American Sovietology From 1917-1991: an Attempt At Diagnosis

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 406-432
Author(s):  
Vladimir Shlapentokh
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
American Social Science ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe goal of this article is to discuss the evolution of the views of American social scientists, particularly Sovietologists, on the origins and nature of Soviet society. The analysis of the American performance in Soviet studies is particularly interesting because American social science was considered, at least after the Second World War, on the cutting edge in research worldwide. In making such an appraisal we are, at the same time, using American Sovietology as a case study for making a judgement about the potential social science in any country has in claiming to understand developments in a foreign society..

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

scholarly journals Accessory and Witness - The Profession of the Lawyer under Stalin (1945–1953)

2016 ◽  
Vol 71 (01) ◽  
pp. 153-182
Author(s):  
Juliette Cadiot
Keyword(s):  
Legal Profession ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The State ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
Privileged Information ◽  
Mutual Assistance ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Intermediary Role ◽  
Second World

Drawing on research conducted in Russian and Ukrainian archives, this article explores the legal profession in the late Stalin-era USSR, with a focus on the years following the Second World War. During this period, the number of cases dealt with in the courts grew considerably, and calls to rehabilitate “socialist legality” became more pressing. It is against this backdrop that the article details the different professional aspects—social trajectories and daily practices—of the criminal lawyer's craft. It concludes that while their influence remained relatively weak and was rarely anchored in their legal capabilities, Soviet lawyers did develop economic and networking capacities that enabled them to maintain their autonomy and to fully participate in the dynamics of the Soviet society that emerged in the aftermath of the war. Despite their weak position and the purges they had suffered, lawyers found ways to gain privileged information about ongoing cases, and some of them played an intermediary role between the apparatus of repression and Soviet notables—particularly by participating in the system of bribery and clientelism. Their actions exemplified the ways that Soviets acclimatized to Stalin's dictatorship, working to bend and improve the rules and to create spaces of protection, mutual assistance, and exchange at the heart of the state and the party.

scholarly journals Vera Lynn on Screen: Popular Music and the ‘People's War’

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATE GUTHRIE
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
A Site ◽  
Second World

AbstractBy the outbreak of the Second World War in Britain, critics had spent several decades negotiating the supposed distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, as recent scholarship has shown. What has received comparatively little attention is how the demands of wartime living changed the stakes of the debate. This article addresses this lacuna, exploring how war invited a reassessment of the relative merits of art and popular music. Perhaps the most iconic British singer of the period, Vera Lynn provides a case study. Focusing on her first film vehicle,We'll Meet Again(1942), I explore how Lynn's character mediated the highbrow/lowbrow conflict – for example, by presenting popular music as a site of community, while disparaging art music for its minority appeal. In so doing, I argue, the film not only promoted Lynn's star persona, but also intervened in a broader debate about the value of entertainment for a nation at war.

The Etappe Kanaren: A case study of the secret supply of the German Navy in Spain during the Second World War

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan J. Díaz Benítez
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
World War ◽  
The One ◽  
Intense Activity ◽  
German Navy ◽  
Second World

The secret supply of the German Navy during the Second World War has scarcely been studied until now. The goal of this article is to study one of the more active supply areas of the Etappendienst at the beginning of the war, the one known as Etappe Kanaren, as part of the Grossetappe Spanien-Portugal. In this research primary sources from German Naval War Command have been consulted. Among the main conclusions, it should be pointed out, on the one hand, the intense activity to support the Kriegsmarine during the first years of the war, despite the distance from mainland Spain and the British pressure, which finally stopped the supply operations. On the other hand, we have confirmed the active role of the Spanish government in relation to the Etappendienst: Spanish authorities allowed the supply operations, but pressure from the Allies forced the Spanish government to impede these activities.

Can Events Facilitate Intercultural Understanding?

2021 ◽  
pp. 218-237
Author(s):  
Karen Davies ◽  
Caroline Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Intercultural Understanding ◽  
World War ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Cultural Events ◽  
Physical Spaces ◽  
Second World

The founding philosophy of many cultural events established after the Second World War was to enhance the dynamics of peace through supporting and developing multicultural understanding. Over 50 years after their establishment, this chapter investigates the potential of such iconic events to achieve this aim and contribute to the concept of peace through tourism, based on a longitudinal ethnographic case study of Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod. The results show that this aim can be achieved by such events if they provide enough time and space for participants (performers and audiences) to interact. However, the study also identifies current cultural, political, and fiscal challenges in providing these temporal and physical spaces.

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.

scholarly journals The Massigli Affair and its Context: Turkish Foreign Policy after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-296
Author(s):  
Onur Isci
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Turkish Foreign Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World ◽  
English I

This article examines Turkey's wartime diplomacy between the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Hitler's unleashing of Operation Barbarossa. Rather than a survey of Turkish foreign policy as a whole, it takes a critical episode from July 1940 as a case study that – when put in context – reveals how fear of Nazi power and even greater fear of the Soviet Union created in Turkey a complex view of a desired outcome from the Second World War. Juxtaposing archival materials in Turkish, Russian, German, and English, I draw heavily on the hitherto untapped holdings of the Turkish Diplomatic Archives (TDA). Overall, this article demonstrates both the breadth and limits of Nazi Germany's sweeping efforts to orchestrate anti-Soviet propaganda in Turkey; efforts that helped end interwar Soviet-Turkish cooperation. Against previously established notions in historiography that depict Soviet-Turkish relations as naturally hostile and inherently destabilizing, this article documents how the Nazi–Soviet Pact played a key role in their worsening bilateral affairs between 1939 and 1941. The argument, then, is in keeping with newer literature on the Second World War that has begun to compensate for earlier accounts that overlooked neutral powers.

scholarly journals Propaganda Music in Second World War Britain: John Ireland's Epic March

2014 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Guthrie
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Total War ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
Music And Politics ◽  
Second World

ABSTRACTWhile biographical studies of British composers' experiences in the Second World War abound, little attention has been paid to how the demands of ‘total’ war impacted on music's ideological status. This article sheds new light on how composers and critics negotiated the problematic relationship between art music and politics in this period. John Ireland's Epic March – a BBC commission that caused the composer considerable anxiety – provides a case study. Drawing first on the correspondence charting the lengthy genesis of the work, and then on the work's critical reception, I consider how Ireland and his audiences sought to reconcile the conflicting political and aesthetic demands of this commission. With its conventional musical style, Epic March offers an example of a ‘middlebrow’ attempt to bridge the gap between art and politics.

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