Moscow

Abstract Informal employment is conventionally viewed as residual, marginal and sweatshop-like work that impairs urban economic development and social cohesion. Reporting data from 313 interviews conducted with Moscow households during 2005/06, this negative reading is found to apply to just one segment of the informal labour market in this post-socialist city—namely, informal waged employment.

Purpose–Contrary to the view that the subsistence economy is some minor residue persisting in only a few peripheral enclaves of modern economies, the purpose of this paper is to begin to chart the importance and prevalence of subsistence work across the contemporary economic landscape and the reasons underpinning engagement in this form of non-commodified labour.

Purpose–This paper aims to evaluate critically the validity of rival theorisations of the hidden economy that variously read this sphere as a leftover from a previous era, a by-product of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal economy. Until now, the common tendency among economic theorists has been to either universally privilege one theorisation over others, or to represent each theory as valid in different places.

"A comprehensive handbook, with 700 pages of text and a bibliography of 100 pages. The first attempt to collect all info about Moscow churches and monasteries in their (sometimes sorry) state during the last phase of the Soviet Union (second half of the 80's).
The book has been met with great critical acclaim."

Although there is growing recognition that many entrepreneurs start-up trading partially or wholly off-the-books, few have evaluated whether the character of this hidden enterprise culture varies spatially. To begin to do so, this paper evaluates whether and how the nature of off-the-books entrepreneurship differs across an affluent, mixed and deprived district of Moscow. Drawing upon 313 face-to-face interviews, the finding is that wholly legitimate enterprises represent just the tip of the iceberg in Moscow. Beneath the surface in all the districts is a large hidden enterprise culture. However, off-the-books entrepreneurship in the affluent district is comprised more of registered businesses trading partially off-the-books and conducted as a voluntarily chosen spin-off from their formal employment. In the deprived district, meanwhile, it is comprised more of unregistered wholly off-the-books businesses and such entrepreneurship is largely a survival tactic and last resort. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings. 

"Catherine the Great’s first com- edy Oh These Times! (1772) provides an in- ventory of the key themes and literary devices that feature in the Empress’s early plays. By way of literary, dramatic and semiotic analyses of the play, this article demonstrates the ways in which Catherine II structured her dramatic works in order to showcase her political goals. The antithesis between Moscow and St Peters- burg, which was central to the Empress’s po- litical vision, underpins the action in Oh These Times! It is above all the question of educa- tion that opposes the two towns, which were worlds apart in terms of way of life and values. Khristina, the central protagonist, is faced with a choice. She must choose a language of for social communication. Reading in Russian is represented as the way to progress in this com- edy. In the light of the increased number of publications of Russian-language belle-lettres during the reign of Catherine the Great, Oh These Times! is revealing as to the Empress’s cultural projects: it was through reading that the hearts and minds of the new generation of Russian subjects were to be educated.
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La première comédie de Catherine II, O temps ! (1772) donne un inventaire des thèmes clés et des procédés littéraires des premières pièces de l’Impératrice. A travers l’analyse littéraire, dramatique et sémiotique, et en s’appuyant sur l’histoire de la langue, cet article montre comment Catherine II orga- nise la structure de ses pièces pour mettre en scène ses projets politiques. L’antithèse entre Moscou et Saint-Pétersbourg, centrale dans la pensée de l’Impératrice, jalonne l’action de la comédie - le problème de l’éducation étant au cœur de l’opposition entre les deux villes, qui se présentent alors comme deux civilisations. Ainsi la jeune Xristina, personnage central de la pièce, se trouve face à un choix. C’est en réalité le choix d’un langage, et la lecture des imprimés en langue russe apparaît dans la comédie comme la voie à suivre. Eu égard à l’accroissement des publications des belles- lettres en russe au cours du règne de Catherine II, nous proposons de voir dans cette pièce une explication de la vision de l’impératrice quant à ses projets culturels : c’est la lecture qui est susceptible de former le cœur et l’es- prit des nouvelles générations de ses sujets."

"Right after Nataliia Kornienko's first publication in "Novyi mir" 1991, 9, in Russia nobody seemed to pay attention to this unusual fragment of a novel written by Andrey Platonov in the 1930s. When I discovered this highly provocative text I decided to give a talk on it at a conference in Prague in 1992 convened by V. Svaton and Tomas Glanc, called "Russia as the Subconscious of the West" ("Rossiia kak podsoznanie Zapada", a quote from Boris Groys); the materials were published in T. Glanc's "Volné sdružení českých rusistů" IX, Prague 1993. Later my text was re-published in the journal NLO (Russia) and provoked not only a negative reaction from a conservative literary historian (published in "Novyi Mir") but also interest into Platonov's "Happy Moscow":
A. Nedel‘
http://v-ostrov.netslova.ru/akadem/text=2.html
Mariia Levchenko
http://proletcult.narod.ru/platonov.htm
N. Bragina; Н. Брагина : Мироздание А. Платонова: Опыт культурологической реконструкции. Москва – 2010.
http://www.fedy-diary.ru/html/112010/11112010-03b.html
Keith Livers
- Scatology and Eschatology: The Recovery of the Flesh in Andrei Platonov's Happy Moscow, Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 154-182.
- “Empty Is My Native Land”: The Problem of the Absent Center in Aleksandr Zel'dovich's Moscow, Issue The Russian Review
Volume 64, Issue 3, pages 422–439, July 2005
Philip Ross Bullock, The feminine in the prose of Andrey Platonov, 2005.

Platonov's text plays with the rules of socialist realism and blends Soviet ideology with abased symbolist concepts of the Soul (sophiology).
Platonov's novel intended to tell the story of "an orphan to whom in the detdom they gave the name Moskva Chestnova", to honour the capital of the USSR. She becomes a parachutist (at the shkola vodzukhoplavanija) and loses a leg while building the Moscow Metro (Metrostroi 1935). The amputation turns her into a Soviet Venus, adored by an engineer (Sartorious) and a surgeon (Sambikin). The most unusual part is to be found in Platonov's passages containing a very special kind of Soviet Soul Searching:
Sambikin is looking for the "airy" soul in a dead girl's body, trying to locate it in the intestines – a scatological parody of symbolist searching of the Weltseele. Humble as Moskva is, she marries the least attractive and significant of her suitors, the "vnevoiskovik" Komiagin.
With Vladimir Sorokin we discussed this piece and some motifs travelled to his script for Zeldovich‘s film "Moskva" which was started in 1997 and finished in 2001.

Tags: Platonov, Chaadaev, lacune, Fedorov, Female Wisdom,tvar, Sophia, Sophiology, Florensky, aviation and metro, Air, Pneuma, Allegories of the Soviet Union, Soviet Surgeons, Zerstückelung, Benjamin, I.P. Smirnov, Groys,"

"This purpose of this study is to investigate the pending extension of Moscow’s outer limits and consider it within a broader context of post-socialist urbanization trajectories. The paper analyses to what extent the ‘New Moscow’ project is driven by predetermined
structural forces (geometries of social and power relations, internalized neoliberalism, place-making strategies) and purposeful urban development practices. It is argued that the
Soviet material and cultural legacy produced a different type of urban dynamics from those occurring in Western cities. The said structural continuities fuel spontaneous and highly speculative initiatives, which are disconnected from visionary place-focused
policies. The author claims that the unduly hasty decision to expand the Russian capital in line with the ideas floated by President Dmitry Medvedev is yet another example of development-led planning underpinned by narrow political interests. key words urban development New Moscow placemaking centripetal urbanism
transition Russia"

Based on interviews with Chechen leaders and former secret service officials in the Ethnic Division, this article examines the emergence of the Chechen business class in Moscow in the 1980s, the unofficial sponsorship it got from the Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti or Federal Security Service (FSB), and its eventual elimination. This article will look at internal policy papers of the FSB, seeking to show that the niche occupied by the Chechens in Moscow as traders suited the authorities, but later became a barrier to the emergence of an indigenous Russian business class. Finally, this article will examine the interaction between the thwarted social ambitions of Moscow's Chechens, and the emerging national movement, by examining different expressions of Chechen identity.