Comment on “Let's Go to the Moon”

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolai Volland
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Traffic Jams ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Casual Observer ◽  
Exploratory Mission

Things were getting busy on the major flight corridors between the Earth and Mars, or so the casual observer of socialist bloc science fiction from the 1950s might come to believe. While there are no reports of intergalactic traffic jams, Mars was becoming a destination of choice in science fiction from both sides of the Iron Curtain. In her fascinating article, Dafna Zur details the exploits of an international exploratory mission to the red planet, consisting of children from a dozen nations, including North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union. It remains unknown whether the explorers from Kim Tong Sŏp's serialized novel Youth Space Expedition Team met any other socialist space travelers on their way to Mars. But they could have very well run into spaceship #1, commanded by Zhenzhen, the protagonist of Zheng Wenguang's (1929–2003) “Cong diqiu dao huoxing” (From the Earth to Mars) (Zheng 1954a).

A Study of Photographs of the Far Side of the Moon and Description of Singular Features Revealed on its Surface

1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Y. X. Lipsky
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Structural Components ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Interplanetary Station ◽  
Space Rocket ◽  
First Time ◽  
Subsequent Passage ◽  
Automatic Interplanetary Station

The third space rocket, launched in the Soviet Union on 4 October 1959, brought to the calculated orbit an automatic interplanetary station which had accomplished, for the first time in history, a flight around the Moon with the subsequent passage near the Earth. During the time of this flight, on 7 October 1959, from 18.30 to 19.10 (Moscow standard time), the photographic camera of the automatic interplanetary station (AIS) took pictures of the far side of our satellite. The camera was equipped with two objectives, having focal lengths of 200 and 500 mm. A number of papers already published [1, 2, 3] contain a detailed description of the AIS trajectory, its perturbations by the Moon, structural components of the station itself, etc.

scholarly journals The Moon as an Object of Exploration in the Perception of Russian Science Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-54
Author(s):  
Galina Zalomkina
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Space Station ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Russian Science ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Scientific Technical ◽  
Soviet Science Fiction

Purpose: to trace how the representative Russian science fiction texts reflect the process of the exploration of the Earths satellite, both in scientific/technical and socio-philosophical aspects. Methods: comparative-historical, mythopoetic, socio-historical, hermeneutical, structural analysis. Results: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the outstanding rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory, in his story On the Moon conjectured in detail the impression of an observer on its surface. The Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev developed Tsiolkovskys hypotheses in the story The Star KETs in which the Moon becomes accessible due to the construction of a space station in Earths orbit, named after the scientist: Star K(onstantin) E(duardovich) Ts(iolkovsky). In the Soviet Union, which was actively engaged in the research of the Moon, the interest in it was so great that it was reflected even in childrens literature. Simultaneously with the deployment of the Soviet lunar program, a fairy-tale novel by Nikolai Nosov Dunno on the Moon appeared. The novel shows the atmosphere of rivalry between the USSR and the United States in the exploration of the Moon. The science fiction vector is unfolded in the picaresque genre. In Victor Pelevins novel Omon Ra the question is raised not only of the research prospects of lunar landings, but also of the spiritual price of scientific search which implies the active participation of the state: is a free intellectual and technical search possible for astrophysicists, engineers, and cosmonauts under the pressure of acute political necessities?

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.

Lukewarm Neutrality in a Cold War? The Case of Austria

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin A. Schmidl
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Military Occupation ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Other Orientation ◽  
Over Time

Geographically, Austria's position during the Cold War differed significantly from that of Switzerland or Sweden, let alone Ireland. Austria, like Finland, was situated along the Iron Curtain. In 1945, Austria was divided between East and West, and the Soviet Union hoped that the Austrian Communists could quickly gain power by largely democratic means. This effort failed, however, when the Communists lost decisively in the November 1945 elections. Over the next decade, Austria remained under Soviet and Western military occupation. The formal adoption of a neutral status for Austria in May 1955, when the Austrian State Treaty was signed, was a compromise needed to ensure the departure of Soviet forces from Austria. Although some other orientation might have been preferred, neutrality over time became firmly engrained in Austria's collective identity.

scholarly journals Uriel Weinreich’s “Languages in Contact” in the Soviet Union: Treading a Dangerous Ground

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (45) ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Oleksandra Litvinyak
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Russian Translation ◽  
Editorial Policy ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Limited Access ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Financial Feasibility ◽  
The Soviet Union

 In a democratic society with a market economy, editorial policy is often a matter of financial feasibility rather than anything else. Meanwhile, totalitarian societies approach it from a different angle, frequently putting political considerations in the centre. Living behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet scholars had very limited access to Western publications – very few of them were translated into the languages of Soviet republics. What is more, research shows that they were subject to censorship, just like literary works. Besides, the work of a translator, being invisible to the majority of readers, could be quite dangerous and ruin one’s scholarly career. Thus, a scholar embarking on a translation journey to acquaint their colleagues with the best samples of world research had to be very considerate. Such was the case of the Russian translation of Uriel Weinreich’s seminal book Languages in Contact done by the Ukrainian linguist, translator, lexicographer, and educator Yuriy Zhluktenko. The present paper explores the matter of censorship and self-censorship in this translation and its paratexts.

Denouement Of Borders

2019 ◽  
pp. 237-248
Author(s):  
Alyssa M. Park
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Korean Population ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Maritime Province

This chapter examines Soviet and Japanese disputes over the Korean population in the Maritime Province from the 1920s to 1945. It shows that heightened geopolitical tensions in Northeast Asia resulted in a renewed effort on the part of the Soviet Union to institute citizenship, migration and resettlement, and cultural policies among Koreans. Tensions inside the Maritime also escalated in the late 1920s and 1930s due to collectivization efforts and the Great Terror. Soviet policies culminated in the 1937 forced deportation of Koreans to Central Asia. The chapter argues that the deportation was an extreme attempt by the Soviet state to align its authority over territory and people in a sensitive border region. The chapter ends with a discussion of Korean migration, citizenship, and the border region between Russia, North Korea, and China after 1945.

From the Earth to the Moon, via Berlin

Willy Ley ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared S. Buss
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
General Public ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Specialized Experts

This chapter follows Ley during his early twenties, when he became an intermediary between specialized experts and the general public. Ley constructed his persona as a freelance writer and journalist, who could translate complex concepts for a broader audience in Weimar Germany. This chapter explores Ley’s entrance into rocketry clubs, amateur science, and circles of journalists during Weimar’s rocketry fad. It concludes with an analysis of his role in the ground breaking science fiction film, Woman in the Moon (1929).

The continuing threat of nuclear war

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Cirincione
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Nuclear Winter

The American poet Robert Frost famously mused on whether the world will end in fire or in ice. Nuclear weapons can deliver both. The fire is obvious: modern hydrogen bombs duplicate on the surface of the earth the enormous thermonuclear energies of the Sun, with catastrophic consequences. But it might be a nuclear cold that kills the planet. A nuclear war with as few as 100 hundred weapons exploded in urban cores could blanket the Earth in smoke, ushering in a years-long nuclear winter, with global droughts and massive crop failures. The nuclear age is now entering its seventh decade. For most of these years, citizens and officials lived with the constant fear that long-range bombers and ballistic missiles would bring instant, total destruction to the United States, the Soviet Union, many other nations, and, perhaps, the entire planet. Fifty years ago, Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, On the Beach, portrayed the terror of survivors as they awaited the radioactive clouds drifting to Australia from a northern hemisphere nuclear war. There were then some 7000 nuclear weapons in the world, with the United States outnumbering the Soviet Union 10 to 1. By the 1980s, the nuclear danger had grown to grotesque proportions. When Jonathan Schell’s chilling book, The Fate of the Earth, was published in 1982, there were then almost 60,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled with a destructive force equal to roughly 20,000 megatons (20 billion tons) of TNT, or over 1 million times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile system was supposed to defeat a first-wave attack of some 5000 Soviet SS-18 and SS-19 missile warheads streaking over the North Pole. ‘These bombs’, Schell wrote, ‘were built as “weapons” for “war”, but their significance greatly transcends war and all its causes and outcomes. They grew out of history, yet they threaten to end history. They were made by men, yet they threaten to annihilate man’.

Is It Transnational? A New Perspective in the Study of Communism

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 114-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan C. Iacob
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Fundamental Shift ◽  
The Continuum

This article presents a comprehensive review of the transnational perspective in the study of communism and the implications of this methodological turn for the transformation of the field itself. While advancing new topics and interpretative standpoints with a view to expanding the scope of such an initiative in current scholarship, the author argues that the transnational approach is important on several levels. First, it helps to de-localize and de-parochialize national historiographies. Second, it can provide the background to for the Europeanization of the history of the communist period in former Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Third, and most importantly, the transnational approach can reconstruct the international dimension of the communist experience, with its multiple geographies, spaces of entanglement and transfer, and clustered, cross-cultural identity-building processes. The article concludes that the advent of transnationalism in the study of communism allows for the discovery of various forms of historical contiguousness either among state socialisms or beyond the Iron Curtain. In other words, researchers might have a tool to not only know more about less, but also to resituate that “less” in the continuum of the history of communism and in the context of modernity. The transnational approach can generate a fundamental shift in our vantage point on the communist phenomenon in the twentieth century. It can reveal that a world long perceived as mostly turned inward was in fact imbricate in wider contexts of action and imagination and not particularly limited by the ideological segregationism of the Cold War.

Visualizing History: Truthfulness in North Korean Art

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-201
Author(s):  
Min-Kyung Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The State ◽  
Korean Art ◽  
Visual Form ◽  
Utopian Vision ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union

Abstract In North Korean paintings, history is mobilized to legitimate the North Korean system and its leaders. Utilizing the mode of socialist realism, North Korean paintings give visual form to a socialist world, a utopian vision full of unremitting heroism, harvest, and happiness centered on the ruling Kim family. In these paintings, positive heroes such as laborers, workers, farmers, and children are depicted in historically correct scenes that always propel the North Korean revolution forward. After adopting socialist realism from the Soviet Union, North Korea localized this creative method to meet its specific political needs through medium and content. Through this process, socialist realism came to reflect the ideals of juche, the state ideology of North Korea. Informed by North Korean theoretical writings on art and art reviews, this article examines how history is visually mobilized in three paintings created in 1985 and 2000 through the language of juche realism.

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