Research

    • Sects in Russia in the 19th century

    Lead: Prof. Dr. Stefan Plaggenborg (RUB)
    Colleague: Dr. Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld
    Funding institution: RUB
    Running time: 2015-2021

    URL: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/oeg/zaganczykneufeld.html

    The subject of the project is the religious dissent expressed in the faith and everyday practices of the religious communities ("sects") of Old Believers, Chlysty, Skopcy, Molokany, Duchoborcy and Stundists. These are "sects" that have split off from Russian orthodoxy and called into question the "innate" orthodox religiosity of the Russians, for which religious tolerance did not apply. "Sects" violated the dogma and the claim to authority of the official church, and the state and its also based on the Orthodox religion authority. They formed not so much theological dogmas, but rather deviant forms of piety with very different rules of conduct, which had concrete effects on their living and working world, but also on their neighborhood. The project follows the development of "sects" against the backdrop of social change, which has accelerated since the 1860s (industrialization, legal reforms, abolition of serfdom, urbanization, nation-building processes) to highlight its role and importance in Russia's modernization processes.

    • Cybernetics and 'scientific-technical revolution' in the Soviet Union 1948-1980

    Lead: Prof. Dr. Stefan Plaggenborg
    Co-worker: Matthias Völkel
    Funding institution: DFG
    Running time: 2015-2018

    URL: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/oeg/

    The project examines the attempt to realign Soviet modernity after Stalinism. It reconstructs the institutional and personal structure of cybernetics as well as considerations on how the socialist society, economy and administration could be controlled on the basis of modern scientific knowledge and technical aids and their development could be made more dynamic. Technological feasibility visions and social control went hand in hand.

    • Gurdians of jusitce: To the figure of right manner in Old Russia

    Lead: Prof. Dr. Stefan Plaggenborg
    Funding institution: Seniorfellow am Historischen Kolleg
    Running time: 2015-2016

    URL: http://www.historischeskolleg.de/personen/professor-dr-stefan-plaggenborg/ , http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/oeg/

    Pravda / Justice and Rule in Old Russia: Pravda is one of the central concepts of political language in Old Russian sources. It means justice, truth, wisdom (to know the truth) and the right action. From the beginning it was associated with domination. Just rule was also justified rule in Russia, finding itself in multiple discourses of legitimacy, charged with religious and moral demands, threatened by the charge of injustice, and subject to change through fundamental social and political changes. By linking discourses, practices and communication, the project offers insights into the cultural history of the Russian autocracy, which can also be read as a history of Russian state formation.

    • Religious dissidents in soviet times

    Lead: Prof. Dr. Thomas Bremer (WWU)
    Colleague: Christian Föller M.A.
    Funding institution:
    Running time: 2014–2017

    Url: https://www.uni-muenster.de/FB2/personen/oekumene/abt2/bremer.html

    The project focuses on dissidents in the Soviet Union in the 60s to 80s of the last century, who were orthodox and at the same time opposed to the restrictions of religious life by the state authorities as well as the attitude of the official church to the Soviet government and its Publicly expressed church policies. It was hard for them without the church intervening to protect them. On one hand, they demanded liberties and concessions from the state that they did not want to grant, and on the other they opposed the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, which did not give any support to the dissidents for their own state loyalty. The study of this complex situation, the background and the motive of religious dissent, the mutual relationship with the official church as well as the development of the positions of dissidents in Perestroika and after the end of the USSR are therefore the subject of this project.

    • Life Writing dissidents in the Soviet Union (1960s to 80s)

    Lead: Prof. Dr. Mirja Lecke (RUB)
    Co-worker: Christina Jüttner M.A.
    Funding institution: DFG
    Running time: 2014–2017

    URL: http://www.slavistik.rub.de/index.php?Forschungsprojekte-17

    The life writing of those who think differently from the dissident movement has not yet been the subject of a systematic investigation, apart from individual remarks or as a source for historical dissident research. The works are hardly ever regarded as literary products. We also know very little about the different thinking as life model and subject form so far. The focus of the research group's discussion context is on the following problem areas in this subproject: the modeling of norms and divergences, concepts of public and private life and their connection with theme and style as well as stories constructed in the texts of the different thinking in Russia.

    • Freedom discourses in Russia

    Lead: PD Dr. Nikolaj Plotnikov (RUB)
    Colleague: Dr. Svetlana Kirschbaum
    Funding institution: DFG
    Running time: 2014–2017

    URL: http://www.slavistik.rub.de/index.php?Forschungsprojekte-16

    The project deals with the question of the significance of freedom as an idea and concept in the political and cultural consciousness of Russia since the end of the 18th century up to the present day: In the project the central traditions of the understanding of freedom in the Russian history of ideas are systematically investigated.
    The task of the project is, on the one hand, to clarify which aspects of freedom are particularly relevant in Russian 'intellectual history', and to compare them with the (Western) European themes of freedom. On the other hand, it will be shown what function the philosophical concepts of freedom fulfill in the process of the formation of public discourse.

    • Anti-modern thinking in Russia

    Lead: Dr. Michael Hagemeister (RUB)
    Colleague: Dr. Michael Hagemeister
    Funding institution: DFG
    Running time: 2014–2017

    Url: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/oeg/index.html

    Anti-modern thinking is part of the history of oppositional discourse in Russia. With its insistence on wholeness or integrity, it resolutely opposes Western European Modernism, which is understood as the dissolution and destruction of the "holistic culture" (celostnaia kul'tura) of the Christian Middle Ages. The endangered or lost original unity, so the basic idea of ​​this holistic-synthesizing thinking, must be preserved or restored. Russia is predestined for this purpose. Although there were definitely points of contact with the ideocratic Soviet period, this thinking often came into conflict with the prevailing discourse of power (of the state, of the institutionalized church, of official ideology) through its universal claim. Thus, it proves to be different thinking (inakomyslie) in terms of both the foreign "West" as well as on the accepted and propagated in their own country standards or (self-) descriptions of society.

    The project seeks to explore these multiple references and examine the main concepts of otherness with its assumptions, traditions, and discursive features that have not yet been explored in their entirety.

    • Politics and literary tradition: the development of Russian-Georgian literary relations since Perestroika

    Lead: Prof. Dr. Mirja Lecke (RUB)
    Colleague: Dr. Elena Chkhaidze
    Funding institution: Volkswagenstiftung
    Running time: 2013–2016

    URL: http://www.slavistik.rub.de/index.php?Forschungsprojekte-10

    The literary life in Russia and Georgia has been closely intertwined for several centuries. During the Soviet period, cultural coexistence was established by the myth of "friendship between peoples"; It was maintained not least with economic, political and military pressure. With the end of this coercive community in 1991, the new or re-emerged nations are politically and culturally completely new to each other, there is, at least in the tendency, an unbundling, a cultural diversion instead. This process will be examined in the project based on the Georgian-Russian literature relations since the Perestroika. We want to find out how Russian or Georgian writers relate to the literary tradition, what motives and narratives they find for each other. In this way, we want to draw conclusions about the functioning of the relationship between rule and literature in this specific post-Soviet space.

    • German culture and science in Vilnius (1803–1832)

    Lead:Dr. habil. Monika Bednarczuk
    Colleague: Prof. Alfredas Bumblauskas, Dr. Katarzyna Filutowska, Dr. habil. Marta Kopij-Weiss, Prof. Mirja Lecke und Dr. Loreta Skurvydaite
    Funding institution: BKM
    Running time: 2015–2018

    URL:

    • The USSR and Hungary in the "Council for Mutual Economic Assistance": Imperial structure or socialist economic integration?

    Lead: Prof. Dr. Stefan Plaggenborg (RUB)
    Colleague: Christian Mady, Erik Radisch
    Funding institution: Fritz Thyssen Stiftung
    Running time: 2010-2013

    URL: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/oeg/RGWprojektskizze.html

    The Economic Association of Eastern Europe in the "Council for Mutual Economic Assistance" formed the socialist variant of economic cooperation among different states. The attempt to organize and integrate the socialist economic area in a division of labor is considered failed. The research project examines the steps taken during the 1950s and 1970s to economically integrate the "Eastern bloc" and resistance against it.
    The study focuses on the USSR as the political and economic center of CMEA and Hungary, whose economic governance system is based on the Reforms of 1968 within the council deviated most from the Soviet model of planned economy.

    • De-stalinization in the Soviet province. Barnaul 1953-1964

    Lead: Prof. Dr. Stefan Plaggenborg
    Colleague: Dr. Oleg Garms
    Funding institution: DFG
    Running time: 2014-2017

    URL: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/oeg/garmsprojekt.html

    The project is dedicated to the reign of Chruščev, known as the period of de-Stalinization and "thawing". On the course, results and significance of de-Stalinization between Stalin's death in 1953 and the fall of Chruščev in 1964, we are generally well informed today. It is unclear how this process of change has taken place in the province, whether, in what way and with what consequences for the local society the separation from Stalinism took place. To get away from Moscow's central perspective, the city and surrounding Barnaul in the Altaj region are selected. Barnaul was a place where the political, social and economic processes of de-Stalinization unfolded with full force. These relationships in their local contexts will explore the project.

    • Societies under German Occupation – Experiences and Everyday Life in World War II

    Lead: Prof Dr. Tatjana Tönsmeyer und Prof. Dr. Peter Haslinger

    Url: http://www.societies-under-german-occupation.com/

    The history of the Second World War has thus far been written predominantly as a history of Nazi aggression and its perpetrators. The Holocaust and the crimes of the Wehrmacht, as well as resistance movements in the occupied countries have been the focus of historical research. In contrast, there is a notable dearth of research on and documentation of the situation and perspectives of local populations living in German-occupied Europe.

    The international research and editorial project ‘Societies under German Occupation – Experiences and Everyday Life in World War II’ seeks to address this deficit. The aim of the project is to compile a collection of sources, in printed and digital form, which documents the diverse and complex everyday circumstances, experiences and survival strategies of ordinary people in the states and territories occupied by the Wehrmacht during the war.

    The carefully selected sources will demonstrate different perspectives and regional specificities of daily life for members of the occupied societies, which, at the height of German expansion, reached from Norway to Greece and from France into the Soviet Union, and encompassed at least 200 million people.

    The edition will thus offer a unique transnational perspective on a period and topic which remains highly relevant for the politics of history and memory throughout Europe, but which has so far been examined primarily within national frameworks. In doing so, it also seeks to give new impulses for the investigation of questions about everyday life during the occupation which have hitherto remained remarkably underexplored.

    The first phase of the project which has served as a pilot study has been funded by the Leibniz Association.

    • Artistic Research. Between the Stenograph and the Encyclopaedia.

    Lead: PD Dr. Nikolaj Plotnikov (RUB)
    Colleague: Dr. Anke Hennig
    Funding institution: DFG
    Running time: 2018-2021

    URL: http://news.rub.de/presseinformationen/wissenschaft/2018-04-26-projektstart-der-grenze-zwischen-kunst-und-wissenschaft

    Strategies for the Acquisition and Documentation of Knowledge used by the State Academy of Artistic Research in Moscow (1921-1930)

    What is artistic research and how does it model the relationship between art and knowledge? Our project considers an historical example, looking at the procedures of the State Academy of Artistic Research (GAChN) in Moscow, 1921-1930. The GAChN was one big interdisciplinary network of artists and researchers, founded by Vasily Kandinsky and Anatoly Lunačarskiy, Commissar for the People's Education. The body of our investigation concerns "stenographs" (that is, transcripts of the GAChN discussions) which were made in large numbers while working on the central, unrealised project of the Academy—their Encyclopaedia of Artistic Knowledge—and which reveal a novel outline of artistic conceptualisation. Until now, the stenographs have been misunderstood as being the found footage of the Encyclopaedia's entire utopian system. We, however, understand them to be the genuine "inner form" (G. Špet) of the Academy's scientific-artistic practice, i.e., that medium for the acquisition and documentation of artistic knowledge that had been sought for by post-revolutionary academics as a synthetic "new science". The project reflects upon the stenograph in its historical significance—as a method of phenomenological practice and artistic research. We rethink the historical significance of the surviving stenographs in order to discover the extent to which they allow us to revise both our understanding of the State Academy of Artistic Research and our current research practices. Artistic research will also shape the working methods and results of the project. Hence, in addition to a workshop, we plan to hold a re-enactment of a stenograph, a videography of the archival work, and finally, an exhibition in conjunction with the project symposium.