Reinscribing the Aesthetic: Cuban Narrative and Post-Soviet Cultural Politics

PMLA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Buckwalter-Arias
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Foreign Companies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Literary Art ◽  
The Aesthetic

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's revolutionary paradigm encounters its greatest crisis to date. As the state's cultural institutions struggle to cope with severe material limitations and strive to square socialist ideology with world events, Cuban writers increasingly publish their work with foreign companies. Not uncommonly these authors reassert the aesthetic priorities that state institutions are said to have repressed or subordinated to political imperatives. It may appear, superficially, that Cuban writers are out to revive some notion of an autonomous literary art. In situating aesthetic discourse in profoundly dialogic, historically specific, and politically charged narrative contexts, however, these writings challenge traditional universalizing formulations of the aesthetic category. Such historico-narrative rearticulation of social practices and theories of art is prerequisite to a more progressive cultural politics than the socialist state has managed to implement and than an uncritical reengagement with the global market can bring about.

Ukrainian Fashion Houses as Centers of Soviet Fashion Representation

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-528
Author(s):  
Olha Korniienko
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Research Institutions ◽  
Light Industry ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
General Orientation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Wide Range

The study examines Soviet fashion houses as fashion corporations with an extensive structure and a certain autonomy which served as centers for the development and representation of Soviet fashion. These state institutions were created in the capitals and large cities of the Soviet republics. The Moscow All-Union Fashion House acted as a methodological center for fashion houses of all Soviet republics. The Ukrainian SSR was one of the important centers of fashion development in the Soviet Union, and it included six general orientation and five specialized fashion houses, as well as the Ukrainian Institute of Assortment of Light Industry Products and Clothing Culture. Based on a wide range of archival sources and interviews with fashion house workers, the article reveals the structure and operation of Ukrainian fashion houses in the period between 1940 and 1991 and also examine their cooperative endeavors with garment enterprises and research institutions. The technology of clothing production by designers, the processes of approval to which these technologies were subjected by art councils, and the organization of exhibitions in the USSR and abroad are also considered.

Geopolitical Catastrophe

Near Abroad ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Toal
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Russian Territory ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
News Service ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
National Decline

On April 25, 2005, President Vladimir Putin addressed the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. In his lengthy speech Putin laid out a series of priorities for the Russian state in the coming decade. These priorities were not new—he had spoken about them in a similar address the year before—and their central aim was well known, “to build,” as he put it in his address, “an effective state system within the current national borders.” However, it was not Putin’s discussion of democracy and corruption in state institutions that generated headlines in the Western media. Instead it was Putin’s prologue for his reform agenda: . . . Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself. Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorist intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation [the agreement that ended the first Chechen war] that followed damaged the country’s integrity. Oligarchic groups—possessing absolute control over information channels— served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere. Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collapse, the prolonged agony of the Soviet system. But they were mistaken. . . . Putin’s rhetorical device was a conventional decline-and-renewal trope, describing the era of national decline and humiliation that set the stage for his heroic mission of restoring Russia’s strength and capacity. However, Associated Press and BBC news service reports on the speech focused only on one phrase, to which they gave a different translation from that released by the Kremlin (cited above).

Remarks by Sally March

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 191-192
Author(s):  
Sally March
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
New World ◽  
Law Firm ◽  
Foreign Companies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
American Law ◽  
Brave New World

Well, I moved to London thirty years ago, and I joined a small American law firm that was about to open in Moscow, to take advantage of the new opportunities for foreign companies to invest in what was then the Soviet Union. And I was not a Russian lawyer, and I didn't have any particular expertise in this field, but I found myself playing the role of the bridge. I was the bridge between the needs of the Western client and the abilities of the local Russian lawyers, and they were a bridge, a cultural as well as a legal bridge, for the clients to understand this brave new world in which they were trying to do business.

Cuba's Quest for Economic Independence

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE ◽  
JULIE M. THOMAS
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Trade Partner ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Cost

Since the colonial era Cuba has been the paradigmatic case of a monocultural export economy, dependent upon the production of one primary commodity – sugar – for sale to one principal trade partner. Overcoming dependency was a high priority for Fidel Castro in 1959, yet despite a promising start, his efforts proved ultimately unsuccessful. Only the collapse of communism in Europe freed Cuba from dependent trade relations with the Soviet Union – albeit at the cost of enormous economic disruption. This article examines Cuba's post-1959 pursuit of economic independence, first to explain why the government's initial successes proved unsustainable in the 1980s, and then to examine Cuba's attempt to reinsert its economy into the global market in the aftermath of the Cold War.

scholarly journals Reinventing Urban Identities in Kazan

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Turowska
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
City Space ◽  
Grassroots Initiatives

The paper aims to consider how, since the early 1990s, the city space of Kazan is shaped by different social actors. This paper assumes that a key influence on the process of social production of space in Kazan was the procedure of gaining autonomy after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lo­cal variant of economic transformation into the global market system. From the beginning of the post-socialist transition, elites’ strategies were related to the politics of memory and the ideas of mul­ticulturalism and federalism. Consequently, Kazan underwent the process of reinventing of urban identity, and indigenization (by Hughes [2007] it was called Tatarazing) of city space. In the capital of Tatarstan the financialization of city space, accumulation through expropriation, and develop­ment by megaevents can be observed. Strategies of development enforced by elites are contested by city inhabitants and grassroots initiatives concentrated around the protection of architectural heritage. Centralized and hierarchical power in Tatarstan makes the grassroots initiatives’ demands possible by a collaboration with local elites.

scholarly journals The Journey Begins: Letter from Vasily Struve to Mikhail Rostovtzev of 25 May 1914

2020 ◽  
pp. 1119-1130
Author(s):  
Ivan A. Ladynin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Near East ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of

The article presents a publication of the letter from Vasily Vasilievich Struve (1889–1965), pioneer in the research of the Ancient Near East societies in the Soviet Union, to Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzev (1870–1952), the prominent Classicist, one of the first scholars in socio-economic history of the Antiquity in pre-revolutionary Russia. The letter was written during Struve’s post-graduate sabbatical in Berlin in 1914; it is stored in the Russian State Historical Archives in St. Petersburg. The document is significant due to its information on Struve’s stay in Berlin and on his contacts with leading German scholars (including Eduard Meyer and Adolf Erman), but it also touches upon a bigger issue. In the early 1930s Struve forwarded his concept of slave-owning mode of production in the Ancient Near East, which was immediately accepted into official historiography, making him a leading theoretician in the Soviet research of ancient history. It has been repeatedly stated in memoirs and in post-Soviet historiography that this concept and, generally speaking, Struve’s interest in socio-economic issues was opportunistic. His 1910s articles on the Ptolemaic society and state published prior to the Russian revolution weigh heavily against this point of view. The published letter contains Struve’s assessment of his future thesis (state institutions of the New Kingdom of Egypt) and puts its topic in the context of current discussions on the Ptolemaic state and society and of his studies in the Rostovtzev’s seminar at the St. Petersburg University. Struve declares the study of Egyptian social structure and connections between its pre-Hellenistic and Hellenistic phases his life-task, introduced to him by Rostovtzev. Thus, Struve’s early interest in these issues appears to be sincere; it stems from pre-revolutionary trends in the Russian scholarship.

Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union: Technologies of Production and Consumption, 1950s–70s

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Elena Kochetkova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Market ◽  
Foreign Companies ◽  
Domestic Technology ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
History Of

This article examines the nature of Soviet consumption and technological development through the history of milk and milk packaging between the 1950s and 1970s. Based on published and archival materials, the paper focuses on the role that milk played in Soviet nutrition and the role that packaging played in Soviet consumption. The article also examines the modernization of technology for making packaging as well as technology transfer from the West. It concludes that, as in many Western countries, both the Soviet state and Soviet specialists saw it as important to increase the consumption of milk after the war, but the meaning of milk changed. Milk, a basic staple for nutrition, became a matter of science and specialists sought to explain its positive effects. In addition, due to the development of the paper and chemical industries, new forms of milk packaging, more practical in their uses, were introduced in the West. Soviet leaders and specialists saw the new packaging as a desirable feature of modernity, but were unsuccessful in launching domestic technologies for manufacturing such packaging. While experimenting with domestic technology, Soviet producers also received foreign equipment for making milk packaging. Nevertheless, the capacity of such foreign equipment was not enough to satisfy growing demand and the consumption of “modern packaging” remained lower than in the West until the introduction of capitalism and, with it, foreign companies into the Russian market in the 1990s.

scholarly journals The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians*

2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (3) ◽  
pp. 1143-1203 ◽  
Author(s):  
George J. Borjas ◽  
Kirk B. Doran
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Mobility Rate ◽  
International Differences ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Total Product ◽  
International Data ◽  
The Impact

Abstract It has been difficult to open up the black box of knowledge production. We use unique international data on the publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians to examine the impact of a large, post-1992 influx of Soviet mathematicians on the productivity of their U.S. counterparts. We find a negative productivity effect on those mathematicians whose research overlapped with that of the Soviets. We also document an increased mobility rate (to lower quality institutions and out of active publishing) and a reduced likelihood of producing “home run” papers. Although the total product of the preexisting American mathematicians shrank, the Soviet contribution to American mathematics filled in the gap. However, there is no evidence that the Soviets greatly increased the size of the “mathematics pie.” Finally, we find that there are significant international differences in the productivity effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and these international differences can be explained by both differences in the size of the émigré flow into the various countries and in how connected each country is to the global market for mathematical publications.

Conclusion

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail Kligman ◽  
Katherine Verdery
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Institutional Infrastructure ◽  
Uniform Manner

This concluding chapter summarizes the main points of this analysis and seeks to extend it by addressing broader comparative questions about the socialist variant of modern state-making. The Soviet Union exported the revolutionary technology of collectivization to its satellites, providing the blueprint along with Soviet advisors to guide them. This blueprint set out the parameters for establishing collectives: new methods to improve agricultural production, a new institutional infrastructure, and an arsenal of pedagogical techniques with which cadres were to enlighten peasants and discipline dissenters. However, collectivization was not carried out in a uniform manner anywhere. Blueprints may provide a plan, but social practices are not so easily hammered or welded into place. Romania's small and weak Communist Party, dependent on the Soviet Union, faced a largely agrarian population that offered heavy resistance. Complicating their task was the ongoing strength of the country's interwar fascist movement in both rural and urban areas, among all social strata.

Moldova’s Thirty-Year Search for Independence

2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (828) ◽  
pp. 268-273
Author(s):  
Petru Negură
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
General Population ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Trust ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Systemic Corruption

Unlike in the Baltics, support for independence in Moldova was relatively low among the political elites and the general population when the Soviet Union collapsed. In the 1990s, the political parties in power pursued an incoherent program, as governments swung between reformist and conservative agendas. Economic crises and systemic corruption depleted citizens’ trust in politicians and state institutions. This low institutional trust has hampered governance at all levels, and primarily in crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

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