Roland Götz
Post-Soviet resource curse?
Natural resource abundance and authoritarianism
Natural resources promise wealth. In many resource states, however, this hope was not fulfilled. Therefore, the theory of the resource curse posits a connection between resource abundance and distorted economics and politics. But an empirical comparison of the post-Soviet states does not confirm such a connection. Corruption flourishes to the same extent in Turkmenistan, a country rich in natural gas, as in Kyrgyzstan, a country with few resources; Russia's rulers are just as authoritarian as Armenia's. If an abundance in resources does nonetheless impede modernisation, a change in the short-term is not to be expected: the post-Soviet resource states will go on producing oil and natural gas for decades to come and will thus be able to generate large profits.

Christiane Barnickel, Timm Beichelt
Networks, clusters, mavericks
University research on Eastern Europe in Germany
In Germany, university research on Eastern Europe is being pursued according to different models. Several facilities have established themselves in the spirit of cluster building, other institutes of higher learning are banking on concentration and the cultivation of networks. The backbone of university research on Eastern Europe is made up by culture and history, around which other disciplines gather.

Dorota Stroinska
On the moment of happiness in translation
K. Dedecius and D. Daume interpret Czeslaw Milosz
Czeslaw Milosz, whose 100th birthday took place on 30 June 2011, is hardly appreciated as a lyric poet in Germany. One reason is that his romantic, realitybased poetics stand in contrast to the anti-mimetic, postwar German lyric poetry, which seeks continuity with modernity. But it is also a matter of translation: its point in time and the self-image of the translator.

Klavdia Smola
Non-conformist Jewish literature
The poetics of resistance and the rediscovery of Jewry in the late
Soviet era
In the 1970s, a dissident Jewish culture came into being in the Soviet Union. It was closely associated with the "awakening" of Jewish historical and cultural memory. The literature of the Soviet Jewish "counter-canon", which came into being in this unique political and cultural period, embraces both the illegally published texts of Jewish samizdat, as well as works by writers who had already emigrated to Israel. An essential element of the poetics of non-conformist Jewish literature is the alliance between the resistance and the new "Jewishness" of the most highly assimilated Soviet Jews. This literature was a draft alternative to official Soviet culture, which was oriented towards ideological and ethnic homogenization.

Andrea Zink
Attempts at nothingness
Chernobyl in text and pictures
The documentary representations of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power station differ fundamentally from fictional and popular ones. The writers Yuri Shcherbak and Svetlana Aleksievich, the photographer Robert Polidori, and the filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter not only provide information about the events of 26 April 1986 and their unforeseeable consequences, they also capture the sense of helplessness that spread after the accident. To this end, they work with monologues, lead comparisons astray, and show the emptiness of existence.

Barys Piatrovich
The absurdity of Chernobyl
Remembering Spring 1986
The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl affected 23 percent of Belarusian territory:
3 678 villages and towns, where more than half a million people lived. Soviet information and evacuation policies ensured that the accident and its consequences failed to secure a place in society's collective consciousness. The residents of the 415 villages within the "zone" were not resettled together, but spread out over thousands of villages and towns throughout Belarus. Thus, their memory and the memory of them were pulverized. After 25 years, Chernobyl remains a blind spot even for those directly affected. It is time to take a look back at the first month after the disaster.

Karlheinz Kasper
Anything goes
The state of contemporary Russian prose
In 2010, 34 novels reached the final round of the four most important Russian literary prizes. But a place on the shortlist of a literary competition is not in and of itself decisive for a nationwide marketing campaign and international reception. Only in a few of the nominated works is a socially relevant theme combined with an innovative style. Roman Senchin's Eltyshevy, Aleksandr Ilichevskii's Pers, German Sadulaev's Shalinskii reid, Margarita Chemlin's Klotsvog, and Vladimir Sorokin's Metel' could endure, reach readers at home and abroad, and perhaps even find their way into the history of Russian literature.

Published 2011-08-16