‘I will empower him!’: Representations of Prisoners’ Wives in Russia

Abstract

Represenfafions of fhe experiences of pasf and presenf Russian prisoners' women relafives in Russia are explored. The annals of Russian nafional hisfory glorify fhe handful of wives who volunfarily chose fo share Siberian exile wifh fheir husbands who were punished for fhe anfi-monarchisf uprising in December 1825. A survey of images of prisoners' v^/ives demonsfrafes how Russian culfural myfhology has promofed a powerful, sfereofypical image of fhe 'Decembrisf wife' as fhe epifome of marifal love, devotion and personal sacrifice. On fhe basis of various hisforic, liferary, documentary and Internet sources, as well as interviews with current Russian prisoners' women relafives, the formation, articulation and enduring vitality of the 'Decembrist wife' discourse in Russia is examined.

An Observationally-Derived Kick Distribution for Neutron Stars in Binary Systems

“…Considering the kick mechanisms and the kick magnitudes Fe CC-SNe, ECSNe, and USSNe can produce, it would not be unreasonable to expect the intrinsic NS kick distribution to be bimodal. Indeed, this has been suggested theoretically (e.g., Katz 1975Katz , 1983Podsiadlowski et al 2004;Schwab et al 2010;Beniamini & Piran 2016) and observationally based on pulsar velocities (e.g., Arzoumanian et al 2002;Brisken et al 2003;Verbunt et al 2017). However, we find no evidence for bimodality in the sample of binaries in this work.…”