Soviet Cultural Practices and the West

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-151
Author(s):  
James von Geldern
Keyword(s):  
Rock Music ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Consumer Products ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Technical Institutes ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Working Class Students ◽  
Original Picture

AbstractWestern cultural influences swept the closed Ukrainian city of Dniepropetrovsk under Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. Imports included rock music, western literature and films, consumer products such as jeans. Primary consumers were children of the elite, and later young working class students of technical institutes. These products entered Dniepropetrovsk from L'viv, and later from fraternal socialist countries and the west. They were brought illegally by black marketers and tourists. Consumers used the western products to assert new non-Soviet identities, which could include Ukrainian nationalism, religiosity, and westernized youth culture. Official reactions were contradictory, revealing tensions between Moscow and Ukrainian authorities, and within the Ukrainian cultural and security apparatus. Komsomol activists were instrumental in disseminating new trends in western music through officially sponsored discotheques. These activists would form the core of the entrepreneurial class that emerged during Gorbachev's market reforms. Zhuk offers an original picture of Soviet cultural practices by focusing on a closed Ukrainian city, rather than the more cosmopolitan Moscow or Leningrad, and by featuring cultural changes during the final three decades of Soviet power. He provides rich documentation through participant interviews, and periodicals and archival documents not previously consulted by researchers.

Popular Religiosity in the “Closed City” of Soviet Ukraine: Cultural Consumption and Religion during Late Socialism, 1959-1984

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
Sergei I. Zhuk
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
State Security ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
Popular Religiosity

Part of a larger research project about Soviet cultural consumption and identity formation, this article explores the connection between rock music and religiosity in the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, in the late socialist period. The Committee of State Security [Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, KGB] closed Dnepropetrovsk to foreigners in 1959 when one of the Soviet Union’s biggest missile factories opened there. Because of its “closed” nature, Dnepropetrovsk became a unique Soviet social and cultural laboratory where various patterns of late socialism collided with new Western cultural influences. The closed city of Dnepropetrovsk can be seen as a microcosm of Soviet society as a whole. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, including archival documents, periodicals, personal diaries and interviews, this article demonstrates how popular fascination for Western rock music, such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, spurred interest in Christianity. Local Protestant and Orthodox church leaders skillfully promoted such interest, even as the Party bosses tried to quash it. This study stands as a reminder of the continued draw of Christianity in Orthodoxy’s heartland—even through alternative, modernizing media—despite the official promotion of atheism.

Cultural Influences on Hermeneutical Frameworks in the Debate on Same-Sex Relationships

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-264
Author(s):  
Karen R. Keen
Keyword(s):  
Sex Difference ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Cultural Distance ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Family Structures

Socio-cultural changes in the West have influenced interpretation and use of scriptural texts among both those who oppose and support same-sex relationships. Cultural distance from the values of antiquity on matters of family structures and perceptions of people attracted to the same sex have led to greater attention to theological reflection beyond the standard biblical prohibition texts, particularly among conservative evangelicals. This article looks at two key areas of discussion: theological anthropology (sex difference) and sanctification.

Is There A Middle East?

1973 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikki R. Keddie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
The West ◽  
Petty Bourgeoisie ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Traditional Islam

The Middle East, as a geographical term, is generally used today to cover the area stretching from Morocco through Afghanistan, and is roughly equivalent to the area of the first wave of Muslim conquests plus Anatolia. It is a predominantly Muslim area with widespread semi-arid and desert conditions where agriculture is heavily dependent on irrigation and pastoral nomadism has been prevalent. With the twentieth-century rise of exclusive linguistic nationalisms, which have taken over many of the emotional overtones formerly concentrated on religious loyalties, it becomes increasingly doubtful that the Middle East is now much more than a geographical expression – covering an area whose inhabitants respond to very different loyalties and values. In Turkey since the days of Atatürk, the ruling and educated élites have gone out of their way to express their identification with Europe and the West and to turn their backs on their traditional Islamic heritage. A glorification of the ‘modern’ and populist elements in the ancient Turkish and Ottoman past has gone along with a downgrading of Arab and Persian cultural influences–indeed the latter are often seen as having corrupted the pure Turkish essence, which only re-emerged with Atatürk’s swepping cultural reforms. Similarly the Iranians are increasingly emulating the technocratic and rationalizing values of the capitalist West, and in the cultural sphere identify with the glorious civilization of pre-Islamic Iran. This identification goes along with a downgrading of Islam and particularly of the Arabs, which has characterized both radical nationalists like the late nineteenth-century Mîrzâ Âqâ Khân Kirmânî and the twentieth-century Ahmad Kasravâ1 and more conservative official nationalists such as the Pahlavi Shahs and their followers. The recent celebrations of the 2500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy, for example, were notable for their virtual exclusion of the Muslim ulama, though religious leaders of other religious were invited, and their lack of specifically Islamic references. In both Iran and Turkey, traditional Islam has become largely a class phenomenon, with the traditional religion followed by a majority of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, but rejected or radically modified by the more educated classes. With the continued spread of Western-style secular education it may be expected that the numbers of people identifying with nationalism and with the West (or with the Communist rather than the Islamic East) will grow.

scholarly journals New trends in the Chinese diet: cultural influences on consumer behaviour

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Del Giudice ◽  
Giovanni Cicia ◽  
Klaus G. Grunert ◽  
Athanasios K. Krystallis ◽  
Yanfeng Zhou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Major Elements ◽  
Food Culture ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Chinese Consumers ◽  
Initial Attempt ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Chinese Consumer ◽  
Food Taking ◽  
Culinary Culture

China is one of the most dynamic regions in the world in terms of economic growth and development. Such development has inevitably influenced the structure and habits of Chinese society. Whilst the economic condition of the middle class and high-income segment have steadily improved, cultural changes are also under way: ancient Chinese traditions now include major elements from other cultures, most notably the West (Hsing, 2011). The above scenario is the background to this paper. A structured research-administered survey was developed to investigate the changes in the Chinese consumer food culture: 500 urban participants were randomly selected from six reference cities, covering geographically almost the whole country. This study aims not only to analyze the propensity of consumers to include food products from other countries in their ancient Chinese culinary culture, but also represents an initial attempt to perform a market segmentation of Chinese consumers according to their degree of cultural openness toward non-Chinese food, taking into account socio-demographic, cognitive and psychographic variables.

{ Epilogue }

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-220
Author(s):  
John Evelev
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The West ◽  
Regional Dialects ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
Entire Nation ◽  
William Cullen ◽  
Fictional Story

The discourse of the picturesque reshaped how Americans understood their landscape, but it largely ended in the mid-1870s. The decline of the picturesque can be illustrated in two emblematic works: Constance Fenimore Woolson’s 1872 short story “In Search of the Picturesque” and William Cullen Bryant’s enormous 1874 scenery book Picturesque America. Woolson’s fictional story is a satire of travel in which a young urban woman accompanies her grandfather to the countryside “in search of the picturesque” and instead only finds development. This story signals the shift in literary interest in rural subjects toward regionalism. Regionalism disavowed the earlier focus on picturesque landscapes, instead featuring distinctive regional dialects and cultural practices that reflected the newly created social sciences. Bryant’s Picturesque America was a Reconstruction-era project aimed at reconnecting the divided nation through a nonhierarchical unification under the sign of “picturesque.” Adding not only the West but also the South to the compendium of American scenery, Picturesque America imagined the entire nation as picturesque. In this formulation, the picturesque became synonymous with landscape in general. Although the picturesque lost its appeal as an authoritative discourse for shaping the American landscape in the latter third of the nineteenth century, this book demonstrates that the spaces that dominated American life in the twentieth century and beyond are owed almost entirely to the transformative project of the mid-nineteenth-century picturesque.

Classics in the Van of the Irish Revolt

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-80
Author(s):  
Eoghan Moloney
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
Literary Output

This chapter provides an assessment of the classically inflected literary output of Thomas MacDonagh, demonstrating how it generates a tension with the contemporary nativist movement with which MacDonagh also sympathized. The romanticization of the rebel leaders of the 1916 Rising as poets and intellectuals is discussed in the context of their engagement with classical models, and it is suggested that the nationalist narrative of opposition to classical literature in favour of Celtic heritage has obscured the more nuanced reality of figures like MacDonagh who were open to a wider range of cultural influences. The poetry of Catullus, translated by MacDonagh in both published and archival documents, illustrates how classical models enabled him to find a consonance between past and present.

scholarly journals Imagining the Hinterland: Literary Representations of Southeast Queensland Beyond the Brisbane Line

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda McKay
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
Literary Landscapes ◽  
Southeast Queensland

Southeast Queensland — the region encompassing Coolangatta and the McPherson Range to the south, Cooloola and the Blackall Range to the north, and the Great Dividing Range to the west — represents one of Queensland's most significant literary landscapes. For millennia, this area — defined by mountains and waterways — contained important gathering places for ceremonies and trade, and its inhabitants elaborated the meaning of the landscape in a rich complex of stories and other cultural practices such as the bunya festivals. Colonisation disrupted but did not obliterate these cultural associations, which remain alive in the oral traditions of local Aboriginal people and, in more recent times, have surfaced in the work of writers like Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Sam Watson.

Towards a Contemporary Australian Retrieval of Sacral Imagination and Sacramentality

2000 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Frank Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Australian Society

A theologian of Ghana argues that the West is declining in adherence to Christian Faith because its cultural meanings which are constitutive of the human and the cosmos tend to suppress human sacral imagination and the sacramentality of the cosmos. This author wagers that the Ghanaian's position is correct and goes on to explore how this suppression of sacral imagination has taken place through the cultural changes in the West from pre-modernity to modernity and up to the present. Against the argument behind these cultural changes the author seeks to establish the validity of sacral imagination and sacramentality through a critical appropriation of the human subject as incarnate spirit and symbolic animal. A contemporary Australian spirituality might thus retrieve a capacity for sacral imagination adequate to the mystery carried in this land and to the redemptive hope needed in Australian society.

Archival Documents of v. F. Odoevsky as a Key to Understanding of the Novel “Russian Nights”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 64-74
Author(s):  
Ilya A. Kachkov ◽  
Natalya V. Prashсheruk
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Single System ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Exact Definition

This article examines the archival documents — letters, drafts, and treaties of V. F. Odoevsky — related to his novel “Russian Nights” and dated around its publication. Odoevsky had not only preceded the writing of his novel in separate articles, but also in his numerous works, providing an insight to the content and form of his work. The reconstruction of these explanations goes together with the understanding and recognition of “Russian Nights” as a phenomenon in the unity of its problems, values, and artistic aspects. This study aims to analyze archival materials that could serve as the basis for such a reconstruction. The comprehension of a number of key concepts from the novel “Russian Nights” was made possible thanks to the connections and assessments revealed in Odoevsky’s manuscripts. They centered around the influence of German philosophy on the mood of society during that era, as well as the interaction of science, art, faith, and love. In his drafts, Odoevsky revealed in detail the nature of the social issues and relations between Russia and the West. He searched for an exact definition of skepticism and independently analyzed the image of Faust. This article shows how the collection of these archival documents complement each other, forming a single system. With this approach, the novel “Russian Nights” becomes just one of the elements of this system, leading to the general conclusion that without compiling and studying the rest of these elements, the pursuit for understanding the philosophical and artistic ideology of Odoevsky turns practically impossible.

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