"Crystal Wall of Wailing" by Marina Abramovich: Analytical Discussion

The discussion focuses on the recently opened "Crystal Wailing Wall" at the Babi Yar memorial complex, an art object created by the famous artist Marina Abramovich. The authors from different analytical positions and from different fields demonstrate the rich interpretative resource of the Wall. Describing various aspects of the composition, the participants of the discussion draw attention to the difficulties associated with both the discussion of the Holocaust and forms of its commemorative representation.

Birthplaces of Our Fear: Reception of Yuri Dud’s Documentary “Kolyma” in Social Media

The article examines reception of the online documentary "Kolyma — the birthplace of our fear" (produced by journalist Yuri Dud in 2019) in social networks. In their comments, internet users regard other topics along with the Soviet repressions, to which the film is dedicated. They discuss the traumatic experience of the recent past, namely the late Soviet period, the collapse of the USSR, the 1990s, and contemporary problems. As a result of analysis of YouTube comments, we identify two trauma narratives. The first narrative is based on the idea of violation of civil human rights, the second focuses on the violation of socio-economic rights. Different topics appear in comments and posts on social media depending on which rights viewers consider key and which they pay more attention to when watching the documentary. In the case of civil rights, these include contemporary political repressions in Russia, names of famous political prisoners, references to recent protests. In the case of socio-economic rights, these topics include privatization, oligarchs, economic reforms, inequality. Those users who comment about the violation of socio-economic rights generally express a positive attitude towards the USSR and a critical attitude towards capitalism. Topics such as corruption or the problems of the penitentiary system in Russia are “inbetween” — they are important symbols in both narratives. The study clarifies how the cultural trauma narrative of the recent past and present-day events is formed. We also demonstrate how this process takes place on social media, and how social media enables participation of ordinary users and not only public figures.

Conducting Interviews during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

The use of telephone and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) interviews has become necessary owing to the legal restrictions and safety measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has furthered scholarly dialogue surrounding the choice of interview mode, and the assumption that face-to-face interviews are the "gold standard" [Novick, 2008: 397]. The general public has also become more accustomed to utilising VoIP in their day-to-day lives. In this article, I discuss this change in communication methods and the impact it could have on interview modes. Nevertheless, the researcher's and participant's contexts remain paramount when deciding which interview mode to employ. For this reason, Oltmann's model [Oltmann, 2016] has been extended to include VoIP, providing a more complete framework for researchers to make an informed decision when contemplating interview modes.

Educational and Professional Trajectories of Women Leaders

The article analyzes the educational and professional trajectories of women leaders. The study is based on an approach to the educational and professional trajectory as part of the life path. The empirical basis of the study was 20 video interviews published on the website of the news aggregator MediaMetrics, which were conducted as part of programs about women's career success. The intentional characteristics of female successful trajectories are empirically investigated on the basis of narratives. The author uses intent analysis to show how women leaders explain their career paths. As a result of the research, educational and professional scenarios realized by women are formulated, as well as their discursive justifications. Women become leaders due to the implementation of the diachronic educational and qualification scenario of a business idea.

Discourse of First Romantic Love: Gender Scenarios

The sexual, gender and family revolutions of the 20th century led to a massive transformation of the institutions of marriage, family and romantic relationships, and with them to the changes in the concept of romantic love, which continue to this day. In modern society, various and even contradictory cultural models and discourses appear, between which individuals are forced to maneuver, using scenarios that are recommendations, schemes of socially expected actions. An important role in the assimilation, application and further formation of attitudes and practices of romantic love is played by the first encounter with it, which is the starting point in feeling for the boundaries of acceptable behavior and the feelings accompanying it. But what experience do individuals themselves refer to first romantic love, how is it evaluated, and what meaning does it have for them? Does this built experience of first romantic love differ between men and women? This study explores these issues by referring to the informants' discursive experience and reconstructing, based on it, the fulfilled gender scenarios of first romantic love, based on a larger cultural model. Based on 30 narrative interviews, 12 scenarios of first romantic love were found, 7 of which are gender specific. There are no fundamental differences in the understanding of first romantic love between men and women, however, its assessment is more emotionally expressed in women, their scenarios are more positively worked out, while men have more negative and ambivalent experiences in the scenarios. The study also confirms that the cultural pattern of romantic love is indeed blurred and contradictory.

Cognitive Interview

Cognitive interviewing helps to bring back the original meaning of pilotage in a case study. Cognitive processes in an interview start with the interpretation of the question and its constituent terms, include the stage of forming an opinion and developing a judgment about it, and ends with editing the answer. The objectives of the cognitive interview are to explore the concepts, words and concepts of everyday language; pull out meanings, associations and emotions associated with the subject of research; detect barriers blocking the respondent's presentation of his position; assess confidence in your opinion, as well as the willingness to correct your point of view; to form their understanding of the "ordinary theory" of the studied phenomenon, etc. For each task, you can build an original strategy for a cognitive interview, but it is important to understand what we are studying, what the result should be and what the research team will do with it.

On the Way to Women's Citizenship in Russia: the 1860s-1917

This article examines the development of Russian women's citizenship from the standpoint of the theory of citizenship and describes the main directions and milestones of its formation on the historical material. The article proves that the main subjects of the setting up of women's citizenship on the one hand are the women's, feminist, suffragist movement, which put the problems of its social (gender) group before the authorities and sought their solution. On the other hand, there are ‘broad masses of women’, i.e. women of various classes and social groups, who, by changing their daily practices, actually expanded their civil rights and duties. The History of Russian Women as a historical discipline in recent years has accumulated significant factual material about various aspects of the life of Russian women, which made possible such a historical and sociological analysis of the phenomenon of women's citizenship in Russia.

«It’s Only a Joke!» What is an Offensive Joke among Adolescents?

All of us cannot imagine adolescents' daily communication without humor and making fun of each other. Jokes can help strengthen friendships, smooth out the awkwardness, or maintain status in the group, but sometimes jokes become a means of humiliation and bullying. Despite many studies, determining the demarcation line between comic and aggressive words is quite challenging. This border remains uncertain. This paper aims to identify characteristics in which a joke becomes offensive and can develop into bullying.The article presents the results of a qualitative analysis of 72 interviews with middle and high school students. We identify three situations when a joke is perceived as aggression. Firstly, If a fun statement emphasizes the differences between the adolescent and the group, it makes one feel "inferior" compared to peers. Secondly, the difference in statuses between a speaker and an interlocutor exists, leading to no reply to a joke using a joke. In that case, the joke ceases to be a part of the dialogue and becomes a means of reinforcing inequality. Thirdly, if not all participants are aware of "the rules of the game," they cannot understand the context of reading the joke. That means the statement is interpreted in different ways by the parties, leading to resentment. The findings can help design effective bullying prevention measures in the school environment.

Three Regimes of Gender Citizenship: Social Policy Experience of Three Generations of Russian Women

The article is devoted to the analysis of ideas of women belonging to three generations about their rights. Women’s rights are considered as part of the concept of gender citizenship, which includes ideologically and institutionalized ideas about normative gender contract for women, as well as their own meanings and values that they attribute to their status as recipients of social policy. The empirical basis of this study is composed of 45 biographical interviews with women of three generations (1950s, 1970s and 1990s years of birth). The interview guide also contained questions about parental family, education, professional activity, family and parenting, housing, organization of recreation and medical services, and retirement benefits. Based on the analysis of biographical narratives, the authors identify three modes of gender citizenship that are typical for women of three generations. 1) The mode of receiving support and benefits from the state is built through receiving support from the state as workers and mothers within the framework of social policy and is built on the subjective assessment by women of the ratio of their labor and reproductive contribution and the amount of assistance received from the state. 2) The regime of self-sufficiency and market consumption of goods relevant for women of the middle generation with experience of socialization and the beginning of working life in the period of post-Soviet transformations. In a broad sense, they see the market as the main source of well-being, which determines their solidarity with the values of the neoliberal economy and forms in them the skills of competent consumers of a wide variety of goods and services. 3) The regime of demanding support and active consumption of social goods and services is built on the basis of a proactive and individualized position of women in relation to such sources of well-being as the state and the market. Representatives of the younger generation not only have their own experience of gender discrimination, but also actively use feminist optics to define and interpret various life situations in terms of gender inequality as structurally determined differences in the life strategies of men and women.

‘My Family and I Are Absolutely against This Law’: Gender Citizenship and Domestic Violence in Contemporary Russia

The article examines how post-soviet legal initiatives on prevention of intimate partner and domestic violence relate to the concepts of gender citizenship and “new private” which transformed gender order in the Russian Federation. To explore emerging concepts the article focuses on the discursive practices of the public debate on the draft law “On prevention of family-domestic violence,” which was released by the Federation Council for the online public discussion on 29 November 2019 and became the most debated draft law drawing 11,186 online entries as comments. Using grounded theory to identify main discursive clusters of the public debate, the article offers an analysis of how theories of cultural sovereignty and “new private” are articulated in contemporary Russian public space. This analysis, supplemented by the examination of other legal and policy documents on prevention of violence against women, gender policy and human rights of women, resulted in conclusions that in post-soviet Russia the concept of gender citizenship has been developing in the close relationship with the concept of cultural sovereignty, which provides the State with legitimate ways to exercise a selective approach to the guarantees of human rights and reject gender-sensitive legislation on the grounds of protecting the family as a traditional value at the expense of human rights of women.