"People are Crying, but I Can’t Stop Laughing": Protest Reaction of the Deportees of Tomsk region to Joseph Stalin’s Death

The research featured special reports from the Tomsk Department of State Security about the “anti-Soviet” protest movement of Tomsk deportees in the first months after Joseph Stalin's death. The analysis revealed how the deportees adapted to the authority demands and imitated their loyalty to the system, even when the regime positions was clearly weakened. The author analyzed the sanctions imposed on the deportees and the behavior of the local punitive officials, who received no instructions from Moscow. Most likely, the “anti-Soviet” behavior was not so much a purposeful protest as an irrational reaction to such an extraordinary event as Joseph Stalin's death. The responsive actions of the Regional Department of State Security did not follow the new course of Soviet policy but rather the behavioral patterns formed during the Stalin era: violators were identified and punished severely and demonstratively.

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Post-Stalin Purge Defectors, 1953–1954

Soviet Defectors ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474467230.003.0006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 214-262

Author(s):

Kevin Riehle

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

At Risk ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

New Wave ◽

Soviet State ◽

State Security ◽

Stalin Era ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Perception Of Threat

The flow of defectors waned in the early 1950s as the Soviet Union began again to enforce 1930s rules against defection. However, the death of Stalin in 1953, and equally importantly, the arrest and execution of Soviet state security director Lavrentiy Beriya later that year, prompted a brief new wave of defections—ten officers in a thirteen-month period. They defected for similar reasons as their predecessors in the Yezhovshchina period—out of fear that they were in danger from a purge. With Beriya’s downfall came the inevitable purge that followed the arrest of a state security leader during the Stalin era. Any officer who had connected his or her career with Beriya’s was at risk of going down with him. These officers revealed a growing perception of threat from the United States as the leader of the Western alliance, and targeting of U.S. and NATO information dominated their collection requirements.

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… Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung, sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen … Gedanken zu Eginald Schlattners Text Ja nicht ja. Walther Gottfried Seidner zum 80.

Germanistische Beiträge ◽

10.2478/gb-2019-0011 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 44 (1) ◽

pp. 181-188

Author(s):

Andreea Dumitru

Keyword(s):

The State ◽

Communist Regime ◽

Department Of State ◽

State Security ◽

Evangelical Lutheran

Abstract The story “Ja nicht ja” was written specifically for the volume “Der siebenbürgische Voltaire. Walther Gottfried Seidner zum 80. Geburtstag” by the famous novelist Eginald Schlattner. It brings the communist regime and the Department of State Security into the focus of the reader. During a meeting in the early 1990s attended by evangelical Lutheran priests of Augustan Confession a young priest admitted that he was a collaborator of the State Security, and thus managed to take over the burden of being an informant on the shoulders of others. Father Walther Gottfried Seidner, who was also threatened, managed to avoid State Security at any price, and understanding the situation of the young priest takes his defense.

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Family Memories and the Transmission of the Independence Struggle in South Yemen

Re-Configurations - Politik und Gesellschaft des Nahen Ostens ◽

10.1007/978-3-658-31160-5_13 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 203-214

Author(s):

Anne-Linda Amira Augustin

Keyword(s):

Intergenerational Transmission ◽

Democratic Republic ◽

The State ◽

Security Forces ◽

Protest Movement ◽

State Security ◽

Family Memories ◽

The Republic ◽

Army Personnel ◽

State Employees

Abstract In 2007, a protest movement emerged in South Yemen called the Southern Movement. At the beginning, it was a loose amalgamation of people, most of them former army personnel and state employees of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) who had been forced out of their jobs after the southern faction lost the war in 1994. Because of the state security forces’ brutality against protesters, more and more people joined the demonstrations, and the claims began to evolve into concrete political demands, such as the restored independence of the territory that once formed the PDRY, which in 1990 unified with the Arab Republic of Yemen to form the Republic of Yemen, as a separate state. By appropriating hidden forms of resistance, such as the intentionally and unintentionally intergenerational transmission of a counternarrative, South Yemenis have strengthened the calls for independence in recent years.

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Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks and the Documentation of Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era

Journal of Cold War Studies ◽

10.1162/jcws.2009.11.3.6 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 6-25 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

John Earl Haynes ◽

Harvey Klehr

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

Federal Bureau ◽

Federal Bureau Of Investigation ◽

State Security ◽

Stalin Era ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Court Proceedings ◽

Congressional Investigations

Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks with 1,115 pages of handwritten transcriptions, excerpts, and summaries from Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB) archival files provide the most detailed documentation available of Soviet espionage in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. This article discusses the provenance of the notebooks and how they fit with previously available Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files, KGB cables decrypted by the Venona project, Communist International records, court proceedings, and congressional investigations. As an example of the richness of the material, the essay reviews the notebooks' documentation of Soviet spy William Weisband's success in alerting the Soviet Union to the U.S. decryption project that tracked Soviet military logistic communications, allowing the USSR to implement a more secure encryption system and blinding the United States to preparations for the invasion of South Korea in 1950.

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“ETERNITY SMELLS OF OIL”. THE OIL AND THE KHANTY: RESISTANCE OR OPPORTUNISM?

Yearbook of Finno-Ugric Studies ◽

10.35634/2224-9443-2020-14-3-516-527 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 516-527

Author(s):

Zoltán x Zoltán Nagy

Keyword(s):

Raw Materials ◽

Forced Migration ◽

Oil Industry ◽

Stalin Era ◽

Tomsk Region ◽

Dominant Society ◽

Local Discourses ◽

The Relationship ◽

Khanty Mansi Autonomous ◽

Nenets Autonomous

The author of the paper shows how differently oil mining affects the Khanty who live in different Western Siberia state administrative districts. According to the opinion taken in the international anthropology, extraction of raw materials within the Russian “mining course” is able to give rise to conflicts and create “crude domination”. The author agrees with Florian Stammler’s opinion that the concept of conflict cannot describe the current situation in the West Siberian region (the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area or “Yugra”; the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area) for a number of reasons. The examples given by the author show that oil-industry workers’ presence did not result in conflicts for the Khanty of the Tomsk region. The reason is that mentioning oil industry in the local discourses means, first of all, a possibility to survive, and secondly, because the forced migration the Khanty’s “lost generations” met with the oil miners as early as Stalin era. Oil industry did not cause any fundamental changes for the Khanty, it just became another manifestation of the dominant society majority. Thus the relationship between the majority and the minority in the Tomsk region is not a conflict one in spite of oil industry dominance in the region’s life.

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Działalność propagandowa polskiego podziemia na Wileńszczyźnie w świetle zbiorów „bernardyńskich”

10.12797/9788381384681.08 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 241-258

Author(s):

Tomasz Bożerocki

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Equal Rights ◽

Department Of State ◽

Cultural Autonomy ◽

State Security ◽

Micro Level ◽

Post War ◽

State Archives ◽

Resistance Movement ◽

Regular Character

PROPAGANDA ACTIVITY OF THE POLISH SECRET STATE IN THE VILNIUS REGION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE “BERNARDINE” COLLECTIONS FROM THE YEARS 1939-1944 The so-called “Bernardine” Archives of the Home Army found in February 1995 in the Vilnius church of St. Francis of Assisi (Bernardine church) are an interesting source for the analysis of activities of the Information and Propaganda Bureau of the Home Army Vilnius District. The circumstances of finding the documents and their transfer to the state archives are also interesting. They were stolen and later transferred to the archives. The whole case was of particular interest to the Department of State Security. The documents that make up the “Bernardine” collection describe in detail the propaganda activity of the BIP [Bureau for Information and Propaganda] in the Vilnius District of the Home Army. Propaganda activity can be classified into several levels, according to its impact, its methods and effects. Low (micro) level propaganda is not very effective. At the micro level, momentary feelings are evoked in the recipient by one-off prints or short-term manifestations. Meso-level propaganda is of regular character. At this stage, the communicated content is prepared by specialists working in the institution responsible for the consistency of the communicated content and its dissemination. Large-scale propaganda activities can be described as propaganda at the macro level, aiming to change the behaviour of society. Propaganda at this level can be described as total propaganda. Here, messages are broadcast by various media and various institutions. This type of categorisation of propaganda makes it easier to present the communication and information activities of the Polish resistance movement. The article describes in detail the circumstances of finding, theft and return of Home Army documents. Using the example of the “Bernardine” collection, the ideas of the Polish-Lithuanian federation that appeared in the announcements of the Home Army BIP of the Vilnius District are analysed in detail. Two types of communication dominate in the analysed documents of the “Bernardine” collections. The first is “federalist” communication, according to which both states and nations would have equal rights and influence. The second one, based on the notion of “incorporation” assumes that Lithuania was to become an integral part of post-war Poland, but with ensuring cultural autonomy for Lithuanians.

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Favourite Research Topics of Estonian Ethnographers Under Soviet Rule

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics ◽

10.2478/jef-2019-0010 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 1-15

Author(s):

Indrek Jääts

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Everyday Life ◽

Traditional Agriculture ◽

Soviet Rule ◽

Research Topics ◽

Soviet Policy ◽

Stalin Era ◽

Peasant Culture

Abstract Estonian ethnography as one of the Estonia-related disciplines was tied with Estonian nationalism from the very beginning. Defined as a science investigating mainly the material side of vanishing traditional peasant culture in the 1920s, it fitted rather well with the Soviet understanding of ethnography as a sub discipline of history. Thanks to the major cooperation projects initiated and coordinated by ethnographers from Moscow, Soviet Estonian ethnographers could continue studying Estonian traditional peasant culture. Their favourite research topics (folk costume, peasant architecture and traditional agriculture) supported Estonian national identity, but also suited the framework of Soviet ethnography. Studying contemporary (socialist) everyday life was unpopular among Estonian ethnographers because the results had to justify and support Soviet policy. They did so unwillingly, and avoided it completely if possible. Despite of some interruption during the Stalin era, ethnography managed to survive as a science of the nation in Soviet Estonia.

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