scholarly journals Astral Karate as a Phenomenon of Late-Soviet Esoteric Underground

Open Theology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanislav Panin

AbstractThe article concentrates on the history of Astral Karate, its doctrine and sources. Astral Karate was a late-Soviet eclectic spiritual movement based on esoteric interpretations of martial arts and yoga. The term “Astral Karate” had spread in the 1980s thanks to spiritual leader and underground esoteric author Valery Averianov who called himself Guru Var Avera. On one hand, the movement reflected global tendencies, such as growing interest in Eastern cultures and spirituality, that characterized esoteric groups in the USSR as well as in the USA and Europe during this period. On the other hand, esoteric groups in the Soviet Union developed in isolation from European and American esoteric currents and under unique ideological and legal pressures. The combination of these factors contributed to the originality of late-Soviet esoteric currents and therefore makes Astral Karate an important object of academic inquiry, which helps us to understand the specifics of Soviet spirituality and its further developments in post- Soviet states

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Peacock

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between childhood, consumption and the Cold War in 1950s America and the Soviet Union. The author argues that Soviet and American leaders, businessmen, and politicians worked hard to convince parents that buying things for their children offered the easiest way to raise good American and Soviet kids and to do their part in waging the economic battles of the Cold War. The author explores how consumption became a Cold War battleground in the late 1950s and suggests that the history of childhood and Cold War consumption alters the way we understand the conflict itself. Design/Methodology/Approach – Archival research in the USA and the Russian Federation along with close readings of Soviet and American advertisements offer sources for understanding the global discourse of consumption in the 1950s and 1960s. Findings – Leaders, advertisers, and propagandists in the Soviet Union and the USA used the same images in the same ways to sell the ethos of consumption to their populations. They did this to sell the Cold War, to bolster the status quo, and to make profits. Originality/Value – This paper offers a previously unexplored, transnational perspective on the role that consumption and the image of the child played in shaping the Cold War both domestically and abroad.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-182
Author(s):  
Alexander Ivanovich Repinetskiy

The paper is devoted to history of childrens home 25 established in 1946 on the territory of the Kuibyshev Region. Children of Russian emigrants living in Austria were accommodated there. These children were transferred to representatives of the Soviet authorities by the American administration. Under the terms of the agreements between the USSR, the USA and Great Britain signed at the Yalta conference (1945) people with the Soviet nationality were transferred to the Soviet Union. Children of Russian emigrants born in Austria didnt belong to this category but despite it they were transferred to the Soviet Union. Local authorities didnt know what to do with repatriated children. That is why the childrens home was established in a remote rural area; life and material conditions of its inhabitants were heavy: there was no necessary furniture or school supplies. Its tutors and staff were in a more difficult situation. Some of them lost their jobs. Some children were returned to parents. Unfortunately, available documents do not allow tracking the future of the children from this childrens home.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-160
Author(s):  
Alexey V. Antoshin ◽  
Dmitry L. Strovsky

The article analyzes the features of Soviet emigration and repatriation in the second half of the 1960s through the early 1970s, when for the first time after a long period of time, and as a result of political agreements between the USSR and the USA, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews were able to leave the Soviet Union for good and settle in the United States and Israel. Our attention is focused not only on the history of this issue and the overall political situation of that time, but mainly on the peculiarities of this issue coverage by the leading American printed media. The reference to the media as the main empirical source of this study allows not only perceiving the topic of emigration and repatriation in more detail, but also seeing the regularities of the political ‘face’ of the American press of that time. This study enables us to expand the usual framework of knowledge of emigration against the background of its historical and cultural development in the 20th century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Maryna Berezutska

AbstractBandura art is a unique phenomenon of Ukrainian culture, inextricably linked with the history of the Ukrainian people. The study is dedicated to one of the most tragic periods in the history of bandura art, that of the 1920s–1940s, during which the Bolsheviks were creating, expanding and strengthening the Soviet Union. Art in a multinational state at this time was supposed to be national by form and socialist by content in accordance with the concept of Bolshevik cultural policy; it also had to serve Soviet propaganda. Bandura art has always been national by its content, and professional by its form, so conflict was inevitable. The Bolsheviks embodied their cultural policy through administrative and power methods: they created numerous bandurist ensembles and imposed a repertoire that glorified the Communist Party and the Soviet system. As a result, the development of bandura art stagnated significantly, although it did not die completely. At the same time, in the post-war years this policy provoked the emigration of many professional bandurists to the USA and Canada, thus promoting the active spread of bandura art in the Ukrainian Diaspora.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1175-1187
Author(s):  
Karina A. Merzhanova ◽  

The publication introduces into scientific use and analyses a unique document on the work of the international aviation commission (Moscow, September 1941) that worked at the conference of representatives of the USSR, the USA, and England on the issue of military deliveries to the Soviet Union. The published document has been found when preparing ‘History of creation and development of the defense industry complex of Russia and the USSR. 1900–1963. Documents and materials.’ Presently the fifth volume of the series covering the period of the Great Patriotic War is being prepared. The document published here precedes the publication of that volume. The question of military lend-lease deliveries of planes to the Soviet Union considered by the commission was of great importance to Soviet aviation industry. Evacuation of aircraft manufacturing facilities led to a decrease in production. For a time the aircraft industry continued to work on mobilization stocks and lend-lease deliveries. The aviation commission of the Soviet Union was to secure the necessary quantity of warplanes from the USA and England, which for that end had to curtail their own arms contracts. The published document shows the process of negotiations and its result – how fully the Soviet delegation managed to solve the tasks set before it. In the introduction, the situation in Soviet and American aviation industry at the start of negotiations is analyzed. The published document is stored in the fonds of the Russian State Archive of Economy. It is a typewritten original record of negotiations of even date. It expands source base on lend-lease, shows how the Soviet delegation tried to obtain newest American and English military aircraft equipment, and allows to understand the nuances of interactions of the allies, to analyze their positions and approaches to negotiations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Vladimir Bobrovnikov ◽  
Artemy M. Kalinovsky

Abstract Fazliddin Muhammadiev’s Dar on dunyo (“In the other world”), first published in Tajik in 1965 and later translated to Russian, Uzbek, and many other languages, is the only known fictionalized account of the ḥajj produced in the Soviet Union. Based on a trip made by the author in 1963, the novel provided the Soviet reader a rare glimpse into this sacred rite. Drawing on archival sources, contemporary responses, and the text itself, this article traces the origins and publication history of the novel, situates it within Soviet domestic and foreign policy goals, and analyzes the text to see how the author tried to reconcile competing ideological priorities.


2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francine Lecours

Soon after the opening of hostilities between Iran and Iraq in September 1980, the Soviet Union offered military assistance to Tehran while simultaneously suspending arms deliveries to Baghdad, a formerly faithful client. Following Iran s refusal of assistance, and possibly in reaction to a percieved threat from the spreading of Iran's Islamic revolution, Moscow re-opened arms shipments to Iraq. This ambivalent behavior on the part of the Soviet Union is partially explained by the history of its interests in the region. The Soviet Union has long Had strategic ambitions to bring Iran under its influence. Moscow welcomed any opportunity to increase economic and political des with Tehran even if in the short term the results were only partial. On the other hand, Iraq is an influential member of the Arab community - a useful relationship for the USSR, and one that while mutually1987 advantageous for both parties, has not required extensive commitments. One cannot ignore the possibility that important events in the Gulf War will cause an abrupt shift in Soviet attitudes and actions in the region.


2018 ◽  
pp. 630-639
Author(s):  
Irina A. Konoreva ◽  
◽  
Igor N. Selivanov ◽  

The review characterizes two collections of archival documents published in Belgrade and Moscow. They contain materials on the history of Yugoslavo-Soviet relations in 1964-1980s from the Archive of Yugoslavia and the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. The reviewed collections continue the series of publications of the Archive of Yugoslavia (‘Documents on Yugoslavia Foreign Policy’) and of the International Fund ‘Democracy’ (‘Russia: The 20th century’). The collections contain over 100 documents, most of which are published for the first time. They address problems of international relations and domestic policy of the two countries. These problems were discussed by the leaders of Yugoslavia and the USSR at their one-on-one meetings. These discussions allow to trace the process of establishment of mutually beneficial relations. There are materials on general problems of international relations, as well as regional issues: estimation of the role of the USA in the international affaires; impact of the Non-Aligned Movement; European problems; political situation in the Near, Middle, and Far East, and in the Southeast Asia; etc. The chronological framework include events of the Second Indo-Chinese War. The 2-volume collection includes I. B. Tito’s and L. I. Brezhnev’s assessments of the operations in Vietnam and their characterization of the American policy in the region. Its name index and glossary of abbreviations simplify working with documents. The materials of these collections may be of interest to professional historians, Master Program students specializing in history and international relations, who may use them as an educational resource, and post-graduate students researching issues of World and East-European history.


Slavic Review ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald D. Egbert

The Arts of Bulgaria since World War II are of considerable interest for the history of art largely because they so directly demonstrate what happens to the arts of a previously non-Communist country under Soviet dominance. Since the Communist take-over, not only has Bulgarian art directly reflected the Soviet political line but it has done this even more thoroughly than the art of the Soviet Union itself. For beautiful Bulgaria is such a compact and homogeneous little country—about 325 miles long and 215 miles wide, with a population of only 8 million people, about 90 percent of whom are of specifically Bulgarian stock—that its Communist government can control the arts with far greater ease than can the regime of so enormous and racially diversified a nation as the Soviet Union. Even long before World War II, Slavic Bulgaria had closer cultural links with Slavic Russia than did any of the other countries that fell under Soviet political domination as a consequence of the war. As might therefore have been expected, its arts have reflected the influence of the Soviet aesthetic of “socialist realism”—and the distinct but related and highly relevant Stalinist formula of an art “national in form and socialist in content”—more directly than have those of the other “satellites.”


2021 ◽  
pp. 311-325
Author(s):  
Zsuzsanna Kalafatics ◽  

Experimental theaters led by Ödön Palasovszky stand out among the attempts to renew the Hungarian theatrical culture of the 1920s. He was the central figure of the creative community that worked under different names, but the performances were results of a collective work. Contemplating on the nature and possibilities of theatrical art, young experimenting artists set themselves the goal of creating a reflective art aiming at the creation of a new society. In search of new ways of expression, they turned to various forms of cabaret, revue, compere-entertainer, choral genres, simultaneous play based on the principle of montage and eurhythmics, and they used many scenic innovations. In my paper, I will focus on the analysis of the staging of Nikolay Evreinov’s monodrama The Theater of the Soul. The performances of the Extraordinary Stage (Rendkívüli Színpad) were built around the typical problems of the modern human. The play by Evreinov was performed only once, on October 3, 1928, during the evening of Happy end. On of the contributors to the stage design was Eva Zeisel (Éva Striker, 1906–2011), who worked in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and later became a world-famous ceramist in the USA. Since the scenery depicting a living organism was presented on the stage as part of the action, the performance may be considered one of the most original experiments in the Hungarian avant-garde theater history.


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