1
C
ONTENTS
May Events
Friday, 2
nd
May 2014
Book Launch
‘After Lermontov: Poems for the
bicentenary’
Thursday, 8
th
May 2014
Gasan Guseinov, ‘Developments in
Russian political language’
Thursday, 15
th
May 2014
Cathy Ratcliff, ‘Freedom as
Development - Seeing Africa in Soviet
Times, through Pravda’
Thursday, 22
nd
May 2014
Yulia Lukyanova,
‘Problematizing 'being
political' in Russia - evidence from talk-
in-interaction’
Friday, 23
rd
May 2014
International Conference
‘Russia as a Value Centre:
Contemporary Russian Identity and Soft
Power’
To become a friend of the
Dashkova Centre please contact
Dashkova.Centre@ed.ac.uk
May Events
The Dashkova Centre’s May programme began with a book
launch and poetry evening and ended with an international
conference organised in conjunction with the University’s
New Centre for Cultural Relations.
Book Launch
On 2
nd
May, in connection with the Scottish Poetry Library,
the Dashkova Centre hosted a book launch for the bilingual
volume After Lermontov: Poems for the Bicentenary. The
publication was planned to mark the bi-centenary of the birth
T
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RINCESS
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ASHKOVA
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USSIAN
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ENTRE
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UNE
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EWSLETTER
Robyn Marsak and Andrei Pritsepov
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of the renowned Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov, and to celebrate the poet’s cultural ties with
Scotland. The launch was attended by the Russian Consul General Andrei Pritsepov, who opened
the evening with an address stressing the need to maintain cultural links between Russia and the
West, particularly given the current
political situation. After this the
editors of the book, Peter France
and Robyn Marsak introduced the
project and spoke of their desire to
bring Lermontov’s poetry to a wider
audience.
A
number
of the
contributing poets were then
invited to read a selection of the
poems from the book, some in
English, and some in Scots. The
poems were also read in Russian by
colleagues of the Dashkova centre,
so that the audience were able to
compare the translations with the
originals. A very enjoyable evening
was rounded up by a musical
performance of a romance written
to Lermontov’s lyrics.
Dashkova Research Seminar
On 8
th
May, Gasan Guseinov, Professor at the
National Research University - Higher School of
Economics (Moscow), presented a research
seminar on developments in the Russian political
language and the new vocabulary arising from the
Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Professor Guseinov
argued that Soviet discourse and Russian
imperialist discourse have been synthesized to
form a new type of post-Soviet imperial discourse,
which is being used in order to justify Russian
actions in Ukraine. Professor Guseinov noted a
number of “unsolved problems” currently affecting
Russian political discourse: the fact that Soviet
political discourse has entered everyday language and is used in an unthinking way; the
“mirroring” of western formulas – such as “president” or “democracy”, which while they resemble
western concepts, are actually understood differently when used in relation to Russia; and the use
on the Internet of “uncensored” language which introduces a harsh, aggressive tone into everyday
political discourse. He also looked at how current negative attitudes to Russian language policy in
Ukraine are a response to a historical legacy of restrictions on Ukrainian language.
Alexander Hutchison reads Lermontov’s poem
Gasan Guseinov
3
Postgraduate Research Seminars
On 15
th
May, Cathy Ratcliff, a
postgraduate
student
in
Russian
Language Studies at the University of
Edinburgh,
presented
a
research
seminar outlining findings from her
research into the representation of
Africa in Soviet newspapers from the
period between 1925 and 2011. In her
presentation, she argued that the
representation of Africa in the Soviet
press at this time differs considerably
from that of the Western press at the
same period, in which a more
colonialist,
paternalist
attitude
is
evident. Papers such as Pravda
portrayed Africa as an active subject,
and a strong emphasis was placed on workers’ rights and the socialist movement. Moreover,
parallels were drawn in Soviet news reports between the development of the Soviet Union and
that of Africa. This identification with Africa was not a feature of western news reports of the
same period. These generally represented Africa as a cultural “other”, requiring aid from the West.
Another postgraduate research seminar
took place on 22
nd
May. This time the
subject was the problematization of “being
political” in Russia. The speaker was Yulia
Lukyanova,
a PhD
student
in the
Department of Psychology studying identity
studies, discursive psychology/conversation
analysis and social theories of collective
action. Lukyanova presented the findings of
a number of interviews with political
protestors in Russia in order to study the
psychology of political protest. She argued
that many opposition protesters in Russia
do not overtly identify themselves as
political, but that actually this attitude
masked an intense interest in political matters. In the discussion after the presentation, it was
suggested that perhaps politics has, in Russia become a severely compromised concept, hence the
desire shared by many Russians to present themselves as apolitical.
Cathy Ratcliff (right) and Lara Ryazanova-Clarke
Yulia Lukyanova
4
International Conference:
“Russia as a Value Centre: Contemporary Russian Identity and Soft Power”
The month’s events ended with an international conference organized jointly with the University’s
newly established Centre for Cultural Relations and Luke March from Politics and International
Relations at Edinburgh University: “Russia as a Value Centre: Contemporary Russian Identity and
Soft Power”. The conference took place on the 23 May at the Princess Dashkova Centre.
The idea of “soft power”, coined by Joseph Nye, refers to the ability to get ‘others to want the
outcomes you want’. Unlike hard power, soft power does not involve the use of coercion or
payment. The aim of the conference was to examine how soft power has become an integral part
of Russia’s efforts to boost its own global image, attractiveness and influence. The conference
sought to highlight different aspects of Russia as a value centre: looking at the particular cultural
values contemporary Russia claims as its own; how these are propagated through domestic and
foreign media and cultural realms; and how they are reflected in official doctrine and debates.
The first conference panel, chaired
by Luke March, was devoted to
political values and norms, soft
power and foreign policy. The
panel opened with Hanna Smith
from the Aleksanteri Institute,
Helsinki, who compared Russia’s
“great power” identity, generally
regarded as one of the guiding
principles of Russian foreign policy,
with the “soft power” which, she
argued, has been an important
element in Russian foreign policy
for at least a decade. The next
presentation, by Derek Averre,
from
CREES
(University
of
Birmingham) was on the topic of
norms
of
intervention,
with
reference to the tensions arising around the principles of Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
programme due to conflicting values. It was argued that while some nations see humanitarian
issues as central to R2P, Russia sees sovereignty and the re-establishment of the primacy of state
order as more important objectives of international law. The final speaker in the panel, Natasha
Kuhrt (King’s College, London) addressed the subject of the language of international law in Russia
since the fall of the USSR, examining possible differences in perception between Russian and
international audiences that could affect the understanding of certain key terms, such as self-
determination, statehood and secession.
From the left: Derek Averre, Natasha Kuhrt, Hanna Smith
and Luke March
5
The second panel, chaired by Derek Averre,
was on soft power strategies and institutions.
The first speaker was Valentina Feklyunina
from Newcastle. Her presentation concerned
the imagined community of ‘Russkii mir’,
which has been central to Putin’s narrative of
Russia’s distinctness in the international
arena, and looked at the evolution of Russia’s
approach to public diplomacy over the past
decade and at the concept of the ‘Russian
world’ within its overall strategy. The second
speaker, Victoria Hudson from Aston, spoke
on soft power and state identity in Russia. She
argued that Russia has undergone an identity
crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, a lack
of consensus on geo-political values which has resulted in an often incoherent and contradictory
foreign policy. Although under Putin’s leadership the Russian Federation has gained a more
assured sense of its place in the world, the nation’s relationship with the rest of the world is still
disputed, and this is reflected in the co-existence of various soft power strategies, each reflecting
the agenda of different elite groups.
The third panel, chaired by Vera
Zvereva, took as its subject soft
power in media discourse. The first
speaker
was
Ilya
Yablokov
(Manchester) who addressed the
subject of conspiracy narratives in the
news agenda of the Russian television
channel Russia Today (RT). The
presentation argued that RT has
deliberately
exploited
populist,
alternative
theories
of
power
(conspiracy theories) in order to
legitimize Russian domestic and
foreign policies, and to delegitimize
the position of the U.S. government.
This component of RT broadcasting is
a powerful political instrument in the
post-Cold War de-ideologized world, and has proved very successful in attracting audiences
around the world with different political views. The second speaker, Stephen Hutchings from
Manchester, offered a comparative analysis of coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi by
RT and BBC World TV. His study described how news narratives were constructed by each channel
Stephen Hutchings
The audience of the conference
6
through the interplay of broadcast and material social media, and assessed the extent to which
those narratives were shaped by‘soft power’ goals. Some of the particular issues examined were
security and openness; LGBT rights; and national and cosmopolitan identities. the relationship
between the Olympics and the looming Ukraine crisis was also addressed. The last speaker on the
panel, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke from Edinburgh, presented an account of Russian state-sponsored
efforts to use the Russian language media as an instrument of soft power. The paper explored the
semantics of homogeneity called upon for the construction of the post-Soviet collective “linguistic
imaginary”, using the illustration of data from ‘Mir’, a broadcasting corporation targeting the CIS.
It was argued that Mir’s programmes employ certain linguistic and discursive forms in order to
represent the post-Soviet world as a coherent unity. However, the delivery of the semantics of
homogeneity was shown to be constantly disrupted, with narratives being conflicting and fluid and
subject positions uncertain.
The final panel, chaired by Hanna
Smith, was on the subject of new East-
West divides. It began with a paper by
Luke March from the University of
Edinburgh on the manifestation of
nationalism in Russian and US foreign
policy. The paper attempted to put
Russian
nationalism
into
a
comparative context, given that much
analysis, particularly in the US, risks
‘Orientalising’ Russia, (as James D.
White notes (2010)), by uncritically
regarding its nationalistic proclivities
as deviations from a ‘normal’ path
espoused by Western states. The
paper argued that American political
culture includes an element of
‘populist nationalism’, which sees the US as a civilization threatened by ‘barbarians at the gate’.
Thus, nationalism within the US and Russia may, in fact, resemble one another more closely than
we think. The second speaker was Yulia Kiseleva from King’s College London, who spoke on civil
society and Russian soft power. Kiseleva argued that Russia has, in recent years, expressed a
strong interest in exercising soft power to shape its relations with the West but has not found it
easy to do so. She argued that it was differences between Russian and Western understandings of
the role of civil society that made it difficult for Russia to use soft power and attraction in order to
influence Western policy decisions. Finally, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova from King’s College, London,
examined the role of emotions in the processes unfolding in relation to the Ukraine, and the role
of political leadership in enabling the expression, legitimization and promotion of these emotions.
It was argued that that political leaders on all sides played a role in intensifying and legitimating
certain emotional reactions - fear, anger, anxiety and ressentiment – which attended and affected
political events and processes in post-Maidan Ukraine. Important for political analysts and policy
makers to understand emotion as a driving force behind political processes.
Gulnaz Sharafutdinova
7
July Events
Guitar Concert
Musician Oleg Timofeev is expected to come to Edinburgh
4
th
of July to present music composed by Princess
Dashkova and her contemporaries.
In this lecture-recital, he will present an illustrated history
of his instrument that was created during the reign of
Catherine the Great and reached the peak of its popularity
in the 1820s-1840s. Oleg Timofeev will play the
compositions of Ekaterina Dashkova, but also I. von Held,
A. Svientitsky, A. Sychra, and others.
The tickets will be available on-line at the Dashkova
website soon.
All of the staff at the Dashkova Centre would like to wish all our friends
and associates an enjoyable summer break.
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Oleg Timofeev
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