Local Lives, Parallel Histories

Author(s):  
Marcel Thomas

The division of Germany separated a nation, divided communities, and inevitably shaped the life histories of those growing up in the socialist dictatorship of the East and the liberal democracy of the West. This peculiarly German experience of the Cold War has so far mostly been seen through the lens of the divided Berlin or other border communities. What has been much less explored, however, is what division meant to the millions of Germans in East and West who lived far away from the Wall and the centres of political power. This book is the first comparative study to examine how villagers in both Germanies dealt with the imposition of two very different systems in their everyday lives. Focusing on two villages, Neukirch (Lausitz) in Saxony and Ebersbach (Fils) in Baden-Württemberg, it explores how local residents experienced and navigated social change in their localities in the postwar era. Based on a wide range of archival sources as well as oral history interviews, the book argues that there are parallel histories of responses to social change among villagers in postwar Germany. Despite the different social, political, and economic developments, the residents of both localities desired rural modernization, lamented the loss of ‘community’, and became politically active to control the transformation of their localities. The book thereby offers a bottom-up history of the divided Germany which shows how individuals on both sides of the Wall gave local meaning to large-scale processes of change.

Author(s):  
D.V. Budianskyi

The characteristic features of I. Kavaleridze’s drama is considered in the article. It is noted that there are signs of the artist’s individuality, attraction to expressionist forms, artistic techniques characteristic for the art of sculpture: symbolism, monumentality, hyperbole. I. Kavaleridze was well versed in the drama laws, understood the specifics of the stage events construction, had a large arsenal of literary means, thanks to which the characters’ monologues and dialogues were extremely expressive and colorful. In his work, he implemented original solutions that were ahead of time. Therefore, many of the artist’s ideas and achievements received due recognition only after his death. I. Kavaleridze’s creative heritage covers a wide range of both purely artistic and general philosophical problems. Among them the formation of the era of modernism and its features in the Ukrainian art of the early XX century, the impact of revolutionary ideas on the work of the 1920s, the role of spiritual leaders of the Ukrainian people T. Shevchenko and G. Skovoroda in the formation of national consciousness, political and ideological pressure on figurative art language and the formation of a socialist-realist canon, etc. The analysis of the productions of I. Kavalerizde’s plays “The First Furrow” and “Gregory and Paraskeva” on the stage of the Mykhailo Shchepkin Sumy Theater of Drama and Musical Comedy in 1970-1972. The article notes that these plays were staged in Sumy for the first time in the history of Ukrainian theater. The premiere of “The First Furrow” (the play was called “Old Men”) took place on March 19, 1970. The figure of the national genius Hryhoriy Skov oroda was als o embodied for the first time on t he stage in Sumy in th e play “Hryhoriy and Paraskeva”. It premiered on October 21, 1972. I. Rybchynsky, Honored Artist of the USSR, performed the production. Creating generalized historical outlines of people’s life, features of life at that time, depicting psychological portraits of people in various, sometimes-dramatic collisions, in the productions of I. Kavaleridze’s plays on the Sumy stage the emphasis was on universal values such as virtue, love. The main character was the Ukrainian people, who nurtured such large-scale historical figures, gave them strength and wisdom for great achievements. Based on publications in periodicals of that time, memoirs of Ukrainian directors, the peculiarities of the director’s interpretation, stenographic and musical design of these plays on the Sumy stage are considered. Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of acting works in I. Kavaleridze’s plays. In particular, the peculiarities of the actor’s embodiment of the image of the national genius Hryhoriy Skovoroda on the stage are presented. It is noted that I. Kavaleridze’s plays, created in a difficult political, social and ideological context, are rightly considered to be highly artistic works of Ukrainian drama. Their staging was carried out on various theatrical stages, including Mykhailo Shchepkin Sumy Theater of Drama and Musical Comedy is an important page of national theatrical art.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tana Wood ◽  
Grizelle González ◽  
Whendee Silver ◽  
Sasha Reed ◽  
Molly Cavaleri

There is a long history of experimental research in the Luquillo Experimental Forest in Puerto Rico. These experiments have addressed questions about biotic thresholds, assessed why communities vary along natural gradients, and have explored forest responses to a range of both anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic disturbances. Combined, these studies cover many of the major disturbances that affect tropical forests around the world and span a wide range of topics, including the effects of forest thinning, ionizing radiation, hurricane disturbance, nitrogen deposition, drought, and global warming. These invaluable studies have greatly enhanced our understanding of tropical forest function under different disturbance regimes and informed the development of management strategies. Here we summarize the major field experiments that have occurred within the Luquillo Experimental Forest. Taken together, results from the major experiments conducted in the Luquillo Experimental Forest demonstrate a high resilience of Puerto Rico’s tropical forests to a variety of stressors.


Author(s):  
Marcel Thomas

This chapter introduces the reader to the two case study villages Neukirch and Ebersbach, explains the methodology of the study, and outlines the structure of the book. It also sets out the central argument that there were parallel histories of responses to social change among villagers in the divided Germany. The chapter then outlines the three major ways in which the book contributes to scholarship on postwar Germany: Firstly, by highlighting similarities between East and West, it complicates persisting Cold War divisions in the historical literature. Secondly, it emphasizes the complex ways in which East and West Germans engaged with large-scale changes through peculiarly local meanings. Thirdly, by focusing on two case study localities which question conventional divides between the urban and the rural, it challenges understandings of the rural as the traditional ‘other’ in modern society.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Dalia Báthory ◽  

The general post-communist perspective of historiography on the Cold War era is that the world was divided into two blocs, so different and isolated from one another that there was no interaction between them whatsoever. As revisionist literature is expanding, the uncovered data indicates a far more complex reality, with a dynamic East-West exchange of goods, money, information, human resources, and technology, be it formal or informal, official or underground, institutional or personal. The current volume History of Communism in Europe: Breaking the Wall: National and Transnational Perspectives on East-European Science tries to confer more detail to this perspec­tive, by bringing together research papers that focus on the history of science during the Cold War. The articles cover a wide range of subjects, from biology to philosophy and from espionage to medical practices, all sharing an ideological context that continuously impacted and molded the professional relations among scholars from both sides of the Iron Curtain.


Author(s):  
Paul Ranford

Lucasian Professor Sir George Gabriel Stokes was appointed joint-Secretary of the Royal Society in 1854, a post he held for the unprecedented period of 31 years, relinquishing the role when he succeeded T.H. Huxley as President in 1885. An eminent scientist of the Victorian era, Stokes explained fluorescence (he also coined the word) and his hydrodynamical formulae (the ‘Navier–Stokes equations’) remain ubiquitous today in the physics of any phenomenon involving fluid flows, from pipelines to glaciers to large-scale atmospheric perturbations. He also made seminal advances in optics and mathematics, and formulae that bear his name remain widely used today. The historiography however appears to understate Stokes's significant impact on science as unacknowledged collaborator on a wide range of scientific developments. His scientific peers regarded him as a mentor, advisor, designer of crucial experiments and, as editor of the Royal Society's scientific journals, arbiter of the standards of excellence in scientific communication to be attained before publication would be considered. Three brief case studies on Stokes's correspondence with Lord Kelvin, Sir William Crookes and the chemist Arthur Smithells exemplify how his impact was conveyed through the work of other scientists. This paper also begins consideration of why the character and worldview of Stokes led him to eschew personal reputation and profit for the sake of science and the Royal Society, and of how the development of the discipline of history of science has impacted on historiography relating to Stokes and others. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Stokes at 200 (Part 1)’.


2021 ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Ashley Scott Kelly ◽  
Xiaoxuan Lu

AbstractThis chapter, From land-locked to land-linked? Laos within a continuum of connectivity in the Mekong region, constructs a history of infrastructure-building in Laos understood through economic connectivity. This chapter challenges the dominant narrative of a de-historicized, often linear progression from land-locked to land-linked or from isolation to integration by contextualizing the contemporary imaginations and developments of Laos within the broader social, economic and political transitions across the Mekong region. We examine the malleable identities of “Laos,” “border” and “infrastructure” in the strategic importance of the Mekong region and the struggles to control and reshape its interconnectivity, especially during the period between colonial-era obscuration and more recent revitalization of the Southern Silk Road. Rather than comprehensive or strictly chronological, this chapter focuses on three loosely defined historical periods: the colonial period from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, the Cold War period from the mid-twentieth century to late 1980s, and the post-Cold War period from the late 1980s until the present day. We ground the distinct histories of these periods in discourses specific to their times and places, each with their own geographic conception of the Mekong region and particular combination of socioeconomic and geopolitical imperatives driving investment in large-scale infrastructure projects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-178
Author(s):  
Danielle Sprecher

This article will examine the use of male fashion shows as a marketing and promotional tool by British high street multiple tailor Hepworths in the 1960s as part of their design collaboration with women’s fashion designer and couturier Hardy Amies. The partnership successfully brought the concept of the branded designer label to British men for the first time and was a major initiative for the menswear industry as it highlighted and consolidated a design ethos which strongly emphasized men’s fashion. Drawing on a wide range of primary source material including oral history interviews with two male models who worked for Hepworths and Amies; object studies of surviving garments; and film and images of the shows, this article will explore the significant and innovative approach to selling men’s fashionable tailoring taken by this mid-market menswear company. It also provides a broader understanding of the history of men’s fashion during this period, a narrative which is dominated by the concept of the peacock revolution, by demonstrating Hepworths’ important contribution to everyday men’s fashion in post-Second World War Britain.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Fabre

AbstractIt is widely alleged that President Putin's regime attempted to exercise influence on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It is known that its Soviet predecessors funded Western communist parties for decades as a means to undermine noncommunist regimes. Similarly, the United States has a long history of interfering in the institutions and elections of its Latin American neighbors, as well as (at the height of the Cold War) its European allies. More recently, many believe that, absent U.S.-driven assistance, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia would have lost the 2000 Yugoslavian presidential election to Slobodan Milošević. As those examples suggest, attempting to subvert the democratic elections of a putatively sovereign country is a time-honored way of bending the latter's domestic and foreign policy to one's will. In this paper, I focus on the state-sponsored, nonviolent, nonkinetic subversion of nationwide elections (for short, subversion) through campaign and party financing, tampering with electoral registers, and conducting disinformation campaigns about candidates. I argue that, under certain conditions and subject to certain constraints, subversion is pro tanto justified as a means to prevent or end large-scale human rights violations.


Author(s):  
Alexander MacDonald

The chapter explores the political and economic origins of the Cold War Space Race. Unlike the earlier private-sector led phases of space exploration, it was the large-scale political demand for spaceflight that provided a new driving economic force starting in the late 1950s. It is the political history of this period that has dominated the history of spaceflight and has given it an overwhelming governmental and public-sector focus, relegating the earlier history of private-sector support to the footnotes and sidelines. The driving motivation during this period for the provision of public funds was a desire to signal status and capability through monumental achievement—this time at a national scale rather than at the city or individual level at which earlier space exploration projects, such as astronomical observatories, had been focused. Understanding space exploration as a signaling function for the nation and the nation’s leaders provides a perspective that allows pursuits such as the Space Shuttle, Space Station Freedom, and the International Space Station to be understood as resulting from the same exchange mechanism that produced America’s desire to go to the Moon.


2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (20) ◽  
pp. 5213-5218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arun Durvasula ◽  
Andrea Fulgione ◽  
Rafal M. Gutaker ◽  
Selen Irez Alacakaptan ◽  
Pádraic J. Flood ◽  
...  

Over the past 20 y, many studies have examined the history of the plant ecological and molecular model, Arabidopsis thaliana, in Europe and North America. Although these studies informed us about the recent history of the species, the early history has remained elusive. In a large-scale genomic analysis of African A. thaliana, we sequenced the genomes of 78 modern and herbarium samples from Africa and analyzed these together with over 1,000 previously sequenced Eurasian samples. In striking contrast to expectations, we find that all African individuals sampled are native to this continent, including those from sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, we show that Africa harbors the greatest variation and represents the deepest history in the A. thaliana lineage. Our results also reveal evidence that selfing, a major defining characteristic of the species, evolved in a single geographic region, best represented today within Africa. Demographic inference supports a model in which the ancestral A. thaliana population began to split by 120–90 kya, during the last interglacial and Abbassia pluvial, and Eurasian populations subsequently separated from one another at around 40 kya. This bears striking similarities to the patterns observed for diverse species, including humans, implying a key role for climatic events during interglacial and pluvial periods in shaping the histories and current distributions of a wide range of species.


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