Political, Linguistic, and Religious Boundaries as Distinctive Creative Space: Why New Ideas are Generated in Border Lands 9780773429260, 0773429263, 9780773417861

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POLITICAL, LINGUISTIC, AND RELIGIOUS BOUNDARIES AS DISTINCTIVE CREATIVE SPACE Why New Ideas Are Generated in Border Lands

Olga Breskaya and

Oleg Bresky

With a Foreword by

Pavel Tereshkovich

The Edwin Mellen Press Lewiston*QueenstoneLampeter

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Breskaya, Olga, 1973Political, linguistic, and religious boundaries as distinctive creative space : why new ideas are generated in border lands / Olga Breskaya and Oleg Bresky; with a foreword by Pavel Tereshkovich. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1SBN-13: 978-0-7734-2926-0 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 0-7734-2926-3 (hardcover) 1. Creative ability--Europe, Eastern. 2. Creative ability. 3. Borderlands. I. Bresky, Oleg, 1972- 11. Title. BF408.B76 2012 303.40947--dc23 2012012218 hors serie.

Translator: Oksana Bai Translation edited by Olga Breskaya

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2013 Olga Breskaya and Oleg Bresky All rights reserved. For information contact The Edwin Mellen Press Box 450 Lewiston. New York USA 14092-0450

The Edwin Mellen Press Box 67 Queenston, Ontario CANADA LOS ILO

The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd. Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT Printed in the United States of America

The Table of Contents

Foreword by Pavel Tereshkovich

Chapter 1 Context of the "Pogranichie" Theory . Starting Point

1

Pandora's Box

.3

Border Studies

5

Boundary Theory and Frontier Research

20

Frontier Studies

24

"Continuum of Boundary Dynamics"

27

The Metaphor of "settlement" and "border post"

30

The "Crossroads" and the project "Social transformations in the Pogranichie"

32

Chapter 2 2B- Model of the Pogranichie Negative Discourses of the Pogranichie Theory

39

Metaphor of the Map

41

The Border and the Boundary

43

Models of Border and Boundary Interaction

46

Actorship

48

Actorship and Legal Personality

50

Depolitization of Research Intelligibility

56 . 59

Chapter 3 The Pogranichie Morphology Border-space Status as a Border Border-space Enlargement Interaction of Different Orders Primary Pogranichie

69 75 77 78 87

Secondary Pogranichie

.93

Dictionary

. 94

Meta-legal Normative Systems

96

Frontier

99

Chapter 4 Discovering the Pogranichie in Eastern Europe Social Space and Border-space Limits of the Idea of Transit

113 . 116

What are the Purposes of Getting into the Other Place?

120

Geography of Eastern Europe

126

Multi Actors and Actorship

Bibliography

131

135

Index

145

List of Illustrations (Figures, Tables)

TL:I.e 1. Traditional approaches to Border studies

9

'.'able 2. The development of Border studies in post-modern approaches

14

Table 3. Actorship models

57

Table 4. Models of the Pogranichie with correlation to Actorship models

58

Pict. 1. The types of border formation with actors' practice correlation

81

Pict. 2. The formation of border with internal

83

and external actor's practices Pict. 3. Between actor (circle) and status (square)

89

Pict. 4. Interaction between different types of normative orders

98

Table 5. The Types of Subject's Transformations

118

Foreword The most essential field of contemporary research for the Eastern European Borderlands is usually recognized as the problem of transition from communism. Humanities have recently become increasingly interested in the issue of frontiers and borderlands. Borderlands can be investigated from different perspectives, including geographical, historical, political, ethnographic, social, economic, and cultural ones. This book of Olga Breskaya and Oleg Bresky is organically connected with their monograph in Russian "From Transitilogy to the Pogranichie Theory" (European Humanities University, Vilnius, 2008, 336 p.). The book is a result of the authors' participation in the seminar of International Higher Education Support Program "Social transformations in Borderlands of Central-Eastern Europe: Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine" (2003-2006). In the context of discussions within the project there was an idea about the necessity of movement from the Transitology to a more sensitive paradigm of the Borderlands which could be applied to the analysis of social, economic and political transformations in Eastern Europe. Such motion did not mean the refusal of noble purposes which were put by the Transit theory but it was a query more likely about the updating of transit strategy connected with the development of stable civil life. In the English version of the book the authors have concentrated on the theory of the Pogranichie and conceptualization of its basic categories. Processes of transition are studied at and projected into the time (modernization), geopolitical and geocultural (Europeanization or Westernization) levels. Transitology today includes primarily political, economic and legal studies. However, it has a problem with the expansion of the border area studies. This means that the issues of transitology should be analyzed in a

wider range of social sciences and especially of new humanities (research of the border area, post-colonial theories, crosscultural studies, gender studies, globalization studies, etc.). In our opinion, what seems to be a problem of transition for the region in a short-term period seems to be the problem of "the border area" (the Pogranichie) in a long-term period. Transition in the conditions of the Pogranichie, continually generates hybrid models, political, economic and cultural practices which forcedly find themselves at the boundary of democracy and authoritarianism, liberalism and conservatism, globalism and regionalism. Political space is broken into Western and Eastern vectors and uses them in political discourses and strategies and constantly requires "therapeutic" means to guarantee its own integrity. Economic practices turn out to be also dependent upon these strategic configurations giving rise to various and often conflict "business subcultures". As a consequence, political, economic and cultural space of the border area, to a great extent, is fragmented and these fragments are simultaneously brought into correlation with different integrities. The major concepts of the Pogranichie theory are "border", "boundary", and "frontier". Each of them describes certain ties between the actor, social system and the public space. "Border" is the closest term for a political or power margin designation. The authors define border as a line of demarcation which symbolizes the power to include or exclude subjects from certain sorts of relations. To draw the border means to define the space which is configured by the principles of relations between its subjects. This type of border draws our attention to the aspect of space division. Out of this border its principles and norms lose their value. For the designation of space, which is II

defined by borders, the authors enter the concept of "borderspace". This is a space of public order which does not depend on subjects' qualities and properties. Borders form the space within which the presentation of the subject is possible. However, border is not the only condition for subject's presentation. The presentation is carried out with help of the boundary. The boundary directs us to a certain type of cultural variety. The main difference between border and boundary is described in the following way — the first (the border) is connected with political and anonymous public limits, and the second (the boundary) with the edges, is connected with cultural and other features of communities and individual subjects, with their uniqueness. The boundary is aimed at communication and public space mastering. The boundary separates in order to bind. It grows out of the effort of social subjects defining their qualities and characteristics. The space which created by the interaction of border and boundary is the Pogranichie. And there is a question on the mechanisms of their interaction. The Pogranichie is a term which designates a condition of social and political spheres created by the boundaries of different nature. Therefore the authors put forward the theme that corresponds with the subject of transition, the value of its normative systems. All this shows that political, economic and cultural processes in the Pogranichie do not possess a linear character (progress or regress) and should be studied with the help of non-linear transdisciplinary paradigms. In the sense the studies of the Pogranichie can be identified, not only as a specific academic direction nor as an interdisciplinary field of research, but as a common frame in the policy context of knowledge about the social space especially of Eastern Europe. 111

The Pogranichie concept allows one to describe the region in its variety and complexity. It is true as differences are more than considerable. Possibly, the traditional culture of Moldavians could much more organically be blended with the Balkan context than the Eastern European one. However, this is still a question of whether this variant is more preferable for the people living in Moldova. It shall be mentioned that internal differences in Ukraine, especially with the growth of the number of Tatar population in Ukraine, hardly looks less significant. In general, if one is to ask the question of what unites Belarus and Moldova the answer will be simple: it is Ukraine. This is not some geographical speculation: the traditional culture of the Carpathian region contains a lot of Balkan elements (for instance, in folklore plots) and the "ethnic linguistic continuity" of Polesje (a smooth flow from one dialect to another) actually "dissolves" the ethnic border between Belarus and Ukraine. It shall be added that one can hardly find a single truly culturally homogeneous region in Europe. Let's consider the Baltic States as an illustration. Can the differences between the Baltic languages, Catholic Lithuanians and Finnish speaking Protestant Estonians (not Indo-Europeans by language), be smaller than between Orthodox Moldavians and Belarusians? But the Baltic States are constantly identified as a single region, despite the growing lack of desire from its own inhabitants to be considered such. This book allows one to build a new view on modernist style history in Eastern Europe and to find out trends of development in the region on its own social and cultural preconditions. The authors pay attention to two important points which explain the failures of Transitology in its classical variant — significance of the subject of transition and value of the normative systems. This releases the region for self-naming. By the way, iv

namelessness is not so bad either especially because some names do not generate positive emotions or to change the name is sometimes more difficult than to acquire a new name. It is typical that the search for the name for us is going very actively. Besides, as a rule, it is done from the outside and it is not likely to satisfy us. It is enough to remember, for instance, "the Eastern Eurasia" or "the New Near East". The acquisition of the name is one of the benefits of the mission of this book. We would like to believe that beyond it the understanding of cultural self-value and self-adequacy of our "Pogranichie" existence will begin. By Pavel Tereshkovich, Ph.D., head of the department of histoty, Professor of European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania

Chapter 1 Context of .e "Pogranichie" Theory The more you use language to communicate across the boundary to other people and other cultures, the more you will realize that language can be a changeable and multi-dimensional tool. Thomas Lunden On the Boundary: About humans at the end of territory Starting Point The problem of the "pogranichie"1 was rais in 2003 at the HESP Seminar2 for possible measurement and research of social space in the Eastern Europe region localized by Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.

I "Pogranichie" (from Russian "granitsa" — bound, limit, and frontier) is the Russian translation of the term Borderlands. "Pogranichie" does not only refer to border studies, but to boundary and frontier studies as well. Nowadays there are two terms "prigranichie" (territory along, near the border) and "pogranichie" (space over, across the boundary) in the developing discourse of border and boundary studies in Eastern Europe. The first concept is closer to border studies and the second one to boundary studies. 2 The regional Seminar "East-Central Europe Borderland in the Context of New Humanities" (2003-2006, Minsk-Vilnius). This project was the first event of its kind within the post- Soviet area, supported by the Open Society Institute. There were historians, political scientists, sociologists, culturalstudy researchers, philosophers, economists and jurists among "students"— all of them were young undergraduate teachers. The names of lecturers speak for themselves (here is the incomplete list): Ihar Babkou (philosopher, Belarus), Vladimir Abushenko (sociologist, Belarus), Dipesh Chakrabarty (postcolonial researcher, USA), Svetlana Naumova (political scientist, Belarus), Sergey Horevsky (historian, Belarus), Yadviga Staniszkis (sociologist, Poland), Gregory Miniankou (philosopher, Belarus), Walter Migno(o (postcolonial researcher, USA), Almira Ousmanova (philosopher, Belarus), Gzhegozh Gozeliak (regionalist, Poland), Michal Buchowski (historian, Poland), Yelena Gapova (gender researcher, Belanis).

The concept of the "pogranichie" (Babkou and Tereshkovich 2004) was offered to researchers as a zero mark, an empty content point that would allow new subjects to be identified without any restrictions and to interpret them as widely as possible, within the limits of the transdisciplinary research of new humanities. In the beginning of the Seminar the pogranichie was mostly perceived by the participants of the Seminar as a geographical space (Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova) which turned up between the centers of powers and thus, by virtue of the historic peculiarities of the region, had lineaments of colonialism and national unrealization3, and as a space where different cultures, histories, religions and languages interact4. It was difficult to conceptualize the pogranichie in the second meaning and to understand its distinction and place in the traditional humanities. The pogranichie theory in general can be classified as a complex of two main approaches: 1) theoretical models based on analysis of geographically located boundaries studied by historians, political scientists, anthropologists, geographers, archaeologists; 2) theoretical models examining non-territorial boundaries (whether they are imaginary, social or cultural) — it is impossible to study such "imaginary lines" in terms of a definite discipline. Considering the boundaries of social organizations, "Belarus has been fighting for her dolya for almost two centuries already, that is why it is still seeking for its fortune" (Babkou 2005, 127).

3

4 "Belarusian culture as a whole is formed nowadays as the pogranichie culture, a culture of inner demarcation, meeting and transition of different multidirectional cultural trends" (Babkou 2005, 136).

2

statuses, symbolic fields, they are also attached to a certain territory, but the methodological approach of the research will differ from the first model. The main point of interest for a social researcher is the actor itself -collective or individual- and its ability to arrange the boundaries of its presence in public space.

Pandora's Box The discussion about concepts is one of the most significant problems in humanities. The definitions of basic categories influence the contents of any theory. The setting of categories also works upon the analysis of empirical data. These basic concepts are the idiomatic multiplication tables in the humanities. It is impossible to make the analysis of social processes without them. But, unlike mathematics, there is a great variability in the creation of such "multiplication tables" in history, political science and sociology. If in mathematics there is only one, in sociology there are many more, and in the pogranichie theory, which is in itself transdisciplinary, their quantity increases repeatedly. The discussion about the concepts of borderland, boundary, border, frontier, and periphery has taken place between intellectuals of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Moldova for some years. But for these several years, in the frameworks of the forming discourse of the pogranichie theory (PT), the previously named categories are used today by researchers with different possible meanings and contexts5. Such polysemy in using the 5

By the present time in Belarus the brightest polemic has taken place on the pages of the journal "Crossroads" in the collection of articles "Afier the Empire: The Researches of East-European Pogranichie".

3

stated concepts, does not only mean the reluctance to work with common terminology, but is the result of intellectual work in the situation, when new terminology gets into the discursive space. Researchers begin to assess it from this or that point, having more and more deep comprehension about the multiplication of concepts' meanings. Besides, one of the problems in definition of concepts of the PT, is a problem of terminology, which might be misinterpreted when translated from different languages, multiplied by the absence of definitive interpretation of the same terms in original theories. It is very important to come back to the question of origin of the main categories of the PT. It does not mean that puzzling out with foreign terminology, it will be easier for us to use Russian language translations of western categories, but, at least, it will be possible to determine the interaction of basic concepts. Perhaps, such work will also allow us to retrace the reasons of growth of interest in the borderland problems and to find out new senses and perspectives of scientific search in the "pogranichie" field that were not planned beforehand by researchers. The term "Pogranichie", that became the Russian language copy of the English term "borderland", is polysemantic. Its application in European and American intellectual traditions at the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century is of current interest for archaeology, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, human geography, study of religion and philosophy. The studies of different kinds of borders and boundaries, border studies, boundary studies and frontier studies find themselves as a part of the PT. Every category is translated as "granitsa", but at the same time has 4

a different notional nuance. This is exactly the reason why there are several theories within the area of English-speaking humanities which constantly interact with each other and destroy their own boundaries, turning into complexly-organized field or research. Border Studies The middle-range border theory was first developed in the mid 1950's in the USA as a part of the borderland problems research. In 1976, the Association of Borderland Studies, ABS6, which became the leading academic association of North American researchers dealing with constant borderland zones and analysis, was founded in America. The initial interest of ABS was focused on the investigation of processes of the US — Mexico border region: the problems of migration, health, education and women's status. The central category of the borderland theory is the term of "border", which is conceptualized not only as a physical line, but as a demarcation line symbolizing the power to include and exclude the subjects from definite relationships (Heewon Chang 1999). For example, the geographical border of Bologna process, includes and excludes the countries which border on it from definite types of arrangements. Those, who are in a more privileged position to the border, always protect it from violation. Thus, the border has its social and political meaning besides the geographical one (Erickson 1997). As time went by, the region and the meaning of border studies considerably expanded. However, "borderland", still 6 ABS is also known as a publisher of the "Journal of Borderland Studies" and the newspaper "La Frontera".

5

being the category, which predominantly describes the processes of borderland regions, and the borderland theory, which would better be translated to the Russian language as the prigranichie theory, includes the problems, which are in some way connected with territorial and geographical localities. Cultural anthropologists and ethnologists set their focus on the borderland as the area where new local communities are being formed (Alvarez 1995; Lang 1994; Martinez 1994; Lunden 2004). The scrupulous historic analysis of the origin of the borderland theory as a field of borderland-studies that was made by Professor V. Kolossov, the head of the Center for Geopolitical Studies of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Science, helps us to see how the prigranichie theory interacts with the pogranichie theory and what aspects of territorial problems can be transported to the non-territorial analysis of borders (Kolossov 2006) (see tables 1, 2). The borderland theory underlines that, along with the situation when the border itself can be the subject of research (political, administrative, military divisions), it determines that diversity of all types of boundaries — cultural, linguistic, economic, religious and symbolic. Furthermore, being predominantly the subject of analysis of geographical borderland processes, the pogranichie as a concept raises new problems. To what extent does the border itself correlate with territorial and geographical division? How did it historically change? What are the consequences of its establishment for local communities and states? What kind of social and cultural problems are connected with the crossing of these borders? What kind of new configurations of cooperation can appear in the borderland zones? 6

In the given context, the research of living on the border itsele as a crossing zone (physical, customs, political, geographical, cultural) can be a subject of special research. For example, analyzing the living area of "Warshaysky most" — the border crossing between Belarusian Brest and Polish Terespol, is a matter of interest. This small borderland territory has its own subculture, social stratification, symbolic system and time space allocation. In spite of the fact that the physical border in the PT acts precisely as a coordinate axis and is a determinative for all other types of borders, the vector of the PT constantly changes from monosemantic interpretation of geographical and tenitorial borders as immediately fixed, defining the conditions of redistribution of other borders. For example, Charles Maier in his article "Does Europe need a frontier: from territorial to redistributive community" puts the question: Where does Europe end? It is an ancient question, the conventional answer to which is the Urals and the Bosporus. Where might the European Union end? It is a contemporary issue, the conventional answer for which won't work. First, because many countries within those borders are far from being ready for membership; but even if they were, the EU admits nation states as units and the ancient limits of Europe bisect two major nations.

7 Thomas Lunden in his work "On the Boundary: About humans on the end of territory" uses the concept of boundary for the description of everyday life of people living on the territories bordering on other nation-states. He is interested in the facts that influence the specific language, culture, communication of the residents of borderland towns.

7

Still it may be helpful to ask what it has meant for a geographical region to 'end', if only because having an end — a frontier helps determine the nature of what is within. The European Union is a variety of territory, the area of the earth's surface enclosed by a frontier. But must it remain so? The premise of this chapter is that both the concept of frontier and what it encloses — i.e. territory — are historically determined notions, and that both are in a period of transformation. If we wish to think about where the European Union should end, it will help to understand these changing concepts (Meier 2002, 16). Anyway, the existence of a territorial, fixed, powerful border is the reason to study another type of demarcation, which does not always coincide with "a pictured line".

8

Table 1. Traditional approaches to Border Studies Stage / Period

Dominant approach- The content The main Leading es and methods of a stage concept and authors achievements

1. Since the Historical / geograph- Accumulalate 19th cen- ical approach tion of empirtury ical data, detailed mapping of economic and social structures in border regions, numerous case studies.

Representation on the evolution of border areas in space and time; explanation of border features and morphology by the balance of power between neighboring states;

J. Ancel (France); I. Bowman (USA); R. Hartshorn (USA); E. Banse (Germany)

Practical applications Allocation, delimitation and demare ation of postwar state borders in Europe; delimitation of colonial possessions in

rise and decline of theory natural of borders. Border typology

Numerous typologies and classifications of state borders; study of relations between the bather and the contact function of a border.

Concepts of border and frontier; theories explaining their evolution and morphology.

Africa and Asia

Lord Curson; T. Holdich. ' C. Fawcett (all — Great BritS. aim); Boggs (USA)

Geopolitical stategies, partition of the world into areas of influence of major powers; overall application on of the European

concept of the border as a strictly fixed line. 2. Since the Functional approach early 1950s

Studies of transboundary movement of people, goods, information, etc., and of mutual influence of borders and of different elements of

Models of transboundary interactions at different spatial levels and typologies of transboundary flows; understanding of borders as a multi-

J.R.V. Prescott; (Australia), J.W. House (Great Britain); J. Minhi (USA); M. Foucher (France); G. Blake

Border negotiations, practice of border cooperation and management of social processes in border areas; de-

the natural dimensional highly and social and dynamic solandscapes cial phenomenon; concepts of the border land scape and the stages of the evolution of border areas.

(Great Britain); 0. Martinez (USA)

limitation deand marcation of new political borders (including sea borders).

Relation between features borders, of and their role in the beginthe ning,

G. Goertz and P. Diehl; T. Gurr; H. Starr; A. Kirby (all

Resolution of intemational and border conflicts, peacemak-

of 3. Since the Political science ap- Studies role of state proaches 1970s borders in international conflicts,

evolution and — USA the resolution and others of border conflicts; borders are most often considered as a given reality.

ing and peace keeping.

Table 2. The development of Border studies in post-modern approaches The Content of a stage

Stage / Period

Dominate approaches and methods

4.Since the 1980s

A. World sys- Border studtems and tern- ies at differtonal identities ent interrelated levels depending on the evolution of territorial identities and the role of a border in the hierarchy of political

The main concept and achievements

Leading authors

Practical applicadons

Modeling of reladons between borders and the hierarchy of territorial identities

A. Passi (Finland); D. Newman (Israel); J. O'Loughlin (USA); P. Taylor (Great Britam); T. Lunden (Sweden); G. Waterburry and J. Ackleson

Use of border problems and conflicts in nation and state building; principles of border policy and cooperation;

(Great Britain) and others

borders as a whole B. GeopolitiB 1. Impact cal approaches of globalizalion and integration on political borders

Representations about processes of "reterritorialisation" (redistribution of function between borders of different levels and types) and about the evolution of the system of political and administrative borders

creation and strengthening of euro regions and of other transboundary regions

C. Borders as social representations

B2. Borders from the perspective of military, political etc. security

Role of borders in securitization of countries and regions; separation of traditional and postmodem representations about this role; studies of the influence of geopolitical culture on function of borders in the field of security

Borders as social constructs and a mirror of

Approaches to the study of borders as an important element of ethnic, na-

social relalions in past and present; role of borders as a social symbol and importance in political discourse

tional and other territorial identities

D. The "prac- Relations tice — policy — between the policy deperception" approach termining the transparency of a border, its

Influence of border policy, practice and perceptions on the management of border regions and border cooperation

H. van Houturn and 0. Kramsch (the Netherlands); J. Scott (Germany)

Management of border regions and border cooperation;

regulation of international migrations and other transboundary movements; regional policy.

perception by people and the practice of activities related to this border

E. Ecopolitical

E. Political

Function of natural and political borders as integrated systems and management of trans-

0. Young; G. White (bothUSA); N. Kliot (Israel); S. Dalby,

State of global and regional environ-

boundary socioenvironmental systen-is

G. (Canada); S. Gorshkov and L. Korytny (Russia) and many more

mental problems; management of intemational river basins etc.

Boundary Theory and Frontier Research The second type of the PT is the boundary theory. Its main operational concept is a "boundary". The subject of boundary theory is defined by means of such categories as bound, limit and edge that have not only physical features but also imaginary and evaluative aspects. The "boundary" concept has come to be used in cultural studies, mostly because of its convenience to describe processes of cultural diversification. That is one of the reasons the boundary theory overlaps gender studies, multicultural and postcolonial theories examining cultural differences. According to Ericson (1997), the cultural boundary "refers to the presence of some kind of cultural difference... cultural boundaries are characteristic of all human societies, traditional as well as modern. A border is a social construct that is political in origin, across a border power is exercised, as in the political border between two nations" (Ericson 1997, 42). So, a border points to the imperative political order and a boundary points to the existence of socio-cultural differences. The category of boundary is also quite often used in the sociology of organizations when one describes the organizational limits of a company or a corporation. As Michele Lamont and Virag Molnar spotlighted in their "the Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences", the revival of interest of social researchers to the boundary states is a resumption to E. Durkheim's classical approaches, when he contrasted the categories of "profane" and "sacred", K. Marx, who divided a society into antagonistic classes and M. Weber, who observed ethic values in the interaction with economic ones. In sociology a "boundary" turns not only into the imagi20

nary line between cultures and histories but between symbolic resources and capitals (P. Bourdieu). In their article, Lamont and Molnar try to differentiate the notions of social and symbolic boundary on the basis of the analysis of boundary aspects in the social theory of the last decades of the twentieth century (Lamont and Molnar 2002, 184). One general theme that runs through this literature across the disciplines is the search for understanding the role of symbolic resources (e.g., conceptual distinctions, interpretive strategies, cultural traditions) in creating, maintaining, contesting, or even dissolving institutionalized social differences (e.g., class, gender, race, territorial inequality). In order to capture this process better, we think it is useful to introduce a distinction between symbolic and social boundaries. Symbolic boundaries are conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space. They are tools, by which individuals and groups struggle over and come to agree upon definitions of reality. Examining them allows us to capture the dynamic dimensions of social relations, as groups compete in the production, diffusion and institutionalization of alternative systems and principles of classifications. Symbolic boundaries also separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership (Epstein 1992, 232). They are an essential medium, through which people acquire status and monopolize resources. Social boundaries are objectified forms of social differences manifested in unequal access to and unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social opportunities. They are also revealed in stable behavioral patterns of as21

sociation, as manifested in connubiality and commensality. Only when symbolic boundaries are widely agreed upon, can they take on a constraining character and pattern social interaction in important ways. Moreover, only then can they become social boundaries, i.e., translate, for instance, into identifiable patterns of social exclusion or class and racial segregation (e.g., Massey & Denton 1993, Stinchcombe 1995, Logan et al. 1996). But symbolic and social boundaries should be viewed as equally real. The former exist at the intersubjective level where as the latter manifest themselves as groupings of individuals. At the casual level, symbolic boundaries can be thought of as a necessary but insufficient condition for the existence of social boundaries (Lamont 1992, ch. 7). One can note that a boundary, the symbolic as well as the social, and a border as a distinct variant of boundary, in the Lamont and Molnar article, are conceptualized as the categories that define the dynamic character of social processes. Such dynamics are examined through the problems of social stratification, boundaries of social communities and professional corporations. The symbolic boundaries are connected with the social ones in such a way that the first often serve for the strengthening, the normative fixing of the second and for their refraining as well. The other version of pogranichie, actively used in history, archaeology, ethnography and anthropology, is based on the analysis of frontiers. Professor of Near East History and Archaeology, Bradley Parker, who uses "borderland" as an operating concept in archaeology, asserts that the frontier studies in modem humanities acquire comprehensive character, but at the 22

same time, the borderland as a theory puts a number of complicated questions for researchers: Several recent attempts to summarize the state of what is often termed "frontier studies" recount its importance to many academic disciplines while at the same time, whether intentionally or unintentionally, illustrating the intellectual divide separating scholars both within anthropology and between anthropology, history, and archaeology ( Anderson 1996, Dorman and Wilson 1994, Green and Perlman 1985, Kopytoff 1987, Lightfoot and Martinez 1995, Parker 2002, Parker and Rodseth 2005, Rice 1998, Roster and Wendl 1999, Wilson and Donnan 1998). It is a simple fact that although frontier studies are fundamental to a variety of academic fields and subdisciplines (geography, political science, history, anthropology and archaeology, for example), each has typically held fast to its own discourse on the topic, and only rarely has research in any field been informed by cross-disciplinary discussion or comparison. In spite of the fact that the study of frontiers is unique in its crossdisciplinary and multiregional appeal, few researchers have explicitly addresses this issue by proposing models that can be applied across spatial, temporal and disciplinary divides. One of the reasons that interdisciplinary comparison of this, or any topic, is relatively rare is because such comparisons introduce a multitude of problems. B. Parker issued a number of books and articles dealing with the "pogranichie" as a theory of frontier studies. Besides, Parker uses the term "frontier" in the titles of his books. The aim of his work, as he states, is the comparison of different types of frontiers. Parker calls his comparative model a "Con23

tinuum of Boundary Dynamics" underlining that the correlation between frontier and boundary can be viewed as the relation among species and genus.

Frontier Studies Parker, conceptualizing his model of "Continuum of Boundary dynamics", defines frontier as a type of boundary. A frontier is a territory at the edge of cultural domain and a place where one culture interacts with another. "Frontiers are the areas between. They are places at the edge of cultural and, therefore, embody the loci, within which culture contact takes place. Like other types of boundaries, frontiers come into being as a result of particular historical circumstances or processes and are thus unique social phenomena" (Parker, 2006). A frontier is a result of especial historic circumstances or processes and that is why it is unique social phenomenon. Moreover, as the nature of interaction that occurs within a frontier can be explained by the influence of different factors- geographical, political, demographic, cultural and economic- a frontier is a maximally dynamic and often unstable zone, which represents a definite degree of differences in time and space. According to Parker, frontier studies may occur within the comparison of different specific frontier situations, from which thankfully, we will be able to construct the models that will help us to understand the nature of boundary processess.

In spite of the fact that the problems of the borderlands appeared in the 1950's during the twentieth century in the USA, the most active usage of borderland categories and the extension of the disciplinary field have come

8

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Together with the general concept of boundary, Parker suggests the definitions of two types of boundaries — frontier and border. In Parker's works the border concept is the "linear dividing lines, fixed in a particular space, meant to mark the division between political and/or administrative units" (Parker 2002, 373). If you intend to cross the border you need to pass it from one country to another. Such crossing is quite easy as it is a mechanical motion. But in some cases such a border is a real barrier for the residents of neighboring states. For example, it can take almost a day to cross the border between Belarusian Brest and Polish Terespol which are located within one kilometer from one another. The freedom of movement is defined by the fact of whether these borders are open or not. Paying attention to the condition of borders and their creation, the prigranichie theory is closely inosculated with the pogranichie theory, as according to the given example, the boundaries of freedom and restraint are not attached particularly to the borders of states, but characterize the separation and colonization within states. For example, in the Soviet period since 1932, such borders existed for kolchozniks (collective farmers) within the state (in connection with the creation of the passport system in the USSR) — as there was an inability to migrate without passports. Until lately in North Korea it has been impossible to migrate within the state without the local authorities' permission. Histo-

to life since the 1990's. This is the reason why the work with the main concepts is still being carried till the present day in the USA and Europe.

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rian A. Lankov writes the following about the borders in the North Korea (Lankov 2007): ...strict control of people's migration. A special permission was necessary if you had a wish to leave your native province (theoretically it has existed till now). The pennission was registered in the same way as a trip to Bulgaria in the Soviet times. It was necessary to receive a certified invitation: you have an uncle and you intend to visit him. There was a complicated system. I would describe a typical situation. An uncle lives in the non-neighboring region and has a wish to see you, his beloved nephew. He sends an invitation certified in the local Administration of the Interior. You go through the triangular line: local authorities- professional authorities — communist party authorities. You go with this document to the second department of the local municipal council. It takes about a week for them to discuss whether you are allowed to go to your uncle or not, then they give you a stamped paper. And only by having this paper, you can buy tickets and leave for the neighboring region. But this is a good example, if you want to go to the capital of revolution — Pyongyang — or to the borderline regions, then you will need more serious permissions that are certified in Pyongyang, and you will be waiting for them for a month or so. What is more, such permissions were not given to the 26

private persons during practically the whole history of Korea. In the context of border studies one may analyze political systems, educational space, migration and mobility. This context is fitting for the use of a historian, a lawyer, a sociologist or a political scientist as the interaction of the borderland theory with the boundary theory is becoming evident in this case. Thompson and Lamar define a frontier as a "zone of interpenetration between two previously distinct people" (Thompson and Lamar 1981, 7). Besides, as Hugh Elton notes, frontiers consist of various types of boundaries and frontiers are "zones of variously overlapping (but not congruent) political, economic and cultural boundaries" (Elton 1996, 3-9; Parker 2002). Parker, modeling the definition of borderland as a "geographic space, in which frontiers and borders are likely to exist" (Wendl and Rosier 1999, 8-10), comes to his own defmitionthe borderlands "are regions around or between political or cultural entities where geographic, political, demographic, cultural and economic circumstances or processes may interact to create borders or frontiers".

Continuum of Boundary Dynamics

Constructing such a definition, Parker explains that a border and a frontier consist of different types of boundaries (geographical, political, demographic, cultural and economic). He defines all types of boundaries as a boundary-set or a matrix. In his conception, border and frontier are two opposite types of 27

boundaries: the first (border) is rigid, static and lineal; the second (frontier) is flexible, shifting and regional. Parker, arranging his model under the title "Continuum of Boundary Dynamic", spotlights the complexity of the boundary interaction model analysis: ...the variables measured on the continuum (geographic, political, demographic, cultural and economic) are very general and thus the model may not capture all of the nuances of any specific borderland. However, I feel it is important not to overcomplicate the model by adding to many categories to the continuum (Parker, 2006). Parker distinguishes five types of boundaries: 1) Geographical (climate, flora and fauna, ecology, environment, rivers, mountain ranges); 2) Political (administrative division, military power, political dynamics, political domination, borderland colonization, "opening/closing" of frontier and transition of frontier); 3) Demographical (interaction of ethnic groups, population density, health, gender classification of population, demographic changes (uncontrolled migration, the character of settlements, demographic shifts, the character of ethnogenesis: agglomeration or fragmentation); 4) Cultural (linguistic, religious, material, cultural practices); 5) Economic (industry, ecosystem, involving of migrants, transport, borderland commerce, control).

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Such matrix of boundaries constantly changes in time as well, so that one set of boundaries lies on another. The boundary process is defined as a dynamics of interactions within and between the sets of boundaries and their characteristics (static, restrictive, porous and fluid). ...the colonization of a region (political) may result in the change of ethnic (demographic) and linguistic (cultural) makeup of a borderland; the extraction of raw materials (economic) is conditioned by the types and quantity of resources available (geographic); population shifts (demographic) may affect the nature and distribution of material found in a borderland (cultural), and so on. Thus, defining and characterizing the various components that makeup boundaries and carefully analyzing these components brings us much closer to understanding the nature of boundary processes. The next step, then, should be too analyze how various components interact and how such interaction produces variation both through time and within and between specific borderland situations (Parker 2006). As a historian, Parker is interested in the cultural boundaries of civilization and their timeline motion. As an archaeologist he conceptualizes frontiers as the material boundaries. In spite of the fact that a frontier is opposed to a border, it acts as an objective category of the historic process. A frontier, according to Parker is mostly a zone of transit, a zone of contacts and a local exchange between different peoples. 29

Assuming that the frontier studies, border studies and boundary studies have their own discursive fields, one can say that there is no holistic theory of the pogranichie, and the state of the art in this research direction more often reminds one of the situation in modern cultural studies or ethnography, where the common theory is mostly combined of the different casestudies. In spite of the fact that the term boundary, border and frontier mix the meanings when used, many of them from border studies can fit in boundary studies which may not have a clear meaning in the geographic space near the physical border. The pogranichie" contrasts the "prigranichie" as it has more imaginary, symbolic and social dimension and more often refers to the social place. As every type of "granitsa" is transforming from the outer, geographically defined and strictly guarded, to the inward, settled in the sphere of mind, freedom, communication and education, we can observe how the "prigranichie" theory is transforming into the "pogranichie" theory.

The Metaphor of "Settlement" and "Border Post" The pogranichie in any type of study, whether they are border studies, frontier studies or boundary studies, is always connected with the idea of end, edge or limit. This limit can be physical, territorial, imaginary, mental, valuable, historic, social and cultural. The variants of different conjunctions and overlapping of borders and boundaries have been meticulously described in the monograph "From Transitology to the Pogranichie Theory" (Bresky, Breskaya 2008) and is represented in the next chapter. 30

Thomas Lunden, professor of human geography, director of the Swedish center of Baltic and East-European studies, points out the fact that the Roman frontier (from Latin fi-ons, forehead) is used in English for the denotation of a front line, an edge or a place of confrontation. In North American history "the frontier" is the end of settlement westwards, the front that the new settlers have to confront. In Romance languages the same word, French fi-ontiere, equals the English "boundary" and the Germanic grens. Charles Meier gives an interesting approach to the definition of a frontier. He points out that, particularly in North America, the frontier was described as a place where white settlement ended and indigenous settlement began (Meier, 2002). Such a frontier indicated the end of culture, civilization and society; it acted simultaneously as a front line where the war for the mastering of new territories took place. That frontier divided civilization from nature, the lower level of people's social development from the higher one. In 1890 American authorities announced that the frontier, as such, had ceased to exist as white settlers had inhabited all continental space of the Unite States. The American frontier ends settlement. Normally frontier in Europe divides peoples: when ordinary Europeans write about a frontier they envisage a line where settlements of one people are replaced by a settlement of another people. Thus the American frontier is symbolized by the forest or the prairie; the European frontier by the border post. The Romans left us an idea of the frontier that shared both elements- the end of their 31

world, but one that had to be fortified against outsiders at a clear border. These were the socalled buffer zones, colonies strictly guarded on the borders. The result was a trade-off... (Meier 2002). A frontier as the "end of a settlement" can be the end of civilization and it is more similar to the fixed border. Such a frontier points to the absence of unified mechanisms of equal exchange and one sided character of its promotion. It can be described by the categories of empire and colony. A frontier can be divisional post- a buffer zone dividing two nation-states mutually recognizing each other. Then such a frontier becomes an open communicative space where subjects can exchange different values. Such a system is built on the arrangement of different processes and conflicts in the frontier zone by legal means. A frontier is more a mechanism of the borderland that depends on different forms of border expansion: equal exchange based on legal acts, colonial conquest or mixed forms.

The "Crossroads" and the Project "Social transformations in the Pogranichie" Such a context of border, boundary and frontier problems in European and American theories influenced the intellectual movement at the beginning of this century in Belarus. It supported the discourse of the pogranichie and distributed it to neighboring Ukraine and Moldova. This intellectual movement is known as the project CASE: Social Transformations in 32

Pogranichie9. We can observe a serious evolution of the intellectuals themselves in this region as they tried to break the frames of substantive discourses, to see not only national and ethic histories in the space outlined by the borders of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, but something common that unites Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova in one region, and also to examine bases and consistent patterns of its development and existence. The main goal of CASE — to promote the renovation in researches and educational university systems in social sciences and humanities, development of professional community and mobilization of intellectual and professional resources for studying social transformations processes in Borderlands of Central Eastern Europe (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova). Theoretical priorities of CASE are theories and models of borderlands in contemporary humanities. The project is ultimately open; it does not impose only one approach, one research field or methodology. The project is set by the concept of the pogranichie and has several stages: individual research work, regular scientific conferences organized by CASE and EHU and texts that are mainly published in the collections of conferences papers and the journal "Perekrestki"1°. The set parameters of the project imply the plu9 CASE: Center of Advanced Studies and Education in Social Sciences and Humanities in European Humanities University (EHU, Minsk-Vilnius). CASE was found in 2003 under the financial support of Carnegie Corporation (New York) and administrative assistance of American Councils in International Education ACTIVACCELS.

I° The "Perekrestki" is a quarterly issued journal (founded in 2001) with the annual digest, "Crossroads" 33

rality of confronting approaches to the problem and inevitably the variety of models which do not either intersect or interact, this is a side effect of this process. The founders of the "Perekrestki" formulate the scope and mission of the journal in the following way: The "Perekrestki" is a transdisciplinary journal dedicated to the political, social and cultural problems of the East European Pogranichie — Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. The main goals are to contribute to the conceptual and methodological renewal of academic researches in the region, to initiate transdisciplinary and transnational dialogue, to assist the representation of regional, national and local academic schools and tradition (Babkou, Tereshkovich 2004, 5). One can note that among the languages of the region (Belarusian, Ukrainian, Romanian and Russian) Russian has been chosen for the journal. All authors' texts and the translations of the most significant texts, that the editors consider to be worth reading, are published in Russian, which is still the academic regional international language. The evolution of ideas has happened for the last nine years within the existing discourse of the pogranichie theory. These changes can be described as the displacement from the geographically centered and geopolitical models of the pogranichie ("land-between") to the concept of the pogranichie as a phenomenon of European civilization, expressed through the problem of coexistence with Other, as the problem of identity, presented in the categories of postcolonial theories. This evolution can also be described as 34

the transition from the idea of insufficient condition of definite space to the discovering of its place and pivot and also the methodological points that will help to analyze it. I. Babkou writes: The pogranichie lies on both sides across the border, and its topological status is paradoxical: the pogranichie acquires a definite integrity due to the fact of its own demarcation, i.e. through the dynamic event of differentiation, meeting a transition of Native and Alien or One and Other (Babkou, 2005, 128). The cherished idea and hope of this intellectual project is to rediscover the Subject in order to escape the anonymity of space. And I. Babkou continues: The pogranichie, seen from the center, does not exist either as ontological or typological integrity, or if to reformulate this idea from the perspective of the center ontology, the pogranichie exists only as a mechanical union of two peripheries divided by the border. If we really have an idea to see the pogranichie, we must imagine other ontology, find other metaphor (Babkou, 2005, 128). This is the way the discovering of the Subject happens in a region. The dynamic processes forming the pogranichie come to life through the Subject's practices. In the article "the project of Identity in the Context of the Pogranichie" N.A. Antanovich writes: 35

It is not necessary to deal with the identity as with something that is given or exists but as with something that is being invented. In other words, it is necessary to deal with the identity as with the project, which assumes that the problem of construction is cultural and social being itself. When you construct your identity, you should be interesting for yourself (Antanovich 2005, 138). 0. Shparaga is also concerned about the problem of the Subjects in the pogranichie; she turns to its philosophical aspect, in which the Subject is conceptualized in the sense adopted from the concept suggested by G. Deleuze. Deleuze introduces this term criticizing the classical concept of Subject as the inner invisible form, and at the same time, discovering the necessity of "its remnant". 0. Shparaga underlines that we can not overcome the boundaries of Western modernity by analyzing the processes that take place in the region of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova: The configuration of the pogranichie itself compels us to relate to everything that surrounds it in a definite way... such axis and achievements of European modernity as human rights, civil society, market economy, modern European system of education and values in many ways are connected with the concept of Subject... (Shparaga 2005, 37). These values cannot be ignored when analyzing the region of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, but in this case we face here, the appearance of three independent problems connected with 36

their realization in the region: "Whether their analysis should be based upon the Subject model; whether these values should be revealed in their decline; whether they should be set, invented or constructed" (Shparaga 2005, 36). Shparaga states that the pogranichie makes itself evident by the process of a reappearance of a Subject. But in this process the pogranichie loses its exceptionally geographical measure and it becomes metaphysical and conceptual. N.A. Antanovich notes that the most important point in the pogranichie discourse is the possibility of its perception from the perspective of the inner experience, this is a transition from the geographical conception of border, to its space and time model — as specific thoughts about the space structure of the outward world in the historic and cultural aspects (Antanovich 2005a, 16). There is a shift in this intellectual discourse from the conception of "borders" to the "pogranichie" ideas. At the same time, N.A. Antanovich makes the process rather objective, analyzing it without concern to states and actions of the Subject: Borders evolve from the single demarcation lines to the plurality of them, from physical borders to cultural boundaries, from barriers — to spaces of interaction, to the pogranichie (Antanovich 2005a, 10). These discussions and research projects are the turning point in the representation of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova region; they confillii their status as a separate European region, East European Pogranichie. In this combination of words the logical stress moves from the words "East European" that ac37

quire only geographical meaning without cultural stereotypes, to the concept pogranichie, that allows one to conceptualize the approaches for describing the given space that are based on the sincere interest in it, and they give it the resources and instruments of self-ascription and self-naming. The prigranichie is not only the zone of the destroying of rigid classification structures (nationstates, in particular) and ideas about them, it should not be analyzed as an analytically empty transit zone, but as a place of creative cultural production... the centers of globalization that do not only have integrative functions but also produce transborder social groups...(Brednikova 2005, 19). The concept of the pogranichie allows the East European intellectuals to avoid the substantial approach, to pay attention to the social structure of the society to which they belong and to suggest an adequate strategy for their description.

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Chapter 2 211- Model of the Pogranichie ...And not the enemies you fight with, but yourself... The Jataka Tales

Negative ;scourse of the Pogranichie 7heory It is clear that the attempts to describe the countries located in the region of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova as a social monolith are artificial" even if they look like a uniform region in some projects. Eastern Europe is not an integrity that can be described with the help of one or even several parameters and variables. Even the political authority that unites this space and allows it to some extent, to ignore a real variety, does not make it uniform. Eastern Europe is perceived as a conglomerate of states which do not form strict interstate unions between themselves. Moreover, Eastern Europe consists not only of nationstates, but also of various corporations. The opening of Eastern Europe as the space of actor's variety as well as the process of actualization of the autonomous actor value and intricately differentiated space is one of the main processes that have occurred in this region since 1989. Therefore, any attempt to deIt does not matter what reasons were selected for this purpose: Slavdom, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, common history etc. All of them serve only to construct a utopian picture of Eastern Europe as a social monolith united politically and ideologically. Such an approach almost completely neutralizes the problem of the border condition of these societies, i.e. valid reasons for their sameness.

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scribe Eastern Europe demands an adequate toolkit and methods of analysis and should take into account the condition of this space defined by the level of development of coordinating mechanisms of cultural, political, civilization, corporate and person boundaries. The Pogranichie is the term that defines the condition of social and political space created through the interaction of borders and boundaries of different natures. It is obvious that in such a context the term "pogranichie" cannot possess only a geographical meaning. The parameters outlining the content of the pogranichie concept have been defined by us as follows: - multi-border and multi-boundary space arising as the effect of social differentiation is a constant feature of the pogranichie; - interaction of borders and boundaries of different nature in one social space; - existence of actors in Eastern Europe defines by presentation and representations of elements of its social space that act in the form of communicative strategies, articulates and artefacts; - intelligibility of the pogranichie spaces, providing an opportunity for a significant interaction with its elements, structures and borders. At the same time the identified parameters specify the presence of negative discourses of the pogranichie research and interpretation of its phenomena as well as possible negative models of Eastern Europe development. We underline the necessity of overcoming the following discourses interfering with the adequate analysis of the pogranichie: 40

- domination of geographical metaphors which impedes the perception of the pogranichie as a space formed by the interaction of borders and boundaries of different natures within the limits of one social space; - politization of social relations and substantial theoretical models of social space that make the structure analysis of processes, occurring in the pogranichie, impossible; - lack of actorship in social processes that breaks off the communication between the actor and the artefact, the actor and its representation; - non-intelligible character of social tendencies that leads processes occurring in the pogranichie to normative deregulation. Metaphor of the Map The first tool guaranteeing the domination of geographical metaphors is the map. The social space is perceived through a complex system of metaphors, the key one, probably topography. More than 5000 years have passed since the moment of the first map emergence. Since then not only the techniques of cartography have changed but, what is more important to us, the functions of the map as well. For a long time the map legitimized the owner of the local farm or was a guidebook for a merchant, a soldier, a traveler. In Modern time the map changes its functions: from showing the route and possession of reflecting social space as such.

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The map, as the route plan, is based on coordinates and marks, the meanings of which are exhausted only by the indication to the goal; the map as a possession scheme concerns only one aspect of the social, namely, the property, being limited by the indication to the owner. The map as a space metaphor is based on the borders acting as configurations of social space in all its aspects. The road, marked on the map, expands the traveler's space, the scheme of possession legitimizes the belonging of the space, specifying its owner, and the border makes the configuration of social space without dealing with the actor. The map of the traveler is the map of the observer who crosses the space and does not stay in one place for long. The map of the owner confirms his status within the social space and represents the procedure of his recognition as such. Basically, modern political maps do not indicate the actors but the borders of imperious orders. Thus, the map may provoke a situation in which the actor is replaced with its metaphor. The third kind of maps, namely metaphors of social space are learnt by school children and are the model of world perception by the majority of people living at present. When we use phrases: "Ukraine has decided", "Belarus has accepted" and "Poland has participated", we apply such geographical metaphors. We have it clear in our mind that behind the metaphor there is an actor defined by the political border. However, geographical metaphors frequently become self-sufficient and consequently cease to represent a complex social reality. The truth is that there is no actor behind the metaphor because the map is a metaphor of the space but not of the actor. 42

The Border and the Boundary It is necessary to differentiate two notions- "border" and "boundary"- if we intend to overcome the designated negative discourse. In English the notion of "border" means, first of all, an actually existing political border, specially created, equipped with a corresponding infrastructure to control, to let through, to register, etc. The border can be crossed as it is material and is not a quality of a certain social actor. Border crossing does not lead to the change of the actor. Simultaneously every public status can be viewed as a border. It is also specially constructed and is the expression of a social need of definite social function. The status can be renewed without the serious change of the actor. For instance, the head of a price department when leaving his office after work, crosses the border of his status, becoming just Alexander Borisovich. The visitor to the department, who needs to discuss some private affairs, should cross the border of the status of Alexander Borisovich so that Alexander Borisovich as the department head could solve the visitor's problem. The border organizes a special kind of space. It represents a set of public statuses configured within the limits of the border. We call this kind of space the border-space in our work. This space obtains its social significance when the pogranichie situations constantly arise. These situations are formed as a result of interaction of the border and boundaries of different natures. The boundary is an imaginary line created by the actor itself, in fact, inseparable from it, behind which the actor's influence is exhausted. It is mental line that objectively fixes the existing division between actors. Its crossing is possible only with the change of the actor. The boundary indicates the existence of the 43

actor participating in social processes, but not completely determined by the border or, in other words, by its status. The example of such a boundary is the already existing distinction between confessional, historical, economic, ethnic and cultural communities. The boundary also appears as the effect of society differentiation and the coming into being of the actor possessing public status (Flora 1999), while preserving other identities. The border forms the space. The boundary does not have such an influence on social space as it is always the result of the actor's practices, it is not the reason but the consequence of the actor's existence and its entering the social space12 . As a matter of fact, actorship is set only by a Pogranichie situation into which the actor should get if he or she intends to confirm both personal and social existence. The formation of the Pogranichie does not occur automatically. It has been proved by modem history often demonstrating the loss of the subject and, consequently, the loss of the 12 It is essential to remember that the formation of the subject can happen only publicly. Even if the actor is a hermit, his activity has public measurement and public effect. Every intellectual and cultural fulfillment is public as it presupposes the presence of the spectator who knows the difference between either beauty, or sense, or suffering. If there is no such break to publicity, then life fades. In Russian literature melancholy of such life isolated from public space was remarkably shown by Vasily Shukshin in his stories about provincial social reformers, who wrote "for the suitcase" all their life, about the inventors of planes and bicycles, about graphomaniacs. Everything that they have invented, have written or have thought up is equally good, because nobody needs it and not because these strange people "were ahead of their time", but because they simply had not entered and did not enter that time. They were closed in their own world that did not have (it was not their fault, obviously) any connection with public space.

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social. A. Renaut in "The Era of the Individual" describes the modernity opposition between the subject and the individual. A. Renaut claims that the subject possesses autonomy while the individual possesses independence: While the concept of autonomy has been allowing the submission to a law or a norm since they were accepted on a free basis (the contractual scheme accurately express this submission to the law given by oneself to himself), the ideal of independence does not accept this restriction of "I", and, on the contrary, strives to set "I" as an essential value. Then the place of autonomy based on its own normativeness is occupied by a simple "care of itself'. Accordingly, the public relation and the consensus concerning the divided norms change into the disunity of the public and the private with the priority of personal happiness and alienation from public space (Renaut 2002, 70). In the Pogranichie theory the models of Belarusian, Ukrainian and Moldavian societies are viewed by us not only within the framework of the interaction of borders, but, mainly, on the one hand, within the framework of the interaction of borders and boundaries, and on the other hand, of boundaries between themselves. The map of Eastern Europe gives us an idea about the border, which has no place for the boundary. However, the Pogranichie research both the border and the boundary, as we have to deal with the problem of existence of boundaries of different nature and also with the problem of existence of 45

boundaries of different nature and also with the problem of actor existence and emergence in the processes, taking place in this region.

Models of Border and Boundary Interaction Using the offered differentiation of notions, the construction of several models of border and boundary interaction becomes possible. The first model represents the variant when the border and the boundary coincide and overlap. The primordial society with no division into political, religious and economic spheres can serve as a good example here. This model has been studied in detail by sociologists since the times of Durkheim. It seems attractive to the society that regresses in its social structure, as well as to totalitarian societies, which take separate subjects beyond the boundaries of the social structure, having achieved concurrence of political, economic and cultural boundaries between themselves. Such homogenization is inevitably connected with violence, as it suppresses the practices of the subjects, based on their freedom and representations built by them. The second variant of border and boundary interaction is possible when the border forms the space, relying on certain boundaries, malting cultural, religious and other kinds of expansion. That is how modern nation-states in England, the Netherlands, France and Germany have been formed. Similar processes are accompanied by acculturation, assimilation and provincialization of space experiencing such kinds of expansion.

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The third is the model in which the subject that has created the boundary is divided between several border spaces. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation can be used as an example of this model. At present, studies of the European integration processes and borderlands' processes take place within the framework of this model (border-studies)13. However, frequently, the problematics of the borderlands research are substituted by the problems of the pogranichie' 4. The fourth model can be named a 2B-model. It assumes the coexistence of the border-space generated by the border and the boundaries interacting with the border-space. In fact, it is the pogranichie model. It becomes possible to resolve a number of questions within its framework: 1) formation of the border and the border-space; 2) formation of the presentation strategy of the actors creating boundaries in the border-space; 3) legitimation of the autonomous status of the actors creating boundaries; 4) institutionalization of the actors who create boundaries;

13 The PT can be viewed as the meta-theory in relation to the research of borderlands and cross-border interaction, having as a rule, an applied character. 14 Compare: "The inhabitants of the pogranichie constantly walk from one culture to another, and it turns out that it is not so important for them to belong to one culture; that is why a special pogranichie culture with the ambivalence of identities is created..." (Brednikova 2005, 20)

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5) construction of the interaction mechanism between normative systems of the border-space and the actors making boundaries. The stated mechanisms should be distinguished from the identification process as they function on the stage of the actor entering the public sphere with the available precise identity system. The identity is one of the basic conditions and bases of boundary construction. The designated mechanisms do not represent socialization mechanisms as their purpose is not the inclusion of the actor in a certain social structure but, on the one hand, the existence of the social structure as such and, on the other hand- the actor.

Actors hip Five afore identified parameters of the 2B-model concept should be united with the help of the notion of "actorship" for the further operationalization of the pogranichie concept. Actorship is the ability of a social actor to produce presentations in the public sphere and is a condition for its participation in public relations. Therefore, we call the actor, as such, a form of existence, which simultaneously complies with all five specified conditions: - it can display its representation in the public sphere; - these representations get legitimation; - it allows the actor to institutionalize its practices; - it compels an actor to provide for the convergence of its normative system with other normative systems.

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- the fifth key condition, independent of the actor, is the presence of environment for the occurrence of such processes, i.e. actually the border-space. Actorship is a necessary precondition, for the opportunity to raise a question about the criteria and the conditions of the actors' belonging to social space. What makes a person a member of a family, a nation, a corporation, a Church, a state? Obviously, it is not only the desire based on the actor's own interests or the will and interests of the community without the actor's aspirations. An actor enters the social space, being in its status, admitting its existence with the limits of other actors and institutions. At the same time social space reaches the actor only in the sphere of its own limit. Therefore, it is possible to make a conclusion that any communication and interaction assumes the contact of the limits of actors and spaces. The limit allows a question to be put about the actor and its boundaries and also about special pogranichie situations: an actor with a free will, an autonomous status and complete social space15

15 During the last decades the discussion about the concept "individual" set by structuralists gave cause for a boisterous debate about the parity of "individual" and "society" or "action" and "structure". These different directions coexisted in parallel in the past, now the problem about their interaction is being discussed more often. When applying to the sociological metaphors, it becomes possible to make a conclusion that modern sociology has almost stopped viewing society as a structured "park" or as an unruffled surface of the sea with "ships floating on it". Pictures were appreciably overlapped, and the sociological analysis of society turns into P. Manson's model of "boats in park".

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It is evident that the Pogranichie is a situation and at the same time a condition typical of different social levels. The Pogranichie space can be both wide and narrow as it is determined by the limits of the construction of self-similar spaces: they can represent greater communities or can be limited "by two or three" subjects. There are similar structures at all levels of this space, therefore, each level can be considered as quite independent and autonomous. When S. Weil wrote about a person's need for roots, she specified the rootedness of social practices in the structures of an individual's inner world (Weil 1992). Apparently, this is a natural order of perception of the social world: internal practices define the social order. As a rule, a healthy community cannot grow on the basis of vile individual nature and vice versa. Actorship allows a paving of the way for communication between the personal and the social and detection of their interdependence.

Actorship and Legal Personality

The notion "actorship" should be distinguished from the notion "legal personality", which is one of the key concepts in the theory of law. The last one is the basis for the social organization theory (the theory of legal relations, the theory of legal order). The notion "legal capacity" refers to the subject already placed in the legal environment, which is always primary in relation to legal personality. Therefore, "legal personality" is a concept which allows the analyzing of stable legal phenomena and established legal systems. However, the discussion about

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the correlation between the subject and its status as well as about the genesis of the legal capacity phenomenon, which we identify as "actorship", still exists. If the theory of law focuses on the procedures of the legal personality acquisition, it does not connect this process with the nature of the subject. The conditions of obtaining legal personality, provides only for some restrictions based on: 1) the psychological condition of the subject (extending only to its capability) and 2) its status in the legal environment (when its activity gets and obvious anti-legal character). Hans Kelsen ignores the problem of the procedures of legal personality obtaining, specifying the fictitious character of the "legal personality" concept. In his opinion, individuals do not create legal environment. In Kelsen's work "Reine Rechtslehre" the author insists that the personificational concepts of "legal subject" and "legal body" are not so necessary for the description of law. These are simply auxiliary concepts which facilitate the description. Their use is admissible only if their special character is realized (Kelsen 1987, 2-37). As a consequence of the prevalence of this approach, the traditional concept of the legal subject is dominated by the idea of some legal essence independent of legal order, i.e. of some legal subjectivity, which law finds already formed, whether it is in the individual or in the community, and which is only important when recognized, and law should recognize it if it does not intend to lose its legal character (Kelsen 1987, 38). However, in the second half of the twentieth century there was a gradual disclosing of communicative functions of law (Habermas 2001) that also entailed a change in the understanding of the 51

actor and its status. It made the problem of law preconditions and existence of extralegal normative systems and their interaction with the legal system, more obvious for researchers. This process originated within the frameworks of law anthropology that, firstly, studied the exotic legal systems of Africa and Oceania16, but then became interested in the national legal systems of the West (Dworkin 1977). On the whole, this tendency can be identified as the concept of the personification of law. The idea about the transcendence of the subject of law in relation to the objective law was used to protect the theory that subjective law is an institute setting an insuperable limit to the substance of legal order formation. The notion of actorship destroys such an approach and specifies that while studying a legal relation and, for example, the process of the status formation, we deal with the interaction of several normative orders in relation to which the actor does not possess the equality of absolute transcendence. Such an approach allows viewing the actor as autonomous in relation to the so-called "objective law", i.e. as free, but not voluntary and unprincipled. In this case, it is necessary to admit that the actor possess discursive qualities unlike a monad. The discursiveness of the actor releases it from the total subordination and conditionality of organizational structures. 16

Legal anthropology, using an historical-normative approach together with evolutionism, moved to the theory of law in its most "obvious" displays, later, due to functionalism and procedural analysis, began to describe the behaviour of people more than codes. Later, having recognized pluralism, it discovered a set or normative systems with state law alongside (Rulan 2000, 50).

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This concept of the actor becomes even more important when legal order is created by means of a democratic procedure and discursive practices without general plan and logic. Consequently, the ideology of legal personality relies on ethical values of individual freedom and an autonomous person. From this point of view, the order, which does not recognize freedoms, cannot be considered legal order in principle. In this case "actorship" is a necessary concept used to define conditions and preconditions of the legal personality genesis as the basis of the actor and its status interaction, the actor and the social order. The given concept refers to the system of the actor's discursive practices denoting the arrangement of social relations. These practices do not depend on the presence or absence of the legal personality of the given actor, but form a discourse provoking reaction of the legal and social systems. This mechanism possesses a universal character that does not depend on time and circumstance. The preconditions of legal personality are connected with actorship, and actorship itself is not institutionalized, but it is a source and basis of any individual social action of the subject, that actually creates a phenomenon of the subject (Kant 1966)". In other words, actorship sets such characteristics of the pogranichie which allow viewing it as a zone of self-reflection, representation and institutionalization of the actor, setting the model of social space. In such a model, subject senses and rep17

Kant states that pure reason is present and remains identical in all actions of a human being in all circumstances, but it does not exist in time and does not acquire, for example, a new condition in which it has not been earlier, it defines the condition, but is not predetermined by it (Kant 1966, 541).

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resentation practices affect not only the actor itself, but also a different actor and social institutions. The concept "actorship" allows considering the actor in its subject-subject relationsI8 in the pogranichie practices, including intrasubject relations connected with the coordination of its roles and statuses19. Such an approach makes it possible to overcome the vision of the The whole complex of the Modern philosophy, from Descartes up to Husserl is based on the idea of methodological solipsism, on the model of a subject-object relation putting aside the belonging of the subject to a certain society. The "linguistic turn" in the philosophy of the 20th century was an attempt to retreat from such an approach. A similar process can be observed in the theory of law. Habermas wrote that not only the knowledge and the use of the objective nature are the phenomena to be explained, it is also the intersubjectivity of possible understanding. Thus, the focus of the research moves from cognitive-instrumental to communicative rationality. It is not the attitude of the isolated subject towards something in the objective world that can be imagined (presented) and manipulated that is paradigmatic for it, but intersubjective communication established by the subjects possessing language and action competence, coming to agreement with each other (Nakarchuk 1997). 113

19 Simona Cerutti writes in her work about the formation of modern judicial institutions that the problem of the parity between practice and status (where a special case is the problem of the parity between personal rights and property law) permeated societies. It affected all social classes. It was vital to define what elements the social identification should be based on, while facing important changes made in those times. Is the status set by the authority (via title, rank or position) or is it the result of certain actions? If somebody is engaged in trade, does he turn into a businessman (this is the basis of the disputes about derogeance)? Is a nobleman the one who lives like a nobleman? Or is he the one who can "decorate himself' with the title given to him? Is a citizen someone who lives in the city or the one who possesses a patent for belonging to petty bourgeoisie (letterdiborghesia)? The analyzed society has been immersed in alternative systems of values and systems of legitimacy. It is impossible to say that the one version corresponds to the national view and the other to the elite one. Both have received their scientific statement. In different times both versions were used by merchants and handicraftsmen, lawyers and attorneys (Cerutti 2005).

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pogranichie only as spheres of interstate relations and also to reject the definition of subjects of border relations as such whose external institutional ties exceed the ties with internal structures (Babkou, Naumova and Tereshkovich 2005). This presents the pogranichie as a crumble state of social system that is in a crisis, broken apart by external forces without a serious influence on the processes going on in it. The pogranichie emergence cannot be connected only with the achievement of a social or political system of some external limit because even in this case, it meets itself (the limit carries out the function of a mirror, specifying the actor features which do not allow it to develop further). Only then the actor meets the Other. Therefore, the pogranichie is created by the internal boundaries formed by actors' practices which define the character of its external interaction. In this case we receive a tool for the analysis of the processes taking place in social space, allowing us to consider the subject's practices and to view the Eastern European social space through the representations of its actors. The concept "actorship" allows avoiding two negative discourses of the pogranichie research at once: 1) politization of the social space analysis with all social interaction considered from the position of the border influence, i.e. a certain objective imperious order; 2) lack of actorship in social processes arising due to the substitution of the actor by its status.

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Depolitization of Research Depolitization of the pogranichie social space allows us to view Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova as intricately differentiated communities taking into account not only their recognized borders but numerous boundaries formed, first of all, by nonpolitical actors as factors of their coming into being and their further existence. This method encourages the revealing of real actors forming this region in social relations, as well as institutions and their representational mechanisms. In Eastern Europe societies the problem of lack of actorship is posed by both postmodernist criticism of the Subject (Shparaga 2005) and the theory of tranzitology, placing the emphasis on the institutional changes in the countries of transition. For example, P. Bourdieu claims, that the social space is the field of power which of necessity is imposed on the agents involved in the given field; it is also the field of struggle inside which the agents resist each other, using their own means and purposes that differ in accordance with their position in the structure of the power field, thus participating in the preservation or transformation of the structure of these positions (Bourdieu 2005). However, the statement about the existence of social space and some of its features does not resolve the problem of analysis of Eastern Europe and the pogranichie. It does not liberate such space from anonymity. This is not only the problem of bases forming for the obtaining of the actor's status, butthe realization of the necessity to overcome the full replacement of the status by the actor; it is also the problem of typologization of relations between the actor and its status.

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Table 3. Actorship Models Status

Non-statu

Actor

Real actorship, le- Potential actorgitimized boundary, ship, nonthe pogranichie legitimized boundary, the pogranichie

Non-actor

Fictitious actorship, Lack of actorship, domination of bor- total border-space, der-space, pseudo- ion-pogranichie boundary, nonpogranichie

The table NQ 3 presents the typology of actor-status relations forming pogranichie. Subjects can participate in the realization of the 2B-model, which really or potentially has their actorship, forming boundaries (system of representations) and relying on their own normative modus. However, the process of Eastern European space formation presupposes the participation of fictitious actors (created from the outside due to an administrative order; they do not have their own existence resources operating, only by way of manipulation), and also the participation of pseudo-subjects which possess neither the status, nor the properties of the subject (masses, "population", atomized individuals, countries, peoples, etc.). Fictitious subjects do not rely on their own normative modus and, consequently, are not capable of forming boundaries in the border-space. Pseudo-subjects 57

are excluded from public space which in this case is defined only by the border factor. The typologization of actor-status relations allows the depicting of a number of models of Eastern European space organization.

Table 4. Models of the Pogranichie with Correlation to Actorship Models Non-Status

Status Actor

actorReal actorship, le- Potential gitimized boundary, ship, the pogranichie non-legitimized the boundary, pogranichie

Non-actor

Fictitious actorship, Lack of actorship, domination of bor- total border-space, der-space, pseudo- non-pogranichie nonboundary, pogranichie

Eastern Europe can develop either as the pogranichie or as the non-pogranichie. The pogranichie is a positive model of a complexly differentiated community structure, being the form within the limits of which there are actors' practices in social and public space. The absence of the pogranichie is organic for the primordial society and, in the context of the autonomous 58

actor's logic, unnatural for complexly differentiated communities which include Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. Intricately differentiated communities which do not build the pogranichie are compelled to resort to irrational practices for the mobilization of society and the maintenance of its integrity; they also have to use violence. In this case, the context of the pogranichie research is set by the actorship concept providing for the ability to perceive social space, thus taking primary non-intelligible situations which presume the absence of the subject of social action beyond the limits of this research. The perceiving of social space becomes the main condition of its actual existence for the actor. M. Mamardashvili writes that: "Besides the imperious need to be, take place or exist as philosophers say, an individual still has a need to comprehend. Basically, an individual cannot live in the world which is not clear to him. But the principle of such understanding is always combined with the fundamental attitude of the human being himself and in the sense of the need to identify himself and in the ability to respect oneself' (Mamardashvili 1992).

Intelligibility The presence of the non-pogranichie zone in table N° 4 shows rather terrifying alternatives for Eastern Europe development, relying on non-actor practices forming in the nonnormative20 and irrational environment. These alternatives be2° Such communities are more likely inclined to resort not to the norm but to

the taboo (Geertz 2004).

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come so terrifying only because Eastern European communities are intricately differentiated and presented by a set of subjects possessing actorship. The development in the direction of these alternatives means the social regress and fragmentation of their own life space for them. First of all, this regress is connected with the coming into being of unintelligible space about which H. Arendt inquires'what kind of fundamental experience from the sphere of people's public life forms the spirit of the totalitarian regime, the essence of which is terror, while the principle of action is the logicality of ideological thinking?' This experience has two foundations, namely, the loneliness and the falsely consistent logic. It is not that kind of loneliness that, in fact, is a fruitful solitude that supports the internal dialogue of our "I" with itself, when we are guaranteed the recognition of our individuality in the community of people. I refer to that kind of loneliness that has the attributes of the loss of "1" when a person loses both trust in him/herself as an internal interlocutor, and that elementary trust in the world without which any experience becomes impossible. "I" and the world, abilities to reflect and perceive experiences, are lost simultaneously (Arendt 1996). The alive experience of the participation in a human community is replaced by the violent self-evidence of the logic reasoning, by the relationships of cause and effect, general determination or tabooing. In this case, the necessity of intensive thinking and decision-making is lost. All forces are directed only towards the achievement of the result, and any result is ac-

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ceptable. "The domination of clichés of logic reasoning in the conditions of mass loneliness" became the formula of totalitarian experience found by H. Arendt (Oznobkina 1997). Z. Bauman in "the Individualized Society" speaks about the presence of this experience outside the totalitarianism" (Bauman 2005). H. Arendt called the situation of non-intelligibility the "languagelessness" in which there cannot be a person but an insane individual. This main difference of two models, the pogranichie and the non-pogranichie, is based on the assumption of the difference between an actor and its status. Here an actor becomes a being in the process formation, "doomed" to the interaction with boundaries, which are built by him and others. The pogranichie is the condition used to address actor practices allowing the production of intelligible situations. It is obvious, that there are only two conditions for the realization of these practices. The first concern the human being and human communities and consists of the recognition of their liquidity. Neither the person, nor the community are given, they are only set. It is necessary to pass a certain road to reach the individual and the community. Only a human being can do this. Accordingly, any social engineering making social space without the participation of the actor, is doomed to degeneration, turning into the regimes that use terror and limit the responsibility of the individual. The second condition concerns the quality of public space. It should be open for an actor because it is a habitat for his thoughts and actions. There is no other environment. It is a certain circle of life and communication, namely a circle of Ira61

ditions and mutual obligations, having not ideological, but alive character. The actions of the subject in this space are determined by the actor's own logic based on the subject's status and nature. There are no obligations and mutual duties, however, as well as guarantees beyond the borders of public space21. Only in the context of the border and border-space is an actor capable of obtaining a certain status by means of which the actor can carry out social interactions. Such space calls for the cooperation of people. The relation between the actor and its status in public space assume that there should be a sphere of sense, and consequently, the internal experience of the actor becomes verified only in a certain adequate space. But this place also cannot be found outside of some practices of the actor. There is no specially prepared sphere of sense. At the same time there is a whole number of places prepared for absurdity. In the twentieth century absurdity has been studied quite thoroughly, both theoretically and practically. It has been defined by a set of metaphors: nausea, plague, process and castle. All of them are used to identify the situation of the initially set world behind the looking glass and to turn both inside out- the actor and social space when absolutely everything becomes impossible: from the respect of the actor towards itself up to the perceiving of the world. Both the actor and the world behind the looking-glass are Hence is the value of any public space. Consequently, there is a problem with the size of this space, whether it is wide enough for everybody. There is rationality somewhere, but the problem is whether it is accessible to everybody.

21

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just imitations of themselves, thus, no categories can be applied to them. They are absurd. It is impossible to comprehend absurdity, it is possible to leave it only for creating a different space because "there are some first actions or acts of world compatibility (absolutes) related to Kant's intelligibility and Descartes's cogito sum. It is inside them that, at the level of his development, an individual can place the world and himself as part of it, reproduced by the same world as the subject of human requirements, expectations, moral and cognitive criteria. The whole reflecting process is not enough for a thought, even for one accidental thought. Other things which I call additional of life acts, life conditions, which have their ontological or existential conditions of the possibility, are also necessary. These conditions could be destroyed" (Mamardashvili 1992, 144). There is no alternative for such first acts or preconditions of sense. There is also no alternative between intelligible and non-intelligible. The latter means the end of internal experience translation or the death of the actor (in our case it is social death); the actor who refuses the sense in social relations, loses the value of an independent social subject. Death is not an alternative to life. The intelligible space is absolutely necessary for the existence of both the societal and the actor who are the only ones capable of producing such a space. This is the base of the actor's institutionalization, if the foundation for a personal action relying on the subject's values and norms, is allocated within it. This sense is absolutely deprived of a speculative value. The sense appears only in the pogranichie situations which inquire about the very bases of the subject and the possibility of its continuation in the interaction 63

with the Other. This sense, as it appears on the boundaries, is immanent to reality, it is not realized, but this is what moves the life. Some things become possible in life and others become impossible due to it22 . This sense cannot be received from the outside, it is revealed only in the personal dynamics of an individual. This dynamic existence cannot be stopped without the destruction of the subject; it cannot be replaced by a metaphor, a card, a picture, an ideology, an idea. It is always real and never has any ready answers. Each answer in this case is personal and cannot be prompted or replaced by someone else. But it means that there are no true and intelligent realities, that the pogranichie is the essence of social life. That for a human it is necessary (again and again) to transform something into a situation that can be intelligently evaluated and solved, for example, in terms of personal dignity, i.e. into the situation of freedom or rejection of it as one of its opportunities.

22 "Unfortunately, in our everyday reflection, including social one, we always make a fatal mistake. We place everything that actually connects the fields of our effects into the world in the form of a perfect image and the ideal that we search for. For instance, we say: show us a fair concrete law and then we shall live obeying this law. But was there anytime and anywhere such a law, the application of which always led to the triumph of justice? Give us an example of ideal or perfect society. When we cannot show it (and it is impossible to show as it does not present), the nihilism triumphs. It is due to the misunderstanding of ourselves and our morals. First of all, nihilism is the requirement for "sublime" to exist. The second step is the discovery that there was never anything sublime: well, show me a truly honest person! Everybody has a drawback, some self-interest. The third step is the confirmation that everything sublime is a continuous pretence, hypocrisy, a lofty covering of vile things. And then the well-known phrase: "All is allowed when there is no God" (Mamardashvili 1992, 61).

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Personalism and the condition of intelligibility of the social as a feature of the pogranichie mean the deobjectivization of those things which seem indissoluble, for example, morals and rights. These objective things "placed into the pogranichie environment demand preconditions. For instance, morality is not a triumph of certain morals (one can say, "good society", "perfect institution", "ideal person"), compared to something opposite but an ability to produce and reproduce the situation, to which it is possible to apply moral terms and to use them (and only them) as the basis for the unique and complete description" (Mamardashvili 1992, 111). In other words, the situation of the pogranichie allows one to correct the main thesis of tranzitology concerning major questions of existence of Eastern European societies. Specifically, the main problem is not in the institutions or their adaption but in the actualization of preconditions on the basis of which these institutions can exist. The intelligibility of social space and its institutions also demands the pogranichie mechanisms to be organized in a special way, which provide an opportunity for the actor to find senses and maintain structures of social space, not deduced from personal efforts. The internal experience is deformed and cannot be broadcast outside of such a space, while the subject cannot be adequately interpreted. For instance, certain values in Europe demanded the creation of semantic structures operating beyond the limits of local orders and logics, being turned directly to an individual, also outside of the context, formed by the position regarding local orders and their normative systems. The concepts of the Empire, Sacred Rus', Rzechpospolita, Europe, state, people, nation and federation serve as examples of such 65

schemes; all of them are not substantial, do not specify any certain subject and even any certain order, but represent mechanisms of the pogranichie, identify the principles of the social interaction and provide the understanding of the social world. They are necessary because they rely on a subject's values not adequate to norms and institutions which are their contemporaries. On the other hand, the pogranichie mechanisms can be viewed as social frames. In this case intelligibility of situation is determined by an opportunity to form a frame, significant for the social place, by the subject. The construction of such a frame becomes an indicator for the realization of actorship23. The social frame is the scheme of interpretation, the background, and understanding of the events, the participants of which possess will, expediency and rationality, in other words, an alive activity of the subject (Goffman 2003). The frame is an alive and developing form of the subject. The given typology is a methodological basis used to overcome the fourth negative

"Though, unfortunately, a human being cannot be the master of time that loosens any orders; however, that consciousness I have been speaking about exists in a special mode and allows the correcting of this inevitable shaking or declination. In a stream of time we all decline. For example, we are declined by our passions, etc. It happens to us contrary to our consciousness. I emphasize that there is also a possibility to straighten the declination along with it. Moreover, it should occur constantly and in each place it should renew again and again, for the world in which we could live, as conscious and emotional beings with desires. But if consciousness is the straightening of declination, hence, something else should be born together with me in this world. It means that declination is some straight segment restored from my soul which I cannot but walk on. Nobody has the right to force me to descend from this straight line" (Mamardashvili 1992, 56). 23

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discourse of the pogranichie research that includes nonintelligible social processes as an object.

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Chapter 3 The Pogranichie Morphology We made an effort, showing our homes. The visitors thought: you live well. The slum is within you. T. Transtromer. The Dispersed Congregation Border Space Borders are always real, directly perceived and static. The evident examples of such are the political borders of states which are the structural bounds24, the limits of public power. Such borders do not point out at any definite actor, but denote a certain public order. Towards the public order, political borders are the outward confines of social structure. Political borders set a particular kind of space which we define as border-space. It cannot be identified either with social space (as far as it does not relate to any definite actors, their actions and goals), or with the space of public power (as is can exist without statuses).

24 The most consciously planned strategies can be realized only within the contexts and the approaches determined by structural limits, and by the knowledge of these limits distributing irregularly in the field (Bourdieu 2005, 142).

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Political borders are unique because their existence depends on the rule that can be formulated as follows: it is impossible to form several public orders within one territory simultaneously. If there are a number of such orders within the limits of one space, they are not in a stable condition25. And, as far as there can be only one particular order of such kind within the definite territory, one can speak about its concrete, unique border that determines the space limits of its spreading. The uniqueness of public space is realized in the concept of sovereignty that is multivocal and indefinite, and therefore, fit to denote the dynamic, changing and non-subjective reality. K. Schmitt writes about the concept of "sovereignty", that the historic stages of the "sovereignty" dogma are characterized by different political struggles for power, but not by the evolution of dialectic immanent to the concept. Bodin's concept of sovereignty was formed in the sixteenth century in the situation of the complete disintegration of Europe into nation-states and of the struggle between princes' absolutism and estates. In the eighteenth century the national consciousness of the recently appearing states was formulated in the internationally legal concept of sovereignty in Vattel's works. The same definition is always

The so-called "grey zones" are good examples of such an unstable condition. Several public systems exert influence upon these grey zones; neither of these systems can be dominant or the only one. Any organized criminality produces a grey zone effect. However, there are a great number of grey zones of national scope in the world. The classical example is Colombia where since the mid-60s of the twentieth century vast territories have been controlled by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which are not under control of the official Colombian authorities.

25

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repeated in different variations: sovereignty is the supreme, absolute power independent of law. This definition can be applied to diverse socially-political complexes and can work for varied political interests. It is not the adequate symbol of reality, but a formula, a sign, a signal. It is infinitely various and, therefore, in practice it can be highly useful or completely worthless, depending on the situation. This definition can be also applied to the superlative degree "the supreme power" to denote a real amount, though in reality, where the law of causality reigns, it is impossible to pull out any separate factor and to endue it with such superlative degree. There is no insuperable power that functions with the reliability of the law of nature, no supreme power in political reality; the power does not prove anything towards the law because of the trivial basis that Rousseau, corresponding to his epoch, formulated: "Power is physical might. A gun in the criminal's hands is also a power. The combination of actual and supreme legal powers is the main dilemma of the "sovereignty" concept" (Schmitt 2000, 32). The concept of sovereignty is an attempt to express the uniqueness and indisputability of any public order that does not represent a defmite actor but the configuration of social relations which are formed within the borders. It is basically important that sovereignty is not a property of any actor26 but a feature of the definite configuration of ties and relations within 26 The concept of the state sovereignty was explained by Jean Bodin who aimed to guarantee the integrity of the state in the situation of political instability in France. Bodin examined that state (not an individual or structure) as the only one possessor of sovereignty. In his early work — "La Methode pour etudier l'Histoire", Bodin wrote about the "indivisibility of power" (Bodin 2000, 75).

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one territory. The sovereignty cannot be appropriated or usurped by the actor. Someone can dream that he has taken possession of this space, though it is nothing but an illusion. T. Hobbes, who gave Leviathan's name to his great tract, continued the Christian tradition of respect and amazement at nature phenomena, which are independent from human will, the state most grandiose among them. "Can you play with it like a bird or keep it on a leash for your girls? "-Hobbes repeats the rhetorical question address to Job thousands of years ago27. There are no fetters for this monster, magnificent and up to any imagination. This space is independent and not subordinate to the actor. It is possible to occupy a definite place in the border-space which depends on the rules of existence of this space, but no one can dictate the rule of existence for this space on the assumption of someone's positional logic. Border-space can be substituted only by other types of border-space, and until it has happened, it has no alternatives. If one knows the codes of this space, he can change it. It is important that border-space is independent of the actor and even of the sovereign, which is based on the configuration of relations where an executer and his victim are both important and interdependent elements, where a vassal means no less than a king. It is obvious that the actors existing in this space do not produce it. Such space is a natural form for a group of actors which are compelled to coexistence by different reasons and have worked out adequate practices. If this society

27

See Job 40:24

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cannot solve the problems of their existence and coexistence with other societies, then others will do it putting the given society in wider structures. It is necessary to introduce the concept of autarchy28 together with the concept of sovereignty for the characteristic of border-space. Any border-space is autarchic in its nature; it is conditionally self-sufficient because nothing hampers it from being self-sufficient. There is no alternative for it, no matter whether it is good or not, fitting for life or not, comfortable or not... It exists, and it existence itself is much more important than all its properties. Border-space is a configuration of social relations of power. There are mechanisms, formed by the necessity in it, which allows the solving of the problem of coordination of these actors' actions in border-space, of the differentiation of social structure and the integrity of its elements. It is notable that all post-soviet history of Eastern Europe begins from the declarations of sovereignty29. Such declarations formed a definite configuration of ties and relations.

28 Autarchy (from Greek airzapiata — "self-sufficient") is the independence of outward phenomena and other persons. it is an important characteristic of border-space that makes the effect of the border. The system of statuses is address inside itself, the border protects this system of statuses, and unites it. There is an analogue in the physical world — substance tries to get the form of a sphere — that is provided by the power of gravitation and surface tension. Social structures act in a similar way; they are "self-sufficient" as a sage-stoic.

See for example, Declaration about the state sovereignty certified by the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus on the 27u of July in 1990, Minsk. 29

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Their main function was to proclaim this space to be the ultimate form of the organization of social relations. The nationalethic rhetoric was used in the declarations as widely as possible, but only as a legitimizing element for solving the practical task of border construction. Though these declarations were approved by citizens, one should distinguish two levels in them: on the first level they were directed to hypostatize the alternative actor to an existing one which solved the problems of constitutive character (but it was not the main function of the given documents). The ratification of the sovereign space, which organized social relations within new borders, took place on the second level. Two given processes turned up to be asynchronous as the hypostatizing of the alternative actor is quite a long process, but a foundation of the border is a brief one. This asynchrony predetermined the perception of the processes that took place in Eastern Europe, at two levels torn in time. These processes are perceived by the majority of researchers as a substantial and subjective, though, the construction of border structures occurs here. It turns out that in transforming societies such processes should be perceived as being composed of two constituents- subjective and non-subjective. If the actor can be defined via substantial properties of language, culture and traditions, then the non-actor is characterized by such concepts as efficacy, integrity, controllability and flexibility. It is impossible to transfer substantial concepts into structural ones and vice versa. Besides, one can state that the interaction within political borders can be increasingly complicated if it turns out that the social space has gaps which cannot be characterized either by structural of substantial features. 74

The last variant is possible as the political border does not necessarily have any substance or any actor possessing one will and holistic organization.

Status as a Border Public statuses are other borders, existing together with the outer political border, which is also important for borderspace30. The public status is characterized by the same qualities as the outer border. The status does not point out at a definite actor; it is only determined by social structure and its needs. If one does not possess a status, it means one does not belong to border-space. A status constricts the actor to its social function and sets up the definite frame and form for the social space. The formation of the system of statuses is the reduction of the infinite variety of the human world to the system consisting of a definite number of elements. In public order we do not deal with the unique actors such as Mikhail, Maria or Vasily, but with the actors, who have different functions such as a teacher, a pediatrician, a taxi-driver. Quantitative analysis of Mikhails and Marias doesn't give any information in the examined society but the same analysis among workers and pediatricians pro--

30 The initial legal state of subjects is characterized by the concept of "legal status". From Latin, the term "status" means "condition", "state". Still, in the juridical literature it is recommended to distinguish the concept of "legal state" from the concept of "legal status". Such a supplement is important if one, when speaking about the "legal state", means a concrete legal state of an actor which is determined by its legal status as well as by the sum of concrete legal relations which the actor is involved in.

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vides us with valuable data. The relations between Marias and Mikhails may be interesting, but they do not inform us about the public order. Ties and relations between their social statuses are necessary for social analysis. The existence of border-space assumes not only the existence of political borders, but plenty of especially configured statuses within the frames of these borders constructing the given space. Borders can be divided into two classes: inner and outer towards the border-space. The outer are political borders, the inner- social statuses. They are the elements of borderspace. One can say that border-space is a complex system of inter-status communications, defined by the political border. Border is an appurtenance of various communities and actors: economic, political, religious, able to form their own competence and statuses; but not all of them may form their border or adopt social statuses. It is not correct to study the border-space as a structure formed by the political border, but- as constructed by the configuration of different types of boundaries where the political border is the organizing principle for the configuration of other borders. The border is not an additional category that allows describing of the public space, but is the element of this space. The outer political border forms the border-space together with the configuration of status borders existing within its limits. The relations between the outer border expressing the unity and uniqueness of the border-space, and the inner borders displaying the genuine diversity and differentiation of this space, initiate the discussion about the mechanisms that solve the problem of such unity and variety combining. 76

Border-Space Enlargement Border-space is not eager to be enlarged, to expand its structure due to its autarchy and the subjectnessless. But it develops thanks to actors' impulses. The border is formed only by the development of a status system; its confines are the primary factor defining the limits of such enlargement. We can observe the same process in different variants within the whole social structure: an actor finds itself in the definite border, but the realization of the actor within this space occurs without the border resources. Border-space does not differentiate itself and does not assume differentiation of a status system. Border-space is about to be formed as the simplest model of hierarchical subordination. However, not any actor is determined only by the sovereign and his-authority. No actor is defined by its status only; everyday and private lives still exist, even in the most primitive and limited variants. Status is a compound phenomenon determined by the border-space as well as by the relation between the actor and its social function. The process of status formation is central and the most problematic one in the given conception of borderspace. The sovereignty principle develops exactly in this process- an actor is not able to form its status anywhere but within the border-space; the problem of personal freedom arises and the strategies of the actorship realization develop within this space. The status achieved by an actor does not always belong to the order that extends up to the limits of political borders. It 77

may be a much smaller order: for example, the order of a military regiment. On the contrary, this outer order may be much larger than the order of political borders. The members of Churches belong to such order. The world, outlined by the political borders is nothing more than one of its models. The national border-space is one among the same numerous spaces that it constantly interacts with.

Interaction of Different Orders Status is a phenomenon whose existence is possibly only when two orders interact: the subjective order and the borderspace. Otherwise, the problem of status would not exist, but there would be an infinitely expanding sovereign's power continued in its counteragents. But it is not like this. The borderspace undergoes the continuous influence of the process of social differentiation, which is external towards the border-space. The genesis of new statuses is always the answer of the borderspace to external challenges, resulting in the differentiation of its structure31 Such structural differentiation and the genesis of new statuses in the existing system should be central for social researchers as it is the main inquiry of social life. In the 50s social psychologist Kurt Lewin worked out the theory of social changes characterizing social institutions as the balance of powers that produce changes and those, which restrain these changes. This theory is a theory of stability but not the theory of changes, as Lewin considered the transition or change as a temporary unstable condition. According to Lewin, such changes consist of three stages: a) defrost that allows keeping stability in the shifting situation, b) change defining the course of development, and c) refreeze that continues as the institutionalization of the strategies of development which arose from the previous stages (Hatch 2002, 347-348) 31

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The relations between: a) border-space and other border-space; b) border-space and a status c) a status and an actorrequire the existence of coordinating mechanisms. Such mechanisms should a) retain the nominal autarchy of the border-space that guarantees social autonomy, b) support diversity, the actual level of social differentiation and the system of public statuses, and c) guarantee the intelligible character of border-space. This balance is very fragile, and it is not surprising, that a great number of countries cannot keep up to this balance. Borders may stay not well-defined, statuses not outlined, actors aloof of the social space. In so defined border-space, the border has two different roles — separational and communicational. Therefore the relation between the border-space and the status system and the formation of the border-space may be realized in two variants: a) a border is the outward margin of a definite social space or status. In this case the formation of a border is one of the goals of institutional construction that occurs within the given border-space. In the epoch prior to modern times, when the state territories had not been united yet, the state-building was always connected with the construction of its border. Even nowadays we can observe the Roman banks, the Great Chinese

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Wall or the range of Russian borderline burgs which are the basis for the administrative division of the Russian Federation32; b) a border is formed by the outward systems of statuses and external forces. In this case, the limits of the borderspace are set not only by the logic of the status system of its own actor's, but, first of all, by the limits of border-spaces. In other words, the functions of ones' own border are realized by the borders of the neighboring states (the Great Chinese Wall was such a border for northern nomads, it was not built by them, but it meant much in their life33); beyond the reasons of this process", such social space undergoes a crisis of the holistic status system, which is able to arrange the border infrastructure35. A border is the reason and the main factor for the status system formation. Its existence itself, which is not determined by the logic of the status system, ensures the possibility of its forming, and guarantees the process of status system formation. (See pict. 1) There are many examples when borders and their infrastructure function longer than the border-space. For example, the border of the USSR existed at least 15 years after the Soviet Union collapse.

32

The brighter example is the border between the USA and Mexico, where the USA would like to construct a 600km wall, but Mexico is against it, or the border between Israel and Palestine built with Israel's initiative.

33

34 This can happen during the processes on intervention, annexion of some territory, forcible construction of borders or in connection with the disability of some space to form its own borders and to guarantee the work of their infrastructure. 35

The so-called manqué states can be good examples in this case. See the practice of border functioning within the conflict territories: Abkhazia, Pridnestrovie and Kosovo (Coppieters et al. 2005).

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Comparing any two processes, a border has different meanings and functions within them. In the first one it represents the border-space, it expresses it and completes the logic, there is a concentration of the given border-space on the borderline; in the second case a border is irrelevant to the borderspace. Initially, there is no connection between a border and border-space, it should be set up and a community should take possession of its own borders. We can speak about the situation when a border exists, but when the border-space does not, the borders enclose practically empty border-space, the conglomerate of the primordial communities.

Pict.l. The Types of Border formation with Actor's Practice Correlation

The same process occurs with the formation of statuses, they are either the expressions of actors' practices, or formed as 81

mainly external towards the actor that results in the projects of modernization and transit. In fact these two models are analytical; in reality they do not appear in the unmixed form. In reality we always observe the relations based upon different configurations of such processes. A border cannot be formed only on the basis of external or internal forces. Therefore, one more important condition is the relations which are formed between the status system of the social space (moving to autarchy) and the external forces. Such features of a border as openness/closeness, transparency/nontransparency, communicativeness / uncommrmicativeness are set by this interrelation (see pict. 2). The situation may be illustrated by the examples of such territorial formations as Pridnestrovie, Kosovo, or South Ossetia. The external actors determine the impossibility of the formation of these subjects as real states (though they are states, in essence) — refusing to recognize their borders first. The autarchy of a border makes such formations state-like, without the coordination of their borders with external border-spaces, but they cannot use the political border as a state border, because of its functioning as a mechanism of communication, contacts and exchange. One more variant of the same process is using a border as a wall, or a curtain, when it stops to execute its communicative functions.

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Pict.2. The Formation of Border with Internal and External Actor's Practices

One can state that even in the second variant when the community becomes accustomed to the borders which it did not build itself, borders turn out to be secondary towards the borderspace, being the result of meeting of several border-spaces, and also the meeting of an actor with the status proposed to him. A border is a configurator of the social space, but it depends only on the space whether this border will function. The human community becomes ultimately dependent on a border, and, at the same time, a border gives the possibility to the actor of such space, to become free of the action and its conditionality set by the border-space. A border suggests alternatives, external as well as internal. The concentration of space occurs on the border, and the processes, which people would not ever come to themselves, becomes closer there. 83

An airport today is an example of such space concentration; it is the infrastructure of the modern border. An art exhibition is a boundary, so it goes outward from the border-space. The Internet is a place where borders are ultimately concentrated and the level of freedom is the highest here. The rules and procedures, which include the actor into the border-space, do not manage to be formed along with new borders appearing. There are more borders in the modern world than there have been before, therefore, there are more uncontrolled borders having social meaning. There are more attempts to promote an actor into the public space, to build a new border that is the basis of a new community where the actors' goals can be realized. Such process is connected with the getting of a status and an approach to the border where the maximum freedom and the arising of the ultimate problems of identity and human's mission are possible. This is an endless process connected with the situation, real or just modeled, of the disappearing of borders: "What will happen if this border is enlarged or simply removed?" This process is connected with the contesting of the space sovereignty to which an actor belongs, and the attempts to construct its own sovereign space. Anyway, the problem is the affiliation between the political border and the status system, the sovereignty realization within the definite space and the development of the ideal public space within the frames of these borders. From the standpoint of the sovereign space disposed within the existing limits, there is a necessity to save the significance of the public space and the maintenance of its reality. In order to exist in the given form, it must change and form new contexts of the pogranichie with the actors whose strategies are entering the 84

public space. From the actor's point of view, there is a problem of entering the border-space as its own, since it provides a place and a definite social status for it. And there is a problem of actor's perception of these borders as its own borders. The political border can exist without the relation with the status system and it may be possible when the sovereignty crisis happens and the alternative space appears within the public space. One more situation is possible when there is no political border but the status system36 The destructing of border-space happened in Eastern Europe during Soviet history. First, the Soviet policy was directed to such deconstructing, when it declared war on class enemies, then carried out the policy of fighting with internal enemies, then alienated whole groups of the population. This policy resulted in the absence of socializing mechanisms for quite large groups of people. Together with it, the processes of differentiation continued in the society, new borders were formed within its limits. After the USSR collapse it was unexpected for the communities to discover themselves within the new borders. If in the Soviet period in Eastern Europe one could find a great number of cases when the actors were deprived of their representation in the public space, in the post-Soviet time the main problem was a break of internal ties within the border-space. The transformations of such meant the displacement of borderspace from territorial to mental structures, defining the condition of Eastern European society. For example, Christian Churches, which came in the social space and set up the jurisdictional borders with the secular state (Gajda 2004).

36

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Z. Bauman designates two social groups in the modern world: a) living predominantly in time; b) living mainly in space. But border-space is equally important for both of them; they become "socially-visible" only within it. However, one can assume that there is the third category — those for whom neither time nor space is important as they are deprived of both. Primarily, only mental structures stay available to them37. It is the state without borders, the situation of ultimate ignoring of reality and the forming of its own, alternative one. Nowadays this phenomenon is called fundamentalism, ideology or other, but its origin is the same all around the world. It prevents an actor from having the possibility to form the Pogranichie sphere with Others that means exchange, representation, comprehension, and duel. It encloses the individual within the confines of primary communities. The extreme fundamentalism is based on such a process when mental structures break in and attack a border. The author of such interventions is anonymous. Such a situation is not planned by "the conflict of civilizations" or diversity of civilizations, but first of all, by the process of border and context multiplications in the society, which provokes such failures. "The conflict between civilizations" may be the reason to form the Pogranichie, besides it assumes that the number of borders is less than the quantity of actors forming the public space. The existence of political bor7

Anthony Smith states that nationalism differs from more universal ideologies as it uses the already existing civil ties and moods, and it gives priority to the constructive activity instead of utopian or holistic moods (Smith 1995, 7). It can be ex-territorial but cannot completely ignore the status structures.

3

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der may be of no importance for most actors, even if it has some meaning, it is marginal and indirect. It is space for those who have an access to statuses and can use public statuses. The new circumstances in Eastern Europe are conditioned by the increase of the number of borders and the absence of the pogranichie, i.e. the interactional mechanisms of such borders. In this case even the presence of border-space does not lead to the consolidation of communities, and the political methods of such consolidation turn out to be ineffective. This fact intensifies the meaning of relations between the actors within the border-space, presenting a complex phenomenon, consisting of two types of relations: a) the relation between an actor and its status b) the relations between actors in which they are involved by means of their statuses. Precisely, by virtue of so complexly organized interactions, the relations between actors within the limits of borderspace are formed as inter-status, but not as simple relations between actors. Border-space is the expression of power relations between statuses (Rickert 1997). The role of an actor is in the teleological usage of status and in the acquiring of this status in the process that occurs on the level of relations between an actor and its status.

Primary Pogranichie One can describe a situation when the pogranichie inevitably appears: it happens when an actor gets a social status. In this case, the determination of conditions and mechanisms of 87

origination, the getting and functioning of statuses is the main direction in the pogranichie analysis. It is correct to speak here about the appearing of the primary pogranichie phenomenon, which comes out when an actor gets a definite status. One actor faces the problem of interaction of various borders and boundaries: family upbringing, the culture of the informal communities s/he belongs to, religious belief, civil duties, and the corporate culture s/he henceforth belongs to, converge here. The problem of getting a status by a definite actor is typologically similar to the problem of quadrature of the circle. An actor must be reduced to a definite formula, a function (see picture 3). A circle needs to become a quadrate. This task assumes the existence of the pogranichie sphere where such transformation takes place and which is supplied with all necessary instruments and mechanisms for this process. Here an actor meets with its status that is a special border in itself. A status sets a context for an actor's interpretation in its own way and an actor makes the interpretation of its status. How does a status begin to function? The same questions arise in the case of any border-space genesis. It is formed by the interaction of a border with the configuration of boundaries; the presentation of the actors of social relations also occurs here. As a status does not completely define an actor, so the border-space does not reduce the diversity of the social space to the representation of its formal public structure only.

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Pict.3 Between Actor (circle) and Status (square

Such a structure is meaningful only in the case when it is interrelated with the social space. In other words, the borderspace needs to be recognized and also supplied with the definite mechanisms through which it can function and be important for more complex actors. In the Pogranichie analysis, the more considerable aspect is the presence of interactional mechanisms which occur between the border-space and the actors of social relations, which have the ability for articulation, but not the existence of the border-space as such. The pogranichie is a zone of transit between the orders of different nature: from an actor to the status, from informal community to the public order38. It is also a transition from the absolutely authoritarian order to the normatively formalized, from the informal communication to the institutionalized one. The problem is whether it is possible to reflect the given transition that mainly depends on the intelligibility of its character In Eastern Europe it is hard to form the conception of the pogranichie, as in public sphere all relations are considered to be homogenous and viewed in the context of the absolute sovereignty concept. There is a conception of allowance and regulation, but not of recognition. 38

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and the ability to form more complex, secondary communities, but without destruction of the primary structures. It allows differentiating the pogranichie processes from the chaotic ones connected with the actors' involvement into the border-space, and these actors having no ability for articulation. It leads to an increase in conflicts, and the relations get irrational and unintelligible in character. J. Habermas writes about such a situation when anyone, who is faced with vital decisions, does not know what he intends, but will eventually come to the question- what is he and what would he like to be (Zotov 1993). This absolutely optimistic picture is not obvious at all. Such questions may not arise, and even if they do, the answers to them may be far from being rational. In this discourse the significance of articulation is ignored, and it is supposed that articulation is a simple consequence of the presence of interests, values and formed identity, but about the articulation in general, which allows the discovery of common and abstract principles of social communication- the coordination of interests, the defining of norms of norms and rules39.

Z. Bauman in "the Individualized society" writes about the process of responsibility replacement from the society to an individual, when the problems of social level become the problems of an individual, when an individual does not take social problems by his own free will, but the society outs its problems on him. Bauman reflects on disintegration of some relations, on the impossibility of collective action, the action of mega forms, on the impossibility of imparting personal responsibility. However, these arguments may be continued in the discourse of such problem rethinking and with the attempt to form a new solidarity. Ethic problems overtake a human unexpectedly. 39

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Before solving the problem of conflicts' regulation it is necessary to fix up the problems of participation, recognition, admission and formation of the environment for actors' interaction. This environment exists beyond the ethical and moral categories and is a neutral sphere. The access to this sphere can be limited by different reasons: a) absence of actors' ability for articulations into the border-space; b) presence of restrictions, conditioned by border; e) absence of the pogranichie mechanisms. The well-grounded restrictions are some kind of a border themselves that form the community structure and impart the importance and hierarchical significance to its institutes. The obtaining of definite statuses needs to be grounded by these three phenomena: actorship, the presence of a border that makes definite requirements to an actor and the mechanisms of an actor's involvement into the social space. The absence of pogranichie and articulating mechanisms cannot be compensated by anything. They cannot be recompensated by the direct influence upon the actor, as in this case the society transforms into the state of mechanically connected, primary and unarticulated communities without the forming of upper stages of interaction, i.e. it rejects the process of civilization, the invention of new important social structures and mechanisms. In this case, it is not necessary to exaggerate the significance of the alternative systems of regulation, which are considered to be autonomous, for example, the moral, which is ex91

ternal towards an actor and a kind of dream about the extemporaneous spontaneous order- without government and power because beyond the definite border ethic norms do not cross the boundaries of primary communities and lose their importance. The moral turns out to be estranged from the public sphere, being the parallel reality in itself, which may be not less totalitarian than political power. Then, only the border-space is able to disburden the moral from its unconditional connection with the sanctions and the necessity of punishment, imparting it its original meaning by doing that. In the border-space the moral obtains the specific address to conscience and becomes the ground for any articulation. In this prospect, it is possible to admit J. Habermas' thesis about the goodwill, which asserts that the will of the autonomous actor must be good. He wrote that Kant had mixed the autonomous will with the omnipotent one. To provide the possibility to think about it as about the absolutely predominant will, Kant had to transfer it into the space of intelligible. But in the real world the autonomous will is effective only because good incentives are able to overcome the influence of other motives (Habermas 1990, 17). In essence, it is not sufficient to form the status systemit is necessary to provide the relation between the actor and its status; it is not enough to form a definite order- it is necessary to set the order of presentation of boundaries within it. The rational coordination of actors' interaction turns to be impossible beyond the border that is the space for articulation. At the same time, such interaction is impossible to create and artificially rearrange as it can just be provoked. Therefore, the public influence should be formed by indirect mechanisms and principles of 92

actors' interaction provoking them for such kind of interrelation. Perhaps, there will be no other pogranichie models as they do not exist in reality, but this primary model, the pogranichie between an actor and its status, always exists. In the pogranichie space two processes- institutionalization and socialization are integrated in a unique way, and the process of institutionalization gets its distinctive character. No matter how mechanical the institutional structure of the public order is, it is not free from the influence, irrational and real, of the existing actors, and also of the common state of knowledge, culture, and ethics.

Secondary Pogranichie. Transitory Mechaisins In relation to the primary pogranichie it is possible to distinguish the secondary stage at which the inter-institutional transitions are realized. It is a stage of interaction between social and political structures of different natures and origins. For example: between politics and social organization, family and public order, Church and society. The primary pogranichie, as well as the secondary one, raises the problems connected with the existence of effective transition mechanisms built-in into the pogranichie. These mechanisms should provide the convertibility of one order for another without losing their autonomy, i.e. guarantee the interaction without mutual absorption. These mechanisms need to be rational and intelligible; they contribute to the coordination of many normative orders between each other and make social movements available. The93

se three tasks assume the existence of three kinds of mechanisms which should be built into the pogranichie: dictionary, meta-normative system providing the interaction of normative systems of legal and non-legal origin and frontier.

Dictionary

Undoubtedly, the dictionary is the simplest and the most obvious pogranichie mechanisms. The dictionary as a necessity appears to testify to the fact that community enters the pogranichie where the meanings of words begin to multiply or the new facts that need to be named appear, or one faces the other point of view that it becomes a reason for the creation of a new language, requiring translation. The dictionary realizes the systematization and the translation of the main concepts of border and boundary spheres, coordinating them with each other. The dictionary guarantees the intelligibility of the public space, and also its admission from the boundary practices position. The problem turns out to be much more complex than the public space legitimization; we do not speak only about a simple admission or submission to it, but about the possibility of its comprehension and perceiving. The dictionary belongs neither to the border, nor the boundary, it belongs to the pogranichie. Lotman wrote that any culture originates from the division of the world into internal "ours" space and external "theirs". The conception of boundary is bilateral. It divides and unites simultaneously. It is always a boundary with something, and therefore it belongs to both pogranichie cul-

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tures. The boundary is bilingual and poly lingual (Lotman 1996, 257). Dictionary indicates the presence of actors of different orders that have different languages. Dictionary is a necessary precondition for a dialogue where the dictionary potential is used. However, such a process does not happen automatically, it is the wish of its participants to cross their own boundaries and arrive in the pogranichie space. The presence of dictionary gives grounds for the existence of contacts between the borders and boundaries of different natures and indicates their evitability. The absence of dictionary may lead to very serious consequences. These occur when a term is used and perceived beyond the dialogical structure. For example, this exactly happens in the situation when Constitutional Law develops out of the discourse of its functioning. This occurs with the formation of the border-space itself when it develops beyond of the intelligible structures. There is a typical interrelation between the concepts of "gosudarstvo" and "state" in Eastern Europe and those distortions in politics or legal thought which are conditioned by fading meanings of the word "state", which are assigned to it in Eastern Europe. The dictionary creates a tension on the border and is able to overcome the division into "we" and "they". "We" and "they" are organic whole within the Pogranichie. "We" and "they" more often form a binary opposition, supposing the mutual conditionality of its members.

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Meta-legal Normative System In the primary Pogranichie we face the problem of distinction between public and private orders. The normative mechanisms of a particular kind, which would allow the effective realization of such distinction supporting autonomy, logics and actors' identity, should be built in into the primary Pogranichie. Along with it, such mechanisms are only potential. The interactions between actors cannot form the pogranichie, they are not formed in the sphere of transition from private to public, but in the sphere of competition of different private orders. The same actor can belong to different structures where each of them is autonomous. The transition from the state of belonging to one corporation towards the state of belonging to another one forms a kind of primary pogranichie. In this case the public sphere is one of the private spheres, even the functioning of a border is the expression of a private interest. Max Weber distinguishes a modification of solving the private problem where the public itself substitutes all other spheres. So, the Pogranichie is a possible, but not sine qua non of social and political processes. One can distinguish two poles of the border-space condition specified by the features of the status: a) defined by the functioning of a status as a privilege; b) defined by the situational character of the status formation, by the status dependence upon the present position of an actor in the constantly changing configuration of governing. In both variants we do not observe a stable border: in the "b" variant it gets the total character and the instability connected with it. The correlation between the public and the private 96

turns out to be not actual because the correlation between borders is not actual as well. Everything performs a border°. A border has sense and importance only in one case — when it coordinates with an actor and forms a part of his intelligible world. One of the most common reproaches to East European communities is that they have not worked out social rules; they do not have the social contract as such. The other reproach is the coexistence of norms, which evidently contradict each other and creates an open space for their random interpretation and use; the third reproach is the is the fixation of a great number of non-working norms. However, all these reproaches are hardly fair. In the USSR there was quite a developed law, and the primary communities formed high levels of moral standards. Besides, one should not deny the success of the Soviet social engineering, and this success could not be achieved only on the basis of a good-working normative system. It is not necessary to 4° But in the meantime, to cross the border of socialistic country means to turn up in a new world with other sets of problems; in the world where such concepts as democracy, elections, parliament, federalism, trade unions and other political institutions or such juridical concepts as property, contract, arbitrage often get other meanings (David 1999). The Soviet law originally is also expressed in the fact that Soviet doctrine declared off the basic classification of law, which had been accepted in the Roman-German legal system. This classification is about the division into public and private law that is traditional and basic for this Roman-German law. It ascends to the Roman law and is basic in the sense that the private law was always the core of law system in these countries. Along the centuries, by the reason of care, lawyers left the public law behind, as it intertwined with politics and was hard to differ from the administrative subject. Even today some of its branches are in a formless, underdeveloped state in comparison with private law.

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speak about the lacks, but about the extremity of normativization in the post-Soviet communities, that has been blocking the formation of the Pogranichie and the meta-legal system. Pict.4 Interaction Between Different Types of Normative Orders

The conception of law as the only normative system developed and dominated in the USSR. It influenced the conceptions of courts as law enforcement organs and social engineering where law was the main instrument. As a result, law becomes a system which cuts the interactions between various normative orders; it was the only possible mediator that blocked any kind of ties between normative systems. The domination of law is a peculiar case of cutting the interaction between different normative orders in human life. In this case the ties between normative systems are only possible via the system of law that means via the sovereign. It is the determinative factor excluding the discursive interaction in such a community. An actor gets status-masks instead of a real status, which do not compete and interact with each other, and by this, the actor is absolutely superseded from the sphere of social life. 98

In such a perspective, conformism becomes a usual phenomenon that is a simple result of the "masks rule" application. So appears the instability of institutes and the relativity of normative instructions which have never been grounded by individual or institutional values. The social model is formed on the assumption of anonymity of social action. It does not function for the application of the actorship principle, the pogranichie phenomena are insufficiently developed within it (the example is the boundary between the law and individual ethics), professionalism (economics and ethics), civil society (politics and ethics). In this system the institution cannot exist as a form of communication, but only as a form of organization, reproducing the border-space structure. The normative systems of non-legal nature are organized by the model of law system as dominating and cutting the interactions between other systems. As a result of their interaction, we do not get a new system, but the crushed old one. Such a situation sets the pogranichie as a sphere of reconstruction of normative orders competition.

Frontier One more aspect of the pogranichie origin will be observed: the actors' presentations are not purposeless. Such presentations are forms of struggle for recognition. It means that the boundary, formed as a result of the presentational process, has an open, reciprocal character, it is supplied with dictionary and normative systems. But such a boundary should also guarantee the actor's mobility, its social movement and meeting 99

with other actors that is justification for the dictionary. Frontier is an open boundary supplied with mechanisms, which guarantee social movement, the possibility of mobility and the change of statuses under the reservation of system wholeness. This is the way the process of development of differentiated societies occurs where the primary structures are preserved. The nationstate can be preserved in the same way. In modern integration processes the structures of other kinds appear over the existing states, instead of over new ones. The historic examples of frontiers are Christianization, the development of law in the Middle Ages, colonization, settling, industrialization, the becoming and functioning of an educational system and the origin of the consumer society. Modernity demonstrates the freezing of frontiers, its transformation into walls, the loss of the perspective of the Other; it means the loss of grounds for supporting the contrasting conditions by the reasons of social space differentiation, the intensification of world trade, tourism and exchange of ideas. Therefore, the possibility of space creation based on the traditional homogenous substantial comprehension is still of current interest. The example is the appearance of the Balkans' metaphor as a state opposite to civilization, i.e. barbarism. Another example is S. Huntington's famous thesis about the war of civilizations. In this case the image of kosmos is always opposed to the image of chaos. The borders appearing along with it are unilateral, as it is impossible to unlock the borders which are beyond this process. If I build a wall, I'm either inside or outside. In both cases one can observe the enlargement of the territories, which are formed by such kinds of borders. The Bal100

kans can be anywhere, and this metaphor can separate whole continents from each other. Along with it, there is a transformation of a border and its infrastructure. The presence of the political border only is not sufficient to set non-Balkans apart from the Balkans. We speak about the complex of measures that guarantee the spreading of the Balkans and also their own nontransformation into the non-Balkans41. Frontiers can be formed by the communities themselves. For the complete transformation it is necessary to carry the center out of itself, out of the own traditional space. Then the boundaries get together not around their own territory, but start moving to the center, taken out of these territories. There were such facts in history. This was the way Constantinople appeared as a new capital of the Empire, how Charles the Great transferred the capital from Ingelheim am Rhein to Aachen, and Peter the Great, from Moscow to Petersburg. The borders with the Western World, which determine individual and collective strategies, are such kinds of frontiers for Eastern Europe today. Lord Acton wrote that a huge place belonging to nations in the state was determined by the fact that political capacity was based on them. The nation character influences the form and the live energy of the state. Along with it, different political ideas and traditions changing during national history are peculiar for different nations. A nation that has hardly left its wild state or which is relaxed by its civilization abun41 lan Leath, Presentation to RUSI on The Need for Trusted Borders', available at http://www.raytheon.co.uk/news room/files/TheNeed forTrustedBorders.doc , accessed 29/6/05

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dance and luxury, is not able to possess the means for selfgovernment; a nation adherent to the ideas of equality or absolute monarchy is not able to form aristocracy; a nation feeling disgust to the private property institute, is deprived of the foremost element of freedom. Every above mentioned nation may be turned into the real free human community only by means of contacts with the race of a higher civilization, the hopes of future statehood concentrated in its live energy. The system, which does not take these facts into account, does not seek its support in human qualities and likes, does not assume that they have to manage with their problems themselves, but it waits for their blind obedience to its instructions from above. So, the denying of national singularity results in the denying of political freedom (Acton 2002, 22). In the second case frontiers are formed as the effect of outside national communities' existence of the second and following levels of social structure. This is the way the educational system, Church and corporation are formed. These institutes work as frontiers. A frontier moves to the real center. Frontier is not a border; it is a zone of transition, when an actor goes beyond the limits of definite statuses in order to obtain a new one. Frontier is a social lift. It is obvious, that there is a universal situation determined by the order of border formation. When a border is independently formed by the actor, we can observe the condition of border as frontier — the line that gives an advantage to the settling and crossing, the line of maximum social dynamics and institutionalization. A status is a provoking phenomenon for the frontier origin. But the presence of a status only is not sufficient. In this case, the rethinking and transformation of the frontier meaning is demonstrated in the USA at the end of the 102

nineteenth century. A frontier is a primary pogranichie model where it takes much effort from an actor to get some status, but a frontier is built in the way the actors could make use of their abilities facing minimum difficulties. In Eastern Europe during the twentieth century the Pogranichie turned out to be not only non-potential, but impossible as well because in the USSR the public sphere was subjected to strict regulation and control, but not private life. In the USSR the private law was rejected as such. So, even the primary pogranichie level was not actual — the individual was absorbed by his status. In the USSR a personality was subjected to a thorough definition: Soviet citizen, communist, Leninist, foremost people and soviet family man. These definitions never leave an individual in private with himself; they exclude any possible transition from the private state to the status. A. Zinovyev names such a system as the super-system directed to the highly effective fixing-up of public tasks. But such system characteristic is found to be autarchic and unsusceptible; it does not depend on any other factors — economy, psychology, national character and environment. The autarchic imperious system behaves equally towards all societies and epochs. It is the mechanical rule of social structures. An individual always finds himself in the minority within them; he always feels discomfort that compels him either to heroism or to retreat and conform to the majority. But there was always one difficulty in this system — the solving of such problems as frontier, transition zone, and personal motivation involvement. It was always the core problem 103

in the USSR. Until such frontiers were being formed (among them are industrialization or the consumer society), the USSR was developing. Then they were closed for different reasons. A frontier supports private action in the public sphere. Like a border, it is an element of social order, it does not point at the presence of any actor, but it determines the spatial contours and the configuration of political, social, economic and other status systems, making them accessible for the actor. Frontier is the effect of interaction between borders and boundaries; it makes the process of actors' presentation within the border-space easier. The actors themselves form the boundaries, which interact with the public sphere and may develop the meaning of a border, i.e. a status. Status is a form of individual or group institutionalization. The status differentiation is carried out on the principle that one actor cannot belong to several similar orders simultaneously. For example, in most cases, it is not possible to have dual or multiple citizenships. The states try to avoid the dual nationally principle — but it is possible to be the citizen of the Union and the state which is a part of the Union. So appears the necessity to regulate such problems. It demands: a) identification and setting up the space of freedom for it; b) institutions and guarantees for their freedom; c) fixing the rules of public sphere functioning. It is impossible to be a Christian and a Muslim simultaneously. This happens not because an actor is not able to desire such a situation, but exactly because he goes through the process of institutionalization within a definite border-space, and is 104

not recognized as "ours" in other border-spaces". This principle can be defined as a principle of statuses' compatibility; according to it, an actor can be provided with a status only within a definite border-space" that makes impossible to grant him the same status in another similar border-space simultaneously. An actor acquires a status within the frontier context. R. Brubaker writes that the contradiction to the realistic and substantial perception of nations does not mean the uncertainty in the reality of national structure existence. First of all, it means the reconceptualization of its reality. It comes out as the differentiation in the analysis of national structure and nations as substances, substantive modes of life, communities and collectivities. Belonging to a nation is a conceptual variable, not a constant one. Social structure is an especial practical category as it points at the existence of the definite institutional forms of its constituents. The existence of such structure is only possible but not necessary (Brubaker 1998, 21). The belonging to the definite social structure demands formalization. The latter is realized through the constructing of a status system considering the existence of social space, which What is an actor without a status? This question is quite essential for human since ancient times. It happened in the ancient polis that practiced the procedure of exile. Nowadays the same happens in the European Union where states build the strategy to allow new members to its labour market, acknowledging all rights of EU members by them. 42

There are no statuses within the pogranichie. There are no statuses within the transition, because everything is directed to the becoming of space itself in it. Hence is the great significance of interpersonal relations within the space, devoid of the pogranichie phenomenon. 43

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consists of the actors, possessing freedom. This freedom is expressed as the possibility of the formation of actors' presentations within a border-space. It is the frontier that includes the individual into the social order" not only by getting definite rights and duties determining his state. The actor is dependent on the demands and criterion which are proposed to him by a definite institution. These demands are initially of formal character, for example, demands to the claimant who applies for citizenship. A frontier makes the process of getting status by an actor a bilateral one that allows taking into consideration the actor's influence on the status. The socializing process demands the inclusion of an actor into the social order on the basis of interiorized norms and values. It is hard to imagine the partial process of institutionalization — when a status can be obtained or not. On the contrary, we constantly face cases of incomplete socialization. Universities, judicial systems, economic structures and all other systems based on the actor's autonomy, responsibility and freedom, exist as frontiers. Only in this case the competition between the normative orders is possible, as it is possible only between phenomena with similar origins. The alternative variant is the absence of such competition and the submission of an actor and its ethics to the monolithic ethical and legal order, and finding itself within the definite borders which were practi44

There may be a lot of social institutionalized orders of such kind. They promoted the formation of the sovereignty concept in the late Renaissance. It was an attempt to determine the main organizing structure in the public order.

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cally not formed by the actor. In this case the borders themselves form the actor, involving it in definite social structure based on social statuses; they endue it with a status. These actions are realized as facts, which are devoid of the actor's will. It is obvious that beyond the frontiers an actor cannot influence the social changes. The conditions and reasons of obtaining a status, the conditions of recruiting and replacement of statuses are set in the primary pogranichie. To make the analysis of the primary pogranichie apply to the category of "actorship", then it becomes obvious that frontier is formed only by the subjects possessing "actorship". A frontier works not on the basis of power, but on the usage of capital. Therefore, frontiers appear only within the sphere of circulation of this capital and all possible transactions where the social capital is involved. It demands the opening of boundaries of normative orders, their competition. Social capital, as a power that forms a frontier, justifies the personal action that promotes the development of institutions and social ethics. Primary communities cannot be changed by themselves, but the emergence of "social lifts" or frontiers are possible within their cultural and civilizational boundaries. Frontiers are not designed for the primary structures, but only for their members; frontiers make social mobility easier for them. As far as the frontier has not been institutionalized, this mobility has episodic character. The primary communities themselves are not the creators of social lifts, they do not evolve. Frontiers are the creations of loners and pioneers.

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New institutions and levels of organization do not demolish primary structures, but suggest the alternatives in socializing to their members. Social space differentiates not via the primary structures development, but via the appearing of new superstructures, which take into consideration the existence of primary structure, but are not predetermined by their logic. These structures, assuming the preservation of social effectiveness and stability, are possible only when the pogranichie mechanisms of different levels of interaction exist, i.e. when the system of lifts and frontiers, providing social mobility, is formed. The lifts themselves do not form autonomous social phenomena; they are always a part of some other institutions. For example, universities may be parts of Churches, state or civil structures. The peculiarity of lifts is that they do not only reproduce themselves in the process of their functioning, but they cardinally change the social space. It is necessary to distinguish the social mobility that develops on the grounds of social differentiation (irrelevantly to the impulses forming its basis, these frontiers can be the following: colonization of new lands, missionary work, trade, urbanization, industrialization, educational system, innovative activity) and the social mobility conditioned by the individual strategy (so a human can become a monk, a pirate, a traveler). There are two constituents of one process, and when there is a gap between them, it means either the social mobility is compulsory (as there is no space for the individual strategy within it), or there is no appropriate institution (lift) in the society, and the social mobility can be realized via personal actions and choice. Only the communities accomplished with lifts can form macro-communities of the second or the third levels, including 108

into themselves not the primary communities, but separate individuals, which leave these primary groups. It is obvious that the necessity of frontier occurs only because of social structure differentiation and the rise of the pogranichie effect. The actors leaving the limits of primary communities have to coordinate borders and boundaries of different natures by themselves. Their new social environment also estimates and sets conditions for the newcomer through various boundaries. Moving beyond the limits of primary structures does not mean entering the social vacuum. Probably, there are only two variants of what can happen to actors making such a move: they acquire the possibility to act independently or they do not obtain it. The first case example is the urban revolution in Europe in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries that resulted in the establishing of various new institutions connected with burghers' activity. The second case example is the urbanization of serfs in Russia in the eighteenth century, when 165 new cities were built (their number was increased twice), but there were typical for Europe, no urban institutions as there had been practically no townspeople (in the European sense of this concept) in Russian cities till the second half of the nineteenth century45. The last variant of urbanization is an inevitable way of primary social structures development. It was repeated in the USSR during the period of industrialization, and it completely covered Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Primary structures stay invariable, but they are supplied with additional functions, their boundaries remain monolithic and impen-

45 The conceptual opposition of the "hrad" (a settlement realizing administrative-military functions) and the "miasto" (trade settlement possessing the rights of self-governing) was not spread in Russia.

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etrable for actors which belong to such structures. These structures imitate the accomplished social movement without performing it in reality. It is not a simple task to organize a structure of such space and sometimes it is impossible, as there are practically no genuine centers within any Eastern European city, or more correctly, they are archaeological facts, buried under the "urban" policy of the the Russian Empire and the USSR46. This is its most cardinal distinction from the European city with its structure-forming cathedral, its market, city hall and cemetery. Eastern European cities are absolutely deprived of a center and always dependent on the capitals. There are no centers in them. These centers are only marked in as a light intrusion of the past in their monotonous space (for example, Minsk city hall is absolutely lonely in the city space). There are no townspeople in these cities but population. These cities are nothing more than ordinary settlements, the element of something greater, practically impenetrable in size, and therefore indifferent. The actual center of all Eastern European space is always somewhere in the capital. This centralization is less obvious in the Ukraine, more obvious in Belarus. In reality, the boundary between Europe and nonEurope, is not the frontier of gothic castles that lies in Western Belarus and Ukraine, according to Huntington, but this very arThe most impressive example of such policy was the replacement of Brest in the XIX century, turning out the old European city into the grand borderland burg surrounded by the rare settlements of natives ("tutejshyia")

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chaeological line including self-governing cities within it, located within the territory of Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and some Russian regions as well.

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Chapter 4 Discovering the Pogranichie in Eastern Europe "Who are YOU?" said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I - I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." "What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar sternly. "Explain yourself! " Lewis Carrot'. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Social Space and Border-space It is essential to differentiate the concepts of social space and border-space, as the border-space is distinguished by the absence of any subject and substance, while the social space by their presence. The complexity in drawing the line between these phenomena results in perceiving the political border as a form of a definite substance, as a presentation of a specific subject that obscures and makes impossible the analysis of the processes occurring in this space. For example, one can be engaged in searching the objective basis of various political borders or regularities and setting of the state territory by the national character (Kokoshin 2005). But it has no sense because a border is not determined by any features of actors within the borderspace but by the political power. Border is a pure structure. It is neither a substance, nor a subject, and it is not a complexity of elements of a social or po113

litical system. It is the result of relations and their configuration. But it is not easy to retain such a vision; it is easier to change it for more personal categories. It is superseded by the image of border-space as a substance having objective properties. It is supported by the outer perception of a border when it works as a metaphor of the given space and the formation of definite local communities, for which the border is one of the prior factors of their identity, as it makes the self-ascription practices easier towards others, characterized by the same border. Here appears the especial political myth about the wholeness of the community47 integrated by this border and getting the "objective" meaning. However, when we use such concepts as nation, country, collective, organization, firm, Church, we do not fix constant and unchangeable phenomena but flexible configurations dependent on various conditions. The substantial approach brings together analytics, political mythology and mythological mind in general; it endows the reality with subjective properties. R. Brubaker, reflecting on the fortunes of nationalism in Eastern Europe, writes that the view 47

This iis the ultimate conceivable community that a human can be identified with. This identification can be realized by foreigners...In the definite community, the opinion about an alien can be formed by his local belonging. Communities have a number of indicators, which make such identification possible. The formation of youth local communities in modern megapolises may be a micro-example of such process. These communities of young people are based on the local belonging and distance from "them". The bordercrossing of such groupings is initially complicated by the status of the individual set up in his living place, if it is out of this grouping area. The other example is the formation of various political parties that occurred exactly on the territorial basis, on the common feeling of "being a countryman", uniting people at first (Duverger 2000)

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of the nation as a definite substance is supported not only by realists but by "modernists" and "constructivists" considering that nations are to be formed by such processes as industrialization, unbalanced development, the increase of communication networks, and also the enforcedly integrating and homogenizing effect of the modern state. Such an approach substitutes the problem of the reality and effectiveness of social structure or national feelings with the problem of the reality of nations as concrete communities (Brubaker 1996). National, cultural, economic and other rhetorics have been supplanting the logic of development in the sovereignty paradigm during all post-Soviet years in Eastern Europe. Sovereignty is not a natural quality of the community, it takes much effort to acquire it, constantly relating with the concrete social system. Meanwhile, the theory of sovereignty turned out to be peripheral; it did not develop and there are no practical conclusions from it concerning the origins of the state power and the essence of public relations. However, the category of sovereignty is a necessary context of nationalism interpretation and transformational process, but not vice versa. The properties of border-space are not determined by the nature of its constituents but by the character of social structures and inter-status relations. It is independent of the qualities of the elements that are included in it or interact with it; exists because there is some actor practice directed outward and demanding the formalization of its status, the fixation of its position in relation to other actors and its own action. Border-space is exactly the environment for such action of every social organization, the only space that does not have any alternatives for the actors, 115

existing within its borders. At the same time the pogranichie assumes that there is a moral and political country, as Edmund Burke stated, which does not overlap the geographical one and oppose it. E. Burke noted that in every address to France, at any attempt to start interaction with it, when one reviews any scheme connected with it in any way, it is absolutely impossible to have in mind the geographical country as one should always have in mind the moral and political one (Burke 2001). So, many processes and circumstances configure modem political borders and border-spaces; they are natural conditions of life together with landscape, climate and resources. In such prospects, the national-ethic rhetorics, distinctly appearing in the post-Soviet declarations of sovereignty, are only incident; it is not the indispensible element of the process. But borderspace is not incidental, it is the main character in the transformational processes of Eastern Europe, its structure, configuration, subsystems and institutions.

Limits of the Idea of Transit The idea of the Other place is associated with the idea of way. To get into the Other place means to make one's way. And it is quite a simple thing if this is a man's way from his house to the market or to his work. But one can get into the Other place by changing his/her social status. 'Just married' are in another place than the yesterday's unmarried ones, though nothing has evidently changed in their everyday lives. It is also possible to get into the Other place by making restoration and repair. For example, a house has the same foun116

dation, the walls of the room remain the same, but they have already become the Other place, everything is new within them and they are perceived as something unknown. One gets into the Other place perceiving new senses and meanings and entering the communicational space of the Other. It may seem that the number of such movings is infinite; however, all of them can be brought to four types presented in the following table: It is also important to understand that the given transitions do not exist only in a pure form, but in different combinations as well. The subject's prior and new states are distinctly presented in the table schemes. These are the peculiarities of our perception that searches for origins and goals. Our attention is mainly concentrated on such elements of the scheme as the Subjects, its status, representation, and the Other, while the transition, marked as turns to be blackout, not clear and, when taking a closer look, seems to be inexplicable. Particularly, the transition is the most hidden from us, and, therefore, hardest to be objectively described. The transition encloses various uncertainties in itself such as formations of epochs, cultural styles, civilizations and all possible kinds of human exploits and falls. A human realizes his individuality and abilities within the transition in maximal ways. There is one more element of scheme given above, which is even more uncertain than the transition itself.

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Table 5. The Types of Subject's Transformations Physical Space

Status Space

Space of Repre- Space of Other sentations (S2) (R)

The Character Si (point A) —). Subject's Si (point B) of (S) transition

S1 (status B) I

Si (R1) —i

Si (status A)

SI (R2)

What happens The Subject does not change, its to the Subject environment changes

The subject does not change, but its relations with social environment change

Si x S2

Si (Si') The subject does not change, but the character of its perception by the soenvironment cial changes

The Subject may entering change the communicational space of the Other Subject

A human realizes his individuality and abilities within the transition in maximal ways. There is one more element of scheme given above, which is even more uncertain than the transition itself. It is a boundary. Boundaries are not marked in this scheme, but are implied. Every transition is connected with the detection of various boundaries- physical, conceptual, symbolic, legal, personal and cultural, which need to be crossed in order to achieve a definite goal. Different instruments, resources and mechanisms may be necessary for attaining it. In the transitional model boundaries are of great importance, though this fact is often left unnoticed. The transition is the best experience of freedom for an actor. When an actor detects a boundary within the transition, it allows one to understand how to discern the way, as this boundary is the beginning of this goal. The ignoring of boundaries will lead to a zero result travelling which will turn out to be a sliding by". 48

As an example, we can recollect the "exoticism" of R. Barthes. The Other is viewed only as exotics which is recognized, identified, but absolutely devoid of practical meaning. For example, in the USA or Australia the reservations where practically all aboriginal population annihilated earlier is being kept, are devoid of any political significance. It is kept as exotics together with their customs, beliefs, culture. The assimilation of the Other is a feature of such consciousness and world perception. R. Barthes defining this type of consciousness as petty bourgeois, notes that a petty bourgeois is a person who is not able to imagine the Other. If the Other appears, the bourgeois becomes blind, takes no notice of him or likens him to himself. In the bourgeois universe any juxtaposition has the character of reverberation; all other things are interpreted in one way. Theatres, courts, all places, where there is a risk to face the Other, turn into mirrors, as the Other denotes a scandal, imminent to our essence. Sometimes, but seldom, it turns out that it is impossible to move the Other to any analogy, not because our conscience begins to worry us, but because commonsense is against it: one has dark skin,

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What are the Purposes of Getting into the Other Place? There are many reasons for it, positive as well as negative. In this work we are interested in the experience of transition of post-communist Eastern European countries". In the 1990's to get into the Other place for these countries meant to improve their own administrative system and effectiveness of economic activity. There were no other reasons for the realization of transition.

not white, the other drinks pear juice, but not Pentad. And how can we assimilate a dark-skinned person or a Russian? In this case one more figure comes to help us: exoticism. The other becomes only a thing, a show; it is moved to the periphery of humankind, and it cannot be dangerous for our hearth and home (Barthes 1994, 121-122). Eastern Europe in this work is defined mainly as the region outlined by the border of a former socialistic system, having the internal borders and boundaries separating, for example, states-satellites of the USSR from the Republics of the former Soviet Union. In this work we do not raise the problems of finding the borders of Eastern Europe, of the origin of the concept "Eastern Europe", its political, cultural, ideological meaning. We accept practically everything that was said by L. Wolff about the adventures of the concept "Eastern Europe", and the main thing is that Eastern Europe was invented, and it resulted in certain outcomes. Though, Larry Wolff notes that he also understands the sceptical attitude of Diderot and his idea that the distributing of good and bad qualities "among the parts of the world" is some kind of intellectual trick. So he thinks that "Eastern Europe" is an invention (Wolff 2002). Here and further we use the concept of Eastern Europe in its common meaning: the East of Europe defined by the border between the West and the European territory which was under the control of the USSR after the Second World War. As our research concerns such countries as Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, in this work we identify the region of "Belarus — Ukraine — Moldova" and the concept of "Eastern Europe countries" or "Eastern Europe region". 49

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In the 1960 — 1980s Soviet economists and lawyers were searching for the ways of Soviet system optimization, growth of the effectiveness of economy by the enlargement of the sphere of activity of market relationships (the conception of "market socialism", recognizing the possibility of convergence of capitalism and socialism, relates to this period). In essence, this plan was an attempt to restructure the system boundaries. The concepts of convergence legitimized reformatory governments and also formed the theoretical basis of the initial steps of these governments towards democracy and market economy. The transitional strategies were worked out with the help of Western European and American specialists in the field of developing countries' economy, macro economy, institutional economy, and also in regional studies having the transdisciplinary status that also denoted the shifting of boundaries. The boundary that previously had separated the socialistic system from the capitalistic world changed its character and became the internal boundary of Eastern European societies, setting apart the elements and spheres in them allowing for mobility and transition, and those which were not able for such a transition. In this case, the boundary fulfilled the function of membrane, which was necessary to go through for getting into the "Other place". The "Other place" could be formed by the models of more successful systems. Undoubtedly, it was possible to make the transition to the Other place individually, leaving for the West from Eastern Europe. However, this variant was impossible for societies, that is why the Other place was constructed within the borders of Eastern Europe in the form of various economic, political and social institutions. It was only one among all theoretical variants 121

of transitional paths, however, it turned out that it had no alternative in practice. Only the West, the enemy and the rival could be the "Other" for the late USSR. This paradox accompanies societies along the whole history of humankind: exactly, the enemy turns out to be the closest and the easiest to understand. Having such an enemy, communist countries initially were in the discourse of transition, which could be presented in more or less radical variants. In the communist European societies the perception of the Other, present beyond the Iron curtain, was formed not only by the Soviet propaganda, but by the Iron curtain itself. Namely, from behind this Iron curtain magic, fantastic goods emerged, music sounded, fragrant aromas reached, movies, books came, inventions emerged, and threats were formed. The feeling that there was a holiday of life, which we were not allowed to enter, arose, and this holiday was based on a stable foundation of a very effective, flexible and powerful system. In the communist part of Europe the Iron curtain formed ambivalent autarchy space. There was an initial contradiction in this space: in the private strategies it was organized for the setting of everyday life, prosperous family life, possessing property, overcoming constant scarcity of the resources which were necessary for families; in public strategies it was organized according to the doctrine of communist bloody romantics of world revolution and cosmopolitan world proletarian fraternity, and also in the economic doctrine of socialism, denying the importance of private property and being in absolute contradiction with private strategies. The communist model was in opposition to the general rhetoric's of progress, improvement and acquiring the space that were chanted in the USSR, which did not possess and in122

stnunents of effective and competitive achievement of these goals in comparison with the West. The Iron curtain was an insuperable limit. A true "edge of the world", it confirmed the feebleness of Soviet middleclasses in widening their own world. For example, a highminded and brave geologist or an experienced professor, turned into supplicants and un-free beings as soon as any trips abroad were concerned. So, the fall of the Berlin Wall became the symbol of freedom, giving the possibility for border-crossing and mastering of new space, first of all, for the middle-classes from the Eastern European region5°. The disappearance of the curtain gave the possibilities for the existence of freedom and restructuring of social landscape in the communist part of Europe. Borders like the Iron curtain do not disappear quickly; they become the inner factor of the society development. Even entering the alien physical space, staying close to another person creates preconditions for an actor's changing. Communist countries were experiencing staying in all types of alien space — physical, status, symbolic and the space of the "Other" — along 50

For the period of the GDR existence, this country had lost three million people who achieved their aim to leave for the West by all means. There was practically no return flows. Even if there were, they came to an end tragically for emigrants. Tourists got used to the Soviet system. Even those from the West who sympathized with the USSR did not become nationals of this state. In the GDR there was the "evening television emigration", which meant that the majority of GDR citizens watched West-German telecasts. It eased the "als-ob-Existenz", which was the divide between public and private lives (Betmakayev 2005).

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with their newest history that impelled them to change. The transition of Eastern European societies to the Other space was realized in all types of spaces, concerning practically all actors who had faced the necessity of distinction and interior overcoming of boundaries. This problem is the most important for understanding the processes of the Eastern European transformation. The attempt to overcome such invisible but very strict and closed dogmatic boundaries in economy and politics had resulted in the changing of the character of such boundaries. It turned out that they were not conditioned only by the external forces, but internal as well. Precisely, this discovery was no less important for Eastern European countries than the formation of new sovereign countries in this region after the USSR collapse. This discovery took place unnoticeably in Eastern Europe. It is not properly reflected, but has a direct influence on actors' practices that form the social space of this part of Europe. The context of border and boundary analysis and its importance in Eastern Europe is the investigative field of transitology. This field was formed in Eastern European regions around some well-defined problems: a) transition for the planned economy to the market one, supposing structural reorganization with application to the number of instruments (stabilization, liberalization, privatization); b) political reform that aims for the formation of consolidated democracy. In the field of economy transitology was suggested to solve the problems of liberalization and macroeconomic stabilization, institutional economic problems supposing the for124

mation of private property relations and the overcoming of state monopolism, and also to guarantee economic growth. Among the political problems were the providing of administration and integrity of new states, building of new political institutions and also the forming of a new system of political power legitimation. Except for the problem of macroeconomic stabilization which was a universal, examined by the economics at that moment and already approved in the countries of the Third World in the 1970 to 1980's, the rest of the problems were absolutely new in their contents, scale, and context of their solving. It was supposed that transitory countries had to overtake the countries of the First World in economic structure and parameters, in the level of GDP. The goals have turned out to be so much clearer that in the beginning of the 1990's in Eastern Europe there was no any paradigm of social, political and economic development but only market and democratic ones. Paradoxically, in Eastern Europe countries exactly the discourse of transit has legitimized the existing changes. For a long time the phrase "along this transitional period..." appeared frequently in speeches of politicians, in scientific works and in everyday life, was used to interpret any objectionable and hard to explain or simply scandalous public phenomenon. To ground the need of transition, transitology was applied to the Modern model of the Project, choosing the selected number of instruments and programming the transition in a limited number of regions, manipulating the actors of such process. Transitology ignored the problem of boundary-crossing mechanisms by the actors of transition and the effects of such transition. And if the sense of transitology in the 1990's can be denoted by the formula [S'] —+ [S2], then the perspectives of its 125

development are connected with the separation emphasizing the into the special research that allows modification segment of the formula of transit, presenting it in the following way: S' [--4] S2, where the transition itself connected with the discovering of boundaries and their usage is the subject of analysis and the important element of transitional process. Therefore, the meaning and perspectives of transitology are connected precisely with the tenseness that is created by the methodology itself, supporting the distinction between "transition" and "transformation".

Geography of Eastern Europe

What allows the uniting of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova into one region called "Eastern Europe", and are there any chances for this geographical name to dispose of its negative connotations51? The answer to the first part of this question is that nothing geographical unites them. Because geography does not provide us with much grounds for it. Geographical maps do not indicate well-defined boundaries between Eastern and Western Europe52, furthermore, there are no fixed boundaries Eastern Europe was the result of philosophical synthesis; it was invented by the people of the Enlightenment. The basis of the cultural scheme of Eastern Europe's foundation is the correlative analytical opposition imparting the homogeneity to this region and its territories. If the geographical conception of Eastern Europe was based on the opposition of Europe and Asia, its vital philosophical importance ensued from the opposition between civilization and barbarism (Wolff 2003, 309).

51

52 A. Giddens, who pays much attention to the problem of time, considers space, "the place" of modernity to be "different in its quality from Middle ages". "The place" symbolizes the idea of localization of social activity in geographical space. In pre-modernity the idea of space and such place coin-

126

between Moldova and Romania, Ukraine and Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. We do not find such kind of boundaries to the East of these countries, where Moldova unnoticeably, through Pridnestrovie, spills over into the Ukraine, where Belarus and Ukraine are practically imperceptibly "changed" by Russia. From the geographical standpoint there is no reason to distinguish the given territory as one region. There are no high mountains, wide rivers or deserts functioning as natural borders between these countries. Only the strange slightly rusty "Iron curtain" still passes through this space, and its role has not been tided over53, and its presence here has not been completely comprehended. How does this boundary divide the homogeneous space? Therefore, these countries are united by the tasks and problems which are identical for them and which they are able to overcome in a definite order, though they demonstrate considerable differences in the choice of strategies. This diversity in the ways of problem solvcide. In modernity the space becomes much larger than the place of location. Here space and time get apart as the symbols of non-linear development, of possibility to live in parallel times. Postmodernists consider history to be the great delusion of the nineteenth century; nowadays geography becomes such a phenomenon. This geography is treated specifically: "The place of Los Angeles is here and everywhere". These two theses form the essence of antinomy and deconstruction allowing you to feel yourself in a city and in the world. The person, who is an experienced traveler, knows that various points of space look different from different places. Giddens stresses that we need to speak here about consciousness, but not about the geography (Giddens 1991). 53 It is also testified to the fact that in Belarus the most common association with the concept of "granitsa" (border) in Eastern Europe is the word "lock" (the border is locked).

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ing and different fortunes of these countries adds more to the fact that they form one space, which we have defined as the pogranichie. The first ground for this statement is that the attempts to describe the countries of this region as a social monolith, as integrity, are artificial. Eastern Europe is not a monolith which it is possible to describe by one or even several parameters or variables. Even political power, binding this space and ignoring the real diversity, does not make it a monolith. The second ground is that the attempts to describe each of these countries as an accomplished wholeness are also fated to failure. Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova slip from one's sight, which is searching for but does not find any concrete image for them. And even myths are not able to piece out this gap, as the tradition to image something demands starting from the beginning. And precisely this beginning is hiding. There is no clear connection between modern Belarus and the events and processes that happened within its territory two, three or five centuries ago, with some exceptions only. Everything has changed: language, political borders, social structure, and mores. We can describe Belarus as something that "remained". But not much did: Churches, villages (that have also seriously changed), old prejudices. Such description leads either to fundamentalism, i.e. elementary denial of the changes that actually happened or to marginality. Obviously, it is impossible to use the principle of remnant for such description54. We can find out that our de54

The same principle can be extrapolated to other countries situated in the given region: Austria. Poland or Russia — they cannot be assessed simply as the "remnant" of the former empires and republics. Poland continued as the

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scription should not present what has remained, but what exists without negative connotations. Eastern Europe is the configuration of various actors which cannot be considered as a monolith; therefore, it is not possible to apply the methods of description to them, which are appropriate for the description of holistic and monolithic phenomena. Every country of Eastern Europe is the diversity in itself as Eastern Europe in general. And this diversity also needs to be arranged. The attempts to describe the countries geographically located in Eastern Europe in a holistic manner are always connected with the description of secession. One can assume that we speak about the holistic approach to the perception of the space of Eastern European civilization, which is in reality defined by internal diversity. And this diversity constantly threatens to fall onto its constituents. It can make the impression of catastrophe. But what is a real catastrophe is the observer's wrong perception. Failures in the holistic description of Eastern Europe point at one great fortune — Eastern Europe can be described as the pogranichie space, i.e. as an infinite diversity which is in reality a chance for it, as only the pogranichie demands, forming the mechanisms of coordination and arrangement based not on the external principle, but on the principle of support of actors' practices and their simultaneous inclusion into the wider space. However, this actual diversity may be the project of the nineteenth century till the end of the twentieth century, and in the twentieth century it found itself in the new social, cultural and political reality. The attempts to describe Poland "objectively" and "successfully" are always connected with the necessity to include, at least, Belarus and Ukraine into this description. But simultaneously, there is nothing more nonperspective than such historic modeling.

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evidence of high level differentiation of this space or of the existence of considerable variety in the ways of development of this part of Europe, and also may be the evidence of ultimate atomization and fragmentation of Eastern Europe social space. Eastern Europe is not united by one common plan, as well as not by one general paradigm, except the paradigm of searching of various actors' practices coordinating in the presenting of it. It is obvious that the plans and paradigms, which do not take into consideration the practices of actors, are fated to failure as well as the premature introduction of the pogranichie practices realized in absence of the actors themselves or in a weakly differentiated space. In general, the attempts of Eastern Europe modernization are similar to the trials and mistakes of Western Europe modernization, and they compose one process55. That is why it would be more correct to speak about Eastern Europe not as about civilizational wholeness, but as about the pogranichie that is characterized by multi-actors and continuous construction of It is also necessary to examine Western Europe in a differentiated way, especially while distinguishing its historically and culturally different territories and its diversity. These distinctions are obvious for the Swedes, Norwegians and Greeks. Norwegian researcher S. Rokkan divides Western Europe by two axes: North — South, East — West. Precisely within these axes the historically dynamic picture is combined. Among the factors, creating the multidimensional character of the model of Europe, S. Rokkan distinguishes primary differences — starting conditions; the factors connected with different combinations of industrial revolution and national revolutions (for example, the French revolution); the differences in the policies of nation-states between 1848 and 1950; the including of states in the structure being not the West as peripheral (Portugal, Greece), so medial (Germany) to become a part of the West; in general, the historically changeable character of what we call the West and non-West (Rokkan 1982). 55

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mechanisms, providing the co-existence of various actors with the maximal defense and protection of their interests and the sphere of competence. This is an optimistic vision of Eastern Europe, which is not whole, as it does not present and independent civilization different from the European one. It is not represented only by the nation-states; together with the nationstates it consists of and is represented by a set of actors which form the context of the Pogranichie.

Multi Actor and Actorship Cultural, civilizational, political, individual (and it is possible to continue the list) boundaries in Eastern Europe are in continuous interaction. The intensity of their interaction determines the conditions of organizations and individuals which have to find a balance in this interaction. In any case, all elements of social space, from primary to complexly differentiated systems, face the problem of organization of a definite order. The societies, whose condition is determined by the interaction of their internal boundaries and borders that are formed by different kinds of actors, obviously belong to the pogranichie societies. The other model is presented by the societies which are closed for the interaction between the actors. In this case the boundary is the edge that is not possible to cross upon which to bring influence. The retreat from the monolithic homogenization model helps to understand the processes taking place in Eastern European societies and to describe them as the pogranichic societies. In relation to the pogranichie problem, the problems of external borders and boundaries and the external policy of Eastern European states are secondary problems, as they de131

pend on the fact of how Eastern European social space is organized, and how the interaction of various boundaries within this space is realized. In this connection it is important to note that the pogranichie societies need to be distinguished from the transitive societies. The first are in the state of searching for balance for their multiform boundaries formed on their own bases by the actors of such societies. The presence of boundaries subjected to comprehension and mastering is vitally important and serves as the basis for the mechanisms of social communications. At the same time, transitive societies have boundaries which function as borders. Such boundaries realize the integrative function for them, but do not fulfill the communicative one. Transitive societies are mobile, but their transition is integrative, it is the unified hierarchic social movement. The pogranichie societies do not shift, but they can change the structure and the function of their boundaries56. The pogranichie societies do not have one specific goal common for all actors. Their goal is to find out and support the communication of a complex system. Transitive societies have a definite goal that is often planned by their own development. Such societies may face the problems of the 56 Even if these societies long to define themselves as monolithic communities, devoid of the pogranichie context, where boundaries serve as limits and do not carry out communicative functions, the social structure of such societies reproduces the effect of the pogranichie. No matter what efforts had been taken in the USSR with the aim to create a monolithic society, the national, religious and economic problems gradually increased. These problems produced the effect of new boundaries arising in the Soviet society. And these boundaries, which were not legitimized, destroyed the integrity of the USSR.

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pogranichie societies, but as a) the result of their own choice of transit; b) the transformation of their own grounds; c) the entering other environments or other civilizations. It is very important for Eastern Europe to have the conception of structure of its boundaries, composition of its actors, vision of its civilization, cultural, corporative, national and personal boundaries, which have become much more evident since the change of role and functions of the political borders after 1989. Such a process is possible only as the discovery of the social reality by plenty of actors to which they belong and with which they have to be sorted. Everything that happens in Eastern Europe after 1989 is the process of stabilization of interaction of actors' boundaries and borders and finding out new forms of social communication; this process is wider than the building of a nation-state and it imparts the peculiarities to the nation building, it introduces Eastern Europe to modernity. Such a process relies on the presence of actors who form their boundaries and solve the problems of the pogranichie — the iinique space of reflection, communication and interaction between actors.

13'3

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Index

"Perekrestki", 33, 34 2B-Model, 47, 48, 57 absurdity, 62, 63 acculturation, 46 actor, II, 3, 21, 24, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 120, 128, 130, 132, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139 actors' pratices, 55, 58, 81, 124, 129, 130 actorship, 41, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 66, 77, 91, 99, 107, 131 affiliation, 84 Alvarez R., 6 Ancel J., 9 Anderson B., 23 Antanovich N., 35, 36, 37 Arendt H., 60, 61 assimilation, 46 Association of Borderland studies, 5 autarchy, 73, 77, 79, 82, 122 145

Babkou I., 2, 34, 35, 55 Balkans, 100, 101 Banse E., 9 Bauman Z., 61, 86 Belarus, I, IV, 1, 2, 3, 7, 25, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 42, 56, 59, 109, 110, 111, 126, 127 Boggs S., 10 border, I, II, III , IV, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 55, 56, 57, 58, 62, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 101, 110, 114, 120, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133 border studies, 4, 5, 9, 14, 27, 30 borderland, I, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 23, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 47 border-space 43, 47, 62, 72, 73, 76, 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 95, 99, 100, 108, 109, 116, 117, 119, 120 boundary II, III, 1, 4, 5, 12, 16, 19, 21, 22, 26, 28, 29, 31, 34, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 60, 61, 62, 98, 103, 104, 122, 125, 128, 132, boundary studies 5, 31 Bourdieu P., 22, 59, 60 Bowman 1., 10 Brednikova 0., 40 Brest, 8, 26 Brubaker R., 109, 110, 118 146

Chang H., 5 Church, 49, 78, 93, 102, 118, 114, 128 citizen, 74, 104 Continuum of Boundary Dynamics, 24, 27 corporation, 20, 22, 39, 49, 96, 102 Curson, L., 10 Dalby S., 18 Deleuze G., 36 depolitization, 56 Descartes R., 63 dictionary, 94, 95, 99, 100 Diehl P., 12 differentiation, 35, 40, 44, 46, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 85, 100, 104, 105, 108, 109, 130 Donnan H., 23 Durkheim E., 20, 46 Dworkin R., 52 Eastern Europe, I, III, IV, 1, 39, 40, 45, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 65, 73, 74, 85, 87, 95, 101, 104, 107, 114, 115, 116, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133 Elton H., 27 empire, 32, 47, 65, 101, 110 Erickson F., 5 147

Europe, IV, 4, 7, 10, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 55, 70, 73, 109, 110, 122, 124, 126, 130, 131 European Union, 7, 8 Fawcett C., 10 freedom, 25, 30, 46, 53, 64, 77, 84, 102, 104, 106, 119, 123 frontier, I, II, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 100, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110 Goertz G., 12 Goffman I., 66 good society, 65 Green S., 23 Gurr T., 12 Habermas J., 51, 90, 92 Hartshorn R., 9 Holdich T., 10 Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, 47 House J. W., 11 Huntington S., 100, 110 identity, 34, 35, 36, 48, 84, 90, 96, 114 institutionalization, 21, 47, 53, 63, 93, 102, 104, 106 Kant I., 53, 63, 92 Kelsen H., 51 148

Kliot N., 18 Kolossov V. 6 Kopytoff, 23 Kosovo, 82 Kramsch 0., 17 Lamar L., 27 Lang A., 6 Lankov A., 26 Lamont M., 20, 21, 22 legal order, 50, 51, 52, 106 legal personality, 50, 51, 53 legitimation, 47, 48, 125 liberalization, 124 Lightfoot K., 23 Lotman Y., 94 Lunden T., 6, 14, 31 Maier Ch., 7 Mamardashvili M., 59, 63, 65 Martinez A., 6 Martinez 0., 12, 23 migration, 5, 18, 26, 27, 28 Minghi J., 11 149

Moldova, I, IV, 2, 4, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 56, 59, 109, 111, 126, 127, 128 nation, 7, 14, 16, 20, 33, 38, 49, 52, 65, 101, 102, 105, 114, 115, 133 Naumova S., 55 Newman D., 14 normative order, 52, 93, 98, 99, 106, 107 O'Loughlin, 14 Passi A., 14 Parker B., 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29 Perlman S., 23 personalism, 65 Pogranichie, I, II, III, IV, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 22, 23, 25, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 103, 107, 108, 109, 116, 129, 130, 131, 132 Prescott J.R.V., 11 prigranichie, 6, 25, 30, 38 public space, II, III, 3, 47, 58, 61, 65, 66, 70, 76, 84, 85, 86, 94 Renaut A., 45 Rodseth L., 24 Rosier M., 23, 27 Russia, I, 3, 4, 6, 19, 34, 80, 109, 110, 111, 127 150

Schmitt K., 70, 71 Scott J., 17 settlement, 28, 30, 31, 32, 110 Shparaga 0., 36, 37, 56 social structure, 9, 38, 46, 48, 69, 73, 75, 77, 91, 102, 103, 107, 109, 115, 128 sovereignty, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 84, 85, 115, 118 state, 6, 8, 11, 15, 25, 32, 39, 46, 49, 69, 70, 79, 86, 113, 115, 131, 133 status, 5, 21, 33, 37, 42, 43, 44, 47, 49, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 92, 96, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 115, 116, 118, 121, 123 Thompson L., 27 transition, I, II, III, IV, 28, 35, 37, 56, 89, 93, 96, 102, 103, 117, 118, 119, 121, 124, 125, 126, 132 transitology, I, IV, 30, 124, 125 Ukraine, I, IV, 1, 2, 3, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 42, 56, 59, 109, 110, 111, 126, 127, 128 USSR, 25, 85, 97, 98, 103, 104, 109, 110, 122, 124 Vattel E., 70 Weil S., 50 Wendl T., 23, 27 White G., 18 Wilson T., 23 151

Young 0., 18 Zinovyev A., 103 Zotov A., 90

152

Olga Breskaya

Dr. Olga Breskaya received her Ph.D. at Lomonosov Moscow State University. She is Associate Professor in European Humanities at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania. Dr. Breskaya's sphere of research interest is social theory, borderland theory, issues of boundary formation of urban communities in public space, and sociology of religion.

Oleg -2,-esky Dr. Oleg Bresky received his Ph.D. at Lomonosov Moscow State University. He is a lawyer and head of the Legal Studies Department in European Humanities at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania. Dr. Bresky's research interests are focused on constitutional law, history of legal thought, European law, and regional policy.