Patriotism without Patriots?:Perm-36 and Patriotic Legitimation in Russia

This article examines the takeover of the Perm-36 GULAG museum as emblematic of the dynamics of patriotic legitimation in Russia. The museum was dedicated to preserving the memory of the victims of Soviet political repression and it grew in popularity into the 2000s, emerging as an opposition platform and target for self-styled patriots who accused it of distorting Soviet history. The regional government soon joined the battle, finally forcing the museum’s takeover and transforming it into a site honoring the GULAG rather than its victims. Drawing on interviews conducted with the museum’s former director and scientific directors in 2015 and extensive local press materials, this analysis of the struggle over Perm-36 demonstrates the significance of patriotism in sustaining the regional government’s attacks even in the absence of federal patronage. The findings thus challenge prevailing understandings of authoritarian regime politics as driven primarily by patronage and power-maximizing elites

Russia’s Ministry of Ambivalence:The Failure of Civic Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Russia

This article argues that the sources of official and societal ambivalence towards civic nationhood in today’s Russia are found in the institutional instability and personalist dynamics of hybrid regime politics in the 1990s. Successful civic nation-building should institutionalize inclusive criteria for citizenship as a basis for policymaking, which in turn should create incentives for dominant ethnicities to embrace civic nationhood. While the shifting views of Boris Yel’tsin on nationalities policy and the constant turmoil in the government’s nationalities ministry have received little scholarly attention, they illuminate the endogenous sources of regime instability in relation to civic nation-building. Russia’s experience thus challenges the traditional view of ethnic nationalism as fostering authoritarianism and civic nationalism as fostering democracy: rather, competitive authoritarianism in the 1990s confounded the regime’s own efforts toward civic nation-building and laid the groundwork for the “ethnic turn” in Russian politics under Vladimir Putin.</p

Russia’s Ministry of Ambivalence:The Failure of Civic Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Russia

This article argues that the sources of official and societal ambivalence towards civic nationhood in today’s Russia are found in the institutional instability and personalist dynamics of hybrid regime politics in the 1990s. Successful civic nation-building should institutionalize inclusive criteria for citizenship as a basis for policymaking, which in turn should create incentives for dominant ethnicities to embrace civic nationhood. While the shifting views of Boris Yel’tsin on nationalities policy and the constant turmoil in the government’s nationalities ministry have received little scholarly attention, they illuminate the endogenous sources of regime instability in relation to civic nation-building. Russia’s experience thus challenges the traditional view of ethnic nationalism as fostering authoritarianism and civic nationalism as fostering democracy: rather, competitive authoritarianism in the 1990s confounded the regime’s own efforts toward civic nation-building and laid the groundwork for the “ethnic turn” in Russian politics under Vladimir Putin.</p

Becoming Banal: Incentivizing and Monopolizing the Nation in Post-Soviet Russia

While new regimes often seek legitimation by forging banal ties between state and nation (or “banalization”), there have been few attempts to explain how nationalism becomes banal, to account for variations in the process across different types of regimes, or to establish clear criteria for identifying successes or failures in banalization. This article presents an original theoretical framework for understanding banalization as a social and political process involving attempts to either incentivize or monopolize national expression, depending on the type of political regime. Drawing on interviews and focus groups conducted during 2014–2016, a case study of post-Soviet Russia fleshes out the process and outcomes of banalization across different kinds of regimes from the 1990s to the present. It further suggests the value of examining banalization as a regime process in accounting for the ways that the successes or failures of banalization influence their successors’ pursuit of legitimation.</p

Russia’s Failed Federalization Marches and the Simulation of Regional Politics

Inspired by Russia’s insistence on federalization for Ukraine, activists in Novosibirsk attempted to organize a protest march in August 2014 to call for greater regional autonomy in Siberia. Authorities squelched the march almost as soon as the protest threatened to spread. Yet even as organizers were arrested and press reports censored, opposition leaders in Moscow and activists in Ukraine seized upon the news of the planned federalization marches and even invented new ones. The resulting spectacle revealed the Kremlin’s ongoing fear of decentralizing power, the weak ties between central and regional opposition, and the boomerang effect of Russia’s intervention in Eastern Ukraine.N

The Revival of Russia’s Gubernatorial Elections: Liberalization or Potemkin Reform?

After an eight year pause, gubernatorial elections returned to Russia in 2012. Formerly appointed governors are now being put to the electoral test, and the Kremlin is discovering the extent to which it sacrificed effective regional leadership for loyalty to the federal center. It now finds itself on the horns of a dilemma: if it continues to heap blame on regional leaders for economic failures and declining trust in the country’s political institutions, then the ranks of volunteers willing to serve as governor will dwindle. Yet if it seeks to attract capable candidates to stand for governor, it may be forced to decentralize power and to allow an opening of regional elections to more opposition candidates.N

The Regional Dimension of Russia’s 2007–2008 Elections

The key to Russia’s presidential and parliamentary elections lies in the regions. The March 2007 regional elections show that United Russia will continue to dominate, but that it will face new challenges from the rapidly rising Just Russia. The new party could help stimulate the fracturing of the regional elite. If the gov- ernors are willing to take risks, they may have increased influence over the course of the 2007 parliamentary elections. Moreover, the rise of Just Russia could make it difficult for the center to maintain control over the regions.N

Chronic Inflammatory Bowel Disease Risk Factors related to Colorectal Cancer

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease have an increasing risk for colorectal cancer which is believed to begin from no dysplasia progressing to indefinite dysplasia, low-grade dysplasia, high-grade dysplasia and finally to invasive adenocarcinoma, although colorectal cancer can arise without proceeding through each of these steps. As regards to the risk factors predisposing to colorectal cancer in the setting of inflammatory bowel disease, it seems that the risk increases with longer duration and greater anatomic extent of colitis, the degree of inflammation, and the presence of primary sclerosing cholangitis and family history of colorectal cancer. Concerning the mechanisms of carcinogenesis, it is now well established that the molecular alterations responsible for sporadic colorectal cancer, elucidated namely chromosomal instability, microsatellite instability, and hypermethylation, also play a role in colitis-associated colon carcinogenesis. Chemoprevention strategies include the management of medicaments such as aminosalicylates, ursodeoxycholic acid, and possibly folic acid, the exact role of which remains to be elucidated.Keywords: bowel disease, inflammation, patients, dysplasia, cytokines, cancer, smoking, chemoprevention, etc.

Liver carnitine metabolism after partial hepatectomy in the rat Effects of nutritional status and inhibition of carnitine palmitoyltransferase

AbstractThis study examined the effects of partial hepatectony on hepatic carnitine and acylcarnitine concentrations in fed or 24 h-starved partially hepatectonized (PH) or sham-operated (SO) rats at 1 or 4 days after surgery. The ratio of free to esterified carnitine was low in fed PH rats at day 1 : the low ratio was increased to the SO value when mitochondrial fat oxidation was inhibited by 2-tetradecylglycidate. Starvation (24 h) increased plasma [non-esterified fatty acid] in PH or SO rats, the increases being greater at day 1 than at day 4. Hepatic [long-chain acylcarnitine] were also increased. These latter increases were a consequence of increased mitochondrial fat oxidation since they were not observed in PH or SO rats treated with 2-tetradecylglycidate. Whereas the starvation-induced increase in long-chain acylcarnitine was associated with increased [ketone body] in livers of SO rats at both day 1 and day 4 after surgery, [ketone body] was inappropriately low for the steady-state long-chain [acylcarnitine] in livers of PH rats at the first post-operative day. This was not a consequence of a decrease in [total carnitine] in the liver. The results are discussed with reference to the role of the liver in determining the relative proportions of the fat fuels available for extrahepatic tissues and the effects of liver cell proliferation on hepatic triacylclycerol metabolism