scholarly journals Between Berlin and Moscow: Polish Western Thought in the Twenty-Year Interwar Period

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Masnyk

This article deals with the professional discussion about the so-called “difficult questions” of Russian history that involves historians and teachers in the now independent republics of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Block. Both academic publications and teaching books are used as primary sources for the study. In the first section, the author studies several problems connected with the origin of Russian statehood, the Varangian question, and civilizational characteristics of East Slavic nations. The second section is devoted to the Russian imperial past and especially to the discourse on colonialism, which is often used as an explanatory model for the imperial period by historians and textbook authors in some of the post-Soviet countries. The third section is concerned with the conception of the 1917 revolution. The author emphasizes the fact that the conception of a continuous revolutionary process (1917–1922) has yet to be accepted by Russian secondary schools. In this part, the author considers several other factors significant for understanding the revolutionary process including issues such as the origins of the First World War and the developmental level of the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century. In the fourth section, the article discusses the conception of the 1930s Soviet modernization along with negative opinions about the Soviet period given by scholars of different former Soviet republics. In the fifth section, the author briefly observes contemporary studies of culture and everyday life. It is concluded that the history of culture is not represented well in Russian school textbooks, and it is also found that the studies on everyday life are often lacking in depth. Discussing various “difficult questions” of Russian history, the author highlights controversial historical ideas and opinions, formulated in the post-Soviet countries during the last decades.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Chubariyan

This article deals with the professional discussion about the so-called “difficult questions” of Russian history that involves historians and teachers in the now independent republics of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Block. Both academic publications and teaching books are used as primary sources for the study. In the first section, the author studies several problems connected with the origin of Russian statehood, the Varangian question, and civilizational characteristics of East Slavic nations. The second section is devoted to the Russian imperial past and especially to the discourse on colonialism, which is often used as an explanatory model for the imperial period by historians and textbook authors in some of the post-Soviet countries. The third section is concerned with the conception of the 1917 revolution. The author emphasizes the fact that the conception of a continuous revolutionary process (1917–1922) has yet to be accepted by Russian secondary schools. In this part, the author considers several other factors significant for understanding the revolutionary process including issues such as the origins of the First World War and the developmental level of the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century. In the fourth section, the article discusses the conception of the 1930s Soviet modernization along with negative opinions about the Soviet period given by scholars of different former Soviet republics. In the fifth section, the author briefly observes contemporary studies of culture and everyday life. It is concluded that the history of culture is not represented well in Russian school textbooks, and it is also found that the studies on everyday life are often lacking in depth. Discussing various “difficult questions” of Russian history, the author highlights controversial historical ideas and opinions, formulated in the post-Soviet countries during the last decades.


Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olena Betlii

Urban studies is still an undeveloped field in Ukraine, partly as a result of a lack of field institutionalization at Ukrainian universities. On the other hand, only in the early 21st century, urban challenges became a subject of interest of urban activists who started raising questions regarding strategic developments of Ukrainian cities. Thanks to that, the urban agenda has become visible and discussible on some independent research institutions or media platforms. Scholarship on Kyiv is a good illustration of this situation. There are not that many scholarly works dedicated exclusively to Kyiv. Ukrainian historians quite often address Kyiv issues in their research on a more general Ukrainian context. Western historians, focusing on the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, mention Kyiv in their work but rarely choose this city as a main subject of examination. This article will introduce the reader to themes examined by scholars who have studied the history or current development of Kyiv. The majority of these studies are written in Ukrainian and have never been translated into English. Considering the emerging status of Kyiv studies, this article attempts to strike a balance between being inclusive and, at the same time, selective. A number of the sources cited here are the only existing examinations of a certain topic. Most of the citations refer to books, with just a handful of articles listed in this article. Papers written by Ukrainian historians are typically very short and do not analyze their topics deeply enough to be mentioned in a citation. Western scholars usually finalize their research in book-length publications, and their research on Kyiv is cited in this article. This article is divided into several topical sections, within which citations are organized chronologically, covering the time period from the medieval history of Kyiv to the present day. This article demonstrates that the late imperial history of Kyiv has been researched the best. There will likely be even more scholarship on this period due to the fact that Kyiv archives are rich and open to researchers, and their records have even been published online. In contrast, the Soviet period is barely touched by urban scholars. It is still uncertain to what degree the current challenges of Kyiv’s development will be reflected in scholarship in the near future. In order to get any further updates on the topic, one might consult the publisher Varto, which specializes in Kyiv literature.


2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (02) ◽  
pp. 255-286
Author(s):  
Sabine Dullin

Abstract Focusing on the European margins of the former Russian Empire as it was reinvented by the Soviets and drawing on the central and local archives of the former Soviet Union, this article uncovers a particular construction of territorial sovereignty that emerged from interactions between countries that were both new and ideologically hostile to one another. It shows that although Soviet authorities adapted to the rules of negotiation necessary for the “co-construction” of a frontier, they gradually managed to affirm an exclusive sovereignty over the territory. The thick border that evolved between mutually suspicious neighbors, especially through the creation of buffer zones, was subsequently institutionalized and appropriated by the Soviets in order to control interactions and border crossings. This analysis of everyday life in these border zones offers new perspectives for a transnational history of the state.


Author(s):  
Olha Zabudkova ◽  

The article analyzes the coverage in the historical literature of the problem of industry’s monopolization in the Russian Empire in the late XIX – early XX century. There are three periods in the development of the historiography have been identified. During the imperial period (late XIX – early XX century.) works were not only theoretical but also practical. Despite the fact that most of these works are descriptive and have a relatively weak source base, they laid the foundation for further study of the problem. In the second, Soviet period, there are three stages. During the first (1920s – mid-1950s) there is an evolution of approaches to the study of monopolies from pre-Soviet traditions to their understanding as one of the means of external management of the Russian Empire’s economy with foreign capital. At the next stage (mid-1950s – mid-1970s) the idea of ​​the weakness of monopoly and the dependent nature of the empire is replaced by the idea of ​​forming the highest stage of capitalism – imperialism, one of the main features of which was the domination of monopolies. During the third stage (mid-1970s – 1980s), research became complex, and the thesis of the high development of monopoly capitalism as a precondition for the socialist revolution was defended. Modern historiography, which represents the third stage, is marked by the desire of historians to objectively cover the role of monopolies, but the problems of monopolization in the Russian Empire are covered mainly in single explorations or in complex works on the history of late XIX – early XX centuries. It is concluded that the analysis of historiography of industrial monopolization’s history in the Russian Empire showed the fragmentary study of the problem, which determines the importance of its further study.


Author(s):  
Irina V. Sabennikova ◽  

The historiography of any historically significant phenomenon goes through several stages in its development. At the beginning − it is the reaction of contemporaries to the event they experienced, which is emotional in nature and is expressed in a journalistic form. The next stage can be called a retrospective understanding of the event by its actual participants or witnesses, and only at the third stage there does appear the objective scientific research bringing value-neutral assessments of the phenomenon under study and belonging to subsequent generations of researchers. The history of The Russian Diaspora and most notably of the Russian post-revolutionary emigration passed to the full through all the stages of the issue historiography. The third stage of its studying dates from the late 1980s and is characterized by a scientific, politically unbiased study of the phenomenon of the Russian emigration community, expanding the source base and scientific research methods. During the Soviet period in Russian historiography, owing to ideological reasons, researchers ‘ access to archival documents was limited, which is why scientific study of the history of the Russian Diaspora was not possible. Western researchers also could not fully develop that issue, since they were deprived of important sources kept in Russian archives. Political changes in the perestroika years and especially in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union increased attention to the Russian Diaspora, which was facilitated by a change in scientific paradigms, methodological principles, the opening of archives and, as a result, the expansion of the source base necessary for studying that issue. The historiography of the Russian Diaspora, which has been formed for more than thirty years, needs to be understood. The article provides a brief analysis of the historiography, identifies the main directions of its development, the research problematics, and defines shortcomings and prospects.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-152
Author(s):  
K.A. Bochaver

The review reveals the content and the directions of the non-fiction book written by a professor Basilova; this book is written about the history of teaching deaf-blind children in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The problems of scientific and methodological supporting the deafblind children are described through the prism of a working career of the three famous domestic speech pathologists and psychologists: Ivan Sokoliansky, Augusta Yarmolenko and Alexander Meshcheryakov.


Author(s):  
Stephen V. Bittner

Whites and Reds: A History of Wine in the Lands of Tsar and Commissar tells the story of Russia’s encounter with viniculture and winemaking. Rooted in the early-seventeenth century, embraced by Peter the Great, and then magnified many times over by the annexation of the indigenous wine economies and cultures of Georgia, Crimea, and Moldova in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, viniculture and winemaking became an important indicator of Russia’s place at the European table. While the Russian Revolution in 1917 left many of the empire’s vineyards and wineries in ruins, it did not alter the political and cultural meanings attached to wine. Stalin himself embraced champagne as part of the good life of socialism, and the Soviet Union became a winemaking superpower in its own right, trailing only Spain, Italy, and France in the volume of its production. Whites and Reds illuminates the ideas, controversies, political alliances, technologies, business practices, international networks, and, of course, the growers, vintners, connoisseurs, and consumers who shaped the history of wine in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union over more than two centuries. Because wine was domesticated by virtue of imperialism, its history reveals many of the instabilities and peculiarities of the Russian and Soviet empires. Over two centuries, the production and consumption patterns of peripheral territories near the Black Sea and in the Caucasus became a hallmark of Russian and Soviet civilizational identity and cultural refinement. Wine in Russia was always more than something to drink.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4-1) ◽  
pp. 230-248
Author(s):  
Sergey Filippov ◽  

The article deals with the analysis of the Soviet national policy from a historical perspective with a focus on investigating into conditions of the loyalty of national elites towards the central government in the last period of the USSR existence. The indicators of the low level loyalty are as follows: supporting the ideas of national sovereignty and independence, participating in the national movement by ruling cadres, influential intellectuals and population. The author shows low sympathy of both groups of representatives: elites and broad population to nationalist ideas. The analysis is based on comparing contrastive cases – the Soviet elites of the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia) and Belorussia in their interactions with the central government as well as local population in the period from 1945 to 1991. These republics, their population and elites were similar regarding some important aspects such as historical and cultural as well as demographic characteristics in the case of Belorussia and Lithuania; some important features of the industry (big export-oriented enterprises) regarding Estonia, Latvia and Belorussia. At the same time, these cases showed a different level of the loyalty towards the Union center, namely, relatively high among the Belorussian Soviet ruling cadres and population and relatively low in the Baltic republics by the end of 1980s. The important aspect of the Soviet national policy was establishing new national elites, educational and cultural institutions preserving their native languages as well as the promotion of native cadres into the positions of power in the regional administration. In some respects, this policy was similar to the “indirect rule” implemented in the imperial period of Russian history and consisted in the cooperation between the central government and local elites as the main approach to administrating a multinational state. However, in comparison with the previous practice tending to include national elites in the imperial nobility, the post revolutionary approach considered the creation of national elites through promoting local cultural and educational institutions that offer quite prestigious but specific positions occupied mostly by representatives of the respective ethnic group. Creating local elites reduced the competition for “universal” positions since socialization and career of “national staff” were oriented towards national institutes. However, increasing numbers of “national staff” with limited positions for them had negative social consequences (elite overproduction). Intra-elite tension increased due to the migration from other regions (in the case of Latvia and Estonia). The other reason of this phenomenon was pursuing socialization strategies oriented to the places of origin (in the case of Lithuania). The attractiveness of the Baltic republics both for local population and migrants from other regions of the USSR was caused by a relatively high level of living standards in these union republics. Location of big export-oriented enterprises in the territory of Belorussia created conditions for preferring socialization strategies oriented towards integration with the Soviet Union economy and, therefore, enhanced loyalty towards the USSR center from both elites and population. Besides, the administrative apparatus of the Soviet Belorussia was recruited extensively among participants of the Soviet partisan movement 1941–1944 what explains the devotion of the Belorussian elite to the Soviet symbols and values. At the same time, the base of the legitimization of the Soviet Lithuanian elite was its ability to control the anti-Soviet (nationalist) movement as well supporting national culture and language.


2021 ◽  
pp. 43-48
Author(s):  
E.A. Naghieva ◽  

The technological development led to the substitution of vegetable and animal oils for the mineral ones. With further development of engine manufacturing, the requirements to the quality of lubricants increased. It was revealed that the mineral oils, as though they are cleaned, do not satisfy the requirements. In this regard, the new method for the improvement of the quality of lubricants is the addition of organic compounds with various functional groups providing the lubricants with set properties into so-called “additives”. In 1945 on the offer of academician U. Mammadaliev a laboratory of the lubricants and additives had been established and leaded by academician A.M. Kuliev under AzNIINP named after V.V. Kuybyshev. Fundamental studies of this staff were considered a basis for the development of industrial production of efficient additives in the former Soviet Union. First developments of the staff related to the depressor and detergent, afterwards to the multi-functional additives. Based on carried out surveys by the laboratory staff the first local additives – depressors AzNII, AzNII-4, AzNII-5, AzNII-TSIATIM etc. have been developed in Azerbaijan. The success of the staff in the studies and developments, as well as the presence of qualified specialists in the chemistry of additives promoted the establishment of the single in our country profiled Institute for the chemistry of additives of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan SSR under the leadership of A.M. Kuliev in 1965. The diapason of fundamental works, enabling to develop the scientific basis of synthesis of efficient additives of optimum structure has been dramatically increased. Numerous efficient additives of various purpose have been obtained. The lubricants are being used in all spheres of the economy.


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