Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Etty
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Large Range ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Graphic Satire ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Collaborative Exploration ◽  
Everyday Reality

Krokodil produced state-sanctioned satirical comments on Soviet and international affairs from 1922 onward. Authored by professional and non-professional contributors, and published by Pravda in Moscow, it became the satirical magazine with the largest circulation in the world. Every Soviet citizen and every scholar of the USSR was familiar with Krokodil as the most significant and influential source of graphic satire in the USSR. This book uses an original framework for reconsidering the forms, production, consumption, and functions of Krokodil magazine. It considers the magazine's content, structures and conventions; it also uses modern cultural and media theory to look beyond content analysis to consider visual language and the performative construction of character. Empirical analysis of Krokodil is thus used to extend and nuance our understanding of Soviet graphic satire beyond state-sponsored propaganda. In several ways, this book challenges existing approaches. It conducts close readings of a large range of different types of cartoons that have not before been discussed in depth, and it does so in ways that reveal new insights. It shows that Krokodil's satire was complex, subtle and intermedial. It highlights the importance of Krokodil's readers' and artists' collaborative exploration and shaping of the boundaries of permissible discourse, and it argues that Krokodil's cartoons simultaneously affirmed, refracted and critiqued official discourses, counterposing them with visions of Soviet citizens' responses. Ideology, Krokodil's satire suggests, is an interpretive tool for negotiating everyday reality and official discourses, and it was not always to be taken seriously.

Projectile Weapons

2017 ◽  
pp. 94-117
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Different Types

The author shows some examples in order to see how justifications can be constructed, and defeated. Projectile weapons belong to many different types or categories, and in this chapter, the author considers examples of artillery and infantry weapons. He includes among the former torsion artillery developed by the Greeks over two millennia ago. This interesting example shows that weapons design has a long history. He considers the development of the modern rifle, which had its genesis in the nineteenth century, and the modern assault rifle. In all of these cases, the weapons were produced at one time and place, in one context, and came to be used in future times and places which the weapons designers could not have known about. To mention one example here, the standard German infantry rifle of both world wars first came into production in 1898 as a result of work started 25 years before. This weapon was used to murder millions of civilians, including Jews, in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945.

The Soviet Defense Industry: Conversion and Economic Reform. By Julian Cooper. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1991. 111 pp. Index. Figures. Tables. Paper. - Economic Thought and Economic Reform in the Soviet Union. By Pekka Sutela. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 197 pp. Index. Paper. - Ko-ops: The Rebirth of Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union. By Anthony Jones and William Moskoff. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. xvii, 154 pp. Index. Tables. Paper. - The Planned Economies and International Economic Organizations. By Jozef M. van Brabant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xv, 318 pp. Index. Hard bound. - The Order of Economic Liberalization: Financial Control in the Transition to the Market Economy. By Ronald McKinnon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. xii, 200 pp. Index. Tables. Figures. Hard bound. - 500 Days: Transition to the Market. By G. Yavlinsky, B. Federov, S. Shatalin, N. Petrakov, S. Aleksashenko, A. Vavilov, L. Grigoriev, M. Zadornov, V. Machits, A. Mikhailov and E. Yasin. Trans. David Kushner. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991. Index. Figures. Tables. Hard bound.

Slavic Review ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-336
Author(s):  
Robert W. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Economic Organizations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Johns Hopkins University

scholarly journals Superpower Ethics: An Introduction

1987 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph S. Nye
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

The first issue of Ethics & International Affairs was published in 1987, when the Cold War still dominated international affairs. It was appropriate at that time to launch the journal with an issue devoted in part to the theme “superpower ethics.” In his introduction to the topic Nye argues that the challenge of establishing an ethics for the United States and the Soviet Union is not met by any traditional Western system. Aristotle's “virtue,” Kant's “good intent,” and the “good result” of the consequentialists are inadequate to the task of determining right on the superpower playing field. In reference to this insufficiency, Nye sketches the arguments of the subsequent articles by Mazrui, Hassner, and Hoffman, each of whom offers an instructive picture of the state of superpower ethics.

scholarly journals Stalin, the Politburo, and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1946

1988 ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Albert Resis
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
New Wave ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

The precise function that Marxist-Leninist ideology serves in the formation and conduct of Soviet foreign policy remains a highly contentious question among Western scholars. In the first postwar year, however, few senior officials or Soviet specialists in the West doubted that Communist ideology served as the constitutive element of Soviet foreign policy. Indeed, the militant revival of Marxism-Leninism after the Kremlin had downplayed it during 'The Great Patriotic War" proved to be an important factor in the complex of causes that led to the breakup of the Grand Alliance. Moscow's revival of that ideology in 1945 prompted numerous top-level Western leaders and observers to regard it as heralding a new wave of Soviet world-revolutionary messianism and expansionism. Many American and British officials were even alarmed by the claim, renewed, for example, in Moscow's official History of Diplomacy, that Soviet diplomacy possessed a "scientific theory," a "weapon" possessed by none of its rivals or opponents. This "weapon," Marxism-Leninism, Moscow ominously boasted, enabled Soviet leaders to comprehend, foresee, and master the course of international affairs, smoothing the way for Soviet diplomacy to make exceptional gains since 1917. Now, in the postwar period, Stalinist diplomacy opened before the Soviet Union "boundlesshorizons and the most majestic prospects."

scholarly journals Politics and Religion in Inner Mongolia: Japan’s Plans for the 9th Jebtsundamba “Living Buddha”

2013 ◽  
pp. 64-74
Author(s):  
Paul Hyer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Early Period ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
Northern Mongolia ◽  
Communist Revolution ◽  
Secular Power

Chinggis Khan is the single most important icon or historical figure of Mongolia but the next most important icon, for many generations was the Jebtsundamba khutukhtu (hubilgan, incarnation or “Living Bud­dha”) of Urga.1 The 8th Jebtsundamba, as a symbol of both religious and secular power or unity in Mongolia, weathered the storm of China’s 1911 Revolution, and Russia’s 1917 Revolution. Then during the early period of the Communist Revolution in Mongolia (1921), northern Mongolia became the first satellite of the Soviet Union and because the Jebtsundamba wielded enormous traditional influ­ence among the people he was retained by communist leaders during a transition in the revolution in Mongolia. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5564/mjia.v0i17.82 Mongolian Journal of International Affairs, No.17 2012: 64-74

Incremental Activism in Soviet Third World Policy: The Role of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee

Slavic Review ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 614-630
Author(s):  
Jan S. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Control Unit ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy

Historically, leaders of the Soviet Union have shown extraordinary faith in the power of bureaucratic reorganization to solve political problems. The 1985-1987 restaffing and restructuring of the foreign policy establishment indicate that Mikhail Gorbachev shares this faith. In the first sixteen months of his leadership, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs replaced its minister, two first deputy ministers, seven deputy ministers, a third of all Soviet ambassadors, and created four new departments. In addition, important changes were made in the central party apparat, affecting three of the CPSU Central Committee departments: The International Information Department was abolished. The Propaganda Department gained added prominence in international affairs with the appointment of a new chief, Aleksandr Iakovlev, who began playing a conspicuous role as Gorbachev's advisor at international conferences even before his elevation to the Politburo in January 1987. Of great significance for the Soviet foreign policy establishment as a whole, the International Department (ID) was given new leadership, a new arms control unit, and expanded missions.

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