Articles published in Rusistika 2011

Published: 6th Sep 2011

Anglicisation and globalisation in post-Soviet Russian:
is English the Anatolii Chubais of the Russian Language?
John Dunn

The use of games in teaching Russian as a foreign language
Ursula Stohler and Elena Makarova

The link between the artist and the moralist in Tolstoy and his changing view of Beethoven
Lucinda Critchley

Социокультурная динамика преподования русского как иностранного языка: вербальные правила общественного поведения
Alina Brown

The fifth ALL Russian Essay Competition 2011
Natalia Tronenko

Eвропейский гуманитарный университет
Ruta Syrovatskaja

The love of learning: the study of Russian for students with serious hearing impairment
Daphne West and Marina Okhapkina

 

 

 

Additional Book Review

 

Food and Everyday Life in the Post-Socialist World
Melissa L Caldwell, ed.
Indiana University Press, 2009, 231pp, £17.99
ISBN 978-0-253-22139-1
A curious feature of the socialist countries is that their generally unsuccessful doctrinaire policies on agricultural production have resulted in the preservation into the 21st century of food production traditions and techniques which are characteristic of the peasant societies of the 19th century. All over Eastern Europe, as a matter of self-preservation, families have engaged in small scale agricultural production on their sadovye uchastki or on their dachas (the two are not the same), and then food processing at home, and it has been argued recently that this has been a serious hindrance to the development of commercial food production, certainly in Russia.

The first article here chronicles the distrust of commercially produced jars and frozen food under socialism, with the public only just beginning to trust these products now. There follows ‘The Tale of the Toxic Paprika’. Hungarians went through the same period of wild capitalism when food adulteration became widespread, but then entered the EU where food standards were suddenly much higher. At the same time contaminated third world products could be imported under cover and be re-exported, for example from Spain to Hungary, as EU produce. Hungarian producers and consumers received the worst of both worlds.

‘Self Made Women’ chronicles the enterprise of Lithuanian women in marketing raw milk through informal markets. The culture of ‘I am my own government’, of hard work, mutual respect and independence is very strong here. Women have built structures which are simply outside the EU’s supervision. The article ‘Tempest in a Coffee Pot’ describes the ordinary Russian’s refusal to enter the new café culture and details the changes in behaviour in public spaces that this brings.

‘The Geopolitics of Taste’ describes the consequences of branding different types of sausages as ‘Euro’ and others as ‘Soviet’, and why the Soviet brand is preferred by most consumers in Lithuania. ‘A Celebration of Masterstvo’ is about the Moscow Youth Championship in the Culinary Arts, now well over ten years old. Lastly, ‘The Social and Gendered Lives of Vodka in Rural Siberia’ compares men’s and women’s drinking behaviour and traditions and follows one case in depth.

The seven articles, almost all by women writers, are tied together in the introduction and afterword, which draw general conclusions about official and consumer behaviour in Soviet times and examine the carry-over into modern times. This book is a nice change from the academic concentration on historical and political trends in many studies of Eastern European countries.

Andrew Jameson

 

 

BOOKS AND MATERIALS RECEIVED

Russkoe Prisutstvie v Britanii
N. V. Makarova and O. A. Morgunova
Moscow, Sovremennaya ekonomika i pravo, 2009, 272pp, £12
ISBN 978-5-8411-0277-9. Hardback

The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth Century Russian Literature
Evgeny Dobrenko and Marina Balina, eds.
Cambridge University Press, 2011, 326pp, £18.99
ISBN 978-0-52187535-6. Paperback

A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov, translated by Natasha Randall, foreword by Neil Labute
Penguin Classics, 2009, 208pp, £9.99
ISBN 9780143105633

Pro Eto – That’s What
Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated by Larisa Gureyeva and George Hyde
Arc Publications, 2009, 170pp, £12.99. Introduction by John Wakeman, article “Translating Mayakovsky” by George Hyde, montages by Alexander Rodchenko, front cover as in 1923 original. Facsimile edition adapted for parallel Russian and English texts
ISBN 978-1-904614-31-9. Paperback

The Three Fat Men
Yuri Olesha, translated by Hugh Aplin, foreword by Graeme Garden
Hesperus Press, 2011, 156pp, £7.99. Foreword, introduction, biographical note
ISBN 978-1-84391-452-5. Paperback

Boris Godunov and Little Tragedies
Alexander Pushkin, translated by Roger Clarke
Oneworld Classics, 2010, 325pp, £9.99. Introductions, notes, historical background, extract from The City of the Plague by John Wilson
ISBN 978-1-84749-147-3. Paperback

Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
Leo Tolstoy, translated by Dora O’Brien
Oneworld Classics, 2010, 364pp, £8.99. Notes on the text, extra material on life, works, translator’s note, bibliography, early reviews in England
ISBN 978-1-84749-142-8. Paperback

War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, revised and edited by Amy Mandelker
Oxford University Press, 2010, 1350pp, £16.99. Full academic edition with notes.
ISBN 978-0-19-958914-2. Hardback

Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy, translated by Kyril Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes
Oneworld Classics, 2008, 884pp, £12.99. Preface, notes on the text
ISBN 978-1-84749-059-9. Paperback

A Confession
Leo Tolstoy, translated by Anthony Briggs, foreword by Helen Dunmore
Hesperus Press, 2010, 146pp, £7.99. Also contains What is Religion, and what Does its Essence Consist of? Notes, biographical note.
ISBN 978-1-84391-190-6. Paperback