Sergei Viktorovich Yarov, 1959–2015

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 177-179
Author(s):  
Clayton Black

Abstract This article offers a brief tribute to the life and career of Sergei Viktorovich Yarov, whose works pioneered new avenues of research in the history of workers, popular mentalities, and the city of Leningrad, especially during the Siege. It provides an assessment of his key works, especially his monographs, and his role in the development of the historical discipline in Russia before and after the fall of the Soviet Union.

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2019) (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleš Maver ◽  
Darko Friš ◽  
Gorazd Bajc

Category: 1.01 Original scientific paper Language: Original in Slovene (Abstract in Slovene and English, Summary in English) Key words: history of Ukraine, history of Belarus, party systems, political parties, Yulia Tymoshenko, Rukh movement, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Communist parties in post-Soviet countries, politics of the post-Soviet environments Synopsis: The development of respective party systems in Ukraine and Belarus immediately before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union could hardly be more different. In Ukraine a solid party system was slow to emerge. Different historical experiences and cultural features in various parts of the country as well as strong linking of political groupings to particular personalities or rather economic power groups prevented formation of stable parties with firm base of support in all regions of Ukraine. The divide between east and west, established already in 1994 and reinforced during the presidential election in 2004, has remained the main feature of Ukrainian politics until today. Belarus, on the other hand, can be seen as a country where political parties exert the weakest influence in all Europe. Animosity towards party politics has been rooted in Soviet traditions, but it has also been systematically encouraged by the president Alyaksandr Lukashenka's regime.


Author(s):  
Alexsandra I. Ermolova ◽  

The paper discusses the activities of children's libraries in Tomsk in the 1960s and 70s. The main goal of this study is consider the history of children's libraries in the city and reveal the role of libraries in educational, cultural, political and ideological components of the everyday lives of young Tomsk residents. There are several reasons for addressing this problem. In the USSR, children were always not only in the care of the state, but also part of the political discourse about the happy childhood and the man of the future who was expected to live under communism. In this context, children's libraries were given a special status as places that successfully combined educational, cultural, political and ideological activities for children. The Tomsk Region has always been considered the intellectual center of Siberia. Therefore, it seems obvious that there has always been a special focus on the development of libraries in Tomsk. For example, the number of public libraries in the Tomsk Region increased from 135 in 1945 to 495 in 1964. This study addresses the history of children's libraries in the city. The thematic focus of their collections, and According to the regional archive, in the 1960– 70s, there were four active children's libraries in the city. The main ones were City Children's Library No. 1 located at 167 Lenin Avenue, and Marshak Children's Library No. 2 located at 17a Nikitina Street, The two other were smaller in size: Library No. 3 (81 Michurina) and City Children's Library No. 6 (9 Kolkhoznaya). The statistical reports of libraries demonstrate the increasing interest of young Tomsk residents in library activities: the number of readers, as well as number of visits grew from year to year. The libraries had quite diverse collections, which included not only books, but also periodicals. Some interesting observations can be made about the distribution of genres: socio-political publications are the second most popular genre, after fiction. Libraries were not only a place where children could receive and read books, but also hosted a variety of cultural, educational and leisure events, such as matinees, debates, exhibitions, and poetry evenings. There were Young Readers Clubs which arranged book discussions and meetings with interesting people. All this evidence suggests that children's libraries were an essential part of the city's social and cultural life. They acted as a kind of educational centers where young Tomsk residents could find answers to their questions. They were also places of leisure where children could spend their free time. Moreover, libraries inculcated some ideologically correct attitudes. Meetings, disputes, and quizzes held in libraries always addressed topics related to Lenin, communism, and activities of the Commuunist Party of the Soviet Union.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-175
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Szewczenko

From 1612 to 1990, the Estonian Narva and the Russian Ivangorod not only belonged to the same countries (at different times they were Sweden, Russia, Estonia and the Soviet Union), but they also were one city. The situation changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and today, with each passing year, the differences between Narva and Ivangorod are becoming deeper and deeper. In this article, the author makes a short introduction to the history of Narva and Ivangorod and analyses the current political, economic and cultural situation in both cities. Narva is particularly important for Estonia’s political life because it has the largest Russian-speaking population in the country. Therefore, after Russia’s occupation of Crimea and the beginning of the Russian aggression in Donbas, Narva has been perceived as the city that may be most threatened by Russian infl uence in Estonia. On the other hand, the Russian authorities consider the surprising difference in economic and infrastructural development between the two cities to be the inconvenient propaganda of the European model of liberal democracy. The author describes how both countries cope with this situation and how ordinary residents of the Estonian Narva and Russian Ivangorod cope with these great political games.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Alexander J. Kent

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> As part of its secret Cold War mapping programme, the Soviet Union produced detailed plans of over 2,000 towns and cities within foreign territories around the globe. Some of these maps were made available for the first time in 1993 at the 16th International Cartographic Conference in Cologne, Germany, via a Latvian map dealer who discovered them at an abandoned depot outside Riga as the Red Army withdrew. However, Soviet city plans have only recently become the topic of cartographic research, which has provided some insights into aspects of their production, accuracy and purpose, that continue to have relevance for mapping diverse urban environments today.</p><p>This paper focuses on the city plan of Tokyo, which comprises four sheets and was produced by the General Staff of the Soviet Union in 1966. Street names are transcribed to allow phonetic pronunciation and the plan identifies almost 400 important objects (from factories to hospitals), which are described in a numbered list. Although the street-level detail of the plan is produced according to a standard specification and symbology, it adopts an uncommon scale of 1&amp;thinsp;:&amp;thinsp;20,000 (with contours at 5-metre intervals) and incorporates an unusual and transitory cartographic style in the history of the series.</p><p>In addition to highlighting the main features of the plan and exploring some possible sources, this paper interprets the wider context of the Soviet military plans of Japanese towns and cities (over 90 are known to have been mapped during the Cold War). Aside from their historical significance, it suggests how understanding the city plans can reveal how problems of the design and portrayal of detailed topographic information may be overcome through their unfamiliar, yet comprehensive, cartographic language.</p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Garczyk

Abstract This article presents a multinational and multireligious character of St. Petersburg since the founding of the city to the collapse of the Soviet Union. An ethnic and cultural mosaic was also an important feature in other centers of Russia, including Moscow and Odessa, as well as forming part of the national capital of the Russian Empire in Warsaw, Riga and Tallinn. St. Petersburg is a city but of a symbolic and unique character. It is the subject of literary impressions and creative inspiration for generations of artists. In addition, St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad was the capital of a multinational and multireligious Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and since 1918, it was the second most important city of the Soviet Union. The author’s intention is also to present the history of St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad, as seen through the prism of the history of national minorities living in it.


Author(s):  
Emily D. Johnson

The introduction provides an overview of the history of the Soviet labor camp system, describes the way the Gulag postal and censorship systems operated, and offers extensive information about Formakov’s biography. It details Formakov’s career as a provincial writer and journalist and discusses the history of Dvinsk/Daugavpils, the city in which he lived and worked before his 1940 arrest and a center of Old Believer culture. It also places the story of Formakov’s arrest and imprisonment in the larger context of Latvian history, noting the purge that took place immediately after the Soviet invasion of Latvia in 1940, the horrors of the Nazi occupation, and the waves of arrests that occurred after the Soviet Union reoccupied the area in 1944. A final section considers Formakov’s relationship with Solzhenitsyn. Formakov served as one of the witnesses who provided testimony about the labor camp system for Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.


2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Tatsiana Hiarnovich

The paper explores the displace of Polish archives from the Soviet Union that was performed in 1920s according to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 and other international agreements. The aim of the research is to reconstruct the process of displace, based on the archival sources and literature. The object of the research is those documents that were preserved in the archives of Belarus and together with archives from other republics were displaced to Poland. The exploration leads to clarification of the selection of document fonds to be displaced, the actual process of movement and the explanation of the role that the archivists of Belarus performed in the history of cultural relationships between Poland and the Soviet Union. The articles of the Treaty of Riga had been formulated without taking into account the indivisibility of archive fonds that is one of the most important principles of restitution, which caused the failure of the treaty by the Soviet part.


Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. This book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. It shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. The book explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.


Author(s):  
A. James McAdams

This book is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. The book argues that the rise and fall of communism can be understood only by taking into account the origins and evolution of this compelling idea. It shows how the leaders of parties in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and North Korea adapted the original ideas of revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to profoundly different social and cultural settings. The book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand world communism and the captivating idea that gave it life.


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