The 65th issue of NZ consists of several
related thematic blocks. The opening topic -- “Education of Feelings:
The Soviet Ethos” -- is devoted to the various aspects of “Soviet”
experience, first of all ethical. It includes a research on the “Soviet
hygiene” by Konstantin Bogdanov, a remarkable selection of interviews
with the Soviet women of different generations “on love and marriage”
(the interviewers are Nikolay Mitrokhin, Ekaterina Konovalova, Olga
Sibireva), research on “female intelligent happiness” by Chelyabinsk
sociologist Rozaliya Cherepanova, an article on atheistic education in
the USSR by the American researcher Victoria Smolkin and analysis of
Leningrad “blockade conversations” in 1941--1942 by Sergey Yarov.
The same block is adjoined by the conversation
between the Parisian writer Andrey Lebedev with the writer and
representative of the “third wave” of Russian emigration Evgeny
Ternovskiy, which is focused on moral objectives of the Moscow
intellectuals of the 1960s. “Soviet” as an object of the post-Soviet
reception is a topic of the article by Natalia Samutina and Boris
Stepanov (Politics of Culture). Ethics, not of the Soviet society but
of the post-Soviet researchers of the Soviet Stalin period is the topic
of notes by the historian Pavel Polyan on the conference “History of
Stalinism: Results and Research Perspectives” held in Moscow in
December 2008.
Another major theme of the issue is a correlation of
special and universal with regard to such ideological construction as
“Russian exclusiveness”. This very topic is set in the Alexander
Kustarev's traditional column (“On Comparison”) and picked up by the NZ editor-in-chief Ilya Kalinin under his column “Daily Political Economy” (“Widely Closed Country”),
and finally, a more detailed analysis of the topic can be found in the
section “Russian Beauty: National in the Modern Art”. This block
consists of articles by the Amsterdam Slavist Ellen Rutten on “the
Russian project” of the Groningen museum (in particular, on the
sensational painting exhibition by Ilya Repin) and Alexander Bobrikov
on the scandalous artist Alexander Belyaev-Gintovt who maintains
ultranationalist moods in Russia. The block also includes the
conversation of the Italian Slavists Damiano Rebecchini and Nina
Colantoni on exhibitions of the modern Russian art in Milan as well as
the discussion by Stanislav Savitsky, Thomas Campbell, Phillip Dontsov,
Andrey Klyukanov, George Witte, Sergey Khachaturov and Gleb Ershov on
the so-called “Russian beauty”. A curious epilogue to a topic serves
the essay of the philosopher Igor Smirnov “On Toilet Seats, or Why I am the Patriot”.
“Federalism, Society, State” is the third thematic
block of this NZ issue. The NZ editor Andrey Zakharov provokes the
reader to consider the RSFSR federalism as an example to be followed;
the small research by Eduard Scherbenko is devoted to the attitude of
the Ukraine citizens to their own state institutions (based on
sociological data); Andrey Makarychev questions whether “the returning of a policy in sphere of federal relations of the present Russia is possible?”.
We also recommend to pay your attention to the NZ
traditional headings Sociological Lyrics (Aleksey Levinson) and
Humanitarian Economics (Evgeny Saburov). In the Culture of Politics
section Andrey Ranchin shares his reasons concerning Russian education
reform, in particular, on the Uniform Graduation Examination.
The issue ends with traditional reviews: New Books
section and Russian Intellectual Journals’ Review (Vyacheslav Morozov
and Petr Rezvykh). Shall we pay your attention to the review of
Alexander Boroznyak regarding the very important research on the
history of Leningrad blockade performed by the German Historian Jörg Ganzenmüler,
and on response by Tatyana Bonch-Osmolovskaya to the book of the known
British writer Stephen Fry about his travel across the United States.