Practical political science. A guide to getting in touch with reality

18.05.2020

Kaos - the hero of the new cycle Anne-Katrina Westly - lives in a small town at the foot of the mountain, in the Newspaper House opposite the waterfall. His dad is a bus driver, he sees a lot of interesting things along the way. Mom works at the pharmacy. On one occasion, she even saved a little girl who ate a lot of adult pills. While his parents are at work, Kaos spends time with Björnar, his "day brother". What does not happen to them! Once they even flew into space!

Anne-Katrina Westly
Kaos and Bjornar
Stories

Kaos and Bjornar

Little blue bus

There lived a little boy in Norway, his name was Kaos. Actually, his real name was Karl Oscar, but when he was very young, even smaller than now, it was difficult for him to pronounce such a long name, and he called himself Kaos. It was a bit like Karl Oscar, or so it seemed to him. Soon my mother began to call him Kaos, and after her, dad, and finally all the acquaintances who lived with him in the same city.

The city was not big, but not very small either. It was called Vetlebu, which means "small town" in Norwegian. As in all cities, there was a Main Street in Vetlebu. It stretched through the whole city, and on it were all kinds of shops, a pharmacy, a library, a bank and a post office. There were also non-main streets and even alleys in the city, but there were almost no shops on them.

The city had two attractions and was very proud of them. The first was the mountain. Just do not think that the city stood at the foot of this mountain. No, it stretched along its slopes, and residents did not get to the upper streets without effort. But they loved their mountain and didn't complain.

The second attraction was the waterfall. Many streams and streams flowed from the top of the mountain, they merged into a river, and the river flowed into the city. In some places it flowed slowly and calmly, and in some places it violently threw itself off the rocks and ledges that met its path. These were the waterfalls.

The largest waterfall was located in the city center. After this waterfall, the river again became a river and peacefully flowed into the lake that lay outside the city.

The inhabitants of the city loved the waterfall and, in order to better admire it, they built a bridge over it. The bridge was so high that the spray did not reach it. Kaos lived next to this bridge. The house in which he lived was called Gazetny, because a newspaper was published in it. Journalists, artists, photographers and printers worked here. The newspaper was published on the second and third floors, and on the first there was a warehouse and next to it a small apartment - two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom.

Kaos lived in this apartment. The printing presses hummed in the printing house, a waterfall rumbled outside the window, but they did not interfere with Kaos. It was his own familiar noise, and Kaos treated him like an old friend. However, the waterfall did not always rumble: in winter it turned into a simple babbling stream. But in spring and autumn it was a real big waterfall.

Now it was autumn, the waterfall was roaring with might and main, but Kaos and dad and mom easily fell asleep to his noise, rejoiced in him in the morning and remembered about him all day.

The newspaper house stood on the square, which was also quite noisy, because many cars and motorcycles passed through it. Cars roared angrily, giving gas to overcome the steep incline just beyond the square. Kaos is also used to their noise. He always knew exactly which car was driving past his house: a car, a truck or a bus, and among them he always made out the noise of one car - a small blue bus that took passengers from the city to hotels located at the very top of the mountain. This bus was called the Mountain one, and Kaos's dad was the driver on it. When the Mountain bus returned from the flight in the evening, Khaos ran to the window and shouted:

Mum! Mum! This is Dad!

And if my mother did not cook dinner, she also went to the window and they, together with Kaos, looked to see if the blue bus would stop near their house. It happened that he stopped, even if the path was clear and none of the passengers was going to go out into the square. The bus gave a short signal and went back a little - it was a special bus dance, which he performed only in front of Kaos and his mother. Then the bus continued on its way again. He was in a hurry to take passengers to the place and return to the bus station, where his house was. Before going to sleep, the bus was thoroughly washed both inside and out, so that tomorrow's passengers would be pleasant to ride in it.

If it was not too late and not too dark and the weather was not too bad, Mom would let Kaos go to meet Dad. But she herself translated him across the square, where cars roared menacingly and a blue bus danced if Dad was in a good mood.

Dad was in a great mood today, the bus performed its dance and even buzzed twice. Kaos immediately realized that dad was in a hurry to go home. But my mother was grilling trout, and Kaos did not know if she could move him across the square. What if, because of this trout, he doesn't go to meet dad? Kaos looked at Mom.

Don't worry, I'm taking you now, ”Mom said. “I just turned the fish over and turned down the fire.

Mom put on a jacket and Kaos put on a sweater. From haste, he could not hit his head in the gate. Finally, his head popped out, and Kaos and his mother ran out of the house into the square.

That's where it was noisy! The waterfall rumbled, the printing house coughed loudly, the cars roared. Kaos took his mother by the hand, looked to the left, then to the right, waited a minute and went to the other side. There he stopped and watched my mother go back - after all, he worried about her no less than she was about him.

Crossing the square, my mother waved her hand to Kaos. Now he could walk alone to the bus station, he no longer needed to cross the street.

The station was not far away. Kaos walked through the waiting room and out into the courtyard where the buses were parked. There were many of them. Some were preparing for the last evening flight, others were resting - they had already run over enough in the day.

The Blue Mountain bus was standing in the very corner of the yard, and dad was next to him, but Kaos knew: you can't run to dad, you have to wait on the porch - it was dangerous in the yard, more and more buses were arriving there. It seemed to Kaos that he was waiting too long. Dad didn't seem to notice him, he talked to one of the drivers, then got on the bus for a bag, then started talking again. But then he looked at the porch and smiled at Kaos.

Now Kaos could wait as long as he wanted! There was something to see, especially since Kaos knew every bus by sight. The one who went to the valley was tired and dusty, his working day had already ended, and he was waiting to be washed. The one who drove to the foot was also pretty tired, but he had to make another, last, flight - people were crowding in front of him, and some had already climbed inside.

The most important view was from the city bus. How could he not have put on airs, if he drove on the asphalt all day and almost did not get dirty! However, when Kaos squatted down, he saw that the city bus was full of dust under its wings.

Here comes dad! But Kaos did not even budge, although everything inside him jumped with joy, dad could be calm - his son would not run out to the bus platform.

Finally, dad took Kaos by the hand, they walked side by side through the waiting room, went out into the street and headed towards the house. Kaos tried to take the same big steps as dad, and dad - as small as Kaos, and therefore they walked almost in step.

They stopped in the square. Here, taking acceleration before the ascent, the cars drove especially fast. Crossing the square, Kaos and dad did not go home, but climbed the bridge. Dad helped Kaos to stand on the lower rail of the railing so that he, holding on to the upper one, could better see the waterfall.

But Kaos remembered everything and was not at all going to jump into the waterfall, as it seemed to dad. It was just that he was having fun, but now he was sad. However, not for long, because the day was still good, and dad returned from work early.

Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contacting Reality

Digest of articles

Ekaterina Shulman

Editor Victoria Stepanets

Editor Igor Alekseev

Editor Ekaterina Plyonkina

Editor Anna Rudyak

Editor Natalia Saliy

Created in the intellectual publishing system Ridero.ru

Ekaterina Shulman is a political scientist, lecturer, expert on the problems of lawmaking, a regular columnist for the Vedomosti newspaper and the author of many other electronic and printed publications, the author of the book Lawmaking as a Political Process. The new collection presents her best articles of 2013-15 under one cover, which tell about the peculiarities of the Russian political system, its properties, qualities and prospects of transformation.

"Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contact with Reality" is a book in which the author aims to describe the Russian political system outside the false dichotomy of "dry theory" and "homely truth", but using methods of scientific knowledge, practical experience and common sense.

From the book you will learn:

- what political regimes the Russian one resembles and what this says about its probable future;

- what stands between democracy and autocracy;

- what do “hybrid” regimes look like and can Russia be attributed to them;

- what the legislative process in Russia actually looks like - where do the new laws come from, who are their real authors and beneficiaries.

Olga Romanova, journalist, head of the Charitable Foundation for Aid to Convicts: “Here is a book that needs to be read. Not reverently, but with a marker or pencil, leaving polemical notes in the margins and highlighting in pink special places... Moreover, Ekaterina Shulman is becoming more and more interesting and famous every day to such an extent that soon, God forbid, she will be labeled "popular author". Not only is she brilliantly fluent in the syllable and writes exceptionally well. She has some kind of rare charm and a clear mind, which cannot but annoy. And this is the main thing in books - to make you think a little differently about yourself, your beloved, about reality and the fantasy surrounding us "

Boris Grozovsky, economic commentator: “Ekaterina Shulman is perhaps the only political scientist working on Russia who combines intellectual honesty and philological grace with inexhaustible optimism. How she does it is a mystery. Probably, the matter is in common sense (he does not give preference to simple explanations of excessively complex) and the ability to look at the political process, including two optics at the same time: active observation from close range and a dispassionate look through a telescope at the political games of incomprehensible aliens, about whose motives we can only guess"

Gleb Morev, journalist, editor-in-chief of the Literatura department of the Colta.ru website: “In Russian intellectual prose, nothing is as scarce as the type of author's strategy, precisely defined in the early 1930s by Viktor Shklovsky as“ the search for optimism ”. And here, developing the second metaphor of Shklovsky, Ekaterina Shulman, with her shrewdly ironic look at today's Russia, is undoubted, according to the Hamburg account, a champion. "

Foreword by Gleb Pavlovsky

Life of hybrids

The life of our political science could form a satire genre in the spirit of A. Zinoviev, whether it was in demand. But strict Ekaterina Shulman will not joke with science. The book is ruled by a healthy non-publicistic ruthlessness - the author is fighting for the scientific honor of the subject.

Isn't the main disaster of the Russian nation building this parascience lost in intrigue, which along with the name political science her vocabulary? The fact that this is the name in the Russian Federation merged from two pools. First, a university copy-and-paste of political science fragments applied to the new reality. In the secular mass of “Russia, returning to the universal human path,” the echoing of Western terms is the very civilizational transubstantiation. Over thirty years, the former naivety degenerated into feasts of the Valdai-Rhodes sages funded by state corporations.

Simultaneously there was an onslaught of informal practitioners who were saving Russia with the baggage of random aphorisms about power: the Strugatskys, a couple of translated American books on strategy, a bit of legal theory and Weber, in the volume of INION collections "for official use." The mixture is plastic, the products are easily kneaded in state fingers, forming passwords for current manipulations. Then the worst happened: the pools merged, political scientists were called to loud TV shows, their title became an indecent role.

Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contacting Reality

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Title: Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contact with Reality

About the book Ekaterina Shulman "Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contact with Reality"

The new collection under one cover presents the best articles by Ekaterina Shulman of 2013-15, which tells about the peculiarities of the Russian political system, its qualities and prospects for transformation. "Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contact with Reality" is a book in which the author aims to describe the Russian political system outside the false dichotomy of "dry theory" and "homely truth", but using methods of scientific knowledge, practical experience and common sense.

On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online book Ekaterina Shulman "Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contacting Reality" in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. Buy full version you can contact our partner. Also, here you will find last news from literary world, find out the biography of your favorite authors.

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Ekaterina Shulman - political scientist, candidate of political sciences, teacher Russian Academy public service and National economy, an expert on the problems of lawmaking, a regular columnist for the newspaper "Vedomosti", the author of the book "Lawmaking as a political process" and the author of many other electronic and printed publications.

A series: Professional book

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company liters.

Editor Victoria Stepanets

Editor Igor Alekseev

Editor Ekaterina Plyonkina

Editor Anna Rudyak

Editor Natalia Saliy

Created in the intellectual publishing system Ridero.ru

From the book you will learn:

- what political regimes the Russian one resembles and what this says about its probable future;

- what stands between democracy and autocracy;

- what do “hybrid” regimes look like and can Russia be attributed to them;

- what the legislative process in Russia actually looks like - where do the new laws come from, who are their real authors and beneficiaries.

Olga Romanova, journalist, head of the Charitable Foundation for Aid to Convicts: “Here is a book that needs to be read. Not reverently, but with a marker or pencil, leaving polemical notes in the margins and highlighting special places in pink. Moreover, Ekaterina Shulman is becoming more and more interesting and famous every day to such an extent that soon, God forbid, she will be labeled "popular author". Not only is she brilliantly fluent in the syllable and writes exceptionally well. She has some kind of rare charm and a clear mind, which cannot but annoy. And this is the main thing in books - to make you think a little differently about yourself, your beloved, about reality and the fantasy surrounding us "

* * *

The given introductory fragment of the book Practical political science. A guide to contact with reality (Ekaterina Shulman) provided by our book partner -

Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contacting Reality

Digest of articles

Ekaterina Shulman

Editor Victoria Stepanets

Editor Igor Alekseev

Editor Ekaterina Plyonkina

Editor Anna Rudyak

Editor Natalia Saliy

Created in the intellectual publishing system Ridero.ru

From the book you will learn:

- what political regimes the Russian one resembles and what this says about its probable future;

- what stands between democracy and autocracy;

- what do “hybrid” regimes look like and can Russia be attributed to them;

- what the legislative process in Russia actually looks like - where do the new laws come from, who are their real authors and beneficiaries.

Olga Romanova, journalist, head of the Charitable Foundation for Aid to Convicts: “Here is a book that needs to be read. Not reverently, but with a marker or pencil, leaving polemical notes in the margins and highlighting special places in pink. Moreover, Ekaterina Shulman is becoming more and more interesting and famous every day to such an extent that soon, God forbid, she will be labeled "popular author". Not only is she brilliantly fluent in the syllable and writes exceptionally well. She has some kind of rare charm and a clear mind, which cannot but annoy. And this is the main thing in books - to make you think a little differently about yourself, your beloved, about reality and the fantasy surrounding us "

Foreword by Gleb Pavlovsky

Life of hybrids

And all this the fiery Shulman declared - fight! Her battle for the honor of political science does not take place in the comfort of an escape, but in public, under the evil scream of political air.

The author's favorite topic hybrid regime theory I'll get around. That one has patron fathers. In my opinion, it is itself a hybrid, like the “Asian mode of production” in Soviet history mathematics: for the sake of adjusting the standard, which was previously mainstream (in this case, the model of democratization), but which suddenly turned out to be an exception. However, I welcome the theory of hybrids, like any politicization in an illiberal environment. The author's goal is clear: by the time of the Last Judgment, to form a scientific and practical consensus. Terminological orthodoxy fences a zone of agreement, and it may work when "reason wins." In the short days of the victory of reason, the agreed password hits on the spot.

With a penchant for the alternatives lurking in history, those glassy bodies that highlight the rawness of the matter of the result, I noticed the power of passwords. Is the victorious march of the revelatory brand so clear administrative command system in the 1980s? After all, in the Soviet industries at that time it was just the executive administration that was lacking. But Gabriel Popov's meme eliminated the issue of leverage ahead. I remember how in the 1990s, while still young reformers cursed the poverty of the means of administration and the futility of the commands they gave them. Until a simplified version of the same meme emerged from the darkness of metaphors ("order in power - order in the country") vertical of power, this Leviathan is for the poor.

Does the bureaucracy really hold power in Russia? The question is rhetorical, it is even shameful to ask them. But even here I would have argued with the author. I like Katya Shulman's categorical traditionalism. And yet I can't admit state bureaucracy a hardware community of local owners who trade power in places where it is accumulated. Our bureaucracy is inseparable from the flesh of the governed people, despite its class non-merger. Power relations in Russia have replaced the public and private structures of human life. In each of us sits a hybrid little Volodin. Isn't that why it's dry political science in the texts of the author of the book looks like an encyclopedia of Russian life?

Gleb Pavlovsky

Practical Nostradamus

or 12 mental habits that prevent us from predicting the future

The traditional genre of late December is fortune-telling and prediction, but the tumultuous 2014 increased the demand for this genre almost more than for cash. In the era social networks political forecasting is no longer the prerogative of the political scientist class (whoever they are), but is available to everyone who has the Internet. Per last year we have heard a lot of various prophecies, and few of us resisted the temptation to be Vanga and predict famine, pestilence, war and the end of the world. However, the prophetic genre has its dangers: the horizon of the future is obscured by prejudice, superstition and the usual course of human stupidity. Here are the main mistakes to avoid when writing prophecy.

1. Personification. If you were smart enough to at least register an account on a social network, then you can no longer be warned against primitive forms of fixation on the role of a person in a story like "If there is no citizen X, there will be no Russia either." You already guess that Russia will outlive both citizen X and Y, and you and me. Even a political regime should not be associated with a specific person: a person may disappear, a regime may persist (or vice versa). Political system – complex organism, and reducing it to one person is a dangerous mental aberration. Try to avoid speculations about resignations and appointments: if you were told "100% info", then the informant, most likely, was driven not by love of truth, but by hardware calculations. Strive to rise to the next level of generalization, and not engage in court political science, which always smacks of lackey.

Practical political science. A guide to getting in touch with reality

Anne-Katrina Westly Kaos and Bjornar Stories

Kaos and Bjornar

Little blue bus

About the book Ekaterina Shulman "Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contact with Reality"

Free download of the book Ekaterina Shulman "Practical Political Science: A Guide to Contact with Reality"

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Anne-Katrina Westly
Kaos and Bjornar
Stories