Assessing the delimitation negotiations between Norway and the Soviet Union/Russia1

The negotiations between Norway and Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, in the maritime delimitation in the Barents Sea have been going on for more than 30 years. Despite a declared will on both sides to reach an agreement, the prospect of an early settlement seems remote. Formally the delimitation problem concerns the distribution of the important economic resources in the area, i.e. petroleum and fish. In practice, however, the strategic importance of the area and the impact of the international context on the bilateral relationship have played an important role in the negotiations. As a result, the parties clearly have different preferences for a solution. Because there is no practical need for a solution and because the parties do not see the boundary dispute as a strain on their mutual relations, the prospect of an early settlement is dependent on the political will of both sides to bring this long-standing conflict to and end.     

The shock of the old: architectural preservation in Soviet Russia

In Soviet sources from the Brezhnev era, the history of architectural preservation after 1917 was presented as a triumph of rational state‐building and cultural organisation: with the support of Lenin, the Bolshevik government had rapidly put in place effective measures to protect historic buildings for future generations. As this article shows, the evolution of legislative and practical measures was considerably more complicated than this optimistic representation would suggest. In the early Soviet period, a highly ideologised understanding of the past meant that preservationist ambitions might (especially during the ‘Great Break’ of 1928–1932) be seen as intrinsically reactionary. The canon of historical buildings was shaped by perceptions of centrality to Soviet values, as well as historical and aesthetic importance. The article also explores the transformation of attitudes to architectural heritage as a response to destruction by the invading forces during the ‘Great Patriotic War’, after which commitment to preservation became far more whole‐hearted, although enforcement and financial support continued to be inconsistent. The Soviet case indicates not just the importance of heritage preservation to the cultural ambitions and self‐image of the modern state but the limits of commitment to preservation and the pressure placed on this by the commitment to all‐out modernisation and to the propaganda of new identities and values.     

Russia's penal peripheries: space, place and penalty in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia

Russia has a distinctive 'geography of punishment' that is the product of the use of the peripheries as a place of exile and incarceration. Framing the analysis in a discussion of recent penal theory, including in the works of Michel Foucault, the author traces the formation of Russia's penal peripheries up to the present day and uses the example of the north of Perm' oblast to analyse the process involved in forging a 'penal region'.     

中国东北与俄苏经济关系史研究的新成就--简评《中国东北与俄国(苏联)经济关系史》

俄国(苏联)与中国东北的经济关系是近代中国东北对外经济关系史的重要内容之一,历来为国内外学者所重视,出版了很多论著。在不同的时期出版或发表的论著,围绕相关问题进行了较为深入的研究,也提供了许多珍贵的历史资料。但是这些著作或是引用材料受到限制,或是仅仅研究了某一历史片断,因此很难对整个300多年的中俄(苏)经济关系史有一个完整的认识。张凤鸣同志的新著《中国东北与俄国(苏联)经济关系史》(中国社会科学出版社2003年版,以下简称《关系史》),以17世纪中叶至1949年期间中国东北与俄苏经济关系史作为一个完整的研究过程,通过使用大…     

抗战时期中国接受苏俄文学的特点初探

本通过对抗战时期国统区、解放区和沦陷区接受苏俄学资料的疏理,分析了当时中国接受苏俄学的特点。认为由于战争的共时性特征．中国学在这一时期通过对苏俄学的接受,参与到了世界学中。中国接受苏俄学的指向性十分明确：直接为抗战服务。由于遵从实用性的审美标准,中苏两国战争学都将英雄人物神化,忽略了战争本身的悲剧性意义。     

Democracy,Equity and Common Property Resource Management in the Indian Subcontinent

This article addresses the relationship between democracy, equity and common property resource management in South Asia, both at the national and at the local level. Its substantive focus will be largely on forests, and its geographical concentration mostly on India, although other sectors (primarily water) and areas (Nepal and Bangladesh) will also be included. The article opens by looking at Garrett Hardin's (1968) three strategies to preserve the commons. It finds that democratic politics is compatible with both privatization and centralization as conserving strategies (although not necessarily successful). With the third approach—local control—democracy has at best a problematic relationship, for where governmental units are the relevant actors, there tends to be more interest in consuming than in conserving or preserving resources at the local level. Local user groups, however, do much better at common property resource management, because they can restrict membership and thus avoid free riders, and they can establish a close linkage in their members' minds between benefits and costs of participating in group discipline to maintain the resource.     

Soft power,Russia and the former Soviet states: a case study of Russian language and education in Armenia*

Abstract

As in human relations, attraction can be an influential force in international relations. A well-known tool in Western countries, in Russia ‘soft power’ has come into play mainly under Putin’s presidency in the 2000s. This paper focuses on language and education as sources generating ‘soft power’. It looks first on the institutional framework progressively established to attract and integrate culturally the former Soviet space. Second, it studies the evolution of the Russian language and education in Armenia. The findings suggest that even if the previous decline in the usage of Russian has been reversed, the monopoly once enjoyed by this language seems to be over. Russian is promoted in a multicultural environment – alongside English, French, German or Chinese – which reflects the new geopolitical reality. Multicultural landscape characterises also the Armenian higher education system.