Barsukova Svetlana

Food Security: Russian Context

The article is devoted to the analysis of the specificity of the Russian interpretation of the universal concept of food security. On the basis of a series of expert interviews with agricultural economists, farmers, representatives of agricultural trade unions, officials at rural administrations and regional ministries, as well as with the help of several secondary data sources, S.Barsukova and C.Dufy show that shifts in the interpretation of this concept reflects the evolution of the authority’s attitudes, business’ capabilities to lobby and the state of society. According to the authors’ conclusion, when choosing ways of ensuring food security, Russia opted for the protectionist approach. The established view of food security means moving towards self-sufficiency. In fact, the debate is about the national specificity in building market economy, about the extent of autonomy in choosing development paths, rather than about ways to feed the population of the country. The reality that incorporates such debates provides food security with interpretations, the legitimization of which is one of the tasks of political mobilization.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2016-82-3-71-89

HANDS OFF FROM WIND MILLS OR A BOOK HOW NOT TO BECOME A FUNNY HIDALGO WHO TAKES WIND MILLS FOR GIANTS

The material offered to the readers is not a review in the literal meaning of this word. The collection of works is just an excuse for S.Barsukova to discuss the phenomenon of corruption in general and Russian corruption in particular. When analyzing the reasons of wide-spread corruption in the third world countries and in Russia Barsukova uses the logic behind the interpretation of corruption as a political process proposed by one of the authors of this collection. She convincingly shows that the channels of political influence stopped at the “entrance” to the legal space are inevitably formed at the “exit” taking the form of corruption. At the same time in her opinion the level of the corruption discourse exploitation is quite weakly related to the scale of this phenomenon. The image of the “corruption at the top” as the incarnation of the model of the “usurpation of the state” by business plays the role of a smoke screen that covers the cardinal change of the line and the transfer to the “usurpation of business” by the state. Under the new conditions it would be wrong to interpret the “gifts” of business in the terms of corruption since they are built into the power economic vertical of the new Russian order and the big business does not buy the right to use the power for their interest (the essence of corruption) but a place in the system “power-property”.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2007-45-2-149-160