The Afterlife of the Beilis Affair

2019 ◽  
pp. 35-56
Author(s):  
Elissa Bemporad
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Criminal Investigations ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Blood Libel ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Press ◽  
Jewish Ritual

Chapter 2 explores the place that the claim of Jewish ritual murder held in interwar Soviet society. The Bolsheviks dealt a blow to the blood libel tradition by confronting aggressively the legacy of the Beilis Affair, and prosecuting those responsible for orchestrating the trial. But ritual murder accusations did not wane in Soviet society. In fact, there were numerous cases of criminal investigations of blood libels that involved investigative commissions, medical experts, the press, and the secret police. If for the Bolshevik state, the Beilis case remained the symbol of the tsarist corrupt system, written and oral references to Beilis echoed through the instances of blood libel in the Soviet Union and validated ritual murder. This chapter also examines the Jewish responses to the blood allegation, showing the assertiveness to denounce the ineptness of local authorities at bringing to justice those responsible for spreading the lie.

New Materials for Studying Preparation and Staging of the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957

2018 ◽  
pp. 550-563
Author(s):  
Daniel Sawert ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Unique Event ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Local Traditions

The article assesses archival materials on the festival movement in the Soviet Union in 1950s, including its peak, the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students held in 1957 in Moscow. Even now the Moscow festival is seen in the context of international cultural politics of the Cold War and as a unique event for the Soviet Union. The article is to put the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in the context of other youth festivals held in the Soviet Union. The festivals of 1950s provided a field for political, social, and cultural experiments. They also have been the crucible of a new way of communication and a new language of design. Furthermore, festivals reflected the new (althogh relative) liberalism in the Soviet Union. This liberalism, first of all, was expressed in the fact that festivals were organized by the Komsomol and other Soviet public and cultural organisations. Taking the role of these organisations into consideration, the research draws on the documents of the Ministry of culture, the All-Russian Stage Society, as well as personal documents of the artists. Furthermore, the author has gained access to new archive materials, which have until now been part of no research, such as documents of the N. Krupskaya Central Culture and Art Center and of the central committees of various artistic trade unions. These documents confirm the hypothesis that the festivals provided the Komsomol and the Communist party with a means to solve various social, educational, and cultural problems. For instance, in Central Asia with its partiarchal society, the festivals focuced on female emancipation. In rural Central Asia, as well as in other non-russian parts of the Soviet Union, there co-existed different ways of celebrating. Local traditions intermingled with cultural standards prescribed by Moscow. At the first glance, the modernisation of the Soviet society was succesful. The youth acquired political and cultural level that allowed the Soviet state to compete with the West during the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students. During the festival, however, it became apparent, that the Soviet cultural scheme no longer met the dictates of times. Archival documents show that after the Festival cultural and party officials agreed to ease off dogmatism and to tolerate some of the foreign cultural phenomena.

India of 1920s as Seen by Soviet Playwright, Consulting Indologists, Theater Critics

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Igor Yu. Kotin ◽  
Nina G. Krasnodembskaya ◽  
Elena S. Soboleva
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
10Th Anniversary ◽  
Russian Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Detailed Picture

The authors of this contribution analyze the circumstances and the history of a popular play that was staged in the Soviet Union in 1927-1928. Titled Jumah Masjid, this play was devoted to the anti-colonial movement in India. A manuscript of the play, not indicating its title and the name of its author, was found in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences among the papers related to A.M. and L.A. Meerwarth, members of the First Russian Expedition to Ceylon and India (1914-1918). Later on, two copies of this play under the title The Jumah Masjid were found in the Russian Archive of Literature and Art and in the Museum of the Tovstonogov Grand Drama Theatre. The authors of this article use archival and published sources to analyze the reasons for writing and staging the play. They consider the image of India as portrayed by a Soviet playwright in conjunction with Indologists that served as consultants, and as seen by theater critics and by the audience (according to what the press reflected). Arguably, the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia in 1927 and the VI Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1928 encouraged writing and staging the play. The detailed picture of the anti-colonial struggle in India that the play offered suggests that professional Indologists were consulted. At the same time the play is critical of the non-violent opposition encouraged by Mahatma Gandhi as well as the Indian National Congress and its political wing known as the Swaraj Party. The research demonstrates that the author of the play was G.S. Venetsianov, and his Indologist consultants were Alexander and Liudmila Meerwarth.

scholarly journals Of Loss and Loot: Stalin-Era Culture, Foreign Aid, and Trophy Goods in the Soviet Union during the 1940s

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (02) ◽  
pp. 219-258
Author(s):  
Nathalie Moine
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Foreign Objects ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army

This article focuses on the influx and circulation of foreign objects in the Soviet Union during the 1940s in order to investigate the specific role of these objects during World War II. It reveals how the distribution of humanitarian aid intersected with both the (non)recognition of the genocide of Soviet Jews during the Nazi occupation, and with Stalinist social hierarchies. It explains why erasing the origins and precise circumstances through which these objects entered Soviet homes could in turn be used to hide the abuses that the Red Army perpetrated against their defeated enemies. Finally, it revises the image of a Soviet society that discovered luxury and Western modernity for the first time during the war by reconsidering the place and the trajectories of these objects in Stalinist material culture of the interwar period.

The Trials of Arnošt K.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Gordin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Soviet Authority ◽  
The Soviet Union

The Prague-born philosopher and historian of science Arnošt Kolman (1892–1979)—who often published under his Russian name Ernest Kol’man—has fallen into obscurity, much like dialectical materialism, the philosophy of science he represented. From modest Czech-Jewish origins, Kolman seized opportunities posed by the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution to advance to the highest levels of polemical Stalinist philosophy, returned to Prague as an activist laying the groundwork for the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, was arrested and held for three years by the Soviet secret police, returned to work in Moscow and Prague as a historian of science, played vastly contrasting roles in the Luzin Affair of the 1930s and the rehabilitation of cybernetics in the 1950s, and defected—after 58 years in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—to Sweden in 1976. This article argues that Kolman’s biography represents his gradual separation of dialectical materialism from other aspects of Soviet authority, a disentanglement enabled by the perspective gained from repeated returns to Prague and the diversity of dialectical-materialist thought developed in the Eastern Bloc. This essay is part of a special issue entitled THE BONDS OF HISTORY edited by Anita Guerrini.

scholarly journals «Сталин и Мао слушают вас»: образы лидеров СССР и КНР на страницах журнала «Огонек» (1949–1953 гг.)

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-594
Author(s):  
Andrey A. Avdashkin ◽  
◽  
Igor V. Sibiryakov ◽  
Tatyana V. Raeva
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Leading Position ◽  
The One

The aim of the article is to examine the process of constructing the images of Stalin and Mao Zedong in the material of Soviet central newspapers on the themes of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) and Soviet-Chinese friendship. Our focus on the techniques of such constructions allow for dealing with a number of research issues, such as which conceptions of the political leaders were rendered to the Soviet audiences and in which way was this implemented; was there a potential for dynamics in treating the subjects and if this was the case what were the factors that played a role in such dynamics. Data and methods. For our database of primary sources we have chosen the ”Ogonyok” issues published in the period between October 1949 and March 1953. The authors of the present article were interested in references in the magazine texts but also in the images of Stalin and Mao. Hence, the research lens of historical imagology allowed us to examine the images under study as complex synthetical constructions, the constructions that were impacted by inner and outer factors in play in the Soviet society itself, including its political culture, the specific features of representations in the sphere of internationl relations, etc. The illustrative material was used for the sake of further verification and detailization. Results. The ”Ogonyok” material on the theme of Soviet-Chinese friendship included a considerable amount of texts and their visual supplements, with Stalin and Mao as their central personages. The thematical distribution of the database has shown that its main themes are Soviet-Chinese friendship described in hierarchical terms as the ”teacher-pupil” relationship, the achievements of socialist transformation in China, etc. Conclusions. The personification of the images of the leaders of the USSR and the PRC was designed to promote the positive attitudes towards the main Soviet ally, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to contribute to the legitimization of the USSR’s leading position not only in the Soviet-Chinese interaction, but in the whole of the Socialist world as well. Mao’s leading role in the transformations of the Chinese society confirmed to the Soviet audiences the correctness of the development model in the Soviet Union itself. Numerous presentations of the good will with which the Chinese side was ready to follow the ”Stalin recipe” in building socialism served as a marker that the ”great friendship” was under Moscow’s control.

scholarly journals THE SOVIET MODEL OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE OF THE FATE OF THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY: THE POLITICAL AND LEGAL ASPECTS

2019 ◽  
pp. 20-27
Author(s):  
V.V. Sukhonos
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Special Groups ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Soviet Model

The article is devoted to the constitutional and legal issues of local government organizations. The main attention is paid to the Soviet model of local government, which, in the period of the industrialization of the country, focused on the further strengthening of the Soviet state apparatus, the deployment of the so-called “Soviet democracy” and the fight against bureaucratic defects. However, such a situation as a whole was not typical of the Soviet system. That is why the Bolsheviks attempts to attract the poor sections of the rural population. However, success in this direction was caused not so much by the strengthening of the Soviet economy as a whole, but by the opportunity for the rural poor to plunder wealthy peasants, which had developed because of the dictatorship of the proletariat existing in the USSR. Subsequently, the Bolshevik Party raised the issue of organizing special groups of poverty or factions for an open political struggle to attract the middle peoples to the proletariat and to isolate wealthy peasants (the so-called “kulaks”) during the elections to the Soviets, cooperatives, etc. With the onset of socialist reconstruction, there was a need to organize poverty, because it was an important element and the establishment of “Soviet democracy in the countryside.” The Stalin Constitution of 1936 transformed the Soviets. From 1918, they were called the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies, and now, with the entry into force of the Stalin Constitution, the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. This transformation of the Soviets reflected the victory of the socialist system throughout the national economy, radical changes in the class composition of Soviet society, and a new triumph of “socialist democracy”. In addition, the “victory of socialism” in the USSR made possible the transition to universal, equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot. On December 24 and 29, 1939, citizens of the Soviet Union elected their representatives to the local Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. 99.21 % of the total number of voters took part in the vote. The election results are another testament to the growing influence of the Bolshevik Party on the population of the Soviet Union, which has largely replaced the activities of the Soviets themselves, including the local ones. Holding elections to the regional, regional, district, district, city, village and settlement councils of workers’ deputies completed the restructuring of all state bodies in accordance with the Stalin Constitution and on its basis. With the adoption in 1977 of the last Constitution of the USSR, the councils of workers’ deputies were renamed the councils of people’s deputies. In 1985, the last non-alternative elections were held for 52,041 local councils, and in 1988, their structure became more complicated: there were presidencies organizing the work of regional, regional, autonomous regions, autonomous districts, district, city and rayon in the cities of Soviets. People’s Deputies. Within the framework of the city (city subordination), village, and town councils, this work is carried out directly by the heads of the designated Councils. On December 26, 1990, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR introduced regular amendments to the Constitution of the USSR, which formally abolished the Presidencies, but did not prohibit their existence. On September 5, 1991, the Constitution of 1977 was effectively abolished. Finally, it happened after December 26, 1991, when the USSR actually ceased to exist. Thus, existing in the USSR during the period of socialist reconstruction and subsequent transformations that began with the processes of industrialization and ended as a result of the collapse of the USSR, the model of local government organization remained ineffective due to its actual replacement by the activities of the governing bodies of the ruling Communist Party. Keywords: Local Government; the system of Councils; local Councils; Council of Deputies of the working people; Council of People’s Deputies; Soviet local government.

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.

The Human Rights of Foreign Labor

Worldview ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-9
Author(s):  
Steven Charnovitz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Labor ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Press ◽  
Developed World ◽  
New Criteria

Little noticed by the press. United States trade policy is undergoing significant changes aimed at promoting the rights of workers in foreign countries—changes achieved through the use of both a carrot and a stick. The carrot, now being offered to the less-developed world, is dutyfree access to the U.S. market for qualifying products exported by countries that meet certain new criteria on bbor. The stick is a ban on imports made by forced labor— something the Reagan administration is under increasing pressure to invoke against the Soviet Union. While it is too early to gauge the success of such attempts at exercising economic leverage, they may yet become a milestone in the march of human rights.

Journeys of Hope: African Diaspora and the Soviet Society Voyages d'espoir : la diaspora africaine et la société soviétique,

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 53-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxim Matusevich
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
African Students ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Diasporic Community ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Presence Africaine

Abstract African presence in Russia predated the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. The arrival of the new Communist rule with its attendant vociferous anti-racist and anti-colonial propaganda campaigns enhanced the earlier perceptions of Russia as a society relatively free of racial bias, a place of multiethnic coexistence. As a result dozens of black, mostly Afro-Caribbean and African-American, travellers flocked to the "Red Mecca" during the first two decades of its existence. Some of those arrivals were driven by the ideology; however, the majority of them were simply searching for a place of racial equality, free of Western racism. To an extent their euphoric expectations would be realized as the black visitors to Soviet Russia were usually accorded a warm welcome and granted the opportunities for professional and personal fulfillment that were manifestly absent in their countries of origin. The second wave of black migration to the Soviet Union was quantitatively and qualitatively different from the early pre-war arrivals. It also took place in the context of the new geopolitical reality of the Cold War. After the 1957 Youth Festival in Moscow, the Soviet Union under Khrushchev opened its doors to hundreds, and eventually to thousands, of students from the Third World, many of them from Africa. By extending generous educational scholarships to young Africans, the Soviet Union sought to reaffirm its internationalist credentials and also curry favor with the newly independent African states. The members of this new diasporic community hailed predominantly from the African continent. If the Soviets had hoped for a major propaganda coup, their hopes were not entirely realised. As a propaganda weapon African students tended to jam and even to backfire. Instead of becoming the symbols of Soviet internationalist effort, they came to symbolise Westernization and "foreign influences." La présence africaine en Russie a précédé la prise de pouvoir bolchévique en 1917. L'arrivée du nouveau pouvoir communiste, avec son aille antiraciste active et ses campagnes de propagande anticoloniale, ont mis en valeur les premières perceptions de la Russie comme une société relativement libre de parti pris racial, un lieu de coexistence multiethnique. En conséquence, des douzaines de Noirs, principalement des Afro-Caribéens et des Afro-Américains, se sont rassemblés à la « Mecque Rouge » durant les deux premières décennies de son existence. Quelques-unes de ces arrivées étaient motivées par l'idéologie ; cependant, la majorité d'entre eux étaient simplement à la recherche d'un lieu d'égalité raciale, libéré du racisme occidental. Leurs attentes euphoriques allaient en partie être satisfaites étant donné que les visiteurs noirs en Russie soviétique avaient droit à un accueil chaleureux et se voyaient offrir des opportunités d'épanouissement professionnel et personnel manifestement absentes dans leurs pays d'origine. La deuxième vague de migration noire vers l'Union soviétique était quantitativement et qualitativement différente des premières arrivées d'avant guerre. Elle se produisait aussi dans le contexte de la nouvelle réalité géopolitique de la Guerre froide. Après le Festival de la Jeunesse en 1957 à Moscou, l'Union soviétique sous Khrushchev ouvrit ses portes à des centaines, puis finalement à des milliers, d'étudiants du Tiers-Monde, beaucoup venant d'Afrique. En accordant de généreuses bourses d'études à des jeunes Africains, l'Union soviétique voulait réaffirmer ses références internationalistes et cherchait aussi les faveurs des Etats africains nouvellement indépendants. Les membres de cette nouvelle diaspora venaient principalement du continent africain. Si les Soviétiques avaient espéré un coup de propagande majeur, leurs espoirs ne furent pas totalement réalisés. Les étudiants africains eurent tendance à bloquer et à se retourner contre cette arme de propagande. Au lieu de devenir les symboles de l'effort internationaliste soviétique, ils vinrent symboliser l'occidentalisation et les « influences étrangères ».

“I Am Home,” 1962–1979

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Cherny
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Ceramic Tiles ◽  
Soviet Art ◽  
The Soviet Union

Arnautoff emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1963 and lived there until his death in 1979. Living first in Mariupol (then called Zhdanov), he again created large public murals, this time using small ceramic tiles. In adjusting to Soviet society under Khrushchev and then Brezhnev, Arnautoff was privileged by his status and his American dollars from his small Stanford pension, and his marriage to a Soviet art critic. He and his second wife moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) where he continued to paint until his death.

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