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LD2668 .T4 1962 S85

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published_or_final_version / History / Master / Master of Philosophy

<p> The purpose of this study is to identify necessary and sufficient conditions in regime collapse that are shared cross-regionally by the Color Revolutions of the post-Soviet region and the Arab Spring uprisings of the Arab region by utilizing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA or QCA). Two countries that experienced regime collapse were chosen from each region, Georgia and Ukraine as well as Egypt and Tunisia, and were compared with two countries from each region where the regime did not collapse even when faced with mass anti-regime protests, Armenia and Belarus as well as Algeria and Syria, for a total of eight case studies. This research presents conditions derived from popular theories on regime collapse, reviews the pre-revolutionary conditions of the case study countries, and applies QCA methodology to tests the necessity and sufficiency of conditions within countries where the authoritarian regime in power collapsed. Results of this analysis suggest that division among coercive forces, a political crisis that weakened the regime, and the high presence of a mobilized youth movement were necessary in regime collapse in both the Color Revolutions and the Arab Spring uprisings. Additionally, division among coercive forces combined with a political crisis that weakened the regime, high levels of unrestricted NGO presence, or a highly unpopular ruling elite present as causal combinations sufficient for regime collapse. Finally, Western intervention and influence presents as a possible stand alone sufficient condition, though further research is needed to identify the specific types of Western intervention and influence that are most effective.</p>

<p>Nybörjaren i ryska eller litauiska stöter strax på en svårighet, som han eller hon oftast inte mött tidigare: den rörliga betoningen. Om man som jag studerat båda språken frågar man sig så småningom om överensstämmelserna i deras betoningsmönster – som så många andra av likheterna – beror på ett gemensamt ursprung. Kan det rent av vara möjligt att utifrån betoningen hos en viss ordform i det ena språket förutse betoningen hos en viss ordform i det andra språket?</p><p>Jag har därför försökt sammanställa de ljudlagar som förändrat betoningsmönstren från baltoslaviskan och fram till våra dagars ryska och litauiska. Jag har dock begränsat mig till substantiven, inte minst därför att det är denna ordklass där den studerande möter de största svårigheterna. Jag har dessutom avstått från att beskriva utvecklingen före baltoslaviskan, och inte heller tar jag upp enstaka avvikande former. Dessutom har dualen lämnats därhän, eftersom dessa former är helt utdöda i dagens ryska och obsoleta i litauiskan, varvid den modernspråkliga komparativa effekten går förlorad. Uppsatsen gäller accentförhållandena, och förändringarna i ordens böjning – som är uppenbara när man betraktar de många exemplen – berörs inte heller.</p><p>Först kommer en beskrivning av ”start och mål”, d.v.s. substantivbetoningen i de båda moderna språken. Avsikten är att den som endast studerat det ena språket ska få en inblick i förhållandena i det andra. Därefter följer en redogörelse för accentförhållandena i baltoslaviskan, och sedan – parallellt så lång det är möjligt – de ljudlagar som lett fram till dagens förhållanden. Avslutningsvis försöker jag att med ett antal exempel visa hur man kan följa ett ord från ryskan till litauiskan eller vice versa för att pröva överensstämmelsernas pålitlighet.</p>

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In this sociolinguistic study, qualitative interviews were used in examining discursive identity construction among Russian Germans. The interview group was composed of Russian German university students attending different universities in Germany. Based on the sociocultural perspective on language and identity, content analysis, turn-internal pragmatic and semantic as well as interactional approaches are used in the thesis. This thesis covers two major questions: What attitudes toward food Russian Germans construct during conversational interaction and what are the major linguistic resources and discursive strategies that these participants use to construct their cultural identities and how the attitudes towards the linguistic and social practices reflect German Russian identity and a particular Russian German space in German cities. The special situation of Russian Germans, that being the initial alienation in Russia due to their ethnic origin, followed by the attitude of local Germans towards Russian Germans after they relocated back to Germany, led to the situation where many of them feel to be in the position of ‘in-between’ (Kaiser 2006: 34). Due to the complexity of this special cultural position of Russian Germans, observations of how individuals negotiate Russian and German cultural spaces and construct their own space in everyday life provide insight to the research of cultural identity. At the same time, the creation of the Russian-German space by means of positioning also reveals the constructed identity of Russian Germans, which they create in discourse. The focus of the thesis lies on one particular practice, namely eating habits as a cultural practice. The analysis of food attitudes with the help of linguistic methods will contribute to the culture identity and the construction of a particular cultural space of Russian Germans. The interviews show how the attitudes towards food preferences and cooking habits serve as a basis for identity construction. By positioning themselves with the help of their attitudes towards eating habits, the participants create certain cultural spaces in German cities. Several domains of life such as private and public spheres, where the participants positioned themselves slightly differently from one another by drawing on different indexical meanings are covered in the interview. The work begins with the history of the Russian German migratory and studies made in relation to Russian Germans and their identity. It is followed by theoretical and methodological approaches. Content analysis, turn-internal pragmatic and semantic as well as interactional approaches are used in the thesis. The main body is devoted to the analysis of the qualitative interview data with the help of the theory and methodology described in the preceding section. In the end of the thesis the summary of the findings and the suggestions for the further research are presented.

This study examines attitudes towards anglicisms in Russian expressed in print media articles. Accelerated linguistic borrowing from English, a particularly visible aspect of the momentous language changes after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, has engendered a range of reactions. Print media articles spanning two decades and several central outlets are analysed to show how arguments for or against use of anglicisms are constructed, what language ideologies these arguments serve, and whether mediated language attitudes changed during the post-Soviet era. A summary of the history of Russian linguistic borrowing and language attitudes from the Middle Ages to the present day shows that periods of national consolidation provoked demands for the restriction of borrowing. Then, a survey of theories on language ideologies demonstrates that they function through the construction of commonsense argumentation in metadiscourse (talk about talk). This argumentation draws on accepted common knowledge in the Russian linguistic culture. Using critical discourse analytic tools, namely analysis of metaphor scenarios and of argumentation, I examine argumentative strategies in the mediated language debates. Particularly, the critical analysis reveals what strategies render dominant standpoints on anglicisms self-evident and logical to the audience. The results show that the media reaction to anglicisms dramatises language change in discourses of threat, justified by assumed commonsense rational knowledge. Whilst there are few reactions in the 1990s, debates on language intensified in the 2000s after Putin’s policies of state reinforcement came into effect, peaking around times of official language policy measures. Anglicisms and their users are subordinated, cast out as the Other, not belonging to the in-group of sensible speakers. This threat is defused via ridicule and claiming of the moral high ground. This commonsense argumentation ultimately supports notions of Russian as a static, sacred component of Russian nation building, and of speakers as passive. Close textual analysis shows that even articles claiming to support language change and the use of anglicisms use argumentation strategies of negativisation. Overall, a consensus on the character and role of the Russian language exists between all perspectives, emphasising the importance of rules and assigning speakers a passive role throughout.

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.