Malinova Olga

Yuri Pivovarov’s 70 Year Anniversary

Editorial note. Politeia could not gloss over this anniversary. Not only because Yuri Pivovarov is a member of our Editorial Council. Not only because he stood at the very origins of our Journal that was founded in 1996. Not only because even a decade before that, he became one of the founders of the Inter-Institute Group of Comparative and Retrospective Political Science Politeia, which gave birth to this Journal, and many other undertakings and institutions. We present this modest homage primarily because Russian Political Science as it is, let alone the Journal Politeia, would not exist if it were not for Pivovarov. Or, in any case, it would be much further away from the very idea of science. There would be much less selfless, passionate love of truth. Much less honor, dignity and nobility. The name and personality of Pivovarov have it all. He has a plethora of these personality traits, which his friends and colleagues can enjoy. The gift that we are presenting here is just a pale shadow of the many gifts we received from him.

The published work presents a collection of texts that tell us about the hero of the anniversary as well as his place in modern Russian social science community. The collection contains texts written by Mikhail Ilyin, Professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE), Head of the Center for Advanced Methodologies of Social and Humanitarian Research at the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INION RAS); Andrei Sorokin, Director of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History; Oksana Gaman-Golutvina, Head of the Comparative Politics Department of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), Professor at NRU HSE, Presi- dent of the Russian Political Science Association; Olga Malinova, Profes- sor at NRU HSE, Senior Research Fellow at INION RAS; and Svyatoslav Kaspe, Professor at NRU HSE, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Politeia.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2020-97-2-192-208

Pages: 192-208

Who Forms Official Historical Narrative and How? (Analysis of Russian Practices)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the practice of forming and articulating the official historical narrative in contemporary Russia on the basis of three cases that make it possible to trace the interactions between various groups involved in constructing the narrative. The study of the thematic repertoire of the commemorative speeches allows to trace in the speeches of the head of state the result of the collective work of the Presidential Administration. The author shows that the formation of the memory infrastructure supporting the official narrative of the thousand-year Russia became more or less systematic only under Putin’s third presidential term. The 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 provides an interesting platform for studying the discussions within the ruling elite. The analysis of the preparation process for the commemoration reveals a certain competition of opinions at the decision-making stage and the Presidential Administration’s desire to balance them. Given the weak consistency of the official historical narrative, this pattern might be typical for the events, the interpretation of which has not taken shape and/or is not subject to securitization. The transcripts of the meetings of Presidents Putin and Medvedev with the “historical community” — scientists and teachers — give an idea of the nature of the interaction between the authorities and the academic community. The study of these transcripts indicates that the recent years witnessed the development of stable practices of interaction between the state and the historical establishment about the official narrative.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2019-94-3-103-126

Pages: 103-126

Commemoration of Historical Events as Instrument of Symbolic Policy: Possibilities of Comparative Analysis

The article is devoted to the problems of a comparative research study of one of the most important practices of politics of memory — commemoration of historical figures and events, i.e., a complex of public acts of “remembering” and (re)interpreting them in the modern context. After reviewing the main approaches to the description and analysis of commemorations, O.Malinova offers a method for studying this process as an instrument of sym- bolic politics. This method implies a combination of the analysis of political strategies implemented by mnemonic actors and a comparative study of the historical narratives they promote, and an assessment of the potential impact of their actions on the transformation of the social and cultural infrastructure of memory about a commemorated event.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2017-87-4-6-22

Pages: 6-22

Constructing "Liberalism" in Post-Soviet Russia. The Legacy of the 1990s in the Ideological Battles of the 2000s

The article analyses the process of discursive construction of the image of “liberalism” in post-Soviet Russia. In accordance with the reputational approach, liberals are defined as those who call themselves liberal or cast as such by contemporaries. Based on the analysis of texts written by “liberals” and their critics, O.Malinova proves that the crisis that liberalism faces today is partly a consequence of its original mould of the 1990s. In the modern Russia liberalism is strongly associated with Westernism, obsession with the market economic reforms, paternalist approach to the illiberal majority, criticism of the authoritarian regime and renunciation of imperial ambitions. In the context of the political and ideological shifts of the 2000s and especially 2010s, this configuration of “initial” constructions played a fatal role in the formation of a negative image of liberalism in the eyes of Russians.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2017-84-1-6-28