Heterotopia in Contemporary Russian Fiction

This dissertation examines Russian culture of the twenty-first century by analyzing fiction and film with speculative elements. Each chapter focuses on the core concerns of a particular author: Pelevin’s preoccupation with neocolonialism and empire, Slavnikova’s contrast between dystopian history and “utopian” death, Sorokin’s interest in historical trauma and the inner workings of terror, and Fedorchenko and Osokin’s eccentric utopian projects. The dissertation helps to understand contemporary culture, since speculative fiction’s imagined realities and envisioned futures are closely connected with sociocultural tendencies. The sustained investigation of the 2000s is merited by the fact that “the Zeroes,” as the decade is known in Russia, is characterized by significant cultural shifts. Compared to the 1990s, the 2000s can be seen in terms of a gradual turn towards much more conservative notions of identity that are often expressed through changing interpretations of Russian and Soviet history, as well as a reevaluation of Russia’s geopolitical role—topics that are central in both political discourses and cultural imaginary. A number of works in contemporary Russian fiction and film creatively reimagine geographic space and history. This fiction and film oscillate between utopian and dystopian modalities and combine ambiguous utopias/dystopias with supernatural elements. While sharing certain features with more traditional genres, these works fall outside of such traditional genre designations as utopias/dystopias and magical realism. To account for this genre hybridity, my project posits Michel Foucault’s notion of “heterotopia” as a critical lens for my analysis of this fiction. I understand heterotopia as a textual strategy in fiction and film that includes utopian/dystopian and fantastic elements, and that, through unusual temporal and spatial structures, interrogate dominant discourses and identity formations. Because of its ability to create a number of possible worlds, this textual strategy allows contemporary authors to both contest and engage with dominant cultural practices and discourses

Embodying the spirit of the time: traumatic history in Vladimir Sharov’s fiction

This article focuses on two novels by Vladimir Sharov, Staraia devochka (The Old Girl) and Voskreshenie Lazaria (The Resurrection of Lazarus), that address the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. Through analysis of these novels, the article examines two interrelated aspects of Sharov’s works: their representation of traumatic history and their postmodernist style. The paper then examines the way these features of Sharov’s prose relate to broader, current cultural trends. Sharov’s novels contain a synthetic view of history that unites such incompatible elements as Orthodox Christianity, a variety of charismatic sects, Bolshevik ideology, and Stalinism. Despite Sharov’s unconventional view of the Soviet past, the article argues that there are parallels between the official, contemporary view of Soviet history and that represented in Sharov’s fiction. Both depict Russian history as unique, separated from global historical processes.publishedVersio

From Celebrated Novel to Media Outrage: The Public Debate Surrounding the Miniseries Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes

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Development and implementation of special seminar “Innovative pedagogical technologies”

Taking into account modern requirements to teacher’s personality in primary education, his knowledge of innovative pedagogical technologies’ essence as well as knowledge of methodology,  relevance of the search for ways to improve the content and forms of future primary school teachers’ training has been revealed. One of the solutions to this problem can be introduction of a special seminar aimed at improving the level of innovative and technological competence of future teachers in primary education into the system of vocational training. The purpose of this article is to substantiate the conceptual and methodological significance of a special seminar "Innovative pedagogical technologies" as well as to describe process of diagnosing effectiveness of the developed special seminar. The aim of the research is achieved through the application of such theoretical and empirical methods of scientific knowledge as method of pedagogical diagnostics, methodical system modeling, method of pedagogical forecasting, analysis of results, synthesis of the results of experimental research. Based on the use of these methods, the main theoretical aspects of a special seminar development are presented, the components of its content and structure are reflected and the stages of testing effectiveness of the developed special seminar are described. The scientific novelty of the research is justified by the development of the conceptual foundations and content of the special seminar "Innovative pedagogical technologies", intended for use in the training of future primary school teachers, indicating methodological aspects of its implementation, as well as the development of a diagnostic system to test its effectiveness in the educational process of the University

Stability of Heat and Energy Characteristics of Refrigerating Units as a Condition of Quality Increase of Agricultural Production Storage

This article provides information about the importance of stable thermal operating modes of refrigeration machines in the condition of changes in the thermal load on the compressor. We also consider the problem of the minimum energy consumption of refrigeration machines. These two parameters characterize the storage quality of agricultural products in refrigeration machines. It is shown that the temperature stability of the cooling chambers and the minimum energy consumption of the cooling process determine the refrigerator efficiency and, ultimately, the production cost. The article proposes continuous monitoring of the heat and energy indicators of refrigerators. These indicators are recorded and after the set period of operation, control and verification measurements of the control refrigeration machine’s heat and energy indicators are performed. The convergence or divergence of these indicators is used to evaluate the stability of the cooling chambers’ temperature regimes and the specific energy consumption. We also consider the influence of time on the performance of the compression refrigeration machine changes and methods of current technical condition diagnostics. If the deviations are insignificant, the program goes through the cycle to the beginning of monitoring and after a set period of time again automatically performs control measurements and evaluation of deviations. In the case of significant deviations, the decision-making subroutine is activated: either to operate the refrigerator further; perform its maintenance; suspend its operation; or replace it. Keywords: refrigeration units, cooling, heat and power characteristics, management controller, storage quality of agricultural productio

Embodying the spirit of the time: traumatic history in Vladimir Sharov’s fiction

This article focuses on two novels by Vladimir Sharov, Staraia devochka (The Old Girl) and Voskreshenie Lazaria (The Resurrection of Lazarus), that address the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. Through analysis of these novels, the article examines two interrelated aspects of Sharov’s works: their representation of traumatic history and their postmodernist style. The paper then examines the way these features of Sharov’s prose relate to broader, current cultural trends. Sharov’s novels contain a synthetic view of history that unites such incompatible elements as Orthodox Christianity, a variety of charismatic sects, Bolshevik ideology, and Stalinism. Despite Sharov’s unconventional view of the Soviet past, the article argues that there are parallels between the official, contemporary view of Soviet history and that represented in Sharov’s fiction. Both depict Russian history as unique, separated from global historical processes

Hardness and recrystallyzation of alloy films and of multilayer films on titanium nitride basis

There the vacuum-bow films of nitrides have been studied. The structural diagrams of pseudobinary systems on the titanium nitride basis with regard to the component dispersability have been designed for the first time. The formation mechanisms of structure of nitride films, it change during the heating have been ascertained. It is determined that the hardness of multilyaer films exceeds substantially the hardness of singlelayer films and of alloy films and grows as result of monolayer number increase. It is determined that the recrystallization temperature of vacuum-blow films is equal to 0.3 in melt temperature and is reduced as a result of the layer thickness reduction. The recrystallization of multilayer films is restrained by the interlayer bordersAvailable from VNTIC / VNTIC - Scientific & Technical Information Centre of RussiaSIGLERURussian Federatio