The Liberal Heritage

Editorial
RONEN PALAN, BROOK BLAIR
On the Idealist Origins of the Realist Theory of International Relations

Sorting Out International Relations
VIATCHESLAV MOROZOV
On the West’s Perfidy and Its Unmaskers: Russian Foreign Political Thought and Russia’s Self-Isolation

FYODOR LUKYANOV
Russia’s Foreign Policy: Technocrats vs. Ideology

ALEXANDER ASTROV
The Roundabout Evolution of the Theory of International Relations from Realism to Traditionalism

The Culture of Politics
ANDREI SHCHERBAK, ALEXANDER ETKIND
The Spectre of the Maidan is Haunting Russia: Preventive Counter-Revolution in Russian Politics

Letter to the Editors

BORIS KAGARLITSKY
Letter to the Editors

MARK STRAUSS
Reply to Boris Kagarlitsky

MISCHA GABOWITSCH
Editor’s Comment

Soviet Queues and Russian Realities

ELENA OSOKINA
A Farewell Ode to the Soviet Queue

VLADIMIR NIKOLAEV
The Soviet Queue: The Past as the Present

PAVEL ROMANOV, ELENA YARSKAYA-SMIRNOVA
The Spivs: The Underground of the Soviet Consumer Society

Humane Economics. Yevgeny Saburov’s Pages
The Demand for Shortages

Topic 3: Between Eros and Dionysus

Editorial
VADIM MIKHAILIN
Dionysos’s Beard: The Nature and Evolution of the Ancient-Greek Banqueting Space

FRANÇOIS LISSARRAGUE
Wine in a Flow of Images: The Aesthetics of the Ancient Greek Banquet

OLGA CHEPURNAYA, LARISA SHPAKOVSKAYA
Alcohol and Sex: Drunken Falls? (Notes on the Cultural Contexts of Drunkenness)

Sociological Lyrics. Alexey Levinson’s Pages
Sex and Liberty

New Institutions
The ‘I Think’ Independent Students’ Association

Journal Reviews
Russian Intellectual Journals

New Books
YURY LATOV
Yegor Gaidar’s and Yevgeny Yassin’s Books as a Mirror of Russian Liberalism
Book Reviews

Summary

This issue of NZ begins with a discussion of theories of international relations and their reflections in contemporary Russia. The Liberal Heritage section presents an article by political scientists Ronen Palan and Brook Blair entitled On the Idealist Origins of the Realist Theory of International Relations, where they show that what passes for ‘realism’ in debates about world politics is in fact a peculiar mix of German idealist philosophy and late 19th century nationalist thought, resulting in an anthropomorphized view of states as discrete actors on the international arena.
The discussion continues in the next section, which begins with an article by Viatcheslav Morozov entitled On the West’s Perfidy and Its Unmaskers: Russian Foreign Political Thought and Russia’s Self-Isolation, in which he argues that Russian debates about international politics are currently dominated by a kind of ‘Romantic realism’ which erects an opposition between a liberal and democratic West on the one hand and ‘Russian peculiarities’ on the other hand and couches it in metaphysical terms which in fact serve more to render political reality opaque than to elucidate it. Fedor Lukyanov, in Russia’s Foreign Policy: Technocrats versus Ideology, comments that although Morozov’s analysis of Russian foreign political thought is correct, this has little impact on the actual policies of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which are much more pragmatic and pro-Western than may appear at first sight. However, Lukyanov argues, this disconnectedness between ideology and practice leads to a dangerous lack of strategic thought and to serious blunders whenever the reins of foreign policy are taken over by the Kremlin. Finally, Alexander Astrov, in The Roundabout Evolution of the Theory of International Relations from Realism to Traditionalism, returns to international political thought and shows how the unsatisfactory realist view of international relations has been gradually superseded first by reflectivism, which acknowledged actors other than the state, and then by traditionalism, which intends to reconnect thinking on international relations with general political theory.
The Culture of Politics section features an article by Alexander Etkind and Andrey Shcherbak entitled The Spectre of the Maidan is Haunting Russia: Preventive Counter-Revolution in Russian Politics, where they review different reactions to the recent Ukrainian revolution among the Russian political elite, and show how the events on Kiev’s Independence Square underline the creative and unpredictable nature of democratic politics, something that Russia’s so-called ‘political technologists’ find very hard to understand.
The next section features a Letter to the Editors by left-wing journalist Boris Kagarlitsky, criticizing an article on Antiglobalism’s Antisemitism Problem published in this year’s first issue, followed by a reply by the article’s author, Mark Strauss, and a comment by NZ editor-in-chief Mischa Gabowitsch.
The second thematic section is devoted to The Soviet Queue and Russian Reality and, more generally, the peculiar methods of distribution of goods that were prevalent in the Soviet Union, and their impact on contemporary Russians’ behaviour. Elena Osokina, in A Farewell Ode to the Soviet Queue, reviews the social practices engendered by the permanent queues in the USSR. Vladimir Nikolaev, in The Soviet Queue: The Past as the Present, shows how those practices continue to shape the habits of post-Soviet Russians. Pavel Romanov and Yelena Yarskaya-Smirnova describe the world of the spivs or black-marketeers, fartsovshchiki in Russian, in The Spivs: The Underground of the Soviet Consumer Society. The authors analyze the economic background, practices and specific culture of the spivs from the late 1950s to the 1980s, showing their crucial role for the distribution of goods in the USSR. In an additional article published only on www.nz-online.ru, sociologist Ekaterina Kozurova describes Shortages and Queues in a Front-Line City During the War: The Example of Saratov.
Our columnist Yevgeny Saburov broadens the topic in his Humane Economics column by asking why situations of deficit emerge where there seems to be no apparent market rationale for them, and answering that shortages may sometimes be a coveted economic good in their own right.
Topic 3 is devoted to cultures of sex and alcohol, contrasting Ancient Greece with present-day Russia. Vadim Mikhailin demolishes myths about what it meant to be Dionysian in Classical Antiquity in Dionysos’s Beard: The Nature and Evolution of the Ancient-Greek Banqueting Space, François Lissarrague writes about Wine in a Flow of Images: The Aesthetics of the Ancient Greek Banquet, and Olga Chepurnaya and Larisa Shpakovskaya take a sociologist’s look at Alcohol and Sex in their Notes About the Cultural Contexts of Drunkenness, analyzing socially accepted and stigmatized functions of drinking in connection with different types of sexual encounters.
Alexei Levinson, in his Sociological Notes, takes another look at Sex and Liberty, contrasting data found in recent surveys on sexual freedom with results of Soviet-era studies.
Under New Institutions, we present a students’ political debating club called Ya Dumayu (I Think), based at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
There follow, as usual, two detailed journals’ reviews, covering journals in all fields of political and cultural debate and enquiry.
The New Books section features a review article on recent books on economics by former Russian ministers Yegor Gaidar and Yevgeny Yassin, as well as a number of individual reviews of books on international relations, the social history of intellectuals, nationalism, religion, and an anthology of Soviet-era samizdat literature.