Social Historian, Franziska Exeler has focussed much of her research on the Soviet Union and the Second World War but at HSE she is asking students to find out what happened in other countries to try to understand the Soviet experience in a global context. She talked to the HSE English News website about teaching and researching at the HSE International Centre for History and Sociology, about discovering Moscow’s architecture and about her life as an academic in Russia.
In the year that marks the 70th anniversary of victory in the Second World War, we talk to Kristy Ironside, who received her BA and MA from the University of Toronto before going on to complete her PhD at the University of Chicago, and who is currently researching life in the Soviet Union in the post-war years. Kristy Ironside’s work examines what the War meant to ordinary people, how their lives changed — and how Soviet society coped with the aftermath.
Why are Russians unhappy; who serves the dictators; how to reform control and supervision;Trade versus wars; Russia’s new citizens; what do Russian and Chinese banks have in common; why analysts don’t predict recession; the provincial social environment and physical isolation of rural settlements: the most interesting research by HSE in 2014. According to Opec.ru.
Most research into social change limits itself to social factors causing change. However, other factors, such as natural disasters, climate and geographical peculiarities of the particular place, or infectious diseases also have a significant impact on societal evolution.
In the past year, 57% of adult Russians have donated money to charity or to strangers in need. Health, religion, disaster relief, and orphanages were the most popular causes, according to Irina Mersiyanova, Director of the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and Non-Profit Sector, and rina Korneyeva, researcher with the same Centre.
Middle-aged Russians whose younger years fell in the era of change fear for their future and tend to save more money than they spend. In contrast, Russia's elderly and young adults are avid consumers: the former have survived hardship and scarcity – potential loss does not scare them, while the latter share the inherent optimism of youth, according to the paper 'Consumer Expectations of the Russian Public (1996-2009): Interconnections across Cohorts, Generations, and Ages' by Dilyara Ibragimova, Senior Researcher at the HSE's Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology.
From November 10 to 14, the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research’s (LCSR NRU HSE) 4th International Annual Research Conference ‘Cultural and Economic changes under cross-national perspective’ will take place in St. Petersburg. The programme includes dozens of themed sessions on current social, political and economic problems, and lectures by the world’s leading sociologists.
Extracurricular activities continue to be popular among Russian youngsters, and most school students attend after-school clubs and classes, including those offered by their own school. Youngsters who are not involved in any after-school activities explain it by not having enough time or not having access to out-of-school programmes which are either non-existent in their community or out of their price range. These are some of the findings of a study by Daniil Alexandrov, Head of the HSE's Research Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science (St. Petersburg), and Valeria Ivaniushina, Senior Research Fellow of the same Laboratory.
Twenty-five million Russians would be prepared to move from cities to the countryside if offered the same living standards in terms of income and available infrastructure. While these conditions cannot be met in Russia at the moment, it is still possible for the government to take steps to encourage urban dwellers to move to rural communities, according to the study Motives, Conditions and Consequences of Migration from the Cities to the Countryside in Russia by Maria Neuvazhaeva, Masters' graduate of the HSE's Faculty of Sociology.
The 2008-2009 financial crisis could have affected people's values; however, researchers have not yet found any such changes in Europe. A study by Maksim Rudnev and Vladimir Magun of the HSE's Laboratory for Comparative Studies in Mass Consciousness and Peter Schmidt, former head of the HSE's Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research, suggests that the recent financial crisis may have a delayed effect on society's values.
