Monthly Archives: April 2006

“The most intimate reactions of human beings have been so thoroughly reified that the idea of anything specific to themselves now persists only as an utterly abstract notion: personality scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odor and emotions. The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.”—Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” (1944).

This passage from Adorno and Horkheimer’s classic essay speaks to the wonders of capitalism: the ability of the system to get people to attach social meaning and influence to consumption. Our identity is so interwoven with what we buy, that our modern global society has created hierarchies where people are measured by what they consume. A truth rings in the saying, “The suit makes the man” that does ..read more

Twenty years ago the nuclear plant Chernobyl exploded. The Guardian did an excellent article on the event and its lingering effects. There is no official count on how many died as a result. The number is probably in the tens of thousands, and its effects will continue to be felt in the region for several decades more. In a UN report released last September that was supported by Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine estimates 4,000 deaths. The World Health Organization altered the estimate to 9,000. Greenpeace estimates up to 100,000 deaths as a direct or indirect result of the nuclear meltdown.Chernobyl’s historical significance goes beyond environmental catastrophe. As Pyotr Romanov argues in a comment on RIV Novosti that Chernobyl was a major blow to the Soviet Union and should be included as one of the factors in its collapse. It completely undercut the ..read more

Russian youth continues to be a topic for commentary on Russia Profile. The husband-wife team of Yelena Rykovtseva and Alexei Pankin comment on the conservatism of Russian youth and the differences between the lives of Soviet post-Soviet Russian youth. These two commentaries are nicely supplemented by an article in the Moscow News on the new radical and pro-Kremlin youth group, Young Russia.

I’ve never been an advocate of generational conflict or a stark divide between generations, but my own research and reading is suggesting more and more that a generational analysis might prove fruitful. This “clash of generations” is an overarching theme in Rykovsteva’s and Pankin’s articles, where they decry Russian youths’ unwillingness to question the government and their passive acceptance of Russian life. Their ire comes from the fact that both grew up in Soviet times when their lives were haunted by the contradictions between Soviet ..read more

On the right side of this page you will find a “Currently Reading” section. The only reason why I mention this is because of the current book that is displayed, Georgi Derluguian’s Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World Systems Biography. I’m sixty pages into it and I find it absolutely fascinating. I became aware of it a few weeks ago when Derluguian spoke at the colloquium “Russia: Failed Transition?” put on by UCLA’s Center for Social Theory and Comparative History. I was skeptical at first because of the propensity for any talk that has the words “Russia” and “transition” tend to simply suck. But the Center tends not to feature any dimwits. A glance at their colloquium themes over the last several years shows that they bring in some of the best intellectuals on the planet. Yet you never know and ..read more

I want to give a quick plug and shout out.

Daut at Ufa Blog seems to be pretty plugged in to Russian anti-fascist activism and the rise of right wing racism. His newest post is a letter about the murder of anti-fascist activist Alexander Ryukhin, which I mention in my last post.

I’m also happy to see that Ufa has a Food Not Bombs chapter. I’ve had several FNB friends over the years. They would often get arrested for serving vegetarian food to the homeless without a “permit.” What kind of society do we have when this is a “crime”? If hope FNB in Ufa doesn’t have to put up with similar bullshit.

There are three rather disturbing articles in the April 20 edition of the Moscow Times that are worth mentioning.

The first, “Soldiers’ Mothers in the Crosshairs,” concerns how the Justice Ministry’s Federal Registration Service lawsuit against the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees. However, when the case was made public when the Soldier’s Mothers received a summons to appear at Moscow’s Basmanny District Court, it was dropped. Clearly, the government didn’t want to risk the bad press and potential public outcry that could potentially come by targeting this organization under the new NGO registration law. In addition, a court case would inevitably bring more attention to the horrible conditions in the Russian military. With increasing public disgust over dedovshchina, attempting to shut down the Soldier’s Mothers couldn’t produce anything positive. So writes the Times: Lev Ponomaryov, the head of For Human Rights, an NGO, said the ..read more