Pollitt-Bouckaert’s model in this context and implications for how the model could be adapted to fit the tax reform process in post-Soviet transition countries. Accomplishment of these goals would require a multiple methods approach based on the assumption that collecting diverse types of data sequentially in the embedded single-case study will provide more complete understanding of research questions than either quantitative or qualitative data alone. For the study of tax reform, the quantitative data are subjected to time-series analysis of the embedded units while the qualitative interviews remain critical in explaining the main proposition central to the entire case study. The study starts with the theoretical assumption that the factors identified in the model have significant effect on tax reform process. This basic proposition – the impact of socio-economic forces, political changes, administrative system, elite’s decisions, and chance events on the reform process – will be traced for each factor in ‘within-country’ explanatory case study. The fundamental part of this thesis is the Pollitt and Bouckaert’s model of public management reform, which will provide a framework for discussion of the main forces influencing the reform process. As a diagram of main factors of the public sector reform, this model will be further adapted and modified for tax reform purposes. However, the direction of tax reform in the Kyrgyz Republic cannot be understood completely without a good knowledge of the main legacies of the Soviet Union, the cultural and institutional features of centralized planning system, which have left a long-lasting impact on trajectory of the economic and political development in the country. Therefore, the model proposed by Pollitt and Bouckaert does not include other forces, which have substantial impact on reform. In particular, it needs to take more account of significant importance of the development partners in tax reform process.

Traditional Soviet conceptualisation of slang, argot and obscenities as ‘substandard’ is argued to have strong ideological underpinnings. Despite such lexis gaining increased visibility in public speech starting from Perestroika times, sociolinguistic research into their use is still scarce and often tainted by the same judgemental approach. Rejecting the association of slang, argot and obscenities with speakers’ insufficient linguistic competency, this study shifts attention to their identity construction values. Drawing largely on constructionist sociolinguistics, this thesis examines the use of slang, argot and obscenities in the scripts of six post-Soviet Russian films released in the period 1993-2005. It investigates how indexical connections between language and society were exploited, negotiated and, at times, reinterpreted in the films. Lexical variation is conceived here as a stylistic resource, and its functions in cinematic discourse are analysed in terms of statics (engagement with stereotypes) and dynamics (identity work) of characterisation. With regards to the former, the focused and economic conditions of film production determine that stereotypes are often drawn on to provide quick identification, especially in construction of minor characters. Stereotypes of criminals, youth and uneducated male adults were analysed, revealing that cinema does not only exploit direct associations between lexical varieties and social groups, but also engages with such stereotypes agentively, bringing to viewers’ attention their arbitrary nature and rigidity of boundaries, established by social categories. Language variation can also represent dynamics of characters’ identity work, which was analysed on two levels – interpersonal and ideational. The analysis revealed a multitude of functions, which on the interpersonal level drew on associations with familiarity, power and catharsis, yet defying stable connections between lexical varieties and structural elements. On the ideational level slang, argot and obscenities were shown to render characters’ orientation towards social structure and discourses, prevalent in the contemporary Russian society. This thesis thus shows that slang, argot and obscenities are a versatile meaning-making resource, employed in cinematic discourse for a variety of purposes. Focusing on the way character identities are styled through the use of lexical variation enabled this project to account for both the local instances of identity construction and the macro-level attempts of the filmmakers to critically engage with the social structures, exploring, questioning and reinterpreting them.

Reproductive health patterns in post-Soviet Central Asian countries Abstract This study aims to evaluate reproductive health patterns among post-Soviet Central Asian republics since their independence. The reproductive health indicators of individual countries were researched and compared. Furthermore, cluster country groups among selected post-Soviet, post-Socialist and capitalist countries were identified based on certain reproductive health indicators for the beginning and the end of the research period. The subsequent research was focused on 1999 Kazakhstan Demographic and Health Survey data. This thesis explores statistically significant factors influencing pregnancy outcomes in the country. According to the results, never married, urban women, women of Ukrainian, Russian, and other ethnicities, women living in the East and North regions were more likely to terminate a first pregnancy by an induced abortion rather than giving a live birth. Additionally, the same categories were proven to be statistically significant using the Poisson regression analysis, except the regions were shown to be the West and the North. Keywords: post-Soviet Central Asia, reproductive health, maternal mortality, pregnancy outcomes

Doctor of Philosophy / Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Lothar F. Weyher / This dissertation explores the case of emigration from Latvia towards the West after collapse of the Soviet Union. It takes the perspective of a particular cultural structure that came to dominate post-Soviet Latvia and adopts the vantage point of the state-society relationships this structure has cast. The central question of this study examines: what is the relationship between the cultural structure in post-Soviet Latvia and emigration towards the West? This study answers this question by contrasting Latvia’s civil discourse with emigrants’ and those who remain in Latvia personal narratives through the lens of cultural sociology that emphasizes the role of the symbolic realm, meaning making, and emotions. Research findings suggested that the post-Soviet cultural structure was dominated by "symbolic codes" (Alexander and Smith, 1993) or sharp divides such as West vs. East/Soviet, Right vs. Left, and Developed vs. Underdeveloped. Notably, symbolic codes of West, Right and Developed were constructed as “sacred” while their opposites were pushed out of "sacred" and ridiculed. These divides originated from such particular emotions as shame, confidence/pride and fear. Their meanings in the dominant transformation discourse and emotional origins were formative to the identity and modern state craft, and subjectivities in post-Soviet Latvia. These sharp divides between what is "sacred" in a community and what is not, came with "unintended consequences" (Weber, 2002). These divides and how they shaped the transformation discourse trumpeted misguided notion of the West, post-Soviet Latvia so eagerly wanted to resemble and belong to. Given this distorted notion of the West, the ruling elite fashioned environment where people not only lost hope for their better future in Latvia but began to lose their self-confidence - an important emotion for one’s "willingness to act" (Barbalet, 2004, p.83); and, as such, were more prone to emigration. Emigration for my respondents provided the space where West and Left were experienced as compatible despite their construction as incompatible in post-Soviet Latvia. Amidst confidence over their better future in their receiving countries, this gave to emigrants also a feeling of comfort, sense of self-confidence and empowerment.