What we see in Russia today is a dual media system, with independent and critical newspapers on one side vs. controlled and censored television channels on the other. The independent media are facing severe difficulties, and the accountability of the elected are nearly non-existing. The weaknesses of the judicial system allowing arbitrary exercising of the legislation against journalists, the increased control of media outlets both regional and federal, among television channels, newspapers and online media, lack of access to information, all are preventing the development of the media as the fourth estate providing a check on those in power. Journalistic practises, the heritage from the Soviet era and not at least the ownership structures are contributing to the development of a media system in favour of authoritarianism. Globalization has only a minor effect on freedom of speech due to increased control of the internet, and the capacities the authorities have shown to use globalization to their own advantage. The Russian media today are far more contributing to uphold an authoritarian regime than contributing to increased democracy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, June, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Akademische Abhandlung - Helsingfors. / "Literaturverzeichnis": p. [vii]-xvii.

Narrative measures derived from English and Russian tell and retell narrative language samples of 20 L1-Russian, L2-English bilingual adults were correlated with their overall, speaking and verbal proficiency self-ratings to verify the validity of the selfrating scale for both languages. In English, measures of fluency, productivity and grammaticality were moderately correlated with speaking proficiency self-ratings. Strength of correlations with tell versus retell narratives varied by category of narrative measure. For Russian, correlations were not significant due to ceiling effects in proficiency. The effects of modifications to narrative measures were considered, showing that correlations with temporal fluency and productivity increased as mazes and fillers were excluded, while correlations with grammaticality increased as article omission errors were excluded. Sources of variation in self-ratings and narrative measures are described, and recommendations are presented for an alternative narrative elicitation method. / text

Abstract / History

This dissertation investigated the extent of L2 (English) acquisition and L1 (Russian) maintenance of two age groups of Russian immigrants in the US and examined the relationship between participants' current language dominance and culture dominance. The study also aimed at enhancing theoretical knowledge about the methodology of assessing language and culture dominance and at establishing which of the measures used here (self-reports of language proficiency, three lexical fluency tests, writing tasks, and a culture questionnaire) are the most accurate and practical for determining the more dominant language and culture. In addition to quantitative data, interviews provided insights into the participants' views and opinions on their language and culture and were used to supplement the statistical results with personal comments.The results indicate a surprisingly high level of first language and culture maintenance in the younger group together with highly successful L2 acquisition and acculturation, marking this group as rather balanced bilingually and bi-culturally. The older participants, on the other hand, clearly maintain dominance in both Russian language and Russian culture. Significant correlations established between different language proficiency measures carry methodological importance for future studies.

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<p>In Russia today women use traditional forms of birth control at unusually high rates, whereas, conversely their use of modern contraceptives is unusually low. During the Soviet period, women&rsquo;s access to modern contraceptive methods may have been limited. However, one would postulate that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nature of the new reforms that developed would have lent itself to an increase in modern contraception usage on par with other countries. In Russia today there is not a lack of availability of modern contraceptives. Yet, women are still not using modern contraception at a rate that is congruent with an increase in availability. What then is influencing Russian women&rsquo;s decisions? The contraceptive acceptance of Russian women today is shaped by cultural legacies of the Soviet Union surrounding both contraceptives themselves and sex and sex education. </p>

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