Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research

Authors

Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research — 2026-06-10

Authors of this issue: short biographies.

Symbolic Violence as a Factor in the Integration of Transboundary Migrants from Central Asia and the South Caucasus into Siberian Cities

Dmitry Timoshkin — 2026-06-10

This article examines violence experienced by transborder migrants in Siberia and analyzes its impact on the integration of newcomers and individuals from migrant backgrounds. The study draws on interviews conducted between 2019 and 2024 in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Tomsk with migrants from South Caucasus and Central Asia. It advances hypotheses on how different forms of violence shape migrants’ quality of life and integration trajectories. Violence most frequently emerges in three contexts: the family, the workplace, and school. Respondents referred primarily to symbolic violence; accordingly, the analysis focuses on this form of violence. In all three contexts, violence is often rooted in a shared belief—present in both migrant and local communities—that the mixing of group attributes (language, appearance, behavior) is unacceptable. Such mixing is perceived as a violation of the natural order. Violence, predominantly symbolic and more rarely physical, accompanies interventions aimed either at compelling individuals to abandon the attributes of the “other” group or at excluding them altogether. Second-generation migrants occupy the most vulnerable position, as they face pressures from both sides simultaneously. This is particularly pronounced for women, who often hold a lower status in migrant communities’ hierarchies. Violence generally functions as a barrier to integration in Russia, though its effects are sometimes ambiguous. Intragroup violence may push second-generation migrants toward closer engagement with the host society, while simultaneously increasing the social and emotional costs of adopting its norms. Violence from the host society may generate a persistent sense of alienation, potentially leading to emigration.

Article in Russian

“You Cannot Walk, but You Must Dance”: Injury in the Narratives of Ballet Dancers

Anna Esenova — 2026-06-10

The article analyzes narratives about injury and their role in the construction and maintenance of ballet dancers’ professional identity. The material for this study consisted of eight semistructured interviews with ballet dancers (among whom were both current dancers and those who had ended their careers due to injuries), case study, and autoethnography. The research begins with the clarification of the category of injury: This word is not used by ballet dancers to refer to any bodily injuries. What is trauma and what is not the dancers determine by how and where the injury occurred, as well as by the degree and “type” of pain. The main focus of the work is on how, in the narrative of physical injury, ballet dancers construct and maintain a professional identity by representing the injury as more than just a threat to their performance. In injury narratives, dancers often talk about attitudes toward pain and the profession, the role of social relationships in shaping these attitudes, and the influence of pedagogue on the choice of treatment strategies. Talking about injury and its treatment forces the dancer to answer questions about what it is like to be a ballet dancer and what kind of ballet dancer to be: Pain, trauma, and their treatment can be presented in narratives as markers of experience, “awareness,” and professionalism. Biomedical discourse, which can potentially define the physical and health requirements of artists, is intertwined with the canons of classical dance and the norms of this professional community.

Article in Russian

“GPs Are Just Registrars!”: The Formation of Professionalism Among General Practitioners in Kazakhstan

Julia Khan — 2026-06-10

One of the key challenges of the healthcare system in Kazakhstan remains the underdeveloped institutional potential of general practitioners (GPs). The GP was expected to be a universal specialist combining preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic work, serving as a central figure in primary healthcare. However, this model faced a number of systemic obstacles: declining professional prestige, staff shortages, and lack of stable institutional support. Within the medical community and among patients, the perception of GPs as intermediaries—“registrars” who do not treat but merely refer patients to so-called specialists—became entrenched. The article is based on interviews and materials from nonparticipant observation in clinics in Almaty and Astana (Kazakhstan). The authors analyze how, under institutional pressure and professional vulnerability, GPs strive to maintain and redefine their understanding of professionalism. In their interpretation, medical expertise extends beyond purely clinical autonomy to include bureaucratic and administrative functions. Routine tasks (processing referrals, patient routing, working with digital platforms) are understood not as obstacles but as an important part of professional identity. Bureaucratic workload becomes a basis for symbolic authority. GPs are rethinking their professional role and adopting new strategies: cooperating with other physicians while maintaining control over patient pathways, and acquiring additional specializations (especially in private clinics, where employment arrangements are more flexible). Thus, the conception of GP professionalism in post-Soviet Kazakhstan is associated not with “universality,” as envisioned by reforms, but with the appropriation of bureaucratic functions and the hybridization of employment. Control over the content and organization of one’s work, even when primarily administrative, becomes a source of professional autonomy and a way to resist external management.

Article in Russian

(Re)Production of Border Proximity: Bordering Communities of Post-Soviet Armenia

Harutyun Vermishyan — 2026-06-10

This article examines how residents of Armenia’s border communities in Tavush and Syunik provinces narrate, experience, and reshape life near contested borders in the aftermath of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts (1988–2020). Drawing on 20 narrative interviews conducted in 2023, the study analyzes how local perceptions of space, identity, and security are transformed under shifting geopolitical conditions. While Tavush residents actively shaped vernacular borders through grassroots defense and memory, Syunik communities faced sudden external impositions following the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, leading to disempowerment and spatial disruption. Using the concepts of heterotopia and vernacular bordering, the study shows how borders are not fixed lines but lived, affective spaces, simultaneously sites of vulnerability and identity construction. It also further highlights how border proximity reorganizes everyday routines, mobility, and moral geographies, revealing uneven configurations of local agency and externally imposed governance. This narrative-based approach contributes to broader borderland studies by offering a grounded, comparative perspective on post-Soviet bordering and the enduring agency of marginalized communities.

Article in English

Rossen Djagalov. Ot internatsionalizma k postkolonializmu: Literatura i kinematograf mezhdu vtorym i tretʹim mirom. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2025

Sergei Abashin — 2026-06-14

Совсем недавно в (пост)советские исследования пришли постколониальные теории, а история и современность стали все чаще рассматриваться в их рамке, привлекающей к пониманию (пост)социалистического «второго мира» примеры и сравнения с «третьим миром». С одной стороны, череда такого рода публикаций и переводов на русский язык вызывает энтузиазм у некоторых ученых, увидевших в этом сравнении возможность выйти из региональной изоляции и использовать уже апробированные и признанные концептуальные формулы из аналитического багажа постколониальных теоретиков. С другой, такое вторжение новой теории в исследования советского периода одновременно рождает недоумение и протесты у тех обществоведов, для кого это выглядит угрозой потери уникальности советского опыта, его игнорирования и маргинализации в мировой академии. Эти споры решают вопрос о будущем (пост)советских исследований: сохранятся ли они в форме отдельной большой дисциплины или же распылятся между многочисленными тематическими studies.

Text in Russian

Nicole Eaton. German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023

Dmitry Astashkin — 2026-06-10

Калининградская область – это исторический палимпсест. Под советской застройкой здесь до сих пор обнаруживают немецкие руины, а в очертаниях городских кварталов прослеживается средневековый план Кенигсберга. Книга Николь Итон не об архитектурных загадках. Она о том, как один и тот же клочок балтийского побережья стал полигоном для двух жестоких утопических проектов XX века, и о миллионах оказавшихся между ними людей. Восточная Пруссия – единственный регион, которым режимы Гитлера и Сталина последовательно управляли не как оккупационной зоной, а как своей неотъемлемой территорией, что делает его идеальной лабораторией для изучения природы диктатур.

Text in Russian

Larry E. Holmes. Win or Else: Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921–1985. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2024

Denis Baranov — 2026-06-10

«Футбол – это никогда не просто футбол». С таких слов начинается работа американского исследователя Лэрри Холмса «Победа любой ценой: советский футбол в Москве и регионах, 1921–1985», посвященная советскому футболу. В отличие от уже имеющихся исследований по этой теме – например, монография Роберта Эдельмана «Московский “Спартак”» ([2009] 2025) – в центре внимания настоящей книги находится провинциальный клуб спортивного общества «Динамо» из города Кирова.

Text in Russian

Douglas C. Nord. Sister City Diplomacy: Community Engagement in US-Russian Relations from the Cold War to Today. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2025

Elena S. Bell — 2026-06-10

In 1963 the legendary broadcast reporter and American statesman Edward R. Murrow said, “The real crucial link in international exchange is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another.” In his book, Douglas C. Nord invites readers to focus on these “three feet” of international relations—what we now broadly call people-to-people diplomacy. Today the world once again finds itself searching for ways out of international political entanglements and diplomatic gridlock, seeking to ease tensions and reestablish meaningful dialogue. When discussing the current state of US-Russian relations, political analysts often invoke the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as a kind of “tuning fork” against which to gauge the tone of communication between the two major world powers, as well as the level of tension in the complex instrument known as “track 1 diplomacy”—official governmental international dialogue conducted by professional diplomats. As the current state of world politics makes us once again turn to the infamous “tuning fork” to analyze the level of international tensions, Nord’s book provides examples of how people-to-people diplomacy could be used for “keeping the peace when it matters too much to be left to politicians,” as Don Carlson and Craig Comstock (1986) put it in the subtitle of their study of “citizen summitry.”

Text in English

Anna Shadrina. The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia. London: UCL Press, 2025

Julia Zelikova — 2026-06-10

Анна Шадрина хорошо известна российским исследователям, работающим в области gender studies. Ее книги «Не замужем: секс, любовь и семья за пределами брака» (2014) и «Дорогие дети: сокращение рождаемости и рост “цены” материнства в XXI веке» (2017) получили широкую известность и часто обсуждались на различных научных семинарах и конференциях. В 2025 году в издательстве UCL Press вышла в свет новая книга Шадриной «The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia» (Феномен бабушки: пожилые женщины и политическая социология старения в России), посвященная пожилым российским женщинам. Слово babushka в названии не должно вводить читателя в заблуждение: речь идет не о женщинах, имеющих внуков, а обо всех пожилых женщинах, которых в современной России принято обобщенно называть «бабушки».

Text in Russian

Erika Mann. Shkola varvarov: Vospitanie pri natsistakh. Saint Petersburg: Jaromír Hladík Press, 2023

Anna Kolotovkina — 2026-06-10

«Школа варваров» немецкой писательницы, журналистки и активистки Эрики Манн (1905–1969) находится на пересечении нескольких жанров и академических школ. Эта книга может быть прочитана как литературное произведение, манифест или историческое свидетельство, однако, на мой взгляд, ее следует также рассматривать в контексте социологии образования. Манн размышляет о школе и авторитаризме, о том, как на первый взгляд консервативная и неповоротливая система стремительно меняется под влиянием политического давления. Для того, чтобы оценить вклад автора в дискуссию об образовании как части нациестроительства, следует определить основные направления исследований в этом поле.

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Tatʹiana Borisova. Kogda velit sovestʹ: Kulʹturnye istoki Sudebnoi reformy 1864 goda v Rossii. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2025

Nikolaj Plotnikov — 2026-06-10

Конфликт между позитивным законом и совестью – один из центральных нормативных конфликтов модерна. «Юридизация» совести в христианской традиции, как показал Паоло Проди в монументальной «Истории справедливости», порождает внутренний «трибунал совести», который с наступлением Нового времени вступает во все более напряженные отношения с внешним правовым порядком (Проди 2017). Секуляризация этого конфликта открыла пространство для различных попыток примирить автономию совести с требованиями позитивного права. Само это напряжение, однако, никуда не исчезло: оно остается структурной проблемой модерна.

Text in Russian

Françoise Daucé, Benjamin Loveluck, and Francesca Musiani, eds. Digital Authoritarianism in the Making: Repression and Resistance on the Russian Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2025

Viktoriia Rybina — 2026-06-10

Рецензируемый сборник посвящен формированию цифрового авторитаризма в России начиная с 1990‑х годов. Исследования, проведенные с 2018 по 2022 годы, предлагают анализ событий и процессов, которые привели к становлению политики «цифрового суверенитета». Это понятие трактуется как исторически складывающийся, конфликтный и противоречивый процесс, формирующийся на пересечении правовых режимов, инфраструктурных решений, экономических интересов, профессиональных практик и репрессивных механизмов. В условиях войны, усиления цензурных режимов и криминализации онлайн-активности анализ и документация этих трансформаций приобретают не только академическое, но и политическое значение.

Text in Russian

Olessia Kirtchik. Economic Knowledge in Crisis: Economists and the State in the Late Soviet Union. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024

Joachim Zweynert — 2026-06-10

This book is the result of almost two decades of historical-sociological research into how Soviet/Russian economists worked in the final years of the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet period and how they shaped economic policy during a time of profound political, institutional, and intellectual transformation. Drawing on extensive archival material, interviews, and secondary sources, Olessia Kirtchik reconstructs the professional environment of Soviet and Russian economists and situates their activities within the broader social structures of state socialism and its aftermath.

Text in English