Substate Nationalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-193
Author(s):  
Yoram Gorlizki ◽  
Oleg Khlevniuk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Membership ◽  
Ethnic Mobilization ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Litmus Test ◽  
Formal Recognition

This chapter shows how formal recognition by the Soviet state of ethnolinguistic elites and cultures created opportunities for republican leaders to negotiate the problems of authoritarian control and authoritarian power sharing through ethnic mobilization. It looks at the early post-Stalin era that witnessed various campaigns to raise the political or cultural autonomy of national groups. The chapter describes the campaigns that rode on the coattails of the center's policy of reinvigorated indigenization and designed to promote ethnoterritorial elites and cultures. It talks about the litmus test of nationalism, in which an ethnoterritorial elite presented its interests as being opposed not only to those of other ethnoterritorial groups but also to those of the Soviet Union as a whole. It also explains ethnic mobilization that meant going over the heads of the party membership and appealing to the wider titular ethnic group.

American Sources of Information and Soviet Interest in the Enemy

2018 ◽  
pp. 38-57
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Voice Of America ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Voice

This chapter is devoted to American official propaganda in the late Stalin era. It analyzes Soviet reactions to the broadcasting of the Voice of America and the publishing of a glossy magazine called Amerika in the Soviet Union. The chapter also covers one of the most radical actions the Soviet state took in controlling its people. As part of a much larger phenomenon, the Soviet state imprisoned and sentenced people who allegedly praised the United States, illustrating the effects of the anti-American campaign on the lives of ordinary Soviet people. The political repressions also show how yet another parallel image of America developed in the Soviet Union: not at all like the “second America” that the anti-American propaganda hailed, this other image of America was a fairytale version, the exact opposite of the bleak realities some experienced under socialism in the late 1940s and the early 1950s.

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.

Enemy Number One

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Inferiority Complex ◽  
Available Information

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.

Restating Classicist Monumentalism in Soviet Architecture, 1930s–early 1950s

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
William C. Brumfield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines the development of retrospective styles in Soviet architecture during the Stalin era, from the 1930s to the early 1950s. This highly visible manifestation of communist visual culture is usually interpreted as a reaction to the austere modernism of 1920s Soviet avant-garde architecture represented by the constructivist movement. The project locates the origins of Stalin-era proclamatory, retrospective style in prerevolutionary neoclassical revival architecture. Although functioning in a capitalist market, that neoclassical reaction was supported by prominent critics who were suspicious of Russia’s nascent bourgeoisie and felt that neoclassical or neo-Renaissance architecture could echo the glory of imperial Russia. These critics left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but prominent architects of the neoclassicist revival remained in the Soviet Union. Together with the Academy of Architecture (founded 1933), these architects played a critical role in reviving classicist monumentalism—designated “socialist realism”—as the proclamatory style for the centralized, neoimperial statist system of the Stalin era. Despite different ideological contexts (prerevolutionary and Stalinist), retrospective styles were promulgated as models for significant architectural projects. The article concludes with comments on the post-Stalinist—and post-Soviet—alternation of modernist and retrospective architectural styles.

scholarly journals The All-Buryat Congress for the Spiritual Rebirth and Consolidation of the Nation: Siberian politics in the final year of the USSR

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-71
Author(s):  
Melissa Chakars
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The Political ◽  
Socialist Republic ◽  
Soviet Socialist Republic ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
People's Party ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian State ◽  
General Goals

This article examines the All-Buryat Congress for the Spiritual Rebirth and Consolidation of the Nation that was held in the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in February 1991. The congress met to discuss the future of the Buryats, a Mongolian people who live in southeastern Siberia, and to decide on what actions should be taken for the revival, development, and maintenance of their culture. Widespread elections were carried out in the Buryat lands in advance of the congress and voters selected 592 delegates. Delegates also came from other parts of the Soviet Union, as well as from Mongolia and China. Government administrators, Communist Party officials, members of new political parties like the Buryat-Mongolian People’s Party, and non-affiliated individuals shared their ideas and political agendas. Although the congress came to some agreement on the general goals of promoting Buryat traditions, language, religions, and culture, there were disagreements about several of the political and territorial questions. For example, although some delegates hoped for the creation of a larger Buryat territory that would encompass all of Siberia’s Buryats within a future Russian state, others disagreed revealing the tension between the desire to promote ethnic identity and the practical need to consider economic and political issues.

Why pioneer camps survived the collapse of the Soviet Union

2021 ◽  
pp. 161189442110186
Author(s):  
Anna Kozlova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Teaching Experiences ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis ◽  
Children’S Centres ◽  
Educational Field

The article analyses the survival of the children’s centres, Artek and Orlyonok, during the post-socialist transformation. It is based on 50 interviews with employees who worked there starting in the late-Soviet era. Artek and Orlyonok were exemplary children’s camps, subordinated to the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Since the early 1960s, they have functioned as schools for distinguished teenagers who were considered ‘good examples’ for other children. In this article, I have made an ethnographic analysis of Artek and Orlyonok employees’ late-Soviet experiences. This analysis shows how the agency of Soviet counsellors and camp directors became a creative interpretation of the governmental order to raise the children as active Soviet citizens. Camp educators transformed it in line with the idea to base their agency on ‘common human values’, which was spread in the Soviet educational field in the post-Stalin era. As a result, the Soviet teaching experiences gained in these education centres were heterogeneous. When a child-centred paradigm was later introduced to the post-Soviet educational system, the camps adopted the most applicable practices from their Soviet experiences.

scholarly journals Reassessing the Standard of Living in the Soviet Union: An Analysis Using Archival and Anthropometric Data

2010 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Brainerd
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Physical Growth ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
The Political ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Anthropometric Data ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Child Height ◽  
Adult Stature

This article uses anthropometric and archival data to reassess the standard of living in the Soviet Union. In the prewar period, the population was small in stature and sensitive to the political and economic upheavals experienced in the country. Significant improvements in child height, adult stature, and infant mortality were recorded from approximately 1945 to 1970. While this period of physical growth was followed by stagnation in heights, the physical growth record of the Soviet population compares favorably with that of other European countries at a similar level of development in this period.

In Afghanistan: Western and Soviet Methods of Counterinsurgency

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-40
Author(s):  
Lasha Tchantouridze
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Military Mission ◽  
Lasting Change

The two-decade-long U.S.-led military mission in Afghanistan ended in August 2021 after a chaotic departure of the NATO troops. Power in Kabul transferred back to the Taliban, the political force the United States and its allies tried to defeat. In its failure to achieve a lasting change, the Western mission in Afghanistan is similar to that of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. These two missions in Afghanistan had many things in common, specifically their unsuccessful counterinsurgency efforts. However, both managed to achieve limited success in their attempts to impose their style of governance on Afghanistan as well. The current study compares and contrasts some of the crucial aspects of counterinsurgency operations conducted by the Soviet and Western forces during their respective missions, such as special forces actions, propaganda activities, and dealing with crucial social issues. Interestingly, when the Soviets withdrew in 1988, they left Afghanistan worse off, but the US-backed opposition forces subsequently made the situation even worse. On the other hand, the Western mission left the country better off in 2021, and violence subsided when power in the country was captured by the Taliban, which the United States has opposed.

The Role of National Diversity in Political Reform A Comparative Study between the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the British Northern Ireland Region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tareq Kakarash ◽  
Alnasir Doraid
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Difference

The issue of national diversity is considered one of the most important points in studying the development of political systems in our time. Many scholars and researchers have noticed that there is rarely a people or nation in the world today that does not possess different national or ethnic diversity, some of which succeed in forcibly obliterating them, which leads to its ignition and the division of nations and states. (As happened in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Eight State, the Empire of Austria-Hungary, etc.) and as it will happen in the future in other repressive countries, no matter how long their repression takes, and some of them succeed in preserving them through assimilation and understanding, as happened in Switzerland and a few other countries. While there are countries that have been striving for decades to arrange their national situations (such as India, Belgium and Spain), with varying degrees of success. The element of national diversity sometimes plays an active role in reforming the political system, and at other times this national diversity hinders the entire political reform. On the basis of the difference and contrast between the two models in terms of the degree of modernity and development, however, a careful examination of the two models confirms that they are not different to this degree. Only years (1998 in Britain and 2003 in Iraq) and the political conflict still exists in the two countries, leading to a final solution to this crisis.

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