‘A Woman Isn’t a Woman When She’s not Concerned About the Way She Looks’: Beauty Labour and Femininity in Post-Soviet Russia

Author(s):  
Holly Porteous
Keyword(s):  
Slavic Review ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muireann Maguire

In this article, Muireann Maguire examines the cultural construction of the trope of the engineer-inventor in Russia during the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on the changing representation of this archetype in three science fiction novels by Aleksei Tolstoi: Aelita (1922-23), Soiuzpiati (The Gang of Five, 1925), and Giperboloid inzhenera Garina (Engineer Garin's Death Ray, 1925-26). Tolstoi's fiction portrays engineers as misguided and self-centred at best and as amoral, megalomaniacal, and irredeemably un-Soviet at worst. This increasingly negative portrayal of the engineers in these novels, and in their later redactions and cinema versions, helped to prepare the way for the alienation of engineer and technical specialist within Soviet society, providing cultural justification for Iosif Stalin's show trials and purges of both categories in the 1930s. Tolstoi's alienation of the engineer-inventor, the traditional hero of early Soviet nauchnaia fantastika (science fiction), prefigured the occlusion of science fiction as a mainstream literary genre. As a trained engineer, former aristocrat, and returned émigré whose own status in Soviet Russia was deeply compromised, Tolstoi's literary demonization of engineers effectively purchased his own acceptance within the Stalinist literary hierarchy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (20) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margus Vihalem

Artikkel keskendub nõukogudeaegse, eriti stalinistliku perioodi ühismajandi mudeli põhjalloodud spetsiifilise ruumi- ja ajakogemuse kirjeldusele ja analüüsile. Püüdes esile tuua mõningaid iseloomulikumaid jooni selles tajukogemuses, vaatleb artikkel ühismajandit ühelt poolt radikaalseid muutusi produtseeriva sotskolonialistliku tööriistana, teisalt aga uut inimtüüpi tootva seadena. Käesolev uurimus mõtestab vaadeldava nähtuse spetsiifikat eelkõige esteetiliste uuringute raames, keskendudes tajukogemuse poliitiliselt suunatud teisenemisele. Uurimus on osaliselt inspireeritud ka autori isiklikust lapsepõlvekogemusest hilise ühismajandi tingimustes, selle eesmärgiks oli jõuda mainitud sensooriumi tähenduslike elementide sidusama analüüsini, võttes aluseks tekstid, mis ühel või teisel viisil peegeldavad uuritava sensooriumi tingimusi.  The article explores the specific sensorium of collective farms, especially kolkhozes, as they were created during the Soviet era in the countryside of occupied Estonia. It aims at examining the collective farm primarily not as an economic system, but as an aesthetic phenomenon and as a universal utopian model that served to translate the Marxist-Leninist ideology and its multiple implications into reality. It has to be emphasized that aesthetics is not defined here in the traditional meaning of referring to a set of aesthetic values, nor is it considered as referring to the arts, but is interpreted as referring etymologically to the experience of time and space, both individually and collectively.During the World War II, as a result of the withdrawal of the Nazi army, Estonia was reoccupied by the Soviet army. Although some sovkhozes or state-owned farms were created already shortly after the beginning of the first period of occupation and annexation of Estonia by Soviet Russia in 1940, it was only in the late 1940s that it was decided by the party authorities to proceed to a rapid and massive forced collectivization that followed more or less the model already widely in use in the whole Soviet Union. The effects of the forced collectivisation, accompanied by a mass deportation that took place on March 1949, turned out to be extremely devastating for the local communities in Estonia. The forced collectivisation paved the way for radical changes of the whole sensorium.Nevertheless, the article does not aim at establishing historical facts or bring new information concerning the systematic Sovietisation of the society, it rather tries to analyse the specific atmosphere that encompassed the human action. In order to examine the specific sensorium created in the collective farms of Soviet Estonia, the article makes use of some concepts borrowed from French theorists Henri Lefebvre and especially Jacques Rancière. Although neither Lefebvre nor Rancière have explicitly written about the Soviet system, it nevertheless appears that their concepts, for example that of production of space (and time) by Lefebvre or that of distribution of the sensible by Rancière are productive and relevant in elucidating the main features of the sense experience specific to the model of a collective farm. From the distribution and articulation of time and space to the ideologically determined modes of being that characterised the ordinary life of the workers in the early kolkhozes, the article attempts to determine the key features of what makes up the sensorium of collective farms. Undoubtedly, an important feature is a shift between the private and the collective; collective farms established a collective sensorium with its specific affective model, the private sphere of life being marginalised and controlled in most aspects. To illustrate the ideological pressure on society, it suffices to refer to the manifold utopian narratives, often naive and manipulative, which were spread systematically by party members, agitators and other proponents of collective farms. These utopian narratives attempted to convince everybody that kolkhozes stood at the forefront of modernisation and that their advantage over individual farming was self-evident.It has to be emphasised that collective farms, especially kolkhozes, submitted to the rule of the communist party and served as tools of Soviet neo-colonialist politics that attempted to rapidly change not only the mode of economic production, but also to produce a new mode of reality that would conform to the predicaments of the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Moreover, individual subjects were also invited, within the strict ideological limits, to contribute to the production of this new reality. Thus the production of a new sensorium was in fact accompanied by the production of new subjectivities, a necessary element on the way towards the utopian future where social antagonism would be eliminated and happiness and prosperity would be accessible to all who would accept the ideological requirements of the Soviet power.While shedding light on the transformations that took place within the complex sensorium of collective farms, this article argues that the sensorium of the collective farm played a crucial role in the Sovietisation of the whole society. Its establishment also functioned as a method of control that would exclude all deviations, thus contributing to the production of a new Soviet subjectivity.


Author(s):  
Habiba Khaled

In 1986 Joan Scott published “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” an article examining the disconnect between the way in which gender is explored within the scholarship and gender history itself. In her work Scott operationalized gender as a framework. Utilizing Scott's framework, this historiographical analysis explores the question of gender as an analytical tool within the scholarship on 1930s Soviet Russia. Works produced prior to and post Scott's “calling” are categorized based upon a gender-based spectrum. Works are categorized as being: descriptive history exploring women; women’s history; beyond women’s history but short of gender history; and gender history. Situating the scholarship of 1930s Soviet Russia alongside Scott's conception of gender history allows for exploration of the evolution of gender- as an analytical tool utilized in the scholarship. Contrasting Scott's conception with scholars' usage of gender alludes to why gender, as a lens, is often overlooked.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 347-360
Author(s):  
Yuri V. Pushchaev

The article examines the work of the famous literary critic of the sixties, Yu.F. Karyakin, who was considered, among other things, a prominent expert on F.M. Dostoevsky, and analyzes his contribution to the studies of Dostoevsky, as well as the evolution of his views on the work of F.M. Dostoevsky. The author argues that Karyakin’s socio-philosophical and literary approach to the work of the great Russian writer, despite some achievements, suffered in general from excessive politicization and simplification. Dostoevsky was important to him as a kind of pretext or screen for his fight against Stalinism – the defining occupation for the Soviet Sixtiers. In this regard, Karyakin, in particular, oversimplified the image and motivation of Raskolnikov from “Crime and Punishment” in his most famous book “Raskolnikov's Self-deception”. The author shows how the black-and-white vision of the Stalinism era in the sixties turned into the completely nihilistic attitude towards Soviet Russia, which was one of the reasons for the collapse of the USSR. And the way to this result lay, among other things, in the simplified interpretation of Dostoevsky's work.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Ewa Berard

The emergence of a Soviet cultural diplomacy in the 1920s was hardly predictable. Bolsheviks’ propaganda for ‘world revolution’ reduced the image of Soviet Russia to one of Leninist-proletarian victory, while the rejection of diplomatic tradition and a distrust of artists and intellectuals precluded any commitment to cultural action abroad. This article explores how, when and why a Soviet cultural diplomacy developed. It focuses on two episodes related to the famine of 1921, including, based on new archival evidence, the First Exhibition of Russian Art in Berlin in October 1922. The exhibition's spectacular success paved the way for Soviet cultural diplomacy that moved away from overtly communist propaganda in order to address Western avant-garde literary and artistic milieus.


Slavic Review ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Paul Sacks

Published census data on Jews have been very scarce, but these data and other sources leave no doubt that in comparison with other groups Soviet Jews were very distinctive in terms of such characteristics as their urban concentration and their educational and professional achievement. This level of achievement occurred despite popular and official anti-Semitism of varying intensity. With the recent release of new data from the 1989 census, a more precise understanding of the opportunities available to Jews in Soviet Russia is now possible. These data show the number of men and women by major ethnic groups (including Jews) in 257 job categories. Surprisingly, this new information is not referred to even in the most recent Russian scholarship on Jews, and it receives no mention in western sources. In this article, I use the new occupational data to evaluate differences between Russians and Jews and to explore the way in which employment disparities may have shaped interaction between the two groups.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 116-136
Author(s):  
Oleg T. Ermishin

The article discusses some works on priest Pavel Florensky’s philosophical and theological legacy of the 1930s–2020s. The author of the article has examined changes in the perception of Florensky and his ideas among Russian émigré philosophers as well as in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The difference in such assessments is clearly visible in two reviews of 1930 of the priest’s book called The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. The review written by G.V. Florovsky has a critical bias, while that of V.N. Ilyin is very positive. We find a more comprehensive expression of Ilyin’s attitude to Florensky in the article Father Pavel Florensky. The Silenced Great Miracle of Twentieth Century Science (1969). The works published in the Russian emigration are characterized by subjectivity due to lack of sources, as most of Florensky’s works remained unpublished. In Soviet Russia, one of the most famous works about Florensky was S.S. Khoruzhy’s book named Florensky’s World View (1999). In this book, Father Pavel’s worldview was reconstructed from the perspective of “existential” experience. S.M. Polovinkin gave another, “personalistic” interpretation in his book Christian Personalism of Priest Pavel Florensky (2015). Hegumen Andronik (Trubachev) was the first to highlight the significance of anthropodicy and its connection with theodicy in his work Theodicy and Anthropodicy in Priest Pavel Florensky’s Works (1998). He presented Florensky’s worldview as a system of concrete metaphysics, combining theodicy and anthropodicy. Moreover, he refuted the popular misconception of Florensky’s philosophy as “the allunity metaphysics.” Further, Hegumen Andronik wrote a fundamental work on Florensky’s life and works that he named The Way to God (2012–2020). The present article states that Hegumen Andronik’s work trailed the path to objective research, overcoming the inertia of thought that arose from bias and lack of sources.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Babińska ◽  
Michal Bilewicz

AbstractThe problem of extended fusion and identification can be approached from a diachronic perspective. Based on our own research, as well as findings from the fields of social, political, and clinical psychology, we argue that the way contemporary emotional events shape local fusion is similar to the way in which historical experiences shape extended fusion. We propose a reciprocal process in which historical events shape contemporary identities, whereas contemporary identities shape interpretations of past traumas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aba Szollosi ◽  
Ben R. Newell

Abstract The purpose of human cognition depends on the problem people try to solve. Defining the purpose is difficult, because people seem capable of representing problems in an infinite number of ways. The way in which the function of cognition develops needs to be central to our theories.


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