The history of Russian/Soviet thought, culture, and subjectivity

The paper focuses on the TRIZ community, formed around a shared interest in the “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving” as developed by Genrich S. Altshuller during the 1960s and’70s in the Sviet Union. As a theory, TRIZ reached its popularity peak in the 1970s and ’80s, when many local TRIZ communities had been formed in different corners of the Soviet Union. These communities, consisting of both professional engineers and amateurs of inventorism, shared not only a rational algorithm-based approach toward innovation, but also a particular type of socialist morality. For many TRIZ adherents, this theory became not only a professional tool but rather a philosophy of life.
During the Perestroika period and the early 1990s, the increased level of outmigration from the (former) USSR helped to spread the TRIZ approach to innovation far beyond the confines of the Soviet Union. The author places particular emphasis on the tension between the philosophical logic underlying TRIZ and the work ethic characteristic of the community members and demonstrates how moral implications of the theory became a ground for internal conflicts within the community under conditions of capitalist economy. The article is based on ethnographic data collected in 2010 in St.Petersburg.

Taking a strikingly interdisciplinary and global approach, Postcolonialism Cross-Examined reflects on the current status of postcolonial studies and attempts to break through traditional boundaries, creating a truly comparative and genuinely global phenomenon. Drawing together the field of mainstream postcolonial studies with post-Soviet postcolonial studies and studies of the late Ottoman Empire, the contributors in this volume question many of the concepts and assumptions we have become accustomed to in postcolonial studies, creating a fresh new version of the field. The volume calls the merits of the field into question, investigating how postcolonial studies may have perpetuated and normalized colonialism as an issue exclusive to Western colonial and imperial powers. The volume is the first to open a dialogue between three different areas of postcolonial scholarship that previously developed independently from one another: • the wide field of postcolonial studies working on European colonialism, • the growing field of post-Soviet postcolonial/post-imperial studies, • the still fledgling field of post-Ottoman postcolonial/post-imperial studies, supported by sideways glances at the multidirectional conditions of interaction in East Africa and the East and West Indies. Postcolonialism Cross-Examined looks at topics such as humanism, nationalism, multiculturalism, nostalgia, and the Anthropocene in order to piece together a new, broader vision for postcolonial studies in the twenty-first century. By including territories other than those covered by the postcolonial mainstream, the book strives to reframe the "postcolonial" as a genuinely global phenomenon and develop multidirectional postcolonial perspectives. Monika Albrecht is Professor of literary and cultural studies (apl. Prof.) at

This review-essay explores approaches to the thought of the creative Soviet Marxist thinker Evald Ilyenkov as discussed in a recent book edited by Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen, Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism. The book consists of a series of commentaries and contextual essays which centre on the translated text of Ilyenkov's Dialectics of the Ideal. The approach the authors take to Ilyenkov's work differs from previous ones of exploring the totality of Ilyenkov's thought or eclectic aspects of it. By commenting on and contextualising Ilyenkov's major text on the Ideal they locate the contribution of Ilyenkov in dialogue with traditions of classical European philosophy, and Western and Soviet Marxism, and in his importance to contemporary issues in philosophy and other disciplines. A deep analysis of Ilyenkov's dense and often complex text is also given. By doing so the authors highlight the immense contribution of Ilyenkov to contemporary thought.

The article introduces the publication of an archival document − extracts from the diary of Ekaterina Sakharova (1886−1963). Trained as an agronomist, after the Revolution of 1917 she worked as a secretary for various academic organizations and as a translator. Ilya Gerasimov argues that Sakharova’s diary is unique not just in its time span (the first entry dates back to 1905, and the last – to 1963) but also for its comprehensive reflection of the main stages in the evolution of the Russian intelligentsia in the early twentieth century. From 1905 to 1922, Sakharova’s worldview went through at least five major transformations – as dramatic as switching from endorsing revolutionary terrorism to taking an explicitly counterrevolutionary political stance. The diarist tried to present her latest change of heart each time as an “objective” and “predetermined” consequence of her previous experiences and thoughts, explicitly claiming that it was a final life decision and that nothing could change it in the future. Analyzing her perception of time and attitude to her social environment, Gerasimov concludes that Sakharova’s diary reveals a dynamics of individual subjectivity different from that suggested by the mainstream literature on the topic. Rather than presenting the work on her “self“ for the future, the text shows the author’s attempts to interiorize a new, recently crystallized hegemonic public discourse by rewriting herself (her emotions, values, aspirations) in the past. A new future
becomes possible by revisiting her own past, and this probably holds true not only in the case of one exemplary intelligent’s personal diary.

Although Dugin's “neo-Eurasianism,” like classical Eurasianism, is radically anti-Western and claims the status of a new geopolitical paradigm, its academic clout is far more modest. Dugin often simply copies, freely paraphrases and boldly mingles ideas of various anti-liberal international philosophical currents. “Neo-Eurasianism” is, in many regards, a purposefully designed misnomer, and – in contrast to what its name suggests – not an adaptation of classical Eurasianism to the post-Soviet period.

https://www.fabula.org/colloques/document6858.php

En s’appuyant sur l’historiographie des « Soviet Subjectivities », l’article s’intéresse à la place
du repentir dans le développement d’un genre du discours caractéristique de l’époque
stalinienne : l’autocritique politique (samokritika). Cette variante soviétique du rite de la
confession publique questionne, au sein du langage lui-même, l’existence d’une force
illocutoire négative. Les écrits autobiographiques du critique Isaïe Lejnev viennent témoigner
de ce pouvoir de défaire. De même, dans les années 1990, les investigations littéraires de Vitali
Chentalinski iront puiser dans les archives littéraires du KGB pour faire du dossier d’Isaak
Babel l’avant-texte d’une confession littéraire non advenue.

The current trends of Russian monumental sculpture are analyzed in the context of the discussion of new sculptural memorials that have appeared recently in Moscow. The main focus is on the history of the creation of a memorial to the victims of political repression in Moscow. It particularly considers works of the Russian sculptor Georgy Frangulyan whose works play a significant role in the formation of ideas about the  latest  trends  in  the  art  culture  of  Russia.  For  comparison,  examples  of  European  and  American sculpture of recent decades are presented including the works of Henry Moore, Alfred Hrdlicka, and Richard Serra. The theme of monuments and memorials is revealed in the context of artistic problems, urban situation, socio-political tendencies. Monumental sculpture is nderstood as a symptom of the state of Russian society, a form of social outlook.

The article examines the personal and scholarly relationship between two prominent twentieth-century thinkers: Russian theologian and the founder of Neopatristic synthesis, George Florovsky and Polish scholar Andrzej Walicki. On the basis of Walicki's memoirs and the epistolary heritage of both philosophers, it has been established that they first met in 1960 at Harvard. Florovsky had a significant influence on the young Polish scholar's interpretation of Slavophilism. At the same time, Walicki interpreted Russian philosophy as a part of European philosophy, while Fr. George, although criticized Western influences in Russian thought, sought to indicate its originality appealing to the Fathers of the Church and the development of a Neopatristic synthesis. Other aspects of both thinkers are noted in the article: their studies in historiosophy and their emphasis on indeterminism in history, and the fact that both Florovsky and Walicki were apologists for Russian culture in the Western academic world. This article is an introduction to the publication of two letters from Walicki to Florovsky stored at the archives of Princeton University: they were sent in 1965 and deal with the exchange of ideas and books between the two scholars.

В тексте рассмотрен языковой трансфер немецких лексем Selbstbetätigung / Selbsttätigkeit / самодеятельность в русский язык и высказано предположение о том, что смысловые метаморфозы их русского эквивалента отмечают
этапы истории взаимодействия индивида и власти в советском обществе. Авторская гипотеза состоит в том, что советский материал позволяет обнаружить культурный механизм самодеятельности, встроенный в разнообразные
дискурсы и практики, где тесно и подчас противоречиво переплетаются политический императив, официальный и повседневный дискурс и субъектив ное стремление к самовыражению. Исследование функционирования этого
культурного механизма позволяет выявить один из специфических элементов феномена советской модерности.