A Belated and Tragic Ecological Revolution: Nature, Disasters, and Green Activists in the Soviet Union and the Post-Soviet States, 1960s-2010s

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Coumel ◽  
Marc Elie
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The 1960S

In the late Soviet period, environmental issues gained an unprecedented media resonance and dramatic socio-political importance. The “Ecological Revolution” took a tragic turn in the Soviet Union, against the background of high-impact industrial and natural disasters. After the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station (Ukraine, 1986) and in a context of increased free-speech, Soviet citizens seized on new and old, covered up or forgotten environmental issues and demanded that a hesitant government put them on the political agenda. In a mixture of media revelations, mass demonstrations, and intense voluntary-sector activity, environmental issues of local, national and global significance ranked high among the main preoccupations of the Soviet population. In this introduction to a special issue of SPSR on the environmental history of the late Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, we explore new avenues of understanding the upsurge of ecological perestroika from the 1960s to the 2010s.

Structuring time, allocating labour: income-earning strategies of urban households in Russia and the Soviet Union: Introduction

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIJS KESSLER
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Urban Households ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

The following articles by myself and by Andrei Markevich are the first in a series of four analysing income-earning strategies of urban households in twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union. The articles deal with a similar set of issues for four subsequent periods. In this issue of Continuity and Change my article covers the early Soviet period from the revolution of 1917 to the start of the Second World War and Andrei Markevich focuses on the war, the post-war Stalin period and the Khruschev years, taking his analysis into the latter half of the 1960s. In the next issue, Victoria Tyazhelnikova will examine the Brezhnev period and Sergei Afontsev the years of reform under Gorbachev and in post-Soviet Russia.

Historical and textual research and essence analysis of the evolution of Lenin’s “German Spy” case

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (02) ◽  
pp. 32-49
Author(s):  
Li Yan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
New Materials ◽  
German Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Textual Research

The rumors that Lenin was a “German spy” first appeared in Petrograd after the February revolution in Russia. During the Soviet period, the “Sisson documents” (papers) were fabricated in the United States and other Western countries, and other evidence was sought that Lenin was allegedly an “agent” of the German government. However, all the evidence presented were convincingly refuted. V. I. Lenin’s “German spy” case was discussed again during the collapse of the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. In some Russian media, political and academic circles, this “case” was reproduced in various forms, but new materials and new evidences were not found.

scholarly journals Behind and Beyond Lenin and Dzerzhinskiy: Soviet-Polish Cooperation in Historical-Revolutionary Cinema (1960s–1980s)

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 119-138
Author(s):  
Eric Aunoble
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Revolutionary History ◽  
Personal Interests ◽  
Mode Of Production

Lenin and Dzerzhinskiy were the most promoted “divinities” in Soviet popular culture. The two leaders also had valuable characteristics for propagandising the “friendship of peoples” between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of Poland: Lenin had lived two years in the Krakow region whereas Polish revolutionary Dzerzhinskiy became a statesman in Soviet Russia. Between the 1960s and 1980s, Soviets and Poles coproduced three movies featuring Lenin and Dzerzhinskiy as transnational heroes: Lenin in Poland, by Sergey Yutkevich and Evgeniy Gabrilovich (1966), No Identification Marks (1979–1980) and Fiasco of Operation “Terror” (1981–1983) by Anatoliy Bobrovskiy and Yulian Semënov. The paper considers the interactions between Soviet and Polish professionals during the preparation, the shooting, and the release of these movies as examples of the “Statesocialist Mode of Production” and of its “micro-politics” (Szczepanik 2013). In the 1960s, Soviets and Poles officially got along well at the ideological level. Yet a muffled antagonism continued about the representation of their nation. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, revolutionary history about Dzezhinsiy was a mere setting for mainstream movies. Once political issues had been driven to the background, the professional advantage of joint movie productions became more obvious. Co-production offered professionals multiple opportunities: to enjoy tourism abroad, go shopping, improve skills by working with foreign colleagues and cutting-edge technologies. Although the involvement of some might have been motivated by personal interests, both countries ended up benefiting from the joint projects.

scholarly journals Russia on a Throne of Bayonets: Militarisation without the Military in Yeltsin’s Russia, 1990-2000

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Allyson S. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
The State ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
State Library ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
The Military

Scholars of Boris Yeltsin’s Russia argue that it was a period of demilitarisation. Research largely focuses on militarisation in terms of its physical dimensions and by investigating subjects, individuals and institutions with a direct link to the military. These scholars instead attribute the success of Russian militarism in the post-Soviet period to Vladimir Putin. However, this is not entirely the case. This thesis challenges the assumption that the collapse of the Soviet Union constituted a break in the militarisation of society, arguing that the focus of current literature is too narrow to provide a comprehensive understanding of Russian militarism at this time. Instead, the research investigates Russian militarisation during the 1990s through a cultural lens by examining the prominent discourses across four societal domains: media, education; social welfare; and commemoration. Two discourses of a militaristic nature prevailed, including the moral obligation and civic duty of Russian people to protect the fatherland, and Russia as a besieged fortress. These narratives underpin Russian identity and have contributed towards the survival of Russian militarism beyond regime change. The thesis examines political documents, including laws, notes and letters, from the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Yeltsin Centre, Russian newspapers and Russian school historical textbooks from the Russian State Library to answer the following questions: what top-down mechanisms militarise society? What discourses are prominent in the four societal domains and in what way do they contribute towards the militarisation of society? How do the discourses within the different societal domains fit into (and add to) current literature on the state of militarism and militarisation in Post-Soviet Russia? The thesis found that the rituals of the Putin era were rooted in Yeltsin’s Russia, and that through a cultural lens, societal militarisation can be seen to persist without a strong military apparatus.

Ārzemju ceļojumu iespaidi latviešu rakstnieku darbos t. s. „Brežņeva laikmetā”: liecības par atļauto un liegto

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Jānis Oga
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
American Anthropologist ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Post Soviet Period

This paper examines travels outside the Soviet Union by Latvian writers who were recognised by the occupation regime and acclaimed by the public during the Brezhnev era –from the 1960s into the 1980s – as one of the privileges enjoyed by the so-called creative intelligentsia, and how those travels were reflected in their literary and journalistic writings. The writers studied were born between 1910 and 1939 and can be seen as belonging to three different generations. The generational differences have a significant impact on how their experiences were treated in their works. Some of the texts considered in this paper are manifestations of their authors’ authentic creativity, whilst others exhibit obeisance to the status quo of their time and obligatory praise for the regime. But can a line between the two be clearly drawn? What were the goals and possibilities for travel among recognized and materially secure writers? What were they permitted to tell those readers who had no such travel opportunities? How did the notes they published in periodicals differ from the versions that later appeared in books? The methodological basis for this paper is the work of Alexei Yurchak, a Russian-born American anthropologist who provides a unique understanding of the concept of ‘the abroad’ (заграница) in the Soviet Union as demarcating not actual borders or territory but an imagined space, and the insights of the Canadian historian Anne E. Gorsuch about Soviet tourism abroad. Gorsuch has studied how Soviet citizens internalised Soviet norms and supported Soviet goals, but also the attempts by tourists to evade official constraints on their experience in foreign lands and how they sought to devise their own individual itineraries. Journeys abroad elicited conflicting emotions. Writers had to be comparatively affluent to travel, but they often experienced humiliation when confronted with the reality of their meager financial means outside the U.S.S.R. and the fact that they remained in durance even in the free world. Versions of their writings published in the post-Soviet period and later commentaries bear witness to episodes that could not be described in the Brezhnev era as well as self-censorship.

scholarly journals Theatre Criticism in Lithuania in the [Late] Soviet Era: From Ideological to Aesthetic Guidelines

Menotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasa Vasinauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Normative Criteria ◽  
The Impact

The article analyses the institution of Lithuanian theatre criticism in the Soviet period and its connection with the ideological requirements of the time. The resolutions of the Communist Party during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods, theatre repertoire, reviews, and the concept of social realism in the theatre are also discussed. The 1946–1948 resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that regulated the development of culture and art, as well as the doctrine of socialist realism influenced both the practice of theatre and its critics. In the 1950s and 1960s, theatre criticism became a tool of ideology and propaganda, to such an extent that it ‘itself created a socialist realist text’. It is also important that during this period, the names of interwar critics disappeared from the press; critics were represented by party functionaries, party-owned directors, actors, and writers. The ‘return’ of criticism is related with the Thaw period and a new generation of both theatre creators and critics. It can be said that the independence and autonomy of criticism started taking shape in the late 1960s, especially with the performances of director Jonas Jurašas. Writing about the Jurašas’s productions, directed between 1967 and 1972, critics came to reflect on the nature of theatre, theatrical creation or creative freedom, and the disguised and false reality. The discourse of criticism not only freed itself from previously obligatory normative criteria and depersonalised style, but also started representing the subjective gaze of the critic, who not only tried to cover the aesthetic/artistic whole of the performance, but also to establish direct contact with both creators and readers, to capture and convey the impact of the performance on the viewers of their time. In summary, despite external (censorship) and internal (self-censorship) circumstances, the discourse of theatrical criticism changed only at the end of the 1960s, and began to approach artistic discourse: the ideological criteria for understanding and evaluating a performance theatrical production were replaced by artistic and aesthetic ones.

scholarly journals Conspiracy Theories in Post-Soviet Russia

2018 ◽  
pp. 360-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilya Yablokov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Politics ◽  
Soviet Russia

Throughout the post-Soviet period various conspiracy theories, most of which have been anti-Western, have moved from the margins of intellectual life to the mainstream of Russian politics. The trauma of the Soviet collapse enabled political elites to offer a conspiratorial reading of the event, and use this both for the purpose of nation-building and for suppressing democratic opposition by accusing its proponents of having destroyed the Soviet Union from within. Russian political elites use conspiracy theories to tackle emerging challenges by dividing Russian society into a majority loyal to the Kremlin, and a minority which is supposedly out to destroy Russia. The state authorities, including top-ranking politicians, seem to be the main producers of this conspiracy discourse; however, they use it with great care, with much reliance on the support of intellectuals who take part both in the production and dissemination of these theories to the general public. Studying conspiracy theories in Russia provides us with a means to comprehend domestic politics and to explain the strategies of the Russian political elite on both the domestic and international levels.

Translation and Transformation: English-Language Children's Literature in (Soviet) Russian Guise

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Inggs
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
English Language ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Free Translation ◽  
Soviet Russia

This article investigates the perceived image of English-language children's literature in Soviet Russia. Framed by Even-Zohar's polysystem theory and Bourdieu's philosophy of action, the discussion takes into account the ideological constraints of the practice of translation and the manipulation of texts. Several factors involved in creating the perceived character of a body of literature are identified, such as the requirements of socialist realism, publishing practices in the Soviet Union, the tradition of free translation and accessibility in the translation of children's literature. This study explores these factors and, with reference to selected examples, illustrates how the political and sociological climate of translation in the Soviet Union influenced the translation practices and the field of translated children's literature, creating a particular image of English-language children's literature in (Soviet) Russia.

Not by Firkowicz’s Fault: Daniel Chwolson’s Comic Blunders in Research of Hebrew Epigraphy of the Crimea and Caucasus, and their Impact on Jewish Studies in Russia

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-668
Author(s):  
Michael Nosonovsky ◽  
Dan Shapira ◽  
Daria Vasyutinsky-Shapira
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Political Pressure ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
Academic Argument

AbstractDaniel Chwolson (1819–1911) made a huge impact upon the research of Hebrew epigraphy from the Crimea and Caucasus. Despite that, his role in the more-than-a-century-long controversy regarding Crimean Hebrew tomb inscriptions has not been well studied. Chwolson, at first, adopted Abraham Firkowicz’s forgeries, and then quickly realized his mistake; however, he could not back up. Th e criticism by both Abraham Harkavy and German Hebraists questioned Chwolson’s scholarly qualifications and integrity. Consequently, the interference of political pressure into the academic argument resulted in the prevailing of the scholarly flawed opinion. We revisit the interpretation of these findings by Russian, Jewish, Karaite and Georgian historians in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the Soviet period, Jewish Studies in the USSR were in neglect and nobody seriously studied the whole complex of the inscriptions from the South of Russia / the Soviet Union. The remnants of the scholarly community were hypnotized by Chwolson’s authority, who was the teacher of their teachers’ teachers. At the same time, Western scholars did not have access to these materials and/or lacked the understanding of the broader context, and thus a number of erroneous Chwolson’s conclusion have entered academic literature for decades.

Utopias of One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Original Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

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