Search Results

The fall of communism in 1991 radically changed the political dimension of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union. The most obvious transformation, of course, was that which resulted from the shattering of the Soviet Union into fifteen or sixteen independent states. No longer is there a single policy toward Jews on the territory of the former Soviet Union. In the Ukraine, the Baltic, and other states, prominent political leaders have explicitly renounced antisemitism and have pledged that the new states will not discriminate against Jews and will guarantee their civil and cultural rights. This has brought about a major change in the Jewish situation and the one on which this chapter will concentrate: the opportunity to rebuild Jewish institutions and communities, which, except for some synagogues, had been destroyed by the Soviet regime back in the 1920s.

This chapter discusses public health in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Topics covered include patterns of health, patterns of mortality, higher death rates in men than in women, effective health-care interventions, and public health training initiatives.

This chapter examines the health profile of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union within the context of an emerging HIV epidemic. Unlike the epidemics in most of the developing world, the HIV epidemics in the transition economies of Europe are apparently fueled by drug use and commercial sex work. The emphasis on the behavioral conditions, however, masks the important role played by economic crises in the collapse of public health services and the increase in human trafficking. This chapter broadens the analysis of declining health in the former socialist economies and situates the study of HIV epidemics within a biomedical analysis of disease vulnerability, rather than the reigning behavioral model.

The dramatic political and economic changes witnessed by Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) since the late 1980s did not leave the area of old-age security unaffected. While the inherited pension systems were rather uniform, the past seventeen years have brought diversity to the region's retirement schemes. Most transition countries have opted for parametric reforms, thus changing key characteristics of their pre-existing pay-as-you-go schemes. A number of countries in the region have embarked on partial or full pension privatization, thereby following the much advertised Latin American role models. Moreover, some countries have introduced national defined-contribution plans, similar to the schemes of Sweden and Italy. Overall, contributory approaches to old-age security — whether publicly or privately organized — dominate the post-socialist pension reform agenda. This chapter outlines the pre-1989 legacy in old-age security and the impact of transformation on the existing retirement schemes. It reviews pension reforms in CEE and the FSU and evaluates the state of pension reform in the post-socialist world.

This chapter provides an overview of the ethnographic research and theoretical foundations informing this study of women’s labor migration from the former Soviet Union into Turkey. Tracing three intertwined themes that animate the book—postsocialism, transnational mobility, and intimacy—the chapter highlights gendered aspiration for mobility and intimate practices like emotional labor forged within forces of global capitalism. The chapter also critically discusses global concerns with trafficking in women, showing how post-Soviet women migrants’ accounts complicate assumptions of oppression. The chapter also presents the context and methods of the research, with an analysis of “mobile” methods and field work with an infant along. The chapter closes with the book’s organizational thread, namely accounts of five key women and their families.

Examines the internationalization of crime and corruption in post‐communist states and its serious implications for both established democracies and democratizing countries. The main hypothesis is that the post‐communist regimes have experienced legitimacy problems because of popular perceptions that the new putatively democratizing systems are often too tolerant of the new criminality, and in some cases directly involved with benefiting from it. The section of the chapter provides a brief overview of the crime situation in the region, highlighting changes in the incidence of crime. The second and third parts of the chapter are concerned with the rise of crime in terms of the interplay of domestic and international/transnational factors. In the fourth section, the implications of the rise of crime for the whole democratization and transition project are assessed. The fifth section provides an overview of international responses to crime in Central Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union states. The conclusions to the chapter locate the criminalization issue in the broader context of the problems besetting post‐communist transition and democratic consolidation.

This chapter provides a description of privatization processes in the main areas of the world. Particularly, the main aspects analyzed are the following: the extent of privatization, measured by the number of transactions and their revenues; the time frames; the choice of privatization methods (public offering or direct placement); the main sectors involved; the stake sold; the opening of capital to foreigners; and the existence of golden share mechanisms (that is the special rights retained by governments after privatization). Finally, within each area, the most interesting national experiences are highlighted.

This chapter reviews the main changes in the agricultural economy and policies that took place after the first decade of transition. It discusses the main developments in Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and in China.

This chapter describes Jewish education in the former Soviet Union (FSU). Intensive Jewish education is seen in many countries, including Israel, as the most promising antidote to the assimilation of Jews — meaning the loss of Jewish identity and commitment. Full-day schools especially have been seized upon by Jews in the FSU and their foreign supporters as the optimal solution to the lack of Jewish education, institutions, public life, and private religious practice among the 400,000 or so Jews left in the FSU. This conclusion is based on extrapolation from Western Jewry's experiences. Common sense would also lead one to believe that viable Jewish life — that which engages people in private and public Jewish behaviours and transmits commitment across generations — depends on education, and not of children alone. One crucial difference between the West and the FSU is that in the West, Jewish education is conveyed in a wider context of Jewish commitment and activity: the family, organized peer and interest groups, a communal structure, religious and cultural institutions, and family and group traditions. In the FSU, Jewish schools exist in a partial void.

This chapter traces encounters between Turks and people from the former Soviet Union, starting with a blockbuster telenovela featuring Hürrem, a passionate 16^th century “Russian” woman who was in Süleyman the Magnificent’s harem, later becoming his wife. Emphasizing two periods, the 1920s “Islamic jazz age”, when hundreds of thousands of Russian speakers arrived in Istanbul as they fled the Russian Revolution, and a post-Soviet era when “Russians” are again highly visible as tourists and labor migrants, the chapter depicts a history of trade, mobility, and desire linking the former Soviet Union and Turkey. The chapter also analyzes politics of gender in a neoliberal Turkey defined by decades of secularism, a vibrant feminist movement, and a growing prevalence of Islamist ideals.

The transition to the market economy has brought about a large and abrupt recession and significant increases in unemployment in most countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This chapter discusses the factors which caused this transformational recession. These include the variations in initial structural and institutional conditions, decline of institutional capabilities, and changes in the property rights regime and microeconomic incentives. It also discusses the key elements for an institutions-focused transition strategy.

This concluding chapter focuses on rebuilding communities, emphasizing the importance of resettlement and access to natural capital. It argues that although a revitalized private sector is essential for growth, its relationship to the state can be problematic in new multi-party political systems. It also emphasizes some important differences between historical experiences of post-war reconstruction and those in contemporary Africa, and discusses the lessons for Africa from the economic and political transitions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (EE-FSU).

This chapter assesses Mozambique's privatization programme. It begins by outlining why the state intervened in the economy, highlighting both ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ motives. It then examines the first phase of privatization in the 1980s and describes the difficulties of the implementation and the gradual erosion of the state's strategic vision of privatization into a process by which assets were sold off almost indiscriminately. It also discusses the interaction of domestic and donor pressures to accelerate privatization in the 1990s. The impact of privatization and the role of economic strategy are also examined. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the relevance of the Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union (EE-FSU) transition experiences and the crucial need to invest in regulatory capacity to protect the public interest and to reintegrate privatization into a strategic vision of the economy's future.

The conclusion summarizes the findings of the book, focusing on the survival of Soviet Jews under conditions of genocide and how is it remembered. Considering narrators’ reflections on their postwar struggles against Stalinist antisemitism and isolationist postwar politics of memory, the themes of age, gender, and nationality remained relevant after the end of the war. The chapter provides important insights into the functioning of postwar Soviet society and how individuals dealt with the aftermath of war and genocide.

This chapter discusses the stance taken by the countries that have been in the vanguard of the abolitionist movement: Western Europe and Australasia, Eastern Europe, countries of the former Soviet Union, and South and Central America. It suggests that most countries appear to support abolition because in this respect they see themselves as heirs of the European Enlightenment and share many of the human rights values of Western Europe. Moreover, the positive influence of Catholicism is felt across the region in the sense of a respect for the sanctity of human life. However, abolition has not proved in the past to be permanent in all parts of this region due largely to political instability. Revolutionary struggles and military coups have both brought with them a time for extreme punitive responses, but the long-term commitment to the ideal of abolition has survived.

This chapter considers the development of Gumilev's influence in three Turkic regions: Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, and the Republic of Sakha. Since 1992, Gumilev's popularity among non-Russians has expanded exponentially. The factors underlying his appeal relate directly to the political and social exigencies that confronted post-Soviet regimes at the moment of their formation and indeed continue to do so. One of these is the complex process of establishing and managing bilateral relations with the power center in Moscow, either on a federal level within the Russian Federation or internationally between now-independent states. For this purpose, non-Russian versions of Eurasianism inspired by Gumilev proved very useful. No less important are the needs associated with “nation-building” within the numerous post-Soviet polities themselves: their self-representation (or invention) as coherent communities and their demand for external acknowledgement as legitimate national-political entities.