Research Group for East Slavic Languages, Societies and Cultures

ngunn Lunde trained as a medieval scholar of East-Slavic text culture. More recently, she has been working on language policy and language ideologies in Russia, politics of history and memory, focusing in particular at how contemporary prose literature has responded to these issues, i.e. to the language question, on the one hand, and to a range of issues linked to history/the past, on the other. Since 2022 she has also worked on contemporary Ukrainian literature and languages policies in Ukraine. Her first monograph was on Kiril of Turaû’s (12th c) homiletic rhetoric and its Byzantine sources (Harrassowitz 2001). Recent books include Language on Display: Writers, Fiction and Linguistic Culture in Post-Soviet Russia (Edinburgh UP 2018, pbk 2018) and Fragmenter av fortid: Historiens rolle i russisk samtidslitteratur (Dreyers forlag 2018). She is currently writing a (the first) history of Russian literature in Norwegian. 

Johanne Kalsaas studies narratives about Norway on the Russian-language Internet, aiming to uncover the dynamics of pro-Kremlin propaganda in participatory media environments. Kalsaas’ project takes three contentious events in the Russo-Norwegian relationship as a point of departure for discourse-centered fieldwork in Russia’s social mediascape:The espionage case against Frode Berg, the commemoration of the Red Army’s liberation of Northern Norway during WWII, and the 2020-cyberattack on the Norwegian parliament attributed to Russia (work in progress). Kalsaas’ background is in Russian media and communication studies, where she has previously worked on Russian mainstream media discourse on the issue of refugees, and communication strategies in Russian refugee activism.

Stehn A. Mortensen has previously published on Bulgakov’s short fiction applying theories of posthumanism, as well as on Russia’s pronatalist censorship laws and the contemporary writer Sorokin. Mortensen is currently working on finishing his dissertation, Vladimir Sorokin’s Splintering Poetics.

Kåre Johan Mjør’s current research interests are Russian philosophy and intellectual history from the nineteenth century to the present, contemporary ideologies in Russia, Russian imperial history and literature. He has published four books, edited two volumes/special issues and about thirty academic articles/book chapters.

Irina Anisimova [coming soon]

Martin Paulsen wrote his PhD thesis on Russian language ideology, with a focus on developments after the fall of the Soviet Union. He works on Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian language and literature. At the moment he serves as Head of Department at the Department of Foreign Languages and works on a book project on Ukrainian history.

Kyle Marquardt is currently involved in multiple projects related to identity and public opinion in the former Soviet Union. In ongoing research with colleagues, he uses a variety of observational and experimental techniques to probe the sources of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In other research, he uses census and survey data to track linguistic change in the former Soviet Union; he also uses survey data to analyze the relationship between identity and support for regional sovereignty in both Russia and Moldova. He is also a Project Manager for Measurement and Methods for the Varieties of Democracy Project, and in this capacity he conducts work on the advantages and disadvantages of using experts to code political phenomena.

Susanne Bygnes currently works on a project entitled “Russian Migrants and the anti-war movement (RAW)”. This pilot project funded by the University of Bergen was initiated in September 2022. It explores the experiences and activities of Russian migrants in Europe who have mobilized for peace after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Based on observations and in-depth interviews, the project studies the Russian anti-war movement abroad focusing initially on one central (Berlin) and two more peripherical (Barcelona and Oslo) sites. In Germany, mobilization for democracy in Russia has diversified and/or intensified in the wake of the invasion, while in Spain and Norway the full-scale invasion has strengthened the emergence of Russian migrants mobilizing for a democratic development. The project also takes into account that the Russian anti-war movement abroad is highly transnational, spanning local initiatives and individuals across many locations, including initiatives inside Russia. In a migrant population known for not being easily mobilized for political purposes, what motivates and what restricts Russians who live in Europe to mobilize against the war and for a democratic development in Russia? Does the political mobilization of Russian migrants against war that started in 2022 have bearings on the potential for building a stronger pro-democratic community of Russian migrants in Europe? These are the central research questions to be addressed by this project.

Under you will find some past events from the research group’s actitives in 2018 and 2019. More recently, we have been too busy (too many events!) to keep these pages up to date… For current events, see the Department of Foreign Languages’ calendar. 

09.11.2019 - 10.00–13.30

Bergen House of Literature: Auditorium

Eastern Europe A-Changing

30 Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall

How is 20th century history treated in Russia and Germany today? Both countries played a vital part in world history and lived through catastrophic changes in the last century. In this seminar, we will focus on the culture and politics of the recent Russian and German historical trajectories.

Where is the historical politics and official memory culture of Russia and Germany headed today? How is the cultural sphere responding to the treatment of historical memory? The two countries share many parallels, but also diverge in how they have chosen to deal with the past.

The seminar will be conducted in English and Swedish, and consists of two key notes by Ekaterina Makhotina (English) og Frank Thomas Grub (Swedish), as well as a panel discussion between the keynote speakers and Martin Paulsen, Ingunn Lunde, Kåre Johan Mjør og Birger Soheim (English).

Program

10.00: Introducton

10.05–10.50: Ekaterina Makhotina: Promise of the Past: Politics of History and Memory Cultures in Post-Soviet Russia

11.00–11.45: Frank Thomas Grub: Litteratur och minne: 'Die Wende', Tysklands återförening och författarna tretti år efter murens fall (Swedish)

11.45–12.30: Break

12.30–13.30: Panel discussion between Ekaterina Makhotina, Frank Thomas Grub, Ingunn Lunde, Kåre Johan Mjør and Birger Soheim. Moderator: Martin Paulsen

The event will be conducted in English and Swedish.

Abstracts:

bstracts

Promise of the Past: Politics of History and Memory Cultures in post-Soviet Russia

Ekatarina Makhotina, University of Bonn

The acceleration of time and scepticism towards the future are universal phenomenons of our society. The past is longing for more attention than the future in several spheres of public life: in politics, culture, public activities. Therefore, political actors, who give the past its meaning and construct the narrative, are of enormous significance. This is the case in Russia, where the politics of history have become extremely important over the last decade. There are considerable investments in the evolvement of “sites of memory,” areas of cultural heritage and public re-enactments. Most of all, the memory of the Second World War, which has been standing still in unique continuity since Soviet times, is still the crucial point for the politics of collective identity in Russia. The politics of history aims at preserving the traditional, heroic meaning of war. A counter-example is the politics of ambivalence regarding the Stalinist repressions. Here, a definite conviction of the Stalinist regime is still lacking, although there are state-sponsored memorials for Stalin’s victims and Gulag museums. 

In Russian society there is also a need for the promises of the (lost) past. Except for the practical nostalgia for “stable” Soviet times, there is a considerable amount of social practices actualizing the past, like “The Immortal Regiment” for the heroes and “The Return of the Names” for Stalin’s victims. The practices of re-enactment, memorial pilgrimage, restoration of the declined Soviet architecture create new meaning of historical events. In the case of commemoration of victims of Stalin’s terror it can even gain a critical potential against the contemporary political power in the Kremlin. Nevertheless: up until now the discourse on the victims of state terror in Soviet times is still more common in the aesthetics and language of the Russian orthodox religious tradition.

Litteratur och minne: 'Die Wende', Tysklands återförening och författarna tretti år efter murens fall

Frank Thomas Grub, Uppsala Universitet

1989 verkade de flesta tyskar i öst och väst ha accepterat den tyska delningen i två stater som en normalitet. ”Die Wende”, murens fall och (åter-)föreningen kom alltså oförutsedda och överraskande för människorna på båda sidor av muren. 

Händelserna kring “die Wende” och (åter-)föreningen, men framför allt deras konsekvenser har lämnat djupa spår i politik, ekonomi och samhälle, men även i litteraturen. Föredraget handlar om dessa spår och om litteraturens och författarnas roll i samband med det historiska minnet.

Det kommer att presenteras texter av alla genrer samt autobiografiska texter från 1989 till idag.

11.04.2019 - 09.30–16.00

Seminarrom M, Sydneshaugen skole

Cultural policies and practices in contemporary Russia

On April 11 we will be having a one-day workshop with invited speakers. Their lectures, as well as shorter presentations by research group members, will be open to the public.

Program:

9.30–10.00: Coffee and introductory remarks; info session on the project idea and role of research group

10.15–11.00: First keynote – Ulrich Schmid (Universität St. Gallen): The Constitution of the Current State: Art. 13 and Russian Cultural Politics

11.00-11.15: Short break with refreshments

11.15–12.00: Second keynote – Mikhail Suslov (Københavns Universitet): Between a ROC and a Hard Place: Russia’s Cultural Policy in the Times of the “Conservative Turn”

12.00–13.00 Lunch

13.00–14.45: Short presentations by members of the group:

Johanne Kalsaas (UiB): Disruptive Digital Discourse and the Diaspora: Representations of Norway in Russian-language ideological trolling and its reception by the Russian-language population in Norway

Irina Anisimova (UiB): Social and Technological Transformations in the Works of Viktor Pelevin

Stehn Mortensen (UiB): Vladimir Sorokin's “Belyi kvadrat”: Infotainment in the Age of Propaganda Television

Kåre Johan Mjør (UiB/Uppsala University/HVL): Ideologies, Politics of History and the Response of Literature in Contemporary Russia

Ingunn Lunde (UiB): Chelovek v istorii: notes on the works of Guzel Yakhina

14.45–16.00: Brainstorming about the project more generally

Dinner in the evening.

Abstracts:

Ulrich Schmid, University of St Gallen

The Constitution of the Current State: Art. 13 and Russian Cultural Politics

Article 13 of the Russian constitution prohibits any forms of (or reliance on?) state ideology. As of late, however, government officials have come to question the timeliness of this regulation. What they propose instead is a new “constitutional identity” that is an idiosyncratic reinterpretation of Habermas’ famous concept of “constitutional patriotism.” Habermas claimed that in a postnational era the constitution must be the only object of patriotism. In the Russian Federation, by contrast, the constitution should embody the necessary multinational patriotism that is required for the coherence of the state. The significance of this move lies in the fact that the constitution turns into a cornerstone for the ambitious project by which the Kremlin seeks to create a “Russian federal nation” (Rossiiskaia natsiia). Against this backdrop, significant emphasis is placed on the politics of culture in the securitization of the Russian state. In the absence of a functioning public sphere that would guarantee the democratic institutions, cultural and historical narratives step in to legitimize the strategies of the current political order. 

Mikhail Suslov, University of Copenhagen

Between a ROC and a Hard Place: Russia’s Cultural Policy in the Times of the “Conservative Turn”

This paper examines the intertwining of cultural policies of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and of the Russian political leadership. It shows how the ROC is trying to recycle the Soviet-era cultural canon on the one hand, and on the other, how the state selectively utilizes “traditional values” discourses, promoted by the Church, in its conservative agenda. In the paper I will lean upon empirical examinations of some cultural products (such as the films Incredible Travellings of Serafima, Viking, and Matilda), and their receptions by various segments of society, cultural and political elite.

07.03.2019 - 14.15–16.30

Rom 371, HF-bygget

The Anthology «Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia»

At this meeting, we will discuss a newly published anthology at the intersections of politics and culture in today's Russia. We will divide the reading among the group; do let us know if you would like to present one of the chapters.

Abstract

Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia

In Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia scholars scrutinise developments in official symbolical, cultural and social policies as well as the contradictory trajectories of important cultural, social and intellectual trends in Russian society after the year 2000. Engaging experts on Russia from several academic fields, the book offers case studies on the vicissitudes of cultural policies, political ideologies and imperial visions, on memory politics on the grassroot as well as official levels, and on the links between political and national imaginaries and popular culture in fields as diverse as fashion design and pro-natalist advertising.

Contents

Introduction: Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia – Niklas Bernsand and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa

Part 1

Cultural Policy and Ideological Movements

1  Russia: Culture, Cultural Policy, and the Swinging Pendulum of Politics – Lena Jonson

2  ‘Middle Continent’ or ‘Island Russia’: Eurasianist Legacy and Vadim Tsymburskii’s Revisionist Geopolitics – Igor Torbakov

3  Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party and the Nazi Legacy: Titular Nations vs Ethnic Minorities – Andrei Rogatchevski

Part 2

Memory Politics

4  Constructing the “Usable Past”: the Evolution of the Official Historical Narrative in Post-Soviet Russia – Olga Malinova

5  Dying in the Soviet Gulag for the Future Glory of Mother Russia? Making “Patriotic” Sense of the Gulag in Present-Day Russia – Tomas Sniegon

6  Memory Watchdogs. Online and Offline Mobilizations around Controversial Historical Issues in Russia – Elena Perrier (Morenkova)

Part 3

Popular Culture and Its Embeddedness in Politics

7  “Your Stork Might Disappear Forever!”: Russian Public Awareness Advertising and Incentivizing Motherhood – Elena Rakhimova-Sommers

8  Fashionable Irony and Stiob: the Use of Soviet Heritage in Russian Fashion Design and Soviet Subcultures – Ekaterina Kalinina

9  Humour as a Mode of Hegemonic Control: Comic Representations of Belarusian and Ukrainian Leaders in Official Russian Media – Alena Minchenia, Barbara Törnquist-Plewa and Yuliya Yurchuk

10  The Cosmic Subject in Post-Soviet Russia: Noocosmology, Space- Oriented Spiritualism, and the Problem of the Securitization of the Soul – Natalija Majsova

Relevant links 

Download the book here (open access)

31.01.2019 - 15.00–16.00

HF-bygget, room 216

Research Group for Contemporary Russia

This Thursday we kick off the semester with a first founding meeting, in order to get acquainted and set an agenda for the coming year.

We would like discuss your research interests as they relate to contemporary Russia. A one-day workshop with invited speakers scheduled for 11 April will also be on the agenda.

Researchers and PhD fellows working (or looking to work) on contemporary Russia are cordially invited to attend!

Here are some of the members' research contributions in public and academic venues:

Ingunn Lunde

2023

«To Write about War: A Poetry Evening with Iryna Shuvalova», Litteraturhuset i Bergen, 27. november 2023.

«Kulturkrigen: Om den sovjetiske og russiske resepsjonen av Rakhmaninovs Allnattsvake (1915)», åpen forelesning ved Institutt for fremmedspråk, 24. november 2023.

«The Language question in Ukraine: Historical Background and Contemporary Developments», gjesteforelesning på emnet «The Frontier of Anthropological Research: Times of War. Cultural and Symbolic Landscapes in Contemporary Eastern Europe», Institutt for sosialantropologi, 25. oktober 2023.

«Words for War: Reflections on Ukrainian Literature», The Biannual Social Sciences and Humanities Symposium: War and Peace, Det norske vitenskapsakademi, 16. oktober 2023.

«Kampen om fortida i dagens Russland: Statleg historiepolitikk og sivilsamfunnets motstemmer», foredrag for Os senioruniversitet, 25. sept 2023.

«Kampen om fortiden i dagens Russland: Statlig historiepolitikk og sivilsamfunnets motstemmer», foredrag for Utdanningsforbundets pensjonister, 19. september 2023.

«Kryms historie», foredrag i Rieber og Søn ASA persjonistforening, 29. august 2023.

«Ukrainsk – historie, språksituasjon og språktypologi», foredrag på Fagdag for vaksenopplæringa i Hordaland, 15. august 2023.

«Tiden har mistet sin vanlige rytme», av Serhij Zjadan, oversatt fra ukrainsk med en innledning av Ingunn Lunde. Vagant 2, 174–79.

Syv ukrainske komponistbiografier for Store norske leksikon: Mykola Lysenko, Stefanija Turkevytsj-Lukijanovytsj, Borys Ljatosjynskyj, Myroslav Skoryk, Mykola Leontovytsj, Valentyn Sylvestrov. 

«Den moralske kollapsens nulltime. Intervju med Sergej Lebedev», Vagant 24. februar.

«Furious at Mother» (forfattersamtale med Tatiana Țîbuleac). Bergen internasjonale litteraturfestival 9. februar.

«Krym – den lange historien», foredrag på Lærernes dag 2023, Peer Gynt-salen, Grieghallen 27. januar.

«Kultur og imperium», foredrag på Kunsthall 3.14 Live, 26. januar 2023.

«Imperiets diktere», kronikk i Morgenbladet 6. januar 2023. 

(med Geir Flikke og Kari Aga Myklebost): «Sivilsamfunn og invasjonen i Ukraina», nordnorskdebatt.no, 1. januar 2023.

2022

«Imperiet og kulturen». Foredrag på seminaret Hva er det med Russland? Barents Press, Bodø, 3. desember 2022.

«Å skrive for Store norske leksikon i krigstid». Arrangement for fagansvarlige og bidragsytere til SNL, HF-biblioteket, UiB, 8. november 2022.

«Nostalgi og ansvar: hva kan Kirsebærhagen fortelle oss i dag?» Programtekst for Rogaland teaters oppsetning av Anton Tsjekhovs Kirsebærhagen, november 2022.

«Sergej Lebedev om Russlands mørke fortid». Forfattersamtale, Litteraturhuset i Bergen, 1. november 2022.

«Kampen om fortiden i dagens Russland: Statlig historiepolitikk og sivilsamfunnets motstemmer». Foredrag ved Fana og Ytrebygda senioruniversitet, 4. oktober 2022.

«Hooo» av Sergej Lebedev, oversatt med en innledning av Ingunn Lunde, Vagant.no

«Ukraina: Historien. Krigen. Menneskene». Forfattersamtale med Arve Hansen, Litteraturhuset i Bergen, 15. september. 

«Forfattersamtale: Guzel Jakhina», Litteraturhuset, 26. mai 2022.

«Åpen bok spesial: Serhij Zjadan», NRK P2, 29. april 2022.

«Hvor forskjellige er ukrainsk og russisk?» Åpen forelesning ved Institutt for fremmedspråk, UiB, 27. april 2022.

«Historie- og minnepolitikken bak Russlands invasjon av Ukraina», Frokostmøte ved Bergen Global med Kari Myklebost og Martin Paulsen, 21. april 2022.

«Språksituasjonen i Ukraina er sentral i konflikten», kronikk i BT med Martin Paulsen, 26. mars 2022.

«Kneblingen av det russiske sivilsamfunnet siden 2012», åpent møte om Ukrainakrigen, Institutt for fremmedspråk, UiB, 17. mars 2022. 

«Russisk historiepolitikk som legitimeringsstrategi», foredrag på Årsmøte for Store norske leksikon, 15. mars 2022.

«Strømninger i litteraturen: Krig i Ukraina og russisk samtidslitteratur», panelsamtale på Litteraturhuset i Bergen, 8. mars 2022.

«Russisk samtidslitteratur og historien: Jorda rundt på Tøyen #11», panelsamtale på Deichman, med Inna Sangadzhieva og Ane Nydal, 28. februar 2022.

«Norges humanitære rolle», kronikk i Bergens tidende, med Kari Myklebost, 28. februar 2022.

«Kampen om fortiden: Statlig historiepolitikk mot sivilsamfunn i dagens Russland», foredrag på Lærernes dag, 28. januar 2022.

«Annus horribilis for det russiske sivilsamfunnet», kronikk i nordnorsk debatt, med Kari Myklebost og Geir Flikke, 1. januar 2022.

2021

Russisk i verden, Fokus på språk 2, Fremmedspråksenteret. 

(with Ragnhild Gudbrandsen, Ellen Lamm, Silje Gripsrud) Kirsebærhavens hemmeligheter: Lørdagskafé på DNS (podkast).

Dostojevskij på 60 minutter: en innføring med dypdykk, Dostojevskij – 200 år, Litteraturhuset i Bergen, 11. november (podkast). 

(with Blom, Hans Petter; Årdal, Ole Kristian). Den russisk gudfaren [intervju]. NRK Kultur, 14. november.

(with Selma Stormyren). Forbedret av straff [intervju]. Klassekampen, 11. november. 

(with Anne Seierstad). Ble blåst av banen da han leste Dostojevskij [intervju]. Dagen 16. november. 

(with Einar Lie Slangsvold). 200 år siden Fjodor Dostojevskij ble født [intervju]. NRK P2 Studio 2. 11. november.

Kampen om fortiden: historiepolitikk og minnekultur i dagens Russland, UiBs 75-års jubileum: Åpen dag på Universitetsmuseet, 30. oktober.

Volgas kulturhistorie. Anmeldelse av Geir Pollen, Volga: En russisk reise, Gyldendal 2021. Klassekampens Bokmagasin 2021 s. 19-19

(with Erik Løveid). Nye perspektiver: russisk litteratur. Tekstbehandlingsprogrammet. Radio Nova, 21. april. 

Andrej Sakharov utviklet den sovjetiske hydrogen­bomben og ble menneskeretts­aktivist. Nå stanses jubileums­utstillingen i Russland. Debattinnlegg, forskersonen.no, 21. mai.

Video blog interview with Jens Aksel Takle on post-Soviet Russian literature in his video blog “Russlandsfarerne/Руссошественники” – in Russian and Norwegian.

Article on the role of WW2 in Russian Literature: “'Sannheten om krigen': Andre verdenskrig i russisk litteratur,” Vinduet 74 (3), 2020, 135–43.

Podcast on historical references in Putin's speeches during corona: “Petsjenegere, polovetsere, og korona: Putins taler til folket.”

Translations of "My Boy", by Maria Stepanova, from her Pamiati pamiati / "Gutten min", av Maria Stepanova, fra hennes Til minne om minnet.

Kyle Marquardt

“What Does Support for Russia Mean? Evidence from Gagauz Yeri, Moldova.” 2023. PONARS Eurasia Memo. 862.

“Ethnic variation in support for Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.” 2023. PONARS Eurasia Memo. 822.

"Hvorfor er Putin så populær?" Bergens Tidende. Norwegian language. 19.08.23. 

“Ethnic variation in support for Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.” 2022. PONARS Eurasia Memo. 822.

 "How popular is Putin, really?" 2022. With Noah Buckley, Ora John Reuter and Katerina Tertytchnaya. The Washington Post.

“Is Putin’s popularity (still) real? A cautionary note on using list experiments to measure popularity in authoritarian regimes.” With Timothy Frye, Scott Gehlbach and Ora John Reuter. 2022. PONARS Eurasia Memo. 733.

Kåre Johan Mjør

Hvem er Putin og hvor mye makt har han egentlig? Bergens tidende (podkast), 5. mars. 2022.

Kvifor gjekk Putin til krig mot Ukraina? (Podkast). Dag og tid (podcast), 4. mars 2022.

På sporet av Vladimir Putins verdsbilde. Syn og Segn 1, 2022: 10-17. (Kortversjon: Klassekampen, 19 april)

Sanninga om krigen. Vagant 2 2022:  195-199

Tankegodset som påverkar Putin (kronikk). Bergens Tidende 6. April 2022

Caryl Emerson, George Pattison and Randall A. Poole (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought. Studies in East European Thought 72 (3–4), 2020, 417–421; Solovëvskie issledovaniia 70 (2), 2021, 171–180 (in Russian)

Frances Nethercott: Writing History in Late Imperial Russia: Scholarship and the Literary Canon. Ab Imperio: Theory and History of Nationalities and Nationalism in the post-Soviet Realm 4, 2020, 281–288

Andrea Oppo: Lev Shestov: The Philosophy and Works of a Tragic Thinker. Dostoevsky Studies, 2021, forthcoming.

The Correspondence Between Semen Frank and Ludwig Binswanger (1934–1950). Filosofskie pisma: Russko-evropeiskii dialog 4 (3), 2021, pp. 233–241.

“Civilizationalism as an Ideology in 21st Century Russia. Civilizational Identity and Politics in Europe and Eurasia,” Paper presentation at Civilizational Identity and Politics in Europe and Eurasia, Uppsala university, 2 December 2021.

Talk on the “Post-Soviet Soviet Union and its uses of history” for the 30-year anniversary event (breakup of SU) at UiB (2021)

Talk on Dostoevsky’s 200^th anniversary (Bergen 11 November, Haugesund 16 November, Stord 1 December)

Talk on the online seminar on the “Symbiosis of Russian Literature and Philosophy,” Moscow/Dom Loseva, 10 March.

“Russia’s Civilizational Politics: Ideological Discourses and Analytical Perspectives,” Aleksanteri Alumni Talk, 17 November 2021.

Book Launch: Russia as Civilization, hosted by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala. 25 May 2021.

“Nagorno-Karabakh - from a historical perspective.” Bergen Global Breakfast Seminar together with Lene Wetteland and Helge Blakkisrud, 17 December 2020.

Lunde, Ingunn; Anisimova, Irina; Mjør, Kåre Johan; Kalsaas, Johanne Berge; Yangeldina, Dinara; Mortensen, Stehn Aztlan; Østbø, Jardar N; Schmid, Ulrich. Book launch: Cultural is Political: Intersections of Russian Art and State Politics (Slavica Bergensia 13); 22 March 2021.

Irina Anisimova

Video blog interview with Jens Aksel Takle on post-Soviet Russian film in his YouTube video blog Russlandsfarerne/Руссошественники – in Russian and English.

Co-organizer with Alissa DeBlasio and Maria Hristova ASEEES stream, “Environment and Contemporary Culture” (2020): Conference Presentation: “Reimagining Waste in Liudmila Petrushevskaia’s Fiction,” ASEEES 2020.

Film review – Klim Shipenko: The Serf (Kholop, 2019), Kinokultura, 69, 2020.

Panel contribution at ASEEES on Pussy Riot and Pavlenskii (2019).

Johanne Kalsaas 

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2022). The ritual function of propaganda: Observations about language in Russian collective trolling of Norway. The annual Fakespeak workshop, University of Oslo.

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2022). Russlands informasjonskrig: Hva er Norges rolle? Akademisk lunsj, Bergen offentlige bibliotek.

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2022). Hva skjer når krigen når sosiale medier? Forskningsdagene UNG, Universitetet i Bergen.

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2022). Hvordan jobber Putins digitale gerilja? Kronikk, Morgenbladet. https://www.morgenbladet.no/ideer/kronikk/2022/04/20/hvordan-jobber-putins-digitale-gerilja/

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2022). Sinne, sorg og skam i russiske sosiale medier. Kronikk, Bergens Tidende.https://www.bt.no/btmeninger/debatt/i/rEy0om/sinne-sorg-og-skam-i-russiske-sosiale-medier

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2022). Russisk propaganda. Podcast, UiB Popviten. https://uibpopviten.podbean.com/e/russisk-propaganda/

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2021). En fredspris for den virale propagandaens tidsalder. Kronikk, Bergens Tidende https://www.bt.no/btmeninger/debatt/i/dnjpoA/en-fredspris-for-den-virale-propagandaens-tidsalder

Panel contribution at ASEEES 2021: “Once Upon a Comment Section: Digital Storytelling as a Trolling Technique on the Russian-Language Internet”

“A prize for the age of viral propaganda”. Feature article in Bergens Tidende on occasion of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa, discussing information freedom and participatory propaganda, 20 December 2021.

“Hackers, trolls and the discourse of derailment: Subverting accusations of cyber aggression on the Russian-language internet,” paper presented in Online Talks on Russian Media by the Russian Media Lab Network, 14 December 2021.

Feature article in Klassekampen on the consequences of regulative measures in social media for political dissidents: “Den globale utestengelsen”, Klassekampen, 19 January 2021

Round table on "Russia's Cyberwar", Studentersamfunnet, 10 February 2021, with Sofie Nystrøm and Jakub Godzimirski.

Conference paper - "Truth-seeking and identity-confirmation in discourses of ‘the new cold war’: Network propaganda in a Russian-Norwegian spy case", SSEES Conference: Truth, Reality and Imagination Interpretations from Eastern and Central Europe, 19-21 February 2020, SSEES, London.

Open lecture, U of Bergen: Antrollpologi: På feltarbeid i mørke avkroker av russisk internett, 4 November 2020.

Susanne Bygnes

2022, Webinar for all local offices of the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) presenting results from Imagining and Experiencing refugee crisis-project. January 2022

2022 Public Library tour. Public talks and discussions about the results from the Imagining and Experiencing refugee crisis-project in public libraries in Western Norway. January 2022

2021 Information Film Activism Across Time and Place: Syrians’ activist trajectories in Berlin and Oslo. December 2021

2020 Radio Interview, EKKO, NRK P2 (27.11.2020) Life on hold at the asylum seeker center

2019 Radio interview, Nyhetsmorgen NRK P2 (20.05.2019) and interview at nrk.no (21.05.2019) about national and local level perceptions about refugee arrivals and integration.

Stehn Aztlan Mortensen

Translation: “Jelena Sjvarts: To dikt og en introduksjon” in Blekk, 2021.

Film review - Fedor Konstantinovich: Good Evening (Dobryi vecher, 2018), Kinokultura 67, 2020.

Film review - Sergei Dvortsevoi: Ayka (aka My Little One, 2018), Kinokultura 63, 2019.

Panel contribution on Sorokin's “White Square” at ASEEES in San Francisco, 2019.

Anisimova and Kalsaas 

Podcast: Elections and Protests in Belarus, University of Bergen.

Helsinki Conference: Technology, Culture, and Society in the Eurasian Space, 2019.
 

Recent peer-reviewed publications:

Ingunn Lunde

2023. «Språkets motstandskraft– eller kollaps», Nordisk Østforum 37.

2023. «Ut av gråsonen: Språk og tilhørighet i to romaner om krigen i Donbas (Serhij Zjadans Internatet og Andrej Kurkovs Grå bier)». Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift 26 (1), 7–22. 

2022: “The Presence of the Past in Contemporary Russian Prose Fiction: A Comparative Reading of Guzel’Iakhina and Sergei Lebedev,” Zeitschrift für Slawistik 67 (2), 171–96 (open access)

2021: “Ortografi og ideologi: Da bolsjevikene kuppet rettskrivningsreformen i 1918,” ARR: idehistorisk tidsskrift, spesialnummer om Utdanning, vol. 3–4, pp. 17–29.

2020: “The Incarnation of the Past: Sergei Lebedev’s Poetics of Memory,” The Cultural is Political: Intersections of Russian Art and State Politics (Slavica Bergensia 13), edited by Irina Anisimova and Ingunn Lunde, Bergen, 177–99 (open access).

“The Incarnation of the Past: Sergei Lebedev’s Poetics of Memory”, In: The Cultural is Political: Intersections of Russian Art and State Politics. Bergen: Dept of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen 2020, pp. 177–199

2020: (with Irina Anisimova) “Introduction” The Cultural is Political: Intersections of Russian Art and State Politics (Slavica Bergensia 13), edited by Irina Anisimova and Ingunn Lunde, Bergen, 5–13.

2019: “Geschichte, Politik und Kunst: literarische Verarbeitungen der russischen Geschichte am Beispiel von Michail Gigolašvilis Roman Tajnyj god (2012),” Osteuropa: Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des Ostens 1/2019, 163–76.

Fragmenter av fortid: Historiens rolle i russisk samtidslitteratur, Oslo: Dreyers forlag, 2019, 208 pp.

Language on Display: Writers, Fiction and Linguistic Culture in Post-Soviet Russia, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 232 pp.

Kyle Marquardt

"Conceptual and measurement issues in assessing democratic backsliding." With Carl Henrik Knutsen, Brigitte Seim, et al. 2024. PS: Political Science & Politics. First View: 1-16.

“Endogenous popularity: How perceptions of support affect the popularity of authoritarian regimes.” With Noah Buckley, Ora John Reuter and Katerina Tertytchnaya. 2023. American Political Science Review. First View: 1-7. 

“Is Putin’s popularity (still) real? A cautionary note on using list experiments to measure popularity in authoritarian regimes.” With Timothy Frye, Scott Gehlbach and Ora John Reuter. 2023. Post-Soviet Affairs. 39(3):213-222.

“Language, ethnicity and separatism: Survey results from two post-Soviet regions.” 2022. British Journal of Political Science. 52(4):1831-1851

“Estimating latent traits from expert surveys: An analysis of sensitivity to data generating process.” With Daniel Pemstein. 2021. Political Science Research and Methods. First View.

“How and how much does expert error matter in expert-coded data? Implications for quantitative peace research.” 2020. Journal of Peace Research. 57(6):692-700. 

“Constraining governments: New indices of vertical, horizontal and diagonal accountability.” With Anna Luehrmann and Valeriya Mechkova. 2020. American Political Science Review. 114(3):881-820.

Irina Anisimova

“‘E’ for Empire: Empire and Postmodernism in the Context of the Sochi Olympic Games,” in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2020, pp. 1–18.

Kåre Johan Mjør

2023

Kort introduksjon til Sovjetunionen. Cappelen Damm AS 2023 (ISBN 9788202803612) 230 s.

“The concept of creativity in Georges Florovsky’s thought.” Studies in East European thought 2023 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09575-5

Forthcoming:

“Russia – the “True Europe” or a “Unique Civilization”? Towards a Genealogy of two Post-Soviet Ideas.” Scando-Slavica79(1) 2024

2020–2022

“Russian Religious Thought and the Christian Justification of the Nation.” In Religion and Secular Modernity in Russian Christianity, Judaism, and Atheism, edited by Ana Siljak. Cornell University Press 2024.

"Civilizationism in Russia from the Slavophiles to Vladimir Putin". I Civilization: Global Histories of a Political Idea, red. Patricia Chiantera-Stutte og Giovanni Borgognone, 173-195. Lexington Books 2022.

"Georgii Fedotov as a Theologian of Culture". Вестник Российского университета дружбы народов. Серия:Философия 26(1), 2022: 15-29.

“Evgenii Trubetskoi's Idealist Grounding of the Religious Meaning of Life,” in Evgenii Trubetskoi: Icon and Philosophy, edited by Randall A. Poole and Teresa Obolevitch. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2021, pp. 65–78

“Ivan Karamazov as a Philosophical Type —But Which One and in What Ways? A Narratological Reading of a Philosophical Novel,” Poljarnyj Vestnik 24, 2021, pp. 54-74

“An Eternal Russia: Oleg Platonov, the Institute for Russian Civilization and the Nationalization of Russian Thought,” in Russia as Civilization: Ideological Discourses in Politics, Media and Academia, edited by Kåre Johan Mjør and Sanna Turoma. Routledge 2020, pp. 186–205.

“‘Russia's Thousand-Year History’: Claiming a Past in Contemporary Russian Conservative Thought,” in Contemporary Russian Conservatism: Problems, Paradoxes, and Perspectives, edited by Mikhail Suslov and Dmitry Uzlaner. Brill Academic Publishers 2020, pp. 281–303.

“Russian Civilizationism in a Global Perspective,” in Russia as Civilization: Ideological Discourses in Politics, Media and Academia, edited by Kåre Johan Mjør and Sanna Turoma. Routledge 2020, pp. 1–26 (with Susanna Rabow-Edling, Mikhail Suslov, Mikhail Loukianov).

“A History of Russian Conservatism, from the 18th Century to the End of the 20th Century” in Contemporary Russian Conservatism: Problems, Paradoxes, and Perspectives, edited by Mikhail Suslov and Dmitry Uzlaner. Brill Academic Publishers 2020, pp. 37–74.

Johanne Kalsaas

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2021). Kald krig i kommentarfeltet? Historien om Frode Berg på russisk internett. Nordisk Østforum. 257-279.

“Beyond borders: Transnational turn of Russian refugee aid,” in Citizen Humanitarianism at European Borders, edited by Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert & Elisa Pascucci. Routledge, 2021, pp 114–128.

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2020). Battle for the North: Russian Cyberconflict over Commemorating the Red Army’s Liberation of Northern Norway. In Ingunn Lunde & Irina Anisimova (eds.). The Cultural is Political: Intersections of Russian Art and State Politics. 128-154

Kalsaas, Johanne. (2017). Evropeiskii Potop: The Discourse of Apocalypse and Silence in Russian Press Coverage on the Issue of Refugees. Poljarnyj Vestnik. 1-17.

«Kald krig i kommentarfeltet? Historien om Frode Berg på russisk internett,» Nordisk Østforum 35, 2021, pp. 257–279

Susanne Bygnes

Bygnes, S (2022) Experiencing and resisting interwoven social boundaries: the case of highly educated recent refugees in Norway. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Van Liempt, I and Bygnes, S (2022) Mobility dynamics within the settlement phase of Syrian refugees in Norway and The Netherlands. Mobilities.

Bygnes, S and Strømsø, M (2022) A Promise of Inclusion: On the Social Imaginary of Organised Encounters Between Locals and Refugees. Journal of Intercultural Studies.

Strømsø, M and Bygnes, S (2021) Local responses to hostility to new asylum seeker centres in Norway. International Migration.

Bye, HH., Bygnes, S and Ivarsflaten, I (2021) The Local-National Gap in Intergroup Attitudes and Far-Right Underperformance in Local Elections. Frontiers in Political Science.

Bygnes, S (2021) Not All Syrian Doctors Become Taxi Drivers: Stagnation and Continuity Among Highly Educated Syrians in Norway. Int. Migration & Integration

Bygnes, S. (2020) A collective sigh of relief: Local reactions to the establishment of new asylum centres in Norway. Acta Sociologica

Stehn Aztlan Mortensen

“Killing the Novel: The Conceptualization of Violence in Vladimir Sorokin’s Roman,” in The Aesthetics of Violence, edited by Gisle Selnes and Hans Jacob Ohldieck, Spartacus, 2021.

“Between Parody and Pastiche: The Posthuman Biomechanics of Bulgakov’s Novellas,” Scando-Slavica 66 (2), 2020, 264–280.

Energy/Waste: Approaches to the Environment in Post-Soviet Cultures

edited by Maria Hristova, Alyssa DeBlasio, and Irina Anisimova (Slavica Bergensia 14, 2023) open access

Main content

Recent article volumes

Energy/Waste: Approaches to the Environment in Post-Soviet Cultures, edited by Maria Hristova, Alyssa DeBlasio, Irina Anisimova

This volume investigates representations of energy and waste in post-Soviet cultures. The contributors analyze how post-Soviet societies reinterpret and reimagine not only their role in energy use and waste management, but also their relationship to the Soviet legacy of large-scale environmental changes, pollution, and resource exploitation. By examining how categories of energy and waste are expressed and made visible through discourse, literature, film, art, and other modes of cultural production, the book aims to nuance and enrich environmental approaches in scholarship on the post-Soviet world. The volume’s interdisciplinary chapters highlight the distinctive trajectories of post-Soviet countries’ approaches to environmental regulation and representation in the last three decades.

The book is open access, published by Slavica Bergensia.

Contents

Energy/Waste: Introduction – Maria Hristova, Alyssa DeBlasio, Irina Anisimova

Regimes and their Refuse: Filming Russia in Transition – Masha Shpolberg

“Pomor’e ne Pomoika”: Framing the Protest Campaign against the Landfill Project at Shies Station in Russia’s Arkhangelsk Region – Elena Gorbacheva

Post-Soviet Filmic Depictions of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Tests – Maria Hristova

Environmental Contamination and Postcolonial Recuperation in Late Soviet and Post-independence Kazakhstani Cinema – Elena Monastireva-Ansdell

The Politics and Aesthetics of Waste in Liudmila Petrushevskaia’s Fiction – Irina Anisimova

Finding Our Words: Representations of Chornobyl and the Impossibility of Language – José Vergara

A Terrible Kaleidoscope: The Anthropocene Lyric in Chornobyl Poetry – Haley Laurila

The Unknowability of Post-nuclear Landscapes in the Russian Television Series Chernobyl, Exclusion Zone – Irina Souch

Contributors

The Cultural is Political: Intersections of Russian Art and State Politics, edited by Irina Anisimova og Ingunn Lunde

Bringing together an international group of scholars from various disciplines – Russian media studies, the history of ideas, political science, literature and gender studies – this book combines assessments of Russian cultural policies, political ideologies and intellectual trends with case studies on Russian literature, film, rap and memory culture.

The book is open access, published by Slavica Bergensia.

Contents:

The Cultural is Political: Introduction – Irina Anisimova & Ingunn Lunde

The Sources of Russia’s Transgressive Conservatism: Cultural Sovereignty and the Monopolization of Bespredel – Jardar Østbø

The Constitution of the Current State: Article 13 and Russian Cultural Politics – Ulrich Schmid

Russian Civilizationism at the Turn of a New Decade: The Case of Academia – Kåre Johan Mjør

#Russianrapisracist vs #RussianNaziPurgeParty: On Geopolitics, Trolling and the Mistranslation of Race in a Twitter Controversy – Dinara Yangeldina

From Celebrated Novel to Media Outrage: The Public Debate Surrounding the Miniseries Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes – Irina Anisimova

Battle for the North: Russian Cyberconflict over Commemorating the Red Army’s Liberation of Northern Norway – Johanne Kalsaas

The Violent Frame: Vladimir Sorokin’s “White Square” – Stehn Aztlan Mortensen

The Incarnation of the Past: Sergei Lebedev’s Poetics of Memory – Ingunn Lunde