Osteuropa 54. Jahrgang, 3/2004

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Bogusław Bakuła: Zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst. Lembergs Kneipen in den 30er Jahren, S. 3

Christiane Uhlig: Geraubte Akten. Die Geschichte einer Odyssee, S. 16

Debatte – Die EU vor der Überdehnung?

Heinz Theisen: Überdehnung oder Überwindung? Europas kulturelle Grenzen, S. 34

Drei Etüden über Rußlands Neoautoritarismus

Zur Einführung, S. 48

Margareta Mommsen: Autoritarismus oder Demokratie? Putins Rußland am Scheideweg, S. 49

Manfred Sapper: Machiavelli, das System Putin und die Zukunft Rußlands, S. 54

Karl Eimermacher: Staatsmacht ohne Volk. Das System Putin und die Zukunft Rußlands, S. 59

Heiko Pleines: Aufstieg und Fall. Oligarchen in Rußland, S. 71

Robert Rudolph: Aufbruch oder Niedergang? Die Zukunft rußländischer Wissenschaftsstädte, S. 82

Abstracts:

Bogusław Bakuła: Between art and science: Lviv’s cafe society in the 1930s
During the interwar period, Lviv’s urban life was legendary. The city’s restaurants, cafes and hotels were popular and renowned both in Poland and abroad. Seen from the perspective of the Szkocka, the Atlas, and the Pod Gwiazdką, Lviv appears as a special type of text with its own semiotic setting, its own internal rules of composition, its own hierarchy, and its own value systems. The Lviv text is a myth with a great potential for cultural creativity.

Christiane Uhlig: Stolen archives: the history of an odyssey.
The dispute between Germany and Russia over the return of stolen works of art reenters the public debate at regular intervals. The history of the archives is less familiar. They were originally seized by Nazi forces, and at the end of the war they were requisitioned by the Red Army’s Commissions for Trophies and transported to the USSR. The Soviet secret service then used the archives for operational purposes, and their existence only became publicly known in 1991. Since then there has been an international argument about these documents, and the outcome of this debate is uncertain.

Heinz Theisen: The future of the EU: overstretch, or an opportunity to overcome Europe’s cultural borders?
Before the debate about whether Turkey could be considered a suitable candidate for membership of the European Union, hardly any attention was paid to the question of the EU’s cultural borders. However, in view of the prospect of integrating countries like Bulgaria and Romania, which have been shaped by Orthodox traditions, and the Islamic influences on some regions of Southeast Europe, this question has been on the agenda for some time. Given Europe’s multicultural nature, wide-ranging intercultural learning processes would be the precondition for political and economic integration. If this precondition is not met before these countries join the EU, there is a danger that the Union could be culturally overstretched and European governance put at risk.

Heiko Pleines: Holdings, politics and power: the rise and fall of Russia’s oligarchs.
The collective term “oligarchs” was used, especially during President Boris Yeltsin’s second term in office, to suggest that commercial banks and the holding companies they set up exercised considerable influence on politics in the Russian Federation. This article reconstructs the rise of the oligarchs, together with the mechanisms they used to acquire power and to exert political influence. Under Putin, some of the oligarchs have suffered spectacular falls and others have seen their influence reduced from the federal to the regional level.

Robert Rudolph: A new departure, or decline and fall?
The future of Russia’s science cities.
The political and economic changes that have taken place in Russia since the 1990s have changed the conditions of existence of the former Soviet science cities, which are currently undergoing changes in a wide variety of different ways. The concentration of scientific and technological potential in the Moscow region provides the preconditions for a dynamic technological development. A necessary condition for the creation in the longer term of a globally oriented technology region is the regional integration of the science cities, which were formerly isolated from one another in administrative, economic, and social terms.