Marginal Man in Modern Russian Literature

This research was focused around the intersection of two discourses: that of marginality and that of ideology. Ponomarev analysed works by Alexander Zinoviev, Vladimir Maximov and Eduard Limonov - three writers representing different groups of Soviet dissidence - from the viewpoint of the concept, drawn from anthropological theory, of marginal man. Using a methodology he describes as ideological analysis, Ponomarev showed that the ideologies of both the writers and their characters are marginal, lying as they do between official Soviet and western democratic ideologies. He showed that the works and the 'creative behaviour' of the three writers did not change after 1991, when their ideas seemed victorious. Marginality is shown to be a permanent characteristic and is linked with the main ideas of the dissident movement in the USSR. On the basis of this marginality, Ponomarev identified some common traits in dissident ideas and drew up a model of dissident ideology. This general model of dissident ideology seems to be one of the special Russian variants of the marginal ideologies of intelligentsia and could be compared to the ideology of Rodon Raskolnikov, the central character in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The discourse of ideology in the USSR in the 1970s-1980s and in 1990s Russia thus appeared as a process in which the elements of the official Soviet ideology were gradually superseded by those of the dissident ideology linked with the ideology of the underground, the Russian version of the post-modern. Marginal ideologies won and became mainstream but did not lose their basic marginal traits. Ponomarev concludes that the gap between the 'state ideology' and the dissident ideology, taken together with the special Russian version of postmodernity has shaped the current literary process in Russia, making the figure of the marginal man into the main writer type.

A Sociological Study of the Political Subsystem in Yugoslavia

In this critical analysis of sociological studies of the political subsystem in Yugoslavia since the fall of communism Mr. Ilic examined the work of the majority of leading researchers of politics in the country between 1990 and 1996. Where the question of continuity was important, he also looked at previous research by the writers in question. His aim was to demonstrate the overall extent of existing research and at the same time to identify its limits and the social conditions which defined it. Particular areas examined included the problems of defining basic concepts and selecting the theoretically most relevant indicators; the sources of data including the types of authentic materials exploited; problems of research work (contacts, field control, etc.); problems of analysisl and finally the problems arising from different relations with the people who commission the research. In the first stage of the research, looking at methods of defining key terms, special attention was paid to the analysis of the most frequently used terms such as democracy, totalitarianism, the political left and right, and populism. Numerous weaknesses were noted in the analytic application of these terms. In studies of the possibilities of creating a democratic political system in Serbia and its possible forms (democracy of the majority or consensual democracy), the profound social division of Serbian society was neglected. The left-right distinction tends to be identified with the government-opposition relation, in the way of practical politics. The idea of populism was used to pass responsibility for the policy of war from the manipulator to the manipulated, while the concept of totalitarianism is used in a rather old-fashioned way, with echoes of the cold war. In general, the terminology used in the majority of recent research on the political subsystem in Yugoslavia is characterised by a special ideological style and by practical political material, rather than by developed theoretical effort. The second section of analysis considered the wider theoretical background of the research and focused on studies of the processes of transformation and transition in Yugoslav society, particularly the work of Mladen Lazic and Silvano Bolcic, who he sees as representing the most important and influential contemporary Yugoslav sociologists. Here Mr. Ilic showed that the meaning of empirical data is closely connected with the stratification schemes towards which they are oriented, so that the same data can have different meanings in shown through different schemes. He went on to show the observed theoretical frames in the context of wider ideological understanding of the authors' ideas and research. Here the emphasis was on the formalistic character of such notions as command economy and command work which were used in analysing the functioning and the collapse of communist society, although Mr. Ilic passed favourable judgement on the Lazic's critique of political over-determination in its various attempts to explain the disintegration of the communist political (sub)system. The next stage of the analysis was devoted to the problem of empirical identification of the observed phenomena. Here again the notions of the political left and right were of key importance. He sees two specific problems in using these notion in talking about Yugoslavia, the first being that the process of transition in the FR Yugoslavia has hardly begun. The communist government has in effect remained in power continuously since 1945, despite the introduction of a multi-party system in 1990. The process of privatisation of public property was interrupted at a very early stage and the results of this are evident on the structural level in the continuous weakening of the social status of the middle class and on the political level because the social structure and dominant form of property direct the majority of votes towards to communists in power. This has been combined with strong chauvinist confusion associated with the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, and these ideas were incorporated by all the relevant Yugoslav political parties, making it more difficult to differentiate between them empirically. In this context he quotes the situation of the stream of political scientists who emerged in the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade. During the time of the one-party regime, this faculty functioned as ideological support for official communist policy and its teachers were unable to develop views which differed from the official line, but rather treated all contrasting ideas in the same way, neglecting their differences. Following the introduction of a multi-party system, these authors changed their idea of a public enemy, but still retained an undifferentiated and theoretically undeveloped approach to the issue of the identification of political ideas. The fourth section of the work looked at problems of explanation in studying the political subsystem and the attempts at an adequate causal explanation of the triumph of Slobodan Milosevic's communists at four subsequent elections was identified as the key methodological problem. The main problem Mr. Ilic isolated here was the neglect of structural factors in explaining the voters' choice. He then went on to look at the way empirical evidence is collected and studied, pointing out many mistakes in planning and determining the samples used in surveys as well as in the scientifically incorrect use of results. He found these weaknesses particularly noticeable in the works of representatives of the so-called nationalistic orientation in Yugoslav sociology of politics, and he pointed out the practical political abuses which these methodological weaknesses made possible. He also identified similar types of mistakes in research by Serbian political parties made on the basis of party documentation and using methods of content analysis. He found various none-sided applications of survey data and looked at attempts to apply other sources of data (statistics, official party documents, various research results). Mr. Ilic concluded that there are two main sets of characteristics in modern Yugoslav sociological studies of political subsystems. There are a considerable number of surveys with ambitious aspirations to explain political phenomena, but at the same time there is a clear lack of a developed sociological theory of political (sub)systems. He feels that, in the absence of such theory, most researcher are over-ready to accept the theoretical solutions found for interpretation of political phenomena in other countries. He sees a need for a stronger methodological bases for future research, either 1) in complementary usage of different sources and ways of collecting data, or 2) in including more of a historical dimension in different attempts to explain the political subsystem in Yugoslavia.

The Legal Protection of Fundamental Human Values in Central and Eastern Europe and Modern Biotechnology: Towards European Harmonization

The protection of the fundamental human values (life, bodily integrity, human dignity, privacy) becomes imperative with the rapid progress in modern biotechnology, which can result in major alterations in the genetic make-up of organisms. It has become possible to insert human genes into pigs so that their internal organs coated in human proteins are more suitable for transplantation into humans (xenotransplantation), and micro-organisms that cam make insulin have been created, thus changing the genetic make-up of humans. At the end of the 1980s, the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries either initiated new legislation or started to amend existing laws in this area (clinical testing of drugs, experiments on man, prenatal genetic diagnosis, legal protection of the embryo/foetus, etc.). The analysis here indicates that the CEE countries have not sufficiently adjusted their regulations to the findings of modern biotechnology, either because of the relatively short period they have had to do so, or because there are no definite answers to the questions which modern biotechnology has raised (ethical aspects of xenotransplantation, or of the use of live-aborted embryonic or foetal tissue in neuro-transplantation, etc.). In order to harmonise the existing regulations in CEE countries with respect to the EU and supranational contexts, two critical issues should be taken into consideration. The first is the necessity for CEE countries to recognise the place of humans within the achievements of modern biotechnology (a broader affirmation of the principle of autonomy, an explicit ban on the violation of the genetic identity of either born or unborn life, etc.). The second concerns the definition of the status of different biotechnological procedures and their permissibility (gene therapy, therapeutic genomes, xenotransplantation, etc.). The road towards such answers may be more easily identified once all CEE countries become members of the Council of Europe and express their wish to join the EU, which in turn presupposes taking over the entire body of EU legislation.

Compensation, Incentives and Risk: Economic Theory and Russian Practise

Mr. Pechersky set out to examine a specific feature of the employer-employee relationship in Russian business organisations. He wanted to study to what extent the so-called "moral hazard" is being solved (if it is being solved at all), whether there is a relationship between pay and performance, and whether there is a correlation between economic theory and Russian reality. Finally, he set out to construct a model of the Russian economy that better reflects the way it actually functions than do certain other well-known models (for example models of incentive compensation, the Shapiro-Stiglitz model etc.). His report was presented to the RSS in the form of a series of manuscripts in English and Russian, and on disc, with many tables and graphs. He begins by pointing out the different examples of randomness that exist in the relationship between employee and employer. Firstly, results are frequently affected by circumstances outside the employee's control that have nothing to do with how intelligently, honestly, and diligently the employee has worked. When rewards are based on results, uncontrollable randomness in the employee's output induces randomness in their incomes. A second source of randomness involves the outside events that are beyond the control of the employee that may affect his or her ability to perform as contracted. A third source of randomness arises when the performance itself (rather than the result) is measured, and the performance evaluation procedures include random or subjective elements. Mr. Pechersky's study shows that in Russia the third source of randomness plays an important role. Moreover, he points out that employer-employee relationships in Russia are sometimes opposite to those in the West. Drawing on game theory, he characterises the Western system as follows. The two players are the principal and the agent, who are usually representative individuals. The principal hires an agent to perform a task, and the agent acquires an information advantage concerning his actions or the outside world at some point in the game, i.e. it is assumed that the employee is better informed. In Russia, on the other hand, incentive contracts are typically negotiated in situations in which the employer has the information advantage concerning outcome. Mr. Pechersky schematises it thus. Compensation (the wage) is W and consists of a base amount, plus a portion that varies with the outcome, x. So W = a + bx, where b is used to measure the intensity of the incentives provided to the employee. This means that one contract will be said to provide stronger incentives than another if it specifies a higher value for b. This is the incentive contract as it operates in the West. The key feature distinguishing the Russian example is that x is observed by the employer but is not observed by the employee. So the employer promises to pay in accordance with an incentive scheme, but since the outcome is not observable by the employee the contract cannot be enforced, and the question arises: is there any incentive for the employer to fulfil his or her promises? Mr. Pechersky considers two simple models of employer-employee relationships displaying the above type of information symmetry. In a static framework the obtained result is somewhat surprising: at the Nash equilibrium the employer pays nothing, even though his objective function contains a quadratic term reflecting negative consequences for the employer if the actual level of compensation deviates from the expectations of the employee. This can lead, for example, to labour turnover, or the expenses resulting from a bad reputation. In a dynamic framework, the conclusion can be formulated as follows: the higher the discount factor, the higher the incentive for the employer to be honest in his/her relationships with the employee. If the discount factor is taken to be a parameter reflecting the degree of (un)certainty (the higher the degree of uncertainty is, the lower is the discount factor), we can conclude that the answer to the formulated question depends on the stability of the political, social and economic situation in a country. Mr. Pechersky believes that the strength of a market system with private property lies not just in its providing the information needed to compute an efficient allocation of resources in an efficient manner. At least equally important is the manner in which it accepts individually self-interested behaviour, but then channels this behaviour in desired directions. People do not have to be cajoled, artificially induced, or forced to do their parts in a well-functioning market system. Instead, they are simply left to pursue their own objectives as they see fit. Under the right circumstances, people are led by Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of impersonal market forces to take the actions needed to achieve an efficient, co-ordinated pattern of choices. The problem is that, as Mr. Pechersky sees it, there is no reason to believe that the circumstances in Russia are right, and the invisible hand is doing its work properly. Political instability, social tension and other circumstances prevent it from doing so. Mr. Pechersky believes that the discount factor plays a crucial role in employer-employee relationships. Such relationships can be considered satisfactory from a normative point of view, only in those cases where the discount factor is sufficiently large. Unfortunately, in modern Russia the evidence points to the typical discount factor being relatively small. This fact can be explained as a manifestation of aversion to risk of economic agents. Mr. Pechersky hopes that when political stabilisation occurs, the discount factors of economic agents will increase, and the agent's behaviour will be explicable in terms of more traditional models.

Aggressive Behaviour of Different Social and Demographic Groups in Post-Totalitarian Society

The project looked at aggressiveness in different age and social groups of modern post-totalitarian society, beginning with the hypotheses that the greatest risk groups are teenagers and the unemployed, and that there is a link between aggression and the level of meaningfulness of life. The groups studied comprised about 200 persons from urban areas of eastern Ukraine, including schoolchildren, students, white collar workers, self-employed persons, the unemployed and pensioners. Workers in industry were not included as this group has virtually disappeared in Ukraine at present since most enterprises have ceased to work and most workers have moved into the groups of the unemployed or self-employed. Participants were divided into age groups of 13-14, 16-17, 18-22, 24-45, 46-60 and over 60, with each group including approximately equal number of men and women. Research methods included Buss-Darky techniques, the "hand test" (E. Wagner), the "non-existent animal" technique, a Rozenzweig picture frustration study, purpose-in-life tests and an interview. The Buss-Darky test showed that schoolchildren have the highest level of aggression, followed by students. These groups have high indexes in virtually all types of aggression, including its open form. The self-employed have relatively lower indexes, although they are more likely to manifest it openly, while such open manifestations are less likely among white-collar workers, pensioners and the unemployed. The least aggressive were the unemployed and pensioners, although the latter had a relatively high level of hostility. In terms of age, aggression was shown to decrease with age, which Ms. Ivanova attributes to the still imperfect control mechanisms of teenagers and their less mature personalities. Among the younger groups girls showed a slightly higher level of aggression, although this situation was reversed among older people. The risk groups inclined to manifest open forms of aggressiveness can therefore be seen to be teenagers and students. Other tests used show aggressiveness as a feature of the current state, rather than as an inherent feature and the results obtained were somewhat different. In the interviews, all adults referred to the increased aggressiveness in society and most stated that they themselves had become more aggressive and bad-tempered. The ability of individuals to adapt to their social environment was also investigated and schoolchildren turned out to have the lowest adaptation index and the unemployed the highest. MS. Ivanova attributes that latter, rather surprising, result to the fact that the constant frustrations facing the unemployed force them to actively seek ways and means of adapting in order to survive. The final aspect considered was the possible connection between human aggressiveness and the meaningfulness of life. Here the groups with the most meaningful lives were the self-employed and pensioners. The latter result, again rather surprising, was attributed to the desire of people who have already lived the greater part of their lives to place more weight on what they have already done, in order to prove to themselves that they have not lived in vain. The hypothesis that aggressiveness is conversely related to the meaningfulness of life was only partially confirmed. In the two extreme cases (schoolchildren and pensioners) this was indeed the case, but the remaining groups did not show any such connection. From the data obtained, Ms. Ivanova concluded that life in modern post-totalitarian society does indeed foster a rise in people's aggressiveness, and this was supported by the fact that indexes of aggressiveness proved to be higher than the norm. Her original hypothesis as to the groups in society most at risk from open aggression confirmed in the case of teenagers but not of the unemployed, who had relatively low aggressiveness indexes and the highest degree of adaptation.

Family Anomie and Juvenile Deliquency in Post-Communist Romania

The sensitivity of crime rates to social, economic and political influences has long aroused the interest of sociologists who have attempted to explain what kind of relationships might be associated with variations in crime rates between different social groups at different times. The earliest views were put forward by Emil Durkheim, and while later writers have developed (R.K. Merton, L. Srole, A, K. Cohen, etc.) have developed some aspects of his ideas further, his basic ideas of the divorce of the individual from normative standards and the lack of social integration are still valid. Ms. Voicu-Minea looked at the theoretical background in detail but then limited it to a specific social group, the family, asking first why certain individual within vulnerable families and/or negative social influences commit offences while others do not. In modern times the family has undergone massive structural and functional changes. Its former economic function, which once endowed it with a great capacity for social inclusion, has generally vanished, while its formerly crucial role in children's education has been massively reduced. These changes, which are still not complete, can lead to dysfunction and in certain social contexts such as that in post-communist Romanian society, this risk of dysfunction is still greater as unfavourably social circumstances more easily affect such families. The number of cases of juvenile delinquency in Romania has increased sharply ever since the end of the communist system and in 1996 reached the level of 18,317 cases. The sample examined included 1012 juvenile delinquents aged between 14 and 18, taken from all areas of Bucharest. Over 80% of charges related to theft, with more serious offences being relatively rare. The children underwent a series of psychological tests, accompanied by a questionnaire relating to family situation. The results showed that juvenile delinquency in Romania is overwhelmingly male, with 91.8% of offences being committed by boys. Two thirds of the research group were under the age of 16 and only just over one third attended school, with over half having left school before the legal age. While the majority of subjects had a lower than average level of education, they did not always recognise this, with two thirds seeing their level of education as being as good as or better than average. Nearly half the children (43%) did not live with both natural parents and majority came from families with three or more children. This applied both to their original families and to the families in which they were living at the time of the survey. The overwhelming majority of families were living in or around Bucharest, but under one third originated from there. Almost 25% of parents were under-schooled and around one third were unqualified workers. At least 30% of families lived in inadequate accommodation and family incomes were generally low. Ms. Voicu-Minea does however point out that over half the minors from the sample saw their family income as satisfactory or even more than satisfactory. When factors such as bad relationships between parents, corporal punishment, alcohol consumption and criminal records of family members were taken into account, the picture was bleak, making it understandable why over 36% of subjects had run away from home at least once, and in many cases repeatedly and for longer periods. The overwhelming majority of offences (80.8%) were committed in groups of between 2 and 11 persons, usually "friends" but in about 10% of cases member's of the family. IQ tests put about 75% of the sample at slightly under average, the difference being too slight to account for the behaviour problems of the majority. Personality tests, however, showed a different picture. Over 70% of those tested manifested an acute need of tenderness and a similar number a high level of potential aggressiveness. Almost half of the minors expressed such feelings as intolerance or a desire for revenge, and Ms. Voicu-Minea found a clear weakness of the Self. Around half the sample expressed sentiments of abandonment, renunciation and solitude.