2015 REECAS NW

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/35007

The Herbert J. Ellison Center Presents: The 21st Annual Northwest Regional Conference for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies Between East & West: Identity, Opportunity & Security in the Post-Communist World The Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington is hosting a one-day interdisciplinary conference. This year REECAS NW will be held at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA on May 2, 2015. We welcome students, faculty and staff from institutions of higher learning from throughout the Pacific Northwest, as well as K-12 educators and the general public. Admission to the conference is free. Contributions are encouraged on area studies, literature, the fine arts, the environment, post-Soviet foreign policy, historical research, economics, national identity or any other relevant subjects. The conference will also feature a session for K-12 educators teaching area languages at the K-12 level.

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The “Big Bang” of Pax Mongolica: The Political Legacy of Chinggis Khan– Empire, State or Mega-Tribe?
(The Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies Center, 2015-05-02) Bedeski, Robert
The relation between man and the state has occupied deliberations of philosophers since at least Plato and Aristotle. Man has physical substance - the state does not. So any link poses an ontological dilemma. The state consists of claims to territory and its resources, a defined population, a government, and organized instruments to preserve order and provide security. It is a consciously constructed structure, in contrast to unorganized families, clans and tribes which preceded the state by thousands of years. How and why have states emerged in the past several millennia? How have families, clans and tribes assembled to form larger organizations as states? The evolution of the medieval Mongol state, as described in the Secret History of the Mongols, offers a condensed narrative of state formation. Why have humans, in contrast to other living organisms, formed states? Self-preservation is man’s foremost motivation. All men have a natural desire and right to life. Thomas Hobbes argued that to secure that right, men will surrender some of their individual freedom. Political order reduces violence and seeks balance between security and freedom. The growth of the modern Euro-American state has roughly and imperfectly followed a path of improving order, security and freedom. However, the same progress has been less evident in the non-West, except in a few countries where Western patterns were imposed or adapted. A wave of optimism occurred after the Cold War, but today global democratization has lost its aura of inevitability.
American cinema in the USSR and Post-Communist Russia: cultural influence in open and closed societies
(The Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies Center, 2015-05-02) Barber, Irina
In the period of complications and antagonism between countries and governments, public diplomacy and its cultural programs become crucial. And in this regard films can be a very powerful and discreet public diplomacy tool capable of acting within foreign society. As Joseph Nye had said, „Pictures often convey values more powerfully than words‟.1 In this paper I would like to use the case study of American cinema diplomacy in the USSR and Russia to demonstrate how cultural influence correlate with phenomena of open or closed societies described by Karl Popper, and how they can work even in closed societies.
On The Origins Of Divisions Plaguing Today’s Ukraine
(The Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies Center, 2015-05-02) Uzhva, Anastasiya F.
With this inquiry I attribute the causes of the divide in the east and west Ukraine to the historical composition, religious affiliations, and political interests of the Ukrainian people
Hellfire and Revolution: The Jews of Odessa and the Works of Isaac Babel
(The Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies Center, 2015-05-02) Cotton, Matthew
At the turn of the twentieth century, on the western shores of Russia’s Black Sea coast, there lay a city unlike any other Russian city. It was said that seven miles of hellfire surrounded the port, separating the city’s enterprising and often rambunctious Jewish inhabitants from the quite life of the Pale of Settlement’s traditional shtetls. This city was Odessa, established in the closing years of the eighteenth century as the regional seat of Catherine the Great’s “New Russia,” that had grown into a cosmopolitan center of commerce and culture for Russian Jews and gentiles alike. The “hellfire” that shrouded Odessa was a popular metaphor for the liberal (read: nontraditional) mores of the city’s inhabitants. The city’s lively harbor ensured a steady influx of foreign capital, and for shrewd entrepreneurs fortunes could be made (and lost) overnight. The warm clime of the Black Sea coast made the city a hub of tourism, and its distinctly European city center remained a cultural destination of socialites regardless of their creed. In many ways, the “hellfire” stood out as more of a beacon on the horizon for Jews of the Pale, with the constant allure of fame and fortune radiating out of the city’s opulent theaters and bustling Exchage.
Jewish Identity in the Russian Cinema of early 1990s
(The Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies Center, 2015-05-02) Klots, Anatoliy
Interest in all topics previously forbidden in the Soviet Union soared in the decade between 1988 and 1999. New films about Stalinism, purges, ethnic conflicts, youth subcultures, crime and corruption, often filled with sex and violence, flooded movie theaters. Soviet filmmakers rushed to use freedom of expression. Among films produced at this time, many were dedicated to Jewish subjects. Public interest surged, and enthusiasts started working on the revival of Jewish culture forming a wide range of public organizations. Filmmakers turned to Jewish classics, began addressing the topic of Jewry in Soviet society, and engaged in a discussion about themes, such as the Holocaust, and the Stalinist anti-Semitic campaign of 1948-1953 (Gershenson 206). Together with feature films, a number of documentaries and animated films were produced. Some gained popularity and have been well researched, others remained relatively obscure due to the collapse of the Soviet film industry. While several Russian and American scholars, like Miron Chernenko and Olga Gershenson wrote about select films, the Jewish presence in the Russian cinema of 1990s-2000s has not been discussed extensively. This paper addresses revisiting the Jewish past and envisioning the place of Jews in Soviet life in two award-winning films produced in the early 1990s, Get Thee Out! (Awards: the Nika award, the main national Russian cinema award, and the main prize of Open Sochi Russian Film Festival 1991) and To See Paris and Die (The Nika award, 1992), and works towards answering the question: How did
Use of Profanities in discourse between Russian speakers: Status and dominance in Svojness
(The Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies Center, 2015-05-02) Jarrett, Jenny
The use of profanity in discourse between Russian speakers creates inclusive and exclusive relationship in speech and formulates an array of social divisions. “The „polarity‟ of Russian styles of interaction might be linked with the „polarity‟ of conceptualizing people into svoi „one‟s own‟ as opposed to čužie „alien/strangers/foreigners‟” and these “indigenous terms encode interpersonal relationships associated with group inclusions and exclusion” (Gladkova, 181). When introducing the concept of Svojness, the usage of profanity between svoi „one‟s own‟ must be brought to the attention of translators. In Russian there is a gradation of effectiveness between profane words “Svoj-ness is motivated both psychologically and socially, and it is subject to fluctuations that depend on subtle shifts in the speaker‟s perception of him/herself and the addressee” (Yokoyama, 402). This gradation of crude language prompts a challenge to translators of Russian. When is it appropriate to translate taboo words into less obscene words of simple euphemisms?

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