Call for papers: Contemporary Russian Nationalism

"Contemporary Russian Nationalism, and Its Historical Roots"

A special issue of Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte [Forum for the Ideas and Contemporary History of Eastern Europe]

Deadline for submission of English or German papers: 1 August 2010.

ZIMOS, the Eichstaett Institute for Central and East European Studies in Upper Bavaria, invites English- and German-language research papers for a 2010 special issue of volume 14 of its biannual Germany-based print-journal Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte [Forum for the Ideas and Contemporary History of Eastern Europe]. Since 1997, the Forum has been published twice per year by Böhlau Press (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar).

Since 2004, it has been supplemented by ZIMOS's interdisciplinary Russian-language web journal Форум новейшей восточноевропейской истории и культуры [Forum for Contemporary East European History and Culture], where currently a similar Russian-language multi-issue project on post-Soviet anti-Westernism and its historical roots is being implemented.

We are looking for properly footnoted, scholarly researched, well-structured, and thoroughly edited English- or German-language investigations into the political ideas, world views, intellectual biographies, societal impact and various activities of contemporary Russian representatives of nationalism and their sources in the history of Russia and other countries.

Submitted texts should have a length of approximately 4,000 to 7,000 words, and be based on primary as well as secondary sources fully listed and properly described, in the footnotes. Papers may be submitted and will be printed in English or German. In the case the author submits not in her or his mother tongue, the text should be thoroughly copy-edited by a native speaker. The paper should not have been published before, in the language in which it is submitted to the Forum. If it has been published in another language before, authors are required to provide proof of reprint permission, by the copyright holder of the original version of the article. The editors of the Forum will not take responsibility for any violations of copyright.

Papers accepted content-wise for publication will only be published in case of a proper adaptation of its linguistic quality and formal style (footnotes, headings, references, citations etc.) to the standards of the Forum by the author/s, by 1 August 2010. Model articles showing the formal style required of the final editions of the papers to be prepared by the author/s may be found at the following sites:

Two German-language model articles:
http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/LuksChamber.htm
http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/Rybakov.html

An English-language model article:
http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/Motyl.html

All versions of the papers should be submitted as MS Word Documents using Word's footnote function.

So far, the following authors have agreed to submit texts with the following working titles:

Kaarina Aitamurto (Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki), “Reviving the Native Faith: The Nationalism of Contemporary Slavic Paganism and Russian ‘Rodnoverie’”

Rosalind Marsh (University of Bath, UK), “The ‘New Political Novel’ by Right-Wing Writers in Post-Soviet Russia”

Denis Jdanoff (Berlin), "Die historischen Wurzeln des heutigen russischen Faschismus: Nationalsozialistische Gruppierungen der russischen Emigration im Dritten Reich"

Mikhail D. Suslov (European University Institute, Florence), “Between Nationalism and Imperialism: Pan-Slavism in Modern Russia”

Andreas Umland (The Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt), "Zhirinovskii as a Fascist: Palingenetic Ultra-Nationalism in Early Documents of the LDPR, 1992-1993"

In the future, it is planned to re-publish some of these papers within a collected volume of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society”.

Please, submit your text as soon as possible, but not later than 1 August 2010 to:

andreas.umland[at]ku-eichstaett.de

or as a hard copy to:

Redaktion des Forums
ZIMOS
Ostenstr. 27
D-85072 Eichstaett
GERMANY

We look forward to receiving your proposal or paper!

Thank you.

The Forum's Editors
Prof. Leonid Luks and Dr. Andreas Umland
http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/Institut.html

Article on apoliteic music in Russian

A friend of mine has translated my article on apoliteic music into Russian, so here it is -

Аполитеическая музыка: неофолк, мартиал-индастриал и "метаполитический фашизм"

Russian Nationalism Yahoo group

In September 2007 Andreas Umland established a Russian Nationalism group on Yahoo groups.

The group is designed as a forum of exchange and an open archive serving researchers, journalists and others interested in the history and current permutations of Russian right-wing thought and politics. While everybody is invited to join, this forum is reserved for the spread of substantive, analytical information as well as for the announcement on relevant conferences, publications, and other academic projects. This is not a discussion group.

In addition to extremely useful Links and Files sections, there is also a biweekly "Russian Nationalism Bulletin" (RNB) that has started to appear on 1 November 2007.

Although you can freely see the messages, Links and Files sections are available only for the members of the group. Joining is pretty easy and you are not required to have a Yahoo account.

Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality

If you read Roger Griffin's magnum opus Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler, you may find this documentary film really fascinating -

Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality (Wiki)



Flight from Death is the first film to investigate the psychological effects of death anxiety, or fear of death. This 90-minute documentary about the effects that our reactions to death anxiety have on a psychological, spiritual, and cultural level reveals convincingly that death denial is a root cause of human behavior and more importantly, violence and aggression.

The effects of death anxiety are embedded within everything we do across the globe. Our architecture, our careers, the children we raise, and the wars we wage, are all manifestations of our desire to gain a sense of permanence in defiance of our mortality. This film is a cinematic approach to these theories, placing them in a modern context and portraying them in ways that are both stimulating as well as reflective of the importance and magnitude of their implications.

Flight from Death is the culmination of many years of research and shooting all over the world in locations such as Egypt, Israel, Guyana, Greece, and China. It features interviews with leading scholars, philosophers, researchers and authors such as Robert Jay Lifton, Irvin Yalom, and Sam Keen culminating in the most comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and mind-blowing investigation of humankind’s relationship with death ever captured on film.


FFD crew with psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton.

(I remember referring to Lifton in my article on "clerical fascism".)

The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism

A new issue of Russian-language version of German online academic journal Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte features my article on Aleksandr Dugin -

Палингенетический проект неоевразийства: идеи возрождения в мировоззрении Александра Дугина

It was previously published in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions and is available here.

The new issue of Forum also features important articles by Andreas Umland, Marina Peunova, Marlene Laruelle, Leonid Luks and other authors.

Jewish question in Bandera's independent Ukraine

The Simon Wiesenthal Center today condemned Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko for posthumously awarding the "Hero of Ukraine," one of the country’s highest honors, to Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader whose followers killed thousands of Jews and others during World War II.

In a letter to Oleh Shamshur, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Mark Weitzman, the Wiesenthal Center’s Director of Government Affairs, expressed "deepest revulsion at the recent honor awarded to Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis in the early stages of World War II, and whose followers were linked to the murders of thousands of Jews and others. It is surely a travesty when such an honor is granted right at the period when the world pauses to remember the victims of the Holocaust on January 27."

I have scanned a short excerpt from the protocol of the OUN (Bandera's faction) conference held in Lviv on 18-19 July 1941. The conference dealt with the ethnic minorities in Bandera's independent Ukraine, but this short excerpt concerns the "Jewish question" only.

П. ГУПАЛО: Добре було би, якби нам віддали райони, заселені українцями. Головне, багато всюди є жидів. В центрах спеціально. Не дозволити їм там жити. Вести політику на виселення. Вони будуть самі втікати. А може виділити їм якісь міста, пр. Бердичів.
П. ЛЕНКАВСЬКИЙ: Схарактеризуйте мені жидів.
П. ГОЛОВКО: Жиди є дуже нахабні. Не можна було сказати жид. З ними треба поступити дуже остро. В центрі не можна держати рішучо. Мусимо їх покінчити.
П. ЛЕВИЦЬКИЙ: В Німеччині Жиди мають арийський параграф. Для нас більше цікава є ця справа в Генерал Губернаторстві. Там назначено кожного Жида. Кожний Жид мусів бути зареєстрований в віроісповідній громаді. Їх усували із деяких міст приміром з Кракова, а переміщували до інших, пр. до Варшави, призначували їм гета, які обмуровували мурами. Вони мають кіна, театри, але не мають що їсти.
Молоді здібні до праці - ідуть до праці. Частину треба знищити. Хоч і тепер є вже дещо знищено... Факт є, що деякі влізли в українську кров, богато женилися з українками. В Німеччині є різні пів-жиди, чверть-жиди, але в нас так бути не може. Німець, що жениться з жидівкою, стає жидом.
П. ГОЛОВКО: На Україні супружжа з жидівками є головно в містах. Жидівки виходили заміж за Українців для вигідного життя, коли українці банкротували вони розводилися. Жиди з українками добре навіть жили. Мені дуже подобається німецький погляд.
П. ГУПАЛО: В нас є багато працівників жидів, яких навіть поважають, є і такі, які вихрестилися до революції.
П. ЛЕНКАВСЬКИЙ: Це треба розглядати індивідуально.
П. ЛЕВИЦЬКИЙ: Німці спеціалістів використовують. В Кракові є 5 жидів, що не носять опасок, за те, що добрі сили. Мені здається, що німецький спосіб жидівської справи нам дуже підходить. Мусимо індивідуально розглядати поодинокі випадки.
П. ЛЕНКАВСЬКИЙ: Відносно жидів приймемо всі методи, які підуть їм на знищення.

Source: Бондаренко К. До питання про національну політику Організації Українських Націоналістів на початку німецько-радянської війни // Українські варіанти. – 1997. – № 2. – С. 93-95 (94).

Radicalism and New Media

Matthew Feldman has recently established a very important research group at the University of Northampton -

Radicalism and New Media Research Group Vision Document

Remit

By harnessing existing expertise in the University of Northampton’s School of Social Sciences, an interdisciplinary research group has been formed to investigate radicalism and new media. While historical examples range from Martin Luther’s use of the printing press to Joseph Goebbels’ use of the radio, primary focus will be placed upon the new media revolution over the last generation (the internet, mobile phones, satellite television, personal audio devices, etc.) as it has been deployed by ideological and/or religious radicals.

Although this understudied connection is both striking and increasingly noticeable – whether from the English Defense League’s use of Facebook for directing activities or Islamist jihadi beheadings filmed for the purposes propaganda and global dissemination – there has been, as yet, no coordinated network to systematically undertake research in this critical, highly visible area. In taking on this role, we will invite academic researchers, practitioners and civil servants (partihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcularly the police and security services) to compare experiences and develop collaborative enterprises in the analysis of this wide-ranging phenomenon, particularly as it relates to the contemporary UK.

To achieve such goals at this formative stage, the ‘Radicalism and New Media Research Group’ especially aims to develop s at once academic and public-facing, cutting-edge yet supported by the School’s established academic leaders in the fields of media studies, political extremism, law, sociology and criminology, as well as modern history.

Academic Advisory Team at the University of Northampton

- Dr Matthew Feldman, History (Project Leader)
- Dr Paul Jackson, History (Project Co-ordinator)
- Professor Jon Stobart, History
- Dr Manos Daskalou, Criminology
- James Ressel, Law
- Kirstie Best, Law
- Simon Sneddon, Law

Forthcoming Activities

- Running academic conferences, ideally for summer 2010 initially;
- Conducting original research, particularly as it relates to the Research Group’s above remit;
- Launching an online journal, perhaps on the interaction of cults and new media;
- Writing government reports, such as for OCST, J-TAC, the Home Office or similar;
- Forming external partners, notably through a series of large grant bids to UK research bodies;http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
- Developing interdisciplinary Masters programme in Radicalism and New Media or similar;
- Creating new continuing professional development courses in issues relating to radicalism and new media;
- Establishing a Research Centre for Radicalism and New Media at the University of Northampton

Contact Details

Email:
Matthew.Feldman@Northampton.ac.uk
Paul.Jackson@Northampton.ac.uk

Postal:
Dr Matthew Feldman, School of Social Sciences, University of Northampton, Boughton Green Road, Northampton NN2 7AL

Telephone: 01604 892575