Gender, Memory, and National Myths: Ol'ga Berggol'ts and the Siege of Leningrad

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Kirschenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Shared Memory ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
War Dead ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

In Russia, the memory of the Second World War has been at once deeply personal and profoundly political. Largely erased from official memory until Stalin's death, the story of the war became, in the 1960s, a key means of legitimizing the Soviet state. The mythic “20 million”—more recent estimates are closer to 30 million war dead—became the heart of a lasting and state-sanctioned collective memory of shared suffering, patriotism, and redemption. As historian Nina Tumarkin has argued, the official “cult” of the war began to crumble in the mid-1980s, and what she calls “raw human memory,” personal stories untainted by the myth created from above, began to emerge. Tumarkin contends that the “winds of glasnost' and perestroika” effectively “ravaged” both the state-sanctioned “myth” and the “shared memory” of the Great Patriotic War. Personal tragedies began to replace the official tale of national triumph.

Ken Russell's Wartime Imagery

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Flanagan
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World ◽  
Wartime Experience ◽  
National Experience

This article traces Ken Russell's explorations of war and wartime experience over the course of his career. In particular, it argues that Russell's scattered attempts at coming to terms with war, the rise of fascism and memorialisation are best understood in terms of a combination of Russell's own tastes and personal style, wider stylistic and thematic trends in Euro-American cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, and discourses of collective national experience. In addition to identifying Russell's recurrent techniques, this article focuses on how the residual impacts of the First and Second World Wars appear in his favoured genres: literary adaptations and composer biopics. Although the article looks for patterns and similarities in Russell's war output, it differentiates between his First and Second World War films by indicating how he engages with, and temporarily inhabits, the stylistic regime of the enemy within the latter group.

Scandalous Events: Metropolitan Culture and Moral Change in Post-Second World War London

2006 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANK MORT
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Moral Change ◽  
Sexual Beliefs ◽  
English Society ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

ABSTRACT Historians of the sexual and cultural changes associated with the ““permissive”” moment of the 1960s have tended to emphasize a progressive narrative of reform focused on national policies and their social outcomes. This article explores a diffierent dynamic, highlighting the ways in which a series of scandalous and transgressive events, associated with particular networks of metropolitan culture in London, played a significant role in reshaping sexual beliefs and attitudes within English society during the postwar period.

Nature and Nurture Lessons from Swedish Adoption Surveys

1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bohman
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
World War ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Nature And Nurture ◽  
Genetic And Environmental Factors ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

The following article by Professor Michael Bohman begins with a brief historical analysis of child development theory in relation to adoption and fostering after the end of the Second World War. The author goes on to review research findings from a series of Swedish adoption surveys which began under his supervision in the 1960s and continue to this day. Much attention is given to the significance of genetic and environmental factors towards shaping the development of adopted children into adulthood. Problems of social and psychological adjustment are discussed, as are the genetic aspects of criminality and alcohol misuse in a group of adult adopted people.

scholarly journals Reassessing Japanese American Collective Memory Through Gene Oishi’s Internment Narratives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolangelo Becce
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
True Self ◽  
Direct Response ◽  
Model Minority Stereotype ◽  
Second World

Seven decades after Japanese Americans were interned during the Second World War, former journalist and internment survivor Gene Oishi published Fox Drum Bebop (2014). The protagonist, Hiroshi, had been introduced in Oishi’s previous memoir, In Search of Hiroshi (1988), as “quasi-fictional” and “neither American nor Japanese, but simply me”. Yet, in the same memoir, Oishi had also described his inability to write about ‘Hiroshi’, thus settling on ‘Gene’ as a main character and waiting 28 more years before publishing a book about his true self. A comparison between the two books highlights that In Search of Hiroshi was written as an attempt at telling a story that would implicitly support the ‘model minority’ myth by offering an account of the internment experience as a direct response to the sociopolitical constraints related to the request by Japanese Americans for redress from the U.S. government. On the other hand, the more recent Fox Drum Bebop represents a fictional retelling of Oishi’s memoir which reveals the limits of the collective memory of the internment as developed during the redress years by openly defying the ‘model minority’ stereotype while at the same time once more denouncing the injustices suffered by the Japanese American community during the war. This essay focuses on Oishi’s double narrative as a reassessment of the collective memory of the internment experience and of its lasting effects on Japanese Americans.

Irish Girls in Liverpool (2)

2018 ◽  
pp. 162-182
Author(s):  
Samantha Caslin
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Irish Immigration ◽  
Irish Women ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

This chapter focuses on the LVA’s efforts to engage with Irish women in Liverpool during the Second World War and post-war years. Despite a reduction in Irish immigration during the war, which saw the LVA’s staff reduced, the organisation was quick to raise concerns about the moral wellbeing of Irish young women once peace was resumed. As such, the LVA continued, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, to provoke concerns about the supposed moral vulnerability of Irish young women in Liverpool in a bid to generate support for their patrols.

Jedwabne and Wizna

2007 ◽  
pp. 244-270
Author(s):  
Marta Kurkowska
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Second World

THE LOCALITIES explored herein, Jedwabne and Wizna, are both situated in the Łomża region of north-eastern Poland, close to each other. Only a few kilometres separate the two and yet what each can contribute and has contributed to local, regional, and national collective memory sets them oceans apart. The inspiration for this article was precisely this simple contrast. How is it that towns inhabited by persons of a similar culture evolve into symbols of radically different attitudes and actions taken by Poles during the Second World War?...

The Soviet Legacy in Thinking about Fascism

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
Second World

This chapter goes back in time to look at the Soviet construction of the Russian term fashizm and some of the ambiguities that the Soviet society cultivated toward the term and its historical personification, Nazi Germany. It recalls that the term fascism (fashizm), in Soviet times, belonged more to an emotional than to an analytical lexicon. The chapter also discusses Russia's history and Russians' memories of the Second World War, called the Great Patriotic War in Russian (Velikaia otechestvennaia voina) and Victory Day (Den´ pobedy). It reviews how the cult of war is intimately linked to the Brezhnev era and provided the context in which commemoration of the Great Patriotic War was institutionalized as a sacred symbol of the Soviet Union, a confirmation of the soundness of the socialist system and the unity of its peoples. The chapter then argues that the very solemnity of Soviet anti-fascism, and its centrality to the country's political identity constitute the fundaments inherited from Soviet times on the basis of which the notion of fascism is operationalized in today's Russia. Ultimately, the chapter further elaborates the three main sources of the Soviet's cryptic fascination with Nazi Germany and source of knowledge about fashizm: the Nazi propaganda, criminal culture, and cinema and culture.

Memory in Post-communist Europe: Controversies over Identity, Conflicts, and Nostalgia

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 924-935
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Communist Past ◽  
The One ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Second World

This article is part of the special cluster titled Social practices of remembering and forgetting of the communist past in Central and Eastern Europe, guest edited by Malgorzata Glowacka-Grajper Controversies over social memory form an important aspect of reality in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe. On the one hand, there are debates about coming to terms with the communist past and the Second World War that preceded it (because important parts of the memory of the war were “frozen” during the communist era), and, on the other hand, and intimately connected to that, are discussions about the constant influence of communism on the current situation. This article presents some of the main trends in research on collective memory in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and reveals similarities and differences in the process of memorialization of communism in the countries of the region. Although there are works devoted to a comparative analysis of memory usage and its various interpretations in the political sphere in the countries of Eastern Europe, there are still many issues concerning daily practices (economic, religious, and cultural) associated with varying interpretations of the war and the communist past which needs further elaboration and analysis.

scholarly journals Lesbian Spaces: Sydney, 1945-1978

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-179
Author(s):  
Rebecca Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
Lesbian Community ◽  
Oxford Street ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Lesbian And Gay Politics ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Asking ‘What is lesbian Sydney?’ and ‘Where is it?’, this article traces the shifting spaces and places of lesbian Sydney in the first decades after the Second World War. In the 1940s and 1950s, when camp bars were overwhelmingly male, lesbians enjoyed a very limited public presence in the city. Many women created lesbian spaces in isolation from a wider community, discreetly setting up house with a female partner and gradually building up a small network of lesbian friends. Groups of women met in each other’s homes or visited the parks and beaches around Sydney and the Central Coast for social excursions. By the 1960s, lesbians were beginning to carve out a more visible public space for themselves at wine bars and cabaret clubs in inner suburbs such as Kings Cross, Oxford Street and the city, and the commercial bar scene grew steadily through the 1970s. However, the influence of feminist and lesbian and gay politics in the 1970s also prompted a rethinking of lesbian spaces in Sydney, with well-known lesbian collective houses challenging older notions of private space and political venues such as Women’s House and CAMP NSW headquarters constituting new bases for lesbian community.

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