This thesis is a study of the Slovenian multi-disciplinary collective the NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst), with particular focus on the music group Laibach. This thesis interrogates how Laibach and the NSK operate as a nexus between Eastern Europe and the West through the ritualised staging of ideology as a mechanism of power. This research addresses the wider issue of Eastern European aesthetic discourse in the context of hegemonic Western aesthetic discourse. Research involved an analysis of Laibach and the NSK’s prime aesthetic strategy, Retrogardism, in the context of Western aesthetic discourse. This required an analysis of diverse fields such as the historic avant-garde, European history, critical theory, cultural activism, and Performance Art. Comparisons with activist, popular music and performance groups were drawn, and a survey of Laibach’s audience undertaken as part of an analysis of Laibach’s interpellative qualities in the West. This research was conducted within a Performance Art framework, and reference made to current Performance Art praxis. Research revealed the dominance of Western aesthetic discourse and how this has resulted in an increased autonomy of Eastern European aesthetic discourse in a post-Socialist context. Laibach and the NSK are intrinsic to this discursive field, and effective engagement with Laibach is only possible within the discourse of this Eastern European autonomy. A study of Western reportage of Laibach was conducted, which demonstrated a failure of the West to engage with the complexity in the Laibach and NSK performative spectacle. It was found that this complexity is Laibach’s dominant interpellative quality. Laibach and the NSK articulate the dialectic between Eastern Europe and the West as both a point of communication and text for interpretation. Laibach and the NSK establish this point of nexus as one achieved by a process of non-alignment with any geo-political, temporal, aesthetic or ideological determinants. In this way they function as a site of resistance to late-capitalism, which has assimilated conventional forms of counter-cultural challenge. In this way Laibach and the NSK’s Performance Art contrasts with Western Performance Art discourse.

My project is an acknowledgement of the fact that the physical layout of our environments is not directly describing and shaping the way we live or our societies are shaped. Non-spatial structures are playing a bigger role in societal processes than spatial ones. My project is trying to give these invisible processes spatial expression. Non-functional structures that highlight the non-functionality of postsocialist space. The monotony and monumentality of socialist spaces is contrasted with a design that expresses the multiplicity (of possibilities, paths, choices, desires) that exists nowadays. Orthogonal space is sliced up, perforated and at points overlaid without replacing it in it’s totality. ‘Non-functional’ elements are formal expressions of the realm of virtual space which permeates our lives and cities as well. These elements function in a more ‘internet’ fashion (multi layered, multi directional, yet clustered, streamlined etc) and yet they perform in the real world. Yet in the same time they are expressing our high-tech society without being hightech. Simultaneously, the presence of these structures addresses the condition of impermanence and change that play a strong role in the psyche of East Germans today. The multiplicity which is expressed by the project contrasts the rigidity of socialist architecture and society - and creates a link to remembering the past.

One of the well-known Chinese revolutionary classics The White-Haired Girl (baimaonü, 白毛女) has gone through different adaptations as a propaganda of Chinese Communist Party from the 1940s to the 1960s. In recent years, the 2011 and 2015 operas are presented by the Ministry of Culture. The 2015 opera became especially widely known for Xi Jinping’s wife, Peng Liyuan’s involvement as an artistic director. What is the purpose of remaking this outdated propaganda in post-socialist China? How can these new adaptations work effectively as a means of propaganda? My study on the new adaptations of the White-Haired Girl (hereafter WHG) can serve as an example of the changes of the propaganda in the age of post-socialism. To do so, this study will use the 2011 opera and the TV reportage program which analyzes the 2011 and 2015 opera in the following ways: examine the 2011 opera as a representative work of the 21stcentury adaptations and focus on the TV reportage program Cultural Focus (Wenhuashidian, 文化视点) which demonstrates the intention of the production through interviewing the main artists and staffs of the 2011 and 2015 operas, and the Chinese public. By doing so, I argue that the emphasis of propaganda is switched from class struggle to social harmony in the 2011 and 2015 operas compared to the film (1950) and the ballet film (1971). This social harmony is achieved by promotion of familial and generational harmony. Also, the heroine, Xi’er is represented as a female individual who can contribute to the unification of the nation instead of being presented as a class subject. In this regard, the endeavor of seeking social harmony through new adaptations reflects anxieties over social disintegration in contemporary China.

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<p>This dissertation takes a step towards providing a better understanding of post-socialist welfare state development from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective. The overall analytical goal of this thesis has been to critically assess the development of social policies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania using them as illustrative examples of post-socialist welfare state development in the light of the theories, approaches and typologies that have been developed to study affluent capitalist democracies. The four studies included in this dissertation aspire to a common aim in a number of specific ways.</p><p>The first study tries to place the ideal-typical welfare state models of the Baltic States within the well-known welfare state typologies. At the same time, it provides a rich overview of the main social security institutions in the three countries by comparing them with each other and with the previous structures of the Soviet period. It examines the social insurance institutions of the Baltic States (old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, short-term benefits, sickness, maternity and parental insurance and family benefits) with respect to conditions of eligibility, replacement rates, financing and contributions. The findings of this study indicate that the Latvian social security system can generally be labelled as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models. The Estonian social security system can generally also be characterised as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models, even if there are some weak elements of the targeted model in it. It appears that the institutional changes developing in the social security system of Lithuania have led to a combination of the basic security and targeted models of the welfare state. Nevertheless, as the example of the three Baltic States shows, there is diversity in how these countries solve problems within the field of social policy. In studying the social security schemes in detail, some common features were found that could be attributed to all three countries. Therefore, the critical analysis of the main social security institutions of the Baltic States in this study gave strong supporting evidence in favour of identifying the post-socialist regime type that is already gaining acceptance within comparative welfare state research.</p><p>Study Two compares the system of social maintenance and insurance in the Soviet Union, which was in force in the three Baltic countries before their independence, with the currently existing social security systems. The aim of the essay is to highlight the forces that have influenced the transformation of the social policy from its former highly universal, albeit authoritarian, form, to the less universal, social insurance-based systems of present-day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This study demonstrates that the welfare–economy nexus is not the only important factor in the development of social programs. The results of this analysis revealed that people's attitudes towards distributive justice and the developmental level of civil society also play an important part in shaping social policies. The shift to individualism in people’s mentality and the decline of the labour movement, or, to be more precise, the decline in trade union membership and influence, does nothing to promote the development of social rights in the Baltic countries and hinders the expansion of social policies. The legacy of the past has been another important factor in shaping social programs. It can be concluded that social policy should be studied as if embedded not only in the welfare-economy nexus, but also in the societal, historical and cultural nexus of a given society. </p><p>Study Three discusses the views of the state elites on family policy within a wider theoretical setting covering family policy and social policy in a broader sense and attempts to expand this analytical framework to include other post-socialist countries. The aim of this essay is to explore the various views of the state elites in the Baltics concerning family policy and, in particular, family benefits as one of the possible explanations for the observed policy differences. The qualitative analyses indicate that the Baltic States differ significantly with regard to the motives behind their family policies. Lithuanian decision-makers seek to reduce poverty among families with children and enhance the parents’ responsibility for bringing up their children. Latvian policy-makers act so as to increase the birth rate and create equal opportunities for children from all families. Estonian policy-makers seek to create equal opportunities for all children and the desire to enhance gender equality is more visible in the case of Estonia in comparison with the other two countries. It is strongly arguable that there is a link between the underlying motives and the kinds of family benefits in a given country. This study, thus, indicates how intimately the attitudes of the state bureaucrats, policy-makers, political elite and researchers shape social policy. It confirms that family policy is a product of the prevailing ideology within a country, while the potential influence of globalisation and Europeanisation is detectable too.</p><p> The final essay takes into account the opinions of welfare users and examines the performances of the institutionalised family benefits by relying on the recipients’ opinions regarding these benefits. The opinions of the populations as a whole regarding government efforts to help families are compared with those of the welfare users. Various family benefits are evaluated according to the recipients' satisfaction with those benefits as well as the contemporaneous levels of subjective satisfaction with the welfare programs related to the absolute level of expenditure on each program. The findings of this paper indicate that, in Latvia, people experience a lower level of success regarding state-run family insurance institutions, as compared to those in Lithuania and Estonia. This is deemed to be because the cash benefits for families and children in Latvia are, on average, seen as marginally influencing the overall financial situation of the families concerned. In Lithuania and Estonia, the overwhelming majority think that the family benefit systems improve the financial situation of families. It appears that recipients evaluated universal family benefits as less positive than targeted benefits. Some universal benefits negatively influenced the level of general satisfaction with the family benefits system provided in the countries being researched. This study puts forward a discussion about whether universalism is always more legitimate than targeting. In transitional economies, in which resources are highly constrained, some forms of universal benefits could turn out to be very expensive in relative terms, without being seen as useful or legitimate forms of help to families.</p><p> In sum, by closely examining the different aspects of social policy, this dissertation goes beyond the over-generalisation of Eastern European welfare state development and, instead, takes a more detailed look at what is really going on in these countries through the examples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In addition, another important contribution made by this study is that it revives ‘western’ theoretical knowledge through ‘eastern’ empirical evidence and provides the opportunity to expand the theoretical framework for post-socialist societies.</p>

Jugendfeier or Jugendweihe, the youth ‘rite of passage’ ritual has been ideologically re-and-de-contextualised by various movements throughout the last 150 years of German history. It is most commonly associated with the communist German Democratic Republic where it was used as a state initiation ritual for the foundation of ‘socialist personalities.’ This thesis focuses on Jugendfeier the ‘youth celebration’ ceremony as performed by the German Humanist Association (Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands) in Berlin. Jugendweihe originated in the mid-nineteenth century as an alternative to Catholic First Communion and Protestant Confirmation. In the former East Germany between 1956 and 1989 more than seven million students aged thirteen to fourteen undertook the ritual. Significantly, it is claimed that in present-day Germany more than 100,000 students annually take part in the ritual throughout post-socialist Germany in one form or another. This thesis highlights the often contradictory nature of Jugendweihe by examining its historical development and continuation in post-socialist Germany. It contrasts the official views of Jugendweihe in the eyes of its organisers and supporters, as well as the unofficial opinions of its participants in the GDR and in contemporary Berlin. It is often assumed that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the East German regime along with its culture, politics, economy, rituals and everyday way of life would likewise fade away. This thesis reconstructs the history of Jugendweihe from its Christian origins, details its implementation as a state-ritual in the GDR, and engages with the German Humanist Association’s adaption of Jugendfeier in reunified Berlin. A study of such a contested ritual sheds light on larger discussions concerning identity, community, theories on ritual, and perceptions of secularisation and humanism. By studying the practices of a largely ‘atheist’ group that rejects religion, it challenges what constitutes collective and individual notions of religiosity and secularity.

The aim of this dissertation is two-fold. First, the discussion seeks to understand the concepts of nationalism and patriotism and how they relate to one another. In respect to the more critical literature concerning nationalism, it asks whether these two concepts are as different as is sometimes assumed. Furthermore, by problematizing nation-branding as an “updated” form of nationalism, it seeks to understand whether we are facing the possible emergence of a new type of nationalism. Second, the study endeavors to discursively analyze the ”bottom-up” processes of national reproduction and re-definition in an online, post-socialist context through an empirical examination of the online debate and polemic about the new Polish patriotism. The dissertation argues that approaching nationalism as a broad phenomenon and ideology which operates discursively is helpful for understanding patriotism as an element of the nationalist rhetoric that can be employed to study national unity, sameness, and difference. Emphasizing patriotism within the Central European context as neither an alternative to nor as a type of nationalism may make it possible to explain the popularity and continuous endurance of nationalism and of practices of national identification in different and changing contexts. Instead of facing a new type of nationalism, we can then speak of new forms of engagement which take place in cyberspace that contribute to the process of reproduction of nationalism. The growing field of nation-branding, with both its practical and political implications, is presented as one of the ways in which nationalism is reproduced and maintained as a form of “soft” rather than “hard” power within the global context. The concept of nation re-branding is introduced in order to account for the role that citizens play in the process of nation branding, which has often been neglected in the literature. This concept is utilized to critically examine, understand, and explain the dynamics of nation brand construction and re-definition, with a particular focus on the discursive practices of citizens in cyberspace. It is argued that citizens in the post-socialist countries, including Poland, can engage in the process of nation re-branding online. It is also argued that this process of online nation re-branding may legitimately be regarded as a type of civic practice through which citizens connect with each other and reproduce a form of cultural national intimacy. The results of the analysis of the online empirical material illustrate that nation re-branding is a complex, dynamic, and ambivalent phenomenon. It involves a process of discursive negotiation of nation and of national identity, but also challenges, dismantles, and transforms the national image as it is communicated both internally and externally. This reveals nation re-branding as an element in the post-socialist transformation from a ”nation” to a ”Western,” ”modern,” and ”normal” country in which dealing with an ”old” nation brand is as equally important as the introduction of the new brand. Nationalism does not disappear in the digital age, but rather becomes part of the new way of doing politics online, whereby citizens are potentially granted a form of agency in the democratic process.

This dissertation takes a step towards providing a better understanding of post-socialist welfare state development from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective. The overall analytical goal of this thesis has been to critically assess the development of social policies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania using them as illustrative examples of post-socialist welfare state development in the light of the theories, approaches and typologies that have been developed to study affluent capitalist democracies. The four studies included in this dissertation aspire to a common aim in a number of specific ways. The first study tries to place the ideal-typical welfare state models of the Baltic States within the well-known welfare state typologies. At the same time, it provides a rich overview of the main social security institutions in the three countries by comparing them with each other and with the previous structures of the Soviet period. It examines the social insurance institutions of the Baltic States (old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, short-term benefits, sickness, maternity and parental insurance and family benefits) with respect to conditions of eligibility, replacement rates, financing and contributions. The findings of this study indicate that the Latvian social security system can generally be labelled as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models. The Estonian social security system can generally also be characterised as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models, even if there are some weak elements of the targeted model in it. It appears that the institutional changes developing in the social security system of Lithuania have led to a combination of the basic security and targeted models of the welfare state. Nevertheless, as the example of the three Baltic States shows, there is diversity in how these countries solve problems within the field of social policy. In studying the social security schemes in detail, some common features were found that could be attributed to all three countries. Therefore, the critical analysis of the main social security institutions of the Baltic States in this study gave strong supporting evidence in favour of identifying the post-socialist regime type that is already gaining acceptance within comparative welfare state research. Study Two compares the system of social maintenance and insurance in the Soviet Union, which was in force in the three Baltic countries before their independence, with the currently existing social security systems. The aim of the essay is to highlight the forces that have influenced the transformation of the social policy from its former highly universal, albeit authoritarian, form, to the less universal, social insurance-based systems of present-day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This study demonstrates that the welfare–economy nexus is not the only important factor in the development of social programs. The results of this analysis revealed that people's attitudes towards distributive justice and the developmental level of civil society also play an important part in shaping social policies. The shift to individualism in people’s mentality and the decline of the labour movement, or, to be more precise, the decline in trade union membership and influence, does nothing to promote the development of social rights in the Baltic countries and hinders the expansion of social policies. The legacy of the past has been another important factor in shaping social programs. It can be concluded that social policy should be studied as if embedded not only in the welfare-economy nexus, but also in the societal, historical and cultural nexus of a given society. Study Three discusses the views of the state elites on family policy within a wider theoretical setting covering family policy and social policy in a broader sense and attempts to expand this analytical framework to include other post-socialist countries. The aim of this essay is to explore the various views of the state elites in the Baltics concerning family policy and, in particular, family benefits as one of the possible explanations for the observed policy differences. The qualitative analyses indicate that the Baltic States differ significantly with regard to the motives behind their family policies. Lithuanian decision-makers seek to reduce poverty among families with children and enhance the parents’ responsibility for bringing up their children. Latvian policy-makers act so as to increase the birth rate and create equal opportunities for children from all families. Estonian policy-makers seek to create equal opportunities for all children and the desire to enhance gender equality is more visible in the case of Estonia in comparison with the other two countries. It is strongly arguable that there is a link between the underlying motives and the kinds of family benefits in a given country. This study, thus, indicates how intimately the attitudes of the state bureaucrats, policy-makers, political elite and researchers shape social policy. It confirms that family policy is a product of the prevailing ideology within a country, while the potential influence of globalisation and Europeanisation is detectable too. The final essay takes into account the opinions of welfare users and examines the performances of the institutionalised family benefits by relying on the recipients’ opinions regarding these benefits. The opinions of the populations as a whole regarding government efforts to help families are compared with those of the welfare users. Various family benefits are evaluated according to the recipients' satisfaction with those benefits as well as the contemporaneous levels of subjective satisfaction with the welfare programs related to the absolute level of expenditure on each program. The findings of this paper indicate that, in Latvia, people experience a lower level of success regarding state-run family insurance institutions, as compared to those in Lithuania and Estonia. This is deemed to be because the cash benefits for families and children in Latvia are, on average, seen as marginally influencing the overall financial situation of the families concerned. In Lithuania and Estonia, the overwhelming majority think that the family benefit systems improve the financial situation of families. It appears that recipients evaluated universal family benefits as less positive than targeted benefits. Some universal benefits negatively influenced the level of general satisfaction with the family benefits system provided in the countries being researched. This study puts forward a discussion about whether universalism is always more legitimate than targeting. In transitional economies, in which resources are highly constrained, some forms of universal benefits could turn out to be very expensive in relative terms, without being seen as useful or legitimate forms of help to families. In sum, by closely examining the different aspects of social policy, this dissertation goes beyond the over-generalisation of Eastern European welfare state development and, instead, takes a more detailed look at what is really going on in these countries through the examples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In addition, another important contribution made by this study is that it revives ‘western’ theoretical knowledge through ‘eastern’ empirical evidence and provides the opportunity to expand the theoretical framework for post-socialist societies.

This thesis explores the ways in which the Holocaust experiences and memories of Roma communities in post-Socialist Ukraine and Russia have been both remembered and forgotten. In these nations, the Porraimos, meaning the “Great Devouring” in some Romani dialects, has been largely silenced by the politics of national memory, and by the societal discrimination and ostracization of Roma communities. While Ukraine has made strides towards memorializing Porraimos in the last few decades, the Russian state has yet to do the same. I question how experiences of the Porraimos fit into Holocaust memory in these nations, why the memorialization of the Porraimos is important, what the relationship between communal and public memory is, and lastly, how communal Roma memory is instrumental in reshaping the public memory of the Holocaust. I approach these questions through a comparative, interdisciplinary framework that combines historical analysis, interviews with two Russian Roma individuals from St. Petersburg Russia, an overview of existing literature and film that focus on the Porraimos, and a survey of the memorials for Roma victims in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. Using these methods, I determine how the Porraimos fits into political and cultural memory in these nations, and what the future of Porraimos memory might look like. / Graduate