From 1914 to 1940 Russia lived through a series of traumatic events: World War I, the Bolshevik revolution, the Civil War, famine, and the Bolshevik and subsequently Stalinist terror. These events precipitated and facilitated a complete breakdown of the status quo associated with the tsarist regime and led to the emergence and eventual pervasive presence of a culture of violence propagated by the Bolshevik regime. This dissertation explores how the ongoing exposure to trauma impaired ordinary perception and everyday language use, which, in turn, informed literary language use in the writings of Viktor Shklovsky, the prominent Formalist theoretician, and of the avant-garde writer, Daniil Kharms. While trauma studies usually focus on the reconstructive and redeeming features of trauma narratives, I invite readers to explore the structural features of literary language and how these features parallel mechanisms of cognitive processing, established by medical research, that take place in the mind affected by traumatic encounters. Central to my analysis are Shklovsky's memoir A Sentimental Journey and his early articles on the theory of prose "Art as Device" and "The Relationship between Devices of Plot Construction and General Devices of Style" and Daniil Karms's theoretical writings on the concepts of "nothingness," "circle," and "zero," and his prose work written in the 1930s. My analysis probes into various modes in which trauma can present itself in a text, in forms other than semantic content, and points to what distinguishes a modernist text from one written under the impairing conditions of trauma, despite their structural similarities.

This dissertation examines the development of Russian literature in the decades after the fall of the Soviet Union as a focused study in how literature adjusts to institutional failure. It investigates how cultural forms reproduce themselves and how literature continues to forge meaningful symbolic connections with its audiences, traditions, and the broader culture. I begin when Soviet state prizes, publishers, and organizations like the Writers Union could no longer provide paths to literary prominence in the early 1990s and a booming book market and a privatized prestige economy stepped into the vacuum. At this time, post-Soviet Russian authors faced a mixed blessing: freedom from censorship alongside a disorienting array of new publishers, prizes, and critical outlets, joined later by online and social media. In this new environment, personal success became an important structural value for authors and for literary works. The literary process was driven, in large part, by authors who found innovative solutions to immediate problems along their pathways to success. In search of readers, recognition, and aesthetic innovation, the authors in this dissertation transformed and even created the institutional and economic frameworks for post-Soviet Russian literature’s development, while at the same time developing new cultural forms capable of connecting with audiences in intimate and meaningful ways. The sum effect of their individual solutions to discrete problems along their own paths to success was a profound shift in the literary field, the creation and entrenchment of a new system of cultural production, distribution and consumption based on capitalist principles—the system I call “cultural capitalism.” This dissertation shows how cultural capitalism developed out of the institutional collapse of the Soviet cultural system. While many studies have analyzed the cultural field’s genesis, its social role, and internal mechanisms, few have considered the fate of literature or culture at times of institutional failure, and fewer still have focused on possible mechanisms of recovery. Studies of contemporary Russian literature, on the other hand, have often relied on master tropes, frequently borrowed from Western literary theory. While this research constitutes an important contribution, it fails to address the central question of how literature has been affected by social upheaval and institutional failure. My project addresses this gap by modeling cultural capitalism as a literary system in which the drive for success is pervasive, but the very meaning of “success” can be defined differently by different authors. The term cultural capitalism builds on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital, but imagines that resource as part of a dynamic system of cultural exchange, while my understanding of success expands on Boris Dubin’s work on the topic. Finally, building on Formalist investigations of “literary evolution” and the “literary everyday,” as well as contemporary Russian sociological studies, I provide a theoretical model that connects the structures of the post-Soviet literary environment to new forms of verbal art. Through interviews, close readings, and secondary research, I show how four prominent authors—Boris Akunin, Olga Slavnikova, Aleksei Ivanov, and Vera Polozkova—have developed idiosyncratic visions of success. I then demonstrate how each author’s particular patterns of ambitions correlate with the literary, economic, and institutional innovations that define their artistic works, careers, and positions in the literary field. By triangulating authors’ visions of success, their navigations of the literary field, and their innovative verbal art, I map out the trajectories of literature as both an institution and as an art form across the transition from the Soviet to the post-Soviet era.

This thesis deals with activities of the Intergovernmental Commission for Economic, Industrial and Scientific Cooperation between the Czech Republic and the Russian Federation, describes its real impact on Czech companies trading in the Russian Federation and analyzes the usefulness of the Intergovernmental Commission activities for Czech exporters who have already traded with Russian entities or who are planning to do so. The first section defines the institutional structure of the Intergovernmental Commission and its history. The following section is devoted to quantitative and qualitative research activities with their impact on business activities of Czech companies on the Russian market. The final part of the thesis on the Intergovernmental Commission analyzes its activities and proposes recommendations for streamlining.

No description available.

This project deals with the sociocultural and pragmatic aspects of second language acquisition. Most current research in this field examines the ability of second language learners to produce socioculturally appropriate utterances in simulated speech settings. Researchers are interested in whether students can interact adequately within the confines of both their linguistic competence and the foreign culture's interactional norms. Analyses of learners' speech routines are quite valuable to our understanding of their ability to enact conversational routines. However, they do not indicate to use what the learners understand; that is, they do not tease apart what learners understand to be true about the language from what they can do under the pressure of performance. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for 'you,' ty (informal/intimate) and Vy (formal/polite). In this project, the term understand is used in two ways, each of which is tested empirically. First, understanding implies knowledge about the pragmatic impact of the pronouns. Do learners correctly indicate which pronoun is appropriate in context? Second, understanding is listening ability. Do learners utilize their pragmatic knowledge when they listen to native speech? Or do proficiency factors, individual learner characteristics, syntactic saliency (overt pronoun vs. pro-drop), and overall attentional limitations affect their listening ability? Students at Middlebury College and at the University of Iowa participated in two experimental tasks evaluating their pragmatic knowledge and listening ability with the ty / Vy feature: (a) a metapragmatic judgment task and (b) a listening task using video clips from famous Russian films. Results indicate that pragmatic knowledge is not significantly different across proficiency levels, nor is perception of the pronouns in a listening task; that is, beginning learners and advanced learners demonstrate similar ability with the understanding of the feature. Furthermore, female learners outperformed male learners on the listening task, although performance on the pragmatic knowledge task did not vary by gender. These results add to the body of knowledge in second language acquisition and, more specifically, to our knowledge of how pragmatic features of a language are acquired.

The main objective of this thesis is to investigate acoustic cues for the voicing contrast in stops in Russian for effects of speaking rate and phonetic environment. Although the laryngeal contrast in Russian is assumed to be a [voice] contrast, very few experimental studies have looked at the acoustic properties of Russian voiced and voiceless stops. Most claims about acoustic properties of stops and phonological processes that affect them (voice assimilation and final devoicing) have been made based on impressionistic transcriptions. The present study provides evidence that (1) voicing in voiced stops is affected by speaking rate manipulation, (2) stops in Russian retain underlying voicing contrast in presonorant position and voice assimilation occurs only in obstruent clusters, and (3) phonological processes of voice assimilation and final devoicing do not result in complete neutralization. The target of the investigation is voiced and voiceless intervocalic stops, stops in clusters, and final stops in different prosodic positions within a word and at the phrase level. The acoustic cues to voicing (duration of voicing, stop closure duration, vowel duration, f0, and F1) were measured from the production data of 14 monolingual speakers of Russian recorded in Russia. Speakers produced words and phrases with target stops in three speaking rate conditions: list reading, slow rate and fast rate. The data were analyzed in 5 blocks focusing on (1) word-internal stops, (2) voice assimilation in stops in prepositions, (3) cases of so-called "sonorant transparency", (4) voice assimilation in stops before /v/, and (5) voicing processes across a word boundary. The results of the study present a challenge to the widely-held assumption that phonological processes precede phonetic processes at the phonology-phonetics interface. It is shown that the underlying contrast leaves traces on assimilated and devoiced stops. To account for the findings, a phonology-phonetics interface that allows interaction between the modules is required. In addition, the results show that temporal cues are affected by speaking rate manipulation, but the effect of rate on voicing is found only in voiced stops. Duration of voicing and VOT in voiceless stops are not affected by speaking rate. The results also show that no effect of C2 is obtained on voicing in C1 stops in in obstruent-sonorant-obstruent clusters, thus no "phonological sonorant transparency to voice assimilation" is found in Russian. Rather, the study provides evidence that there is variation in production of voicing in stops in prepositions, and that voice assimilation in stops before /v/ followed by a voiced obstruent is optional for some speakers.

What factors motivate members of minority groups to vote based on an ethnic attachment? What motivates candidates and political parties to make appeals to specific ethnic groups? I argue that ethnic voting is more likely to emerge when individual socialization experiences and dissatisfaction increase the salience of ethnic identity, contextual factors serve to politicize this salient identity, and the mobilization potential of the ethnic group is high, making it more likely that an ethnic-based appeal will be successful. I test this theory with a combination of regional-level large-N statistical comparisons, case studies, and individual-level survey data. I primarily examine party voting in the Baltic Republics and Ukraine. In these systems, I contend, ethnic voting may manifest support for traditional ethnic parties but also support for more mainstream but ethnically inclusive parties. These inclusive parties, generally overlooked in the ethnic politics literature, are an important component of ethnic representation and an important addition to research on ethnic voting. While in this work I focus on the Russian minority in the countries of the former Soviet Union, the general theory I develop may be applied to ethnic minorities in other political environments.

This study is based on an exhaustive analysis of 1,500 Russian words that have been borrowed from the Russian lexicon into Modern Chinese.The purpose of this study is in part to provide a scientific basis for the formulation of the standardisation of the Chinese language.The fact that at present there is no standard method by which foreign words are borrowed into Chinese is problematic because it gives rise to confusion amongst Chinese speakers. It is hoped that this study can begin to clarify such methods, and also limit potential abuses of lexical borrowing that do not accord with the linguistic principles of the Modern Chinese language. In addressing these issues this study covered eight forms of borrowing that exist in Modern Chinese borrowings.In effect these eight forms all stem from either phonetic, semantic or direct transplantation forms of borrowing.This thesis has also discussed many of the linguistic difficulties, and their resolutions, that arise in the process of borrowing.It has also highlighted several aspects of lexical borrowing that have not been addressed in previous literature, and suggested creative ways in which these issues could be addressed in the future. It is hoped that the content of this thesis is able to form part of the process of providing a reference for the formulation of an official Chinese language policy. / Master of Arts (Hons)

Kolokol: Spectres of the Russian Bell, submitted by Jason Kaminski in fulfilment of the requirements of PhD (Humanities and Social Sciences) candidature at the University of Technology, Sydney, is an interpretative history of Russian bells (kolokola) and bell music (zvon). As a cultural object and sign, the Russian bell is associated with ideas of transcendence, and ideological and creative ‘vision.’ This interpretation of the signification of the kolokol as a sign arises directly from the perception that the bell is essentially a physical (anthropomorphic) body that is capable of ‘projecting’ or ‘transcending’ itself in the form of a spectrum. This essential ‘spectrality’ defines a history of the Russian bell as an instrument of magical, spiritual and religious ritual, as a cultural artefact associated with changing ideological movements (paganism, Christianity and communism) and as a sign represented synaesthetically in image, sound and text. Ethnographic and campanological studies observe that the kolokol ‘reflects Russian social history like a mirror’, representing the ‘voice of God’ or Logos as an aural or ‘singing’ icon, pointing to the primordial origins of language. This dissertation further investigates the idea that the kolokol acts as an ‘acoustical mirror’ and ‘ideological apparatus’: a medium or spectre through which Russian history and culture is interpellated and reflected. The various logical streams (storytelling, legend, script, text, song, cultural theory, philosophy and ethnography) that contribute to this dissertation form a textual ‘polyphony’ through which the essential meanings and ‘personae’ of the kolokol as a cultural object are interpreted. The bell is regarded as presenting an enigma of signification that must be resolved through investigation and definition. The thesis concludes that the kolokol acts as an iconic sign of the creative ‘Word’ (Logos) and as a symbolic sign that implies a ‘bridge’, copula or psychic ‘hook’, articulating the relationship between the cosmos and consciousness, the material and spiritual, the real and imaginary. Keywords: Russia, Russian History, Russian Arts, Russian Music, Russian Poetry, Russian Political History, Russian Orthodoxy, Russian Revolution, Bell-founding, Bell Music, Bell-ringing, Campanology, Iconology, Kolokol, Zvon. Word-count: 82,250 (excluding endnotes) 98,300 (including endnotes).

本文採取歷史研究途徑（Historical Approach）和君•蕾森（June Layson）之舞蹈研究途徑，針對俄羅斯芭蕾舞起源的相關社會、文化與藝術背景，及各時期重要編舞家與舞蹈家作一系統性的分析與研究。 本文研究架構共分五章，第一章說明研究動機與主題，並對俄羅斯芭蕾相關之歷史文獻進行整理，闡述採行之研究方法與架構。 第二章為俄國芭蕾藝術的傳入期，分四個部分說明俄國芭蕾吸取西方芭蕾養分的奠基過程：一為俄羅斯芭蕾藝術受皇室扶植萌芽的時代背景與專業化發展，二為俄國芭蕾自決的濫觴，三為俄羅斯芭蕾與西歐芭蕾接軌的浪漫芭蕾時期，四為裴堤帕為俄國創造的古典芭蕾時期。 第三章為俄國芭蕾藝術的改革期，指由佳吉列夫領導之「俄羅斯芭蕾舞團」在1909年至1929年間，走出裴堤帕公式化編舞，跨進現代芭蕾領域的芭蕾改革運動。本章著重於舞蹈專業層面，研究使芭蕾藝術獲得重生，讓俄國芭蕾立足西方的主要功臣—五位編舞家—的編導風格及其形成的時期特色。 第四章為蘇聯芭蕾的實驗期，說明1917年10月革命對俄羅斯芭蕾藝術的影響，分析1920年代影響往後數十年之編舞家作品風格，最後並對蘇聯芭蕾的重要資產與瑰寶—芭蕾舞者，以及蘇聯芭蕾教學體系的建立者瓦加諾娃，作一整理與介紹。 第五章為本論文的結論，將對本文的研究結果作綜合性的回顧與檢討，並做總結。 / The thesis of “The Origin and development of Russian Ballet” focuses on “Historical Approach” and adopts June Layson’s “ Dance Study Approach”, aims at analyzing the social, cultural and artistic content of the Russian Ballet’s origin, as well as the style of important choreographers, dancers and educators of each time. The research consists of five chapters. The first chapter summarizes the theme and the motif of the research. Historical document and archives are organized and presented as to explain the method and structure of the thesis. The second chapter, the nourishment of the Western ballet on the forming stage of Russian ballet, discusses four important elements that were introduced from the Western world. First, the sprout and professionalization of Russian ballet supported and sponsored by Russian Royal family. Second, the beginning of self-determination of Russian ballet. Third, the Russian romantic ballet period, and the last, “the classic ballet” created by Marius Petipa that surpassed the Western style. The third chapter examines the reform period of Russian ballet led by the dance group “Ballet Russes”. The group was founded by Serge Diaghilev during 1909-1929 that broke away from the Petipa’s formulism and stepped into the modern ballet movement. The innovative style of “Ballet Russes” not only revitalized the ballet world but also gave Russian ballet a foothold in the hometown of ballet. This chapter further explored the development of the group and its three important periods with different style. Also, the style of five choreographers who were the inspiration of the group is introduced. The forth chapter, the experimental period of Russian ballet, outlined the influence of 1917 Russian October Revolution that brought into the Russian ballet. The experimental works of the 1920’s important choreographers that greatly influenced the later Soviet ballet even more than 30 years are also analyzed. Furthermore, this chapter introduces the most important treasure—Soviet ballet dancers and the founder of Soviet ballet teaching system—Agrippina Vaganova. The fifth chapter concludes the thesis, and takes an overall review of the research.