This book, based on extensive original research in the field, analyses the political, social and cultural implications of the rise of Islam in post-Soviet Russia. Examining in particular the situation in Tatarstan and Dagestan, where there are large Muslim populations, the authors chart the long history of Muslim and orthodox Christian co-existence in Russia, discuss recent moves towards greater autonomy and the assertion of ethnic-religious identities which underlie such moves, and consider the actual practice of Islam at the local level, showing the differences between "official" and...

Since the political whirlwinds of the mid-1980s and the fall of communism in 1991, Russia has undergone dramatic social change, much of which has escaped the attention of Western media. In this study, Pilkington applies the methods of cultural studies research to the study of Russian youth. She does this by deconstructing the social discourses within which Russian youth has been constructed, and by providing an alternative reading of youth cultural activity, based on an ethnographic study of Moscow youth culture at the end of the 1980s.

This book explores the lives and expectations of young women in the new Russia, looking at the enormous changes that the new social and economic environment have brought.
The authors draw on the growing literature on gender and generation in the West which has arisen as a result of the recognition that the experience of youth is classed, raced and gendered and that the experience of gender is mediated by class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and age. They consider the role of the media, state and social institutions in shaping opportunities and experiences in the post-Soviet environment,...

Russia's Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives provides a thorough examination of the phenomenon of skinheads, explaining its nature and its significance, and assessing how far Russian skinhead subculture is the 'lumpen' end of the extreme nationalist ideological spectrum. There are large numbers of skinheads in Russia, responsible for a significant number of xenophobic attacks, including 97 deaths in 2008 alone, making this book relevant to Russian specialists as well as to sociologists of youth subculture. It provides a practical example of how to investigate youth...