The semiotics of Russian culture

The seventeenth century was one of scientific fervour and of fundamental change in how the natural world was to be approached. With increased voyages abroad, the world was being drawn into Europe and each country wanted to be the first to capture the ‘Codex Naturae’. French physician/naturalists were examining and dissecting nature and Jesuit missionaries were documenting day-to-day life of First Peoples in the New World. The interplay between an ethnogeography and a scientific knowledge including an environmentally orientated medical geography illustrate the contrast of approaches to health, humanity, and place.     

The image of the city in modern literature

This article considers the meanings attached to refugeehood, repatriation and liberal citizenship in the twentieth century. Refugees are those who have been unjustly expelled from their political community. Their physical displacement is above all symbolic of a deeper political separation from the state and the citizenry. ‘Solving’ refugees’ exile is therefore not a question of halting refugees’ flight and reversing their movement, but requires political action restoring citizenship.

All three ‘durable solutions’ developed by the international community in the twentieth century – repatriation, resettlement and local integration – are intended to restore a refugee's access to citizenship, and through citizenship the protection and expression of their fundamental human rights. Yet repatriation poses particular challenges for liberal political thought. The logic of repatriation reinforces the organization of political space into bounded nation–state territories. However, it is the exclusionary consequences of national controls over political membership – and through this of access to citizenship rights – that prompt mass refugee flows. Can a framework for repatriation be developed which balances national state order and liberal citizenship rights?

This article argues that using the social contract model to consider the different obligations and pacts between citizens, societies and states can provide a theoretical framework through which the liberal idea of citizenship and national controls on membership can be reconciled.

Historical evidence suggests that the connections in practice between ideas of citizenship and repatriation have been far more complex. In particular, debate between Western liberal and Soviet authoritarian/collectivist understandings of the relationship between citizen and state played a key role in shaping the refugee protection regime that emerged after World War II and remains in place today. Repatriation – or more accurately liberal resistance to non-voluntary refugee repatriation – became an important tool of Cold War politics and retains an important value for states interested in projecting and reaffirming the primacy of liberal citizenship values. Yet the contradictions in post-Cold War operational use of repatriation to ‘solve’ displacement, and a growing reliance on ‘state-building’ exercises to validate refugees’ returns demonstrates that tension remains between national state interests and the universal distribution of liberal rights, as is particularly evident when considering Western donor states’ contemporary policies on refugees and asylum. For both intellectual and humanitarian reasons there is therefore an urgent need for the political theory underpinning refugee protection to be closely examined, in order that citizenship can be placed at the centre of refugees’ ‘solutions’.     

文献系统化加工与文化演进

献整理包括献搜集、献选择、献系统化加工诸阶段。就与整个化系统的关系而论,献系统化加工可能是最为重要的。它通过献化内涵的修改、献化地位的升降、献化结构的调控等方式对整个化系统进行历史重构、目标控制与功能组配,从而生成高度整合的献系统,作用于人类化的演进．     

Neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe: an overview

To date, neo-Latin studies have been hardly concerned with the nineteenth century, let alone the twentieth century. It would seem that literature written in Latin (called ‘neo-Latin literature’ from the Renaissance onwards) had completely lost its significance. However, recent research has shown that Latin verses were still quantitatively and qualitatively important, even if they no longer enjoyed the same popularity as in previous centuries. This article is a synthesis of what we know about neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe. The first section discusses the question of its quantitative and qualitative significance. Section 2 deals with the specific features of the neo-Latin literature in the nineteenth century. Section 3 presents the situation in Germany in order to give a more precise idea of the phenomenon. The aim of this article is to provide an impetus for further investigation in the field and to cast light on a facet of the nineteenth century that has long been forgotten.     

Impact of the Russian Financial Crisis on Stock Exchanges in Central and Eastern Europe

A German economist analyses the structure of capital flows to Central and Eastern European countries following the Russian financial crisis in August 1998. Special attention is devoted to the behavior of equity flows and their impact on the stock exchanges in the region and on enterprises' ability to raise capital. In addition, the paper provides an assessment of the effects of the establishment of pension funds on the development of the stock exchanges and evaluates the prospects for several newly established trading places for stocks of companies from Central and Eastern Europe. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F30, G15, G20. 1 figure, 4 tables, 24 references.     

Russian geopolitical culture and public opinion: the masks of Proteus revisited

In this paper, we build on the work of Graham Smith, who was developing a critical geopolitics of Russia in his posthumous paper of 1999, published in this journal. Like Smith, we link the evolving geopolitical orientations of Russia to the search for a post-Soviet identity amongst its citizens and its political leadership. While Smith saw a core concept in Russian geopolitics having Protean masks, it is the leadership of the Russian state, specifically President Putin, who has successfully adopted a Protean strategy to appeal to the disparate elements of the Russian geopolitical spectrum. Based on a nationwide survey in spring 2002, we identify six clusters in Russian public opinion by socio-demographic characteristics and we connect each cluster to the main geopolitical orientations competing in contemporary Russia, including democratic statism and the increasingly marginalized Eurasianism that formed the core subject of Smith's paper.     

Socioeconomic impacts of Russian invasion of Ukraine: A multiregional assessment for Europe

History shows that wars can be enormously disruptive of economic activity, especially international trade, national income, and global economic welfare. This article analyzes the impact on the European regions the Russian invasion of Ukraine using the largest and most updated multiregional input-output model for Europe. Two shocks, trade and inflation, and four alternative scenarios are simulated. The scenarios are considered regarding the number of countries applying a trade embargo, the exemption of oil and gas, and the potential trade diversions with third countries such as China. We obtained a significant fall in GDP (−1.7%), 3.7 m lost jobs and 3% raise over the prewar inflation rate. For trade shock, large indirect effects are obtained, indicating the high relevance of the sectors and countries exposed to the war and the sanctions. The republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as the satellite countries of the former communism, face the harshest adverse impacts. This work shows the importance of breaking Russia's colonial economic ties to the countries in Eastern Europe.     

俄罗斯学者关于那乃人历史文化的研究历程

俄罗斯境内的那乃人和我国境内的赫哲族是同宗同源的一个民族,只因19世纪中期<中俄瑷珲条约>和<中俄北京条约>的签订,使之分属于中俄两国,成为跨界民族.俄罗斯学者对那乃人的民族学和人类学的调查与研究有150余年的历程,大体可以分为二个阶段,本文将按此进行分述,以期有助于赫哲等东北民族的研究.