How can an icon of romantic Ukrainian nationalism be refashioned into a tool for building Soviet internationalism? This article tells the story of the bandura—the musical instrument constructed in the nineteenth century as an icon of romantic Ukrainian nationalism—and its fraught integration into the culture of Young Pioneers in early Soviet Ukraine. Focused on the shift in cultural policy from Leninist korenizastiia to Stalinist socialist realism, this article examines how the emancipatory and universalizing claims of Soviet internationalism became premised on Russified culture that inhibited the possibility of non-Russians’ full assimilation into the project of Soviet revolution. In the hands of Young Pioneers, who were appointed as Soviet “revolutionary agents” and as targets of the state’s pastoral care (“Stalin’s flowers”), the bandura became a particularly vexed symbol, epitomizing the irreconcilable tensions and the apparently inevitable violence inherent to nationalities policies in Soviet Ukraine. Following the intergenerational saga of a family of bandurists, the article shows how the disciplining technologies of Soviet musical-political education yielded often unexpected results.

In his paper “Moral Permissibility and Desert in the Therapy-Enhancement Distinction,” Ozan Gurcan takes a fresh look at the therapy-enhancement distinction and argues that, while the distinction does not establish rigid moral boundaries, it nevertheless serves an important purpose because it differentiates between interventions that are, generally speaking, owed to individuals as a matter of justice (i.e., therapies) and those that are not (i.e., enhancements). Because therapies help to promote justice in society, therapies are always permitted and, in many cases required, whereas enhancements may be, at best, permitted. In this commentary, I argue that we would be concerned about the morality of genetic enhancements even if they did not raise issues of social justice and I propose that other key moral ideas, such as the concept of human nature, may also be important in establishing the boundary between therapy and enhancement.

This article presents a methodology for identifying the influence of free Black women in a set of Spanish legal documents. In response to a 1574 decree imposing tribute on them, Panamá’s free men and women of African descent collectively petitioned for exemption on the basis of their poverty and decades of uncompensated military service. They presented sworn depositions from twenty of the city’s Spanish notables in support. This essay analyzes those depositions for patterns of grammatical and orthographic variances and interruptions that point to the influence of free Black women—who formed the majority of the city’s free Black population—in the preparation and performance of the successful legal case.

As corporations increasingly embrace ethical commitments and prioritize corporate social responsibility (CSR), commentators have begun to speak of a shift toward “moral capitalism.” This shift has revived debates about the compatibility of CSR with economic efficiency and the role of markets in promoting social change. We find the economic concern misplaced: moral capitalism efficiently responds to a growing demand for CSR from all stakeholders, including shareholders. Yet the same market mechanisms that make modern CSR profitable raise political objections worth considering. Major shareholders can now leverage their disproportionate economic power to use corporations as vehicles for forcing unilateral resolutions of societal issues, bypassing and undermining formal democratic processes. Beyond this, there is a broader risk to social cohesion: when markets become arenas for adjudicating rather than sidestepping moral and political disagreements, they reinforce exchanges among “friends” (those with shared preferences) while deepening divisions with “foes.” This may import polarization into market life, with spillover effects on society at large. Taken together, these concerns raise the question of whether moral capitalism may threaten the very democratic moral sensibility it claims to uphold.