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View Rights PortalWe are publishing book about the central questions of our culture in politics, philosophy, art and history.
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View Rights Portal— Comprehensive and detailled analysis of the Euromaidan and the ongoing war in Ukraine — Brussels versus Moscow, Russian aggression and geopolitical interests — China's role in a new East-West conflict The years between 2013 and 2019 were almost as significant for Ukraine as the attainment of independence in 1991, as this very independence was in danger of being lost again after the Euromaidan. The nationwide popular uprising against the regime of President Yanukovych had led to a change of power: the former parliamentary opposition formed a new government, resulting in a loss of influence for Russia. Russian agents therefore tried to bring about a "Crimea scenario", another secession in the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine. The resulting "Ukraine conflict", often called a civil war, is in fact a Russian war of attrition against Ukraine. President Putin intends to resolve it on his terms in the Minsk process: through a de facto "autonomous" part of the Donbass in the Ukrainian state, independent of Kiev, as a lever for Russian political influence. Winfried Schneider- Deters, a renowned expert on Ukraine, analyses narratively and in detail the events from 2013 to 2019 and places the Russian- Ukrainian conflict in the context of the dawning "Chinese century".
The relationship between Germany and Russia is Europe's most important link with the largest country on the continent. But despite Germany's unparalleled knowledge and historical experience, its policymakers struggle to accept that Moscow's efforts to rebalance Europe at the cost of the cohesion of the EU and NATO are an attack on Germany's core interests. This book explains the scale of the challenge facing Germany in managing relations with a changing Russia. It analyses how successive German governments from 1991 to 2014 misread Russian intentions, until Angela Merkel sharply recalibrated German and EU policy towards Moscow. The book also examines what lies behind efforts to revise Merkel's bold policy shift, including attitudes inherited from the GDR and the role of Russian influence channels in Germany.
This volume features new research on Russia's historic relationship with Asia and the ways it was mediated and represented in the fine, decorative and performing arts and architecture from the mid-eighteenth century to the first two decades of Soviet rule. It interrogates how Russia's perception of its position on the periphery of the west and its simultaneous self-consciousness as a colonial power shaped its artistic, cultural and national identity as a heterogenous, multi-ethnic empire. It also explores the extent to which cultural practitioners participated in the discursive matrices that advanced Russia's colonial machinery on the one hand and critiqued and challenged it on the other, especially in territories that were themselves on the fault lines between the east and the west.
The rise of critical realism in nineteenth-century Russia culminated in 1870 with the formation of the Wanderers, Russia's first independent artistic society. Through depictions of the harsh lives of the peasantry, the fate of political activists, Russian history, landscapes, and portraits of the nation's cultural elite, such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, the society became synonymous with dissident sentiments. Yet its members were far from being purveyors of anti-Tsarist propaganda and their canvases reflect also a warm humanity and a fierce pride for such nationalistic themes as Russian myth and legend. Through close readings of single canvases, investigations of major themes and a multi-disciplinary integration of the Wanderers within Russian society, this book gives the first comprehensive analysis of the crucial cultural role played by one of the most successful and genuinely popular schools of art, the legacy of which comprises a fascinating panorama of life and thought in pre-revolutionary Russia.
This book explores what to do with heritage that has been destroyed in conflict. It charts a path through the colonial histories and traumatic wars of Syria and Iraq to examine the projects and responses currently on offer and assess their flaws and limitations, including issues of digital colonialism, technological solutionism, geopolitical manoeuvring, media bias and community exclusion. Drawing on current research into the psychology and neuroscience of trauma and trauma recovery, and taking inspiration from artists and creative thinkers who challenge the status quo, this book envisages gentler, creative and ethically-driven ways to respond to heritage damaged in conflict that recentre people and their hopes, dreams and needs at the heart of these debates.
This introductory text, written by an established authority on communist and post-communist politics, describes how Vladimir Putin has turned to those with backgrounds in the military and security structures to provide stability in today's Russian Federation, following the democratising reforms of Gorbachev and the ensuing instability of the Yeltsin presidency. Against the background of an increasing authoritarianism, which has restored features of the Soviet political system, it examines the attempts by social and economic groups to assert themselves against the state using embryonic democratic forms that fall far short of pluralism. The book's fourteen chapters offer an exceptionally broad coverage. It will appeal to first- and second-year students in higher education, but its deliberately accessible style will also make it attractive to sixth-form students and the general reader. ;
This volume is timely in that it explores key issues which are currently at the forefront of the EU's relations with its eastern neighbours. It considers the impact of a more assertive Russia, the significance of Turkey, the limitations of the Eastern Partnership with Belarus and Moldova, the position of a Ukraine in crisis and pulled between Russia and the EU, security and democracy in the South Caucasus. It looks at the contested nature of European identity in areas such as the Balkans. In addition it looks at ways in which the EU's interests and values can be tested in sectors such as trade and migration. The interplay between values, identity and interests and their effect on the interpretation of europeanisation between the EU and its neighbours is a core theme of the volume.
Early in the twentieth century, Russia was experiencing a decadent period of cultural degeneration just as science was developing ways to identify medical conditions which supposedly reflected the health of the entire nation. Leonid Andreev, the leading literary figure of his time, stepped into the breach of this scientific discourse with literary works about degenerates. The spirited social debates on mental illness, morality and sexual deviance which resulted from these works became part of the ongoing battle over the definition and depiction of the irrational, complicated by Andreev's own publicised bouts with neurasthenia. This book examines the concept of pathology in Russia, the influence of European medical discourse, the development of Russian psychiatry, and the role that it had in popular culture, by investigating the life and works of Andreev. It engages the emergence of psychiatry and the role that art played in the development of this objective science.
This volume offers a detailed examination of the stability of the late imperial regime in Russia. Students and scholars will appreciate the lively summaries of the latest scholarship in political, economic, social, cultural, and international history. Accessible yet insightful, contributions cover the historiography of complex topics such as peasants, workers, revolutionaries, foreign relations, and Nicholas II. In addition, there are original studies of some of the leading intellectuals of the time. The late imperial economy is examined through the writings of Tugan-Baranovsky. There is an account of M. N. Pokrovskii's radical interpretation of late imperial Russia's historical path of development. The state of the Russian theatre is studied through the lives of theatrical impresarios. Each chapter also highlights a unique interpretation, suggesting new lines of inquiry and research. This book will be compulsory reading for students of Russian and European history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seeking to better understand why Tsarism collapsed in 1917. ;
Securitising Russia shows the impact of twenty-first-century security concerns on the way Russia is ruled. It demonstrates how President Putin has wrestled with terrorism, immigration, media freedom, religious pluralism, and economic globalism, and argues that fears of a return to old-style authoritarianism oversimplify the complex context of contemporary Russia. The book focuses on the internal security issues common to many states in the early twenty-first-century, and places them in the particular context of Russia. Detailed analysis of the place of security in Russia's political discourse and policy-making reveals nuances often missing from overarching assessments of Russia today. To characterise the Putin regime as the 'KGB-resurgent' is to miss vital continuities, contexts, and on-going political conflicts which make up the contemporary Russian scene. Securitising Russia draws together current debates about whether Russia is a 'normal' country developing its own democratic and market structures, or a nascent authoritarian regime returning to the past. ;
After explaining the background of Schema Therapy as well as the individual schema modi, this manual outlines modus specific interventions for clients exhibiting aggressive behavior. With the help of examples from outpatient, inpatient, forensic, and correctional context, it explains the therapeutic procedures. The accompanying CD contains PDFs of all worksheets that are needed to complete the described therapy sessions. Target Group: psychotherapists, specialists in psychiatry and psychotherapy, specialists in psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, clinical psychologists, psychological coaches and counselors, students ans teachers of psychology, staff in psychiatric wards and hospitals, staff in correctional facilities.
Cinema provides entertainment, but it also communicates a set of values, a vision of the world or an ideology. From its beginnings more than a century ago, European cinema has dealt with the tension between these two functions in a variety of ways: at the extremes, dictatorial regimes have sweetened the pill of ideology with the sugar of entertainment. Meanwhile, spectators have persisted in seeking out, above all, the pleasure film can provide. Now available again in paperback, this book explores the complex relationship between entertainment, ideology and audiences in European film, through studies that range from the Stalinist musicals of the 1930s, to cinematic representations of masculinity under Franco, to recent French films and their Hollywood remakes. Diverse and entertaining, this study is addressed to students of film - especially French, German, Russian or Spanish - and to those readers and academics interested in both the history of cinema and in European culture.