“Orange Plague”: World War II and the Symbolic Politics of Pro-state Mobilization in Putin’s Russia

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 822-839
Author(s):  
Matthew Luxmoore
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Symbolic Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Mass Gatherings ◽  
War Experience ◽  
State Mobilization ◽  
War Commemoration ◽  
Great Victory

AbstractThis article examines the symbolic politics of three pro-state movements that emerged from the “preventive counterrevolution” launched by the Kremlin in response to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. In 2005, youth movement Nashi played upon war memory at its rallies and branded the opposition “fascist”; in 2012, the Anti-Orange Committee countered opposition protests with mass gatherings at Moscow’s war commemoration sites; in 2015, Antimaidan brought thousands onto Russia’s streets to denounce US-backed regime change and alleged neo-Nazism in Kiev. I show how evocation of the enemy image, through reference to the war experience, played a key role in the symbolism of the preventive counterrevolution. Interviews with activists in these movements discussing their symbolic politics reveal an opposing victim/victor narrative based on an interplay of two World War II myths—the “Great Victory” and the “fascist threat.” Moving beyond approaches that view the Soviet and Russian World War II cult as a triumphalist narrative of the Great Victory over fascism, I conclude that its threat component is an understudied element.

The Great War and Civil War Memory

2019 ◽  
pp. 232-282
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Civil War Memory ◽  
Lincoln Memorial ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War ◽  
War Commemoration

This chapter examines the influence of Civil War commemoration on World War I commemoration and the impact of World War I on Civil War commemoration. The war limited recognition that the Lincoln Memorial climaxed development of the National Mall with less militarism than recent Lincoln statues suggested. Some sponsors of World War I monuments rejected Civil War precedents, such as those who projected useful memorials, but an army of doughboy statues built on Civil War precedents. The proliferation of male nudes was one example. The crisis of World War I caused some memorial promoters to treat the Civil War as a foreshadowing and some memorial promoters to treat the Civil War as a refuge from modernity. The Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain illustrated both tendencies and the displacement of public monuments by cinema in the 1930s.

Measuring the War Experience: Ghanaian Soldiers in World War II

1987 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne M. Israel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West African ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The Impact

During World War II, some 65,000 Ghanaians were under the command of British officers in the Royal West African Frontier Force, and since India was the transit and refuelling station for those en route to Burma, the 30,000 who served there briefly experienced life in both countries. There has been much conjecture about the impact of the war on participating African soldiers,1 and this article focuses on the nature and socio-economic implications of their experience as later revealed by the veterans themselves in two rather overlooked sources of information: oral interviews and locally published materials.

scholarly journals War Memory and Mizoguchi’s Film

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fumie Yatagai
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Japanese Society ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Life ◽  
War Memory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Japanese Film ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Common ◽  
Kenji Mizoguchi

This paper focuses on the Japanese film director called Kenji Mizoguchi who worked not only the making films but gave the caricature impact to the Japanese society. He was touching with the Japanese philosophy and spirit before and after the World War II. He described the common life of the Japanese life, especially tracing on how the women were dis-treated because of the context of the machismo in the public and at home. Also, the women were prohibited to have good education. The Japanese women at that time had a harsh moment to find their identity. For instance, as I experienced the poverty and discriminations just to be a women, Mizoguchi’s film encouraged me and opened a door to the new life.

Bodily Violence and Resistance in Wojtek Smarzowski’s Rose (Róża, 2011)

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-55
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Ostrowska
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
World War ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Female Experience

Abstract The article argues that Wojtek Smarzowski’s film Rose (Róża, Poland, 2011) undermines the dominant bigendered logic of screen death and suffering in the Polish films depicting the experience of World War II. In these films, there is a significant absence of images of female suffering and death, which is striking when compared to the abundant images of wounded and dying male bodies, usually represented as a lavish visual spectacle. This unrepresented female death serves as a ‘structuring absence’ that governs the systematic signifying practices of Polish cinema. Most importantly, it expels the female experience of World War II from the realm of history to the realm of the mythical. This representational regime has been established in the Polish national cinema during the 1950s, especially in Andrzej Wajda’s films, and is still proving its longevity. As the author argues, Smarzowski’s Rose is perhaps the most significant attempt to undermine this gendered cinematic discourse. Specifically, the essay explores the ways in which Smarzowski’s Rose departs from previous dominant modes of representation of the World War II experience in Polish cinema, especially its gendered aspect.1 Firstly, it examines how Rose abandons the generic conventions of both war film and historical drama and instead, utilises selected conventions of melodrama to open up the textual space in which to represent the female experience of historical events. Then the author looks more closely at this experience and discusses the film’s representation of the suffering female body to argue that it subverts the national narrative of the war experience that privileges male suffering. A close analysis of the relationship between sound and image in the scenes of bodily violence reveals how the film reclaims the female body from the abstract domain of national allegory and returns it to the realm of individual embodied experience. The article concludes that Rose presents the female body as resisting the singular ideological inscription, and instead, portrays it as simultaneously submitting to and resisting the gendered violence of war.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inger L. Stole
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Success ◽  
The Public ◽  
Consumer Activism ◽  
Consumer Movement ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The Impact

This concluding chapter discusses the impact of wartime events on advertising and consumer activism after World War II, and examines their reverse trajectories in the 1950s. With a few notable exceptions, it was not until the later 1960s that advertising came under new scrutiny by a nascent consumer movement. The key factor in the transformation of advertising’s image was the (War) Advertising Council’s tireless work on behalf of the advertising community. Displaying an excellent sense of timing and direction, the WAC coached and chastised individual advertisers, pleading for their compliance in what it believed to be a fantastic public relations opportunity. The war experience had shown that just as advertisers were capable of providing the keys to social success, they were equally adept at guiding the public through issues of political magnitude.

A Transnational History of Revolution and Nationalism: Encounters Between Japanese Asianists, the Turkish Revolution, and the World of Islam

2006 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 37-63
Author(s):  
Selçuk Esenbel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Psychiatric Treatment ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
World War ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Japanese Imperialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Clinical Description ◽  
Post War ◽  
War Crimes Trial

The leading intellectual and ideologue of the Japanese Asianist agenda of Japanese imperialism until the end of World War II, Okawa Shumei (1886-1957), was tried in the Tokyo War Crimes Trial as a war criminal but found to be mentally disturbed. The post-war memory about Okawa is an alien image-Okawa spending his days translating the Qur'an while detained in a mental hospital in solitary confinement. The clinical description of Okawa's hallucinations on 13 March 1947, while under psychiatric treatment, is a telling climax of the narrative on the fusion of Japanese Pan Asianism and Islam. The examination report describes in detail the psychological state of Okawa, who might have been suffering from syphilis-induced hallucinations: “Okawa believes Mohammed comes to him. In his vision, he states that he sees Mohammed dressed in a green mantle and white turban. Mohammed's eyes glow brilliantly, and his presence fills him with courage, enthusiasm, and contentment […] Patient believes that this is a religious experience. Mohammed enables him to understand the ‘Koran’ as he was never able to understand it before. There is no conflict with his Buddhist faith because he states there is only one God: and Mohammed, Christ, and Buddha are all prophets of the same God.” The report notes that the prisoner's principal interest is now in “Mohammedanism and the translation and interpretation of the Koran.”

scholarly journals Performing Memory in Conflicting Settings: Russian Immigrants and the Remembrance of World War II in Finland

2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542095669
Author(s):  
Olga Davydova-Minguet
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Russian Speakers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Media Space ◽  
The Sacrifice ◽  
Great Victory

This article discusses public and mediatized memory politics concerning Word War II in Finland, particularly its transnational dimensions brought about by post-Soviet immigration from the former Soviet Union. Despite the ongoing multiculturalization of Finnish society, where Russian speakers have become the largest immigrant group, Finnish national identity is still constructed around the idea of national independence and its heroic defence. Finnish collective and public memory with its monuments and celebrations concentrates on the sacrifice the nation made for Finnish independence in the wars against the Soviet Union during 1939–1944. In turn, these (re)produce performative membership in the Finnish nation. Likewise, recent Russian memory politics that celebrate Russia’s “great victory” in World War II have become visible in the Finnish public and media space owing to the Immortal Regiment marches held in Helsinki since 2017. This event is embedded within a series of complex connections between Russian speakers, Russian mediascapes, and pro-Russian activists in Finland, and represents an instance of the mediatization of transnational memory politics.

Florentine: Unrepentant Political Nazi

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
South America ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
National Bank

This chapter tells the story of Florentine, widow of Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, one of the two top Dutch Nazis during the Hitler period. Florentine's husband served as the Dutch plenipotentiary to the League of Nations during the 1930s and as head of the Dutch National Bank during World War II. Offered the chance to be secreted to South America after the war by the Nazi leadership, Florentine and her husband elected to stay in Holland to “tell people the truth” about the war. Florentine remained an unrepentant Nazi until her death in 2007, traveling as much as her health permitted to speak in favor of the Nazi cause. She was extremely proud of her job as former leader of the Dutch Nazi Youth Movement for Women and was devoted to the memory of her husband.

Gender and the Construction of Wartime Heroism in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum ◽  
Nancy M. Wingfield
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Entire Nation ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Post War ◽  
War Commemoration

During World War II, the Soviet media featured both male and female military heroes as part of an effort to mobilize the entire nation for the protection of hearth and home. The wartime hero cults inspired post-war commemoration in both the Soviet Union and in countries it `liberated' from Nazism. However, no single Communist/Soviet model of commemoration and heroism was imposed on post-World War II Eastern Europe. The relative lack of female heroes constituted one of the most striking differences between the `cults' of the war in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. The difference can be explained in part as a consequence of the very different Soviet and Czechoslovak wartime experiences. The absence of female heroes also points to post-war differences in how the two states' leaders understood and employed the legitimizing potential of the war. These differences in turn shaped the post-Communist fate of hero cults in both countries.

Changing perspectives: France’s post-war laureates and the Nobel Prize for Literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phoebe Weston-Evans ◽  
Colin Nettelbeck
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Literary History ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
International Perspectives ◽  
Post War ◽  
War Experience

This article identifies and examines the largely overlooked corpus of the introductory and acceptance speeches relating to the French Nobel Literature Prize laureates in the post-World War II period. Following a broadly chronological development, it illuminates the tensions between the national and the international perspectives inherent in the process, analysing how individual laureates negotiate their creative trajectories within a longer-term historical shift towards a transnational literary paradigm. Within that context of a changing ethos, the war experience itself is shown to be of pervasive and persistent importance, informing both the writers’ construction of their imaginary worlds, and the reception/perception of those worlds within the Nobel framework. Such special problems as Sartre’s attempted refusal of the prize and Beckett’s ambiguous national identity are used to propose a different viewpoint on France’s recent literary history, from the era of Gide and Mauriac to the more contemporary one of Simon, Le Clézio and Modiano.

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