scholarly journals PERCEPTION OF THE IMAGE OF STAKHANOVKA: FAN LETTERS TO DUSYA VINOGRADOVA, 1935–1936

2021 ◽  
pp. 160-172
Author(s):  
D. I. Navolotskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Public Figure ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Celebrity Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fan Letters

The main question of the article is why Soviet citizens of different professions and ages wrote letters to Stakhanovka, who was the first Soviet celebrity. To answer it, the author relies on "celebrity studies", a new direction in the social sciences and humanities, in which historians turn to the study of "celebrity culture". In the article, a celebrity is seen not as a status assigned to an individual and providing prestige and other social dividends, but as an analytical tool for analyzing the culture of society. Therefore, to study the mechanisms of the emergence and spread of celebrities, it is important to shift the research focus from studying the personality of a public figure to fame in general. In other words, it is important to pay attention to the cultural practices of consuming the image of a public figure, as well as to the political and social mechanisms by which these practices were constructed. Referring to "celebrity culture" as a tool for analysis, the author demonstrates that in the 1930s, the Soviet Union was not an anomaly in comparison to the Western societies. The Soviet culture of celebrity was the basis of the planned economy and the authoritarian regime, but this did not exclude the presence of non-repressive, democratic phenomena among the audience of the central Soviet press.

RESTORATION OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF YALTA IN 1944

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (72) (4) ◽  
pp. 24-36
Author(s):  
N. D. Borshchik
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Food Industry ◽  
Southern Coast ◽  
Recreational Facilities ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Resorts ◽  
Post War ◽  
Short Time

The article considers little-studied stories in Russian historiography about the post-war state of Yalta — one of the most famous health resorts of the Soviet Union, the «pearl» of the southern coast of Crimea. Based on the analysis of mainly archival sources, the most important measures of the party and Soviet leadership bodies, the heads of garrisons immediately after the withdrawal of the fascist occupation regime were analyzed. It was established that the authorities paid priority attention not only to the destroyed economy and infrastructure, but also to the speedy introduction of all-Union and departmental sanatoriums and recreation houses, other recreational facilities. As a result of their coordinated actions in the region, food industry enterprises, collective farms and cooperative artels, objects of cultural heritage and the social and everyday sphere were put into operation in a short time.

Exporting Soviet Culture: The Case of Agitprop Theater

Slavic Review ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Mally
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Global Influence

In this article Lynn Mally examines the efforts of a Comintern affiliate called MORT (Mezhdunarodnoe ob“edinenie revoliutsionnykh teatrov) to export models of Soviet theatrical performance outside the Soviet Union. Beginning with the first Five-Year Plan, MORT was initially very successful in promoting Soviet agitprop techniques abroad. But once agitprop methods fell into disgrace in the Soviet Union, MORT abruptly changed its tactics. It suddenly encouraged leftist theater groups to move toward the new methods of socialist realism. Nonetheless, many leftist theater circles continued to produce agitprop works, as shown by performances at the Moscow Olympiad for Revolutionary Theater in 1933. The unusual tenacity of this theatrical form offers an opportunity to question the global influence of the Soviet cultural policies promoted by the Comintern. From 1932 until 1935, many foreign theater groups ignored MORT's cultural directives. Once the Popular Front began, national communist parties saw artistic work as an important tool for building alliances outside the working class. This decisive shift in political strategy finally undermined the ethos and methods of agitprop theater.

How Should One Evaluate the Soviet Revolution?

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Hösle
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Marxist Philosophy ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soviet Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractThe essay begins by discussing different ways of evaluating and making sense of the Soviet Revolution from Crane Brinton to Hannah Arendt. In a second part, it analyses the social, political and intellectual background of tsarist Russia that made the revolution possible. After a survey of the main changes that occurred in the Soviet Union, it appraises its ends, the means used for achieving them, and the unintended side-effects. The Marxist philosophy of history is interpreted as an ideological tool of modernization attractive to societies to which the liberal form of modernization was precluded.

Russian Organized Crime: Its History, Structure and Function

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 213-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph L. Albini ◽  
R.E. Rogers ◽  
Victor Shabalin ◽  
Valery Kutushev ◽  
Vladimir Moiseev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
Russian Economy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Client Relationships ◽  
And Function

In analyzing Russian organized crime, the authors describe and classify the four major forms of organized crime: 1) political-social, 2) mercenary, 3) in-group, and 4) syndicated. Though the first three classifications of the aforementioned types of organized crime existed throughout Soviet history, it was the syndicated form that began to emerge in the late 1950's, expanding during the corrupt Breznev years (1964–82), exploding during perestroika, and reaching pandemic levels after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. The abrupt transformation of the Russian society from a centralized command economy to one driven by the forces of market capitalism created the socio-pathological conditions for the malignant spread of mercenary and especially syndicated organized crime. New criminals syndicates were created by an alliance of criminal gangs/groups and former members of the Soviet Union's communist nomenklatura (bureaucracy) and the consequence was the criminalization of much of the Russian economy. The social structure of these syndicates is based on a loose association of patron-client relationships rather than a centralized hierarchical system; their function is to provide illicit goods/services desired by the people. The authors conclude their study by emphasizing that what has taken place in Russia is not peculiar to the Russian people, but exemplifies what can happen to societies that experience rapid and intense social change.

A New Circle of Hell: The Postwar Gulag and the Rise of the Special Camps

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Social World ◽  
Political Institution ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Significant Life Experience ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Significant Life

This chapter takes the Gulag into the postwar era when authorities used the institution in an attempt to reassert social control. At the same time, arrivals from the newly annexed western territories and former Red Army soldiers dramatically altered the social world of the Gulag prisoner. New prisoner populations of war veterans, nationalist guerrillas, and peoples with significant life experience outside the Soviet Union provided a potentially combustible mix. The isolation and concentration of many of these prisoners in a small number of special camps raised even further the potential explosiveness of the population. The Gulag was a political institution, though, and it was only the death of the system's founder that would set off the explosions.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann P. Arnason ◽  
Marek Hrubec
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
New Era ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
East Central European

Problems of social revolutions and/or transformations belong to the classical agenda of social inquiry, as well as to the most prominent real and potential challenges encountered by contemporary societies. Among revolutionary events of the last decades, particular attention has been drawn to the changes that unfolded at the turn of the 1990s and brought the supposedly bipolar (in fact incipiently multipolar) world to an end. The downfall of East Central European Communist regimes in 1989 and of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the beginning of a new era, originally characterised on the one hand by the relaxation of international tensions and on the other by the ascendancy of Western unilateralism. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Soviet collapse prompts the authors of this book to reflect on revolutions and transformations, both from a long-term historical perspective and with regard to the post-Communist scene. The social changes unfolding in Eastern and Central Europe are not only epoch-making historical turns; their economic, social and political aspects, often confusing and unexpected, have also raised new questions and triggered debates about fundamental theoretical issues. Moreover, they have had a significant impact on developments elsewhere in the world, in both Western and developing countries.

Society in Flux

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Wickhamsmith
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Literary Response ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Motorized Transport ◽  
Livestock Husbandry

Using S. Buyannemeh’s 1936 novella ‘Tovuudai the Herder’ (Malchin Tovuudai) as a basis, this chapter examines the social policies that the Party implemented so as to bring Mongolia into line with the Soviet Union. Through an analysis of the literary response to the unsuccessful policy of collectivization and to the more successful policies surrounding education and livestock husbandry, it shows how changes to the traditional nomadic herding culture – not only in the management of livestock, but in education and gender equality – affected society as a whole. In journeys such as Tovuudai’s, from the far west of Mongolia to the rapidly developing capital Ulaanbaatar, the kind of technological innovations that the Party wished to encourage – motorized transport and electrification – were seen as evidence of Mongolia’s modernization, and writers used the imagery and sensation of spee

Leftward Together

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Wickhamsmith
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Innovations

This chapter discusses the social innovations and industrialization that began to appear in Mongolia towards the end of the 1920s following Stalin’s accession to power and the implementation of increasingly leftist policies in the Soviet Union. It considers the establishment of the first Revolutionary Writers’ Group (Huvisgalt uran zohiolch naryn bülgem) and the publication in 1929 of the first anthology of Mongolian literature (Uran ügsiin chuulgan) in which revolutionary ideas were developed and promoted. The growing pressure on writers to conform to the Mongolian Party’s relationship to the policies advanced in the Soviet Union meant that what was published – and hence what was read – began to cleave more assiduously to this ideology. By presenting new or would-be writers with advice on how to create socialist literature, the introductory essays to the Anthology by S. Buyannemeh and Chimid Dungarin indicate how the Party focused on developing and using Mongolia’s literary talent to promote its ideology.

Introduction: human blood and social policy

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Richard M. Titmuss
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Human Blood ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the study of the beliefs, attitudes, and values concerning blood and its possession, inheritance, and use and loss in diverse societies. The study originated and grew over many years of introspection from a series of value questions formulated within the context of attempts to distinguish the ‘social’ from the ‘economic’ in public policies and in those institutions and services with declared ‘welfare’ goals. As such, this book centres on human blood: the scientific, social, economic, and ethical issues involved in its procurement, processing, distribution, use, and benefit in Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, South Africa, and other countries. Ultimately, it considers the role of altruism in modern society. It attempts to fuse the politics of welfare and the morality of individual wills.

The Social and Political Role of the Orthodox Church in Post-Communist Russia

1992 ◽  
Vol 20 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Paul Valliere
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Security Network ◽  
Cultural Roles ◽  
The Church

The political role of the Orthodox Church in post-communist Russia is more difficult to assess than its social and cultural roles for several reasons. First, to offer any systematic observations on the matter one must attempt to construe the nature of the church-state relationship in Russia, a notoriously controversial subject. Second, one must make an educated guess concerning the part played by the huge internal security apparatus which only yesterday dominated the internal affairs of the Soviet Union, including religious affairs. The security establishment has been dislodged from its hegemonic role in the Soviet state as a result of the Gorbachev reforms, but there is little question that it continues to exist as a political force in the country. Reading the aims of this network is no easy matter, however, because by definition it operates in relative secrecy and by means of diversionary tactics. One also has to reckon with the possibility that the security network has been disrupted by the changes of recent years, and operates with less coordination than in the past.

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