Soviet Selves

2019 ◽  
pp. 60-81
Author(s):  
Justine Buck Quijada
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Religious Actors

Chapter 2 presents the Soviet chronotope embodied in Victory Day celebrations. Victory Day, which is the celebration of the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II, presumes the familiar Soviet genre of history, in which the Soviet Union brought civilization to Buryatia, and Buryats achieved full citizenship in the Soviet utopian dream through their collective sacrifice during the war. The ritual does not narrate Soviet history. Instead, through Soviet and wartime imagery, and the parade form, the public holiday evokes this genre in symbolic form, enabling local residents to read their own narratives of the past into the imagery. This space for interpretation enables both validation as well as critique of the Soviet experience in Buryatia. Although not everyone in Buryatia agrees on how to evaluate this history, this genre is the taken-for-granted backdrop against which other religious actors define their narratives.

What was bipolarity?

1993 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Harrison Wagner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Eurasian Continent ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Structural Theories

In spite of its widespread use, no one has ever stated clearly what the distinction between bipolar and multipolar systems refers to. Moreover, some common definitions of “bipolarity” imply behavior that is inconsistent with the behavior of states during the cold war. This article argues that the distinctive feature of post–World War II international politics was not that two states were more powerful than the others, as the literature on bipolarity would suggest, but that one state, the Soviet Union, occupied in peacetime a position of near-dominance on the Eurasian continent, a position that states in the past had been able to achieve only after a series of military victories. This fact explains the behavior that others have sought to explain by bipolarity, as well as behavior that is inconsistent with what common definitions of bipolarity would lead us to expect. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the argument for structural theories of international politics and controversies about what lies ahead.

DARIUSH ZAHEDI, The Iranian Revolution Then and Now: Indications of Regime Instability (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000). Pp. 215. $60.00 cloth.

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-652
Author(s):  
Maziar Behrooz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Iranian Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
And Training ◽  
Adequate Data

In general, historians seldom venture into predicting the future. Their discipline and training guides them toward attempting to reconstruct the past by relying on research, scrutinized facts, deliberation, and analysis. Other disciplines seem sometimes to disagree. That historians do not venture into predictions does not arise from a conservative orientation in their discipline, which may lead to a lack of enthusiasm for adventure; it comes from a philosophical attitude toward study of human society that points up the fact that the task of reconstructing the past, when data are obtainable, is a monumental task. Doing the same for events that have yet to happen can easily turn into futile attempts precisely because of lack of adequate data for analysis. On rare occasions, of course, major events in history have been predicted. World War II is a good example. However, observers missed other, equally significant events. The fall of the Soviet Union and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 are two examples.

scholarly journals The Excluded: Begging in the Postwar Soviet Union

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (02) ◽  
pp. 259-288
Author(s):  
Elena Zubkova
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
The 1960S

To what extent was the Soviet state able to control (and oppose) the process of social exclusion and to what extent was Soviet society ready to integrate social outcasts? This article attempts to answer these questions by analyzing the phenomenon of begging in the Soviet Union between the 1940s and the 1960s. The article begins by studying the phenomenon of begging as a reaction to poverty, serving as a survival strategy for the lower social classes who were excluded from society due to poor standards of living. A brief historical overview of the campaign to combat begging in the the USSR from the Revolution of 1917 until the mid-1950s shows both the continuity and shifting perspectives of state reaction to this social problem. This article also analyzes begging, which was an important social phenomenon in the USSR after World War II, through the specific biographies of actual beggars. The article concludes with an examination of the public discourse on poverty in the 1950s and early 1960s, which reveals how both society and the state viewed the issue.

4. The limits of power

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-122
Author(s):  
Joseph T. Glatthaar
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Strong Position ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Over Time

At the end of World War II, America was in a uniquely strong position which it was not always able to leverage. “The limits of power” details the deterioration of America’s relationship with the Soviet Union into weapons stockpiling, brinkmanship, and the threat of mutually assured destruction. The Vietnam War lost popularity over time and while wars in the Gulf captured the public imagination, they fueled anti-American sentiment in those territories. During the War on Terror, strategists first overestimated the effectiveness of technology and then underestimated numbers and costs required for the lengthier, costlier, but more effective “boots on the ground” approach. Care for veterans was also under-resourced.

Legacies of Stalin or Putin? Public Opinion and Historical Memory in Ukraine

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110416
Author(s):  
Vitali Shkliarov ◽  
Vera Mironova ◽  
Sam Whitt
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Reflection ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Negative Appraisals

Our research considers the relationship between historical memory and political evaluations of the past and present. We first examine how historical reflection on the Soviet Union under Stalin is influenced by memories of familial suffering during World War II and victimization under the widespread Soviet gulag prison system. Based on a 2019 representative survey of Ukraine, we show that respondents who recall family members being injured or killed fighting during World War II and those who recount families being imprisoned in Soviet gulags have increased positive and negative appraisals of the Soviet Union under Stalin respectively. However, we also find that favorable opinions of Stalin are strongly predicted by approval of Vladimir Putin, who has actively promoted rehabilitation of Stalin’s legacy to bolster personalist rule at home and justify revisionist agendas abroad, including in Ukraine. Our results underscore interactions between the present and past in shaping historical memory such that what appears as enduring legacies of the past could also be a function of present political circumstances.

Communism, Nationalism and the Growth of the Communist Community of Nations After World War II

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 886-898 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Shoup
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Entire System ◽  
World War ◽  
National Community ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World

In the apocalyptic visions of Marx, the world revolution which was to destroy capitalist society was also to sweep away the entire system of nation-states, and in its place to substitute a world proletarian society, a new supra-national community ruled over by the victorious working class.Of all the prophecies of early Marxism, none proved more ill-founded than this belief in an international socialist order. The revolution, when it came, was confined to Russia. Only after the victories of the Soviet armies in World War II did it become possible to extend Communist rule beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. After less than two decades, this new international Communist community of nations has become divided into blocs of quarrelling states, and the goal of international Communism seems still distant. The Communists, like other universalistic movements of the past, have apparently proved incapable of surmounting the limits of the nation-state system they set out to destroy. Why?

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

Atskaņotājmākslas attīstība Liepājā un Otrā pasaules kara ietekme uz mūziķu likteņiem

2021 ◽  
pp. 338-351
Author(s):  
Vēsma Lēvalde
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Soviet Union

The article is a cultural-historical study and a part of the project Uniting History, which aims to discover the multicultural aspect of performing art in pre-war Liepaja and summarize key facts about the history of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. The study also seeks to identify the performing artists whose life was associated with Liepāja and who were repressed between 1941 and 1945, because of aggression by both the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. Until now, the cultural life of this period in Liepāja has been studied in a fragmentary way, and materials are scattered in various archives. There are inaccurate and even contradictory testimonies of events of that time. The study marks both the cultural and historical situation of the 1920s and the 1930s in Liepāja and tracks the fates of several artists in the period between 1939 and 1945. On the eve of World War II, Liepāja has an active cultural life, especially in theatre and music. Liepāja City Drama and Opera is in operation staging both dramatic performances, operas, and ballet, employing an orchestra. The symphony orchestra also operated at the Liepāja Philharmonic, where musicians were recruited every season according to the principles of contemporary festival orchestras. Liepāja Folk Conservatory (music school) had also formed an orchestra of students and teachers. Guest concerts were held regularly. A characteristic feature of performing arts in Liepaja was its multicultural character – musicians of different nationalities with experience from different schools of the world were encountered there. World War II not only disrupted the balance in society, but it also had a very concrete and tragic impact on the fates of the people, including the performing artists. Many were killed, many repressed and placed in prisons and camps, and many went to exile to the West. Others were forced to either co-operate with the occupation forces or give up their identity and, consequently, their career as an artist. Nevertheless, some artists risked their lives to save others.

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