scholarly journals Bolshevik Disease and Stalinist Terror: On the Historical Casuistry of Artificial Pneumothorax

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor J. Polianski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Pulmonary Tuberculosis ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Artificial Pneumothorax ◽  
History Of

AbstractFrom its initial development by Carlo Forlanini at the end of the nineteenth century until the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s, artificial pneumothorax was one of the most widely used treatments for pulmonary tuberculosis. However, there were strongly held reservations about this therapy because of its risks and side effects. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, such uncertainties became instruments of political denunciation. The leading Soviet pulmonary physician Volf S. Kholtsman (1886–1941) was alleged to have used the so-called ‘aristocratic therapy’ of artificial pneumothorax to kill prominent Bolsheviks. Drawing on documents from Stalin’s personal Secretariat, this historical study of the pneumothorax scandal contributes to the cultural history of tuberculosis, showing how it was instrumentalised for political purposes.

Sonic Overload

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Schmelz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Information Overload ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Materials ◽  
Film And Literature

Sonic Overload presents a musically centered cultural history of the late Soviet Union. It focuses on polystylism in music as a response to the information overload swamping listeners in the Soviet Union during its final decades. The central themes are collage, popular music, kitsch, and eschatology. The book traces the ways in which leading composers Alfred Schnittke and Valentin Silvestrov initially embraced and assimilated popular sources before ultimately rejecting them. Polystylism first responded to the utopian impulses of Soviet doctrine with utopian impulses to encompass all musical styles, from “high” to “low.” But these initial all-embracing aspirations were soon followed by retreats to alternate utopias founded on carefully selecting satisfactory borrowings, as familiar hierarchies of culture, taste, and class reasserted themselves. Looking at polystylism in the late USSR tells us about past and present, near and far, as it probes the musical roots of the overloaded, distracted present. Sonic Overload is intended for musicologists and Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian specialists in history, the arts, film, and literature, but it also targets a wider scholarly audience, including readers interested in twentieth- and twenty-first century music; modernism and postmodernism; quotation and collage; the intersections of “high” and “low” cultures; and politics and the arts. Based on archival research, oral historical interviews, and other overlooked primary materials, as well as close listening and thorough examination of scores and recordings, Sonic Overload presents a multilayered and comprehensive portrait of late-Soviet polystylism and cultural life, and of the music of Silvestrov and Schnittke.

scholarly journals From Dreams to Disillusionment: A Socio-Cultural History of the American Space Program

Ad Americam ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 75-87
Author(s):  
Rafał Kuś ◽  
Patrick Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Space Program ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Insight Into

This article offers an insight into the history of the U.S. space program, including its cultural and political aspects. Starting from the vision of space as a new field of peaceful and exciting exploration, predominant in the first half of the 20th century, moving through the period of the intensive and eventually fruitful Cold War competition between the two belligerent ideological blocs led by the United States and the Soviet Union, and ending with the present-day cooling of the space enthusiasm, it focuses on the main actors and eventsof the century-long struggle for reaching the stars. The article is based in part on primary journalistic sources in order to capture the social atmosphere of the times it focuses on. It points out to the mid-1960s as the time when the noble aspirations and optimism of the early cosmic endeavors started to succumb to the pressure of reality, which caused the overwhelming stagnation of space initiatives, effectively ending the Golden Age of extraterrestrial exploration. This argument is backed by an analysis of historical developments leading to and following the American conquest of the Moon.

The Free Germany Committee— An Historical Study

1952 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-366
Author(s):  
Andreas F. Lowenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
National Committee ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Interesting Insight ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Zone ◽  
Political Warfare ◽  
War Effort ◽  
History Of

In the summer of 1943 a group of German prisoners in the Soviet Union founded an association under Russian auspices designed to combat the war effort and government of Nazi Germany. The group, made up of soldiers, officers, and political exiles, called itself the National Committee “Free Germany,” and under that title operated with varying intensity throughout the remainder of the war. It was disbanded late in 1945, and by now has been largely forgotten. But many of its arguments are still effective in Germany today, and many of its members are now politically active in the Eastern Zone. I shall attempt to reconstruct here the history of the Free Germany movement, primarily as an addition to our historical knowledge of the Second World War. At the same time, I think, this account can provide an interesting insight into the workings of a certain type of German officer's mind, as well as a picture of a complete Russian operation in political warfare. With German rearmament an imminent problem and Soviet political strategy a continuing one, an examination of the Free Germany movement seems to be appropriate at the present time.

scholarly journals The (Anti-)Ideological Origins of Bernard Bailyn's Education in the Forming of American Society

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas D. Fallace
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society

Bernard Bailyn'sEducation in the Forming of American Societyrepresents, perhaps, the most significant text in the history of the field. In this essay, I argue that Bailyn's classic text can, and should, be contextualized in the post-World War II intellectual milieu of consensus liberalism that overtly rejected ideological commitment. Bailyn and other postwar consensus liberals considered academic research, conducted free from political ideology, to be the best antidote to the totalitarian thought of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Bailyn's famous text reflected the values of postwar consensus liberalism by rejecting the ideological commitments of the interwar period and embracing the objective, scientific values of the 1950s as reflected in the new intellectual and cultural history. Bailyn's emphasis on cultural-intellectual history as the best corrective for totalitarian thinking reflected the aspirations, hopes, and fears of his own moment in time, in the same way the progressives’ focus on conflict and reform reflected theirs.

The Role of the Mongolian People’s Republic in the Korean War

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty

Displace of Documentary Heritage from the Soviet Union to Poland during the Third Decade of the XXth Century

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Tatsiana Hiarnovich
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Xxth Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection Of

The paper explores the displace of Polish archives from the Soviet Union that was performed in 1920s according to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 and other international agreements. The aim of the research is to reconstruct the process of displace, based on the archival sources and literature. The object of the research is those documents that were preserved in the archives of Belarus and together with archives from other republics were displaced to Poland. The exploration leads to clarification of the selection of document fonds to be displaced, the actual process of movement and the explanation of the role that the archivists of Belarus performed in the history of cultural relationships between Poland and the Soviet Union. The articles of the Treaty of Riga had been formulated without taking into account the indivisibility of archive fonds that is one of the most important principles of restitution, which caused the failure of the treaty by the Soviet part.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Experiment

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. This book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. It shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. The book explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

Vanguard of the Revolution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. James McAdams
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

This book is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. The book argues that the rise and fall of communism can be understood only by taking into account the origins and evolution of this compelling idea. It shows how the leaders of parties in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and North Korea adapted the original ideas of revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to profoundly different social and cultural settings. The book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand world communism and the captivating idea that gave it life.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document