scholarly journals The Immortal Host of Prince Igor

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 883-903
Author(s):  
Evgeny A. Rostovtsev ◽  

The attention of the author of this paper is focused on “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” (Slovo o polku Igoreve), a famous work of Russian literature. Before the revolution the text was included in the school curriculum, and within the period of 1850–1917 its separate editions exceeded 150. The early Soviet period was marked by a brief decline of the popularity of the “Tale”, but since mid-1930s, the number of its separate editions started to grow, and the negative or indifferent comments on Prince Igor Sviatoslavich in Soviet encyclopedias were replaced by the favorable ones. The heroization of its characters during the Great Patriotic War also contributed to the popularity of the “Tale”. After the war, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was effectively used again as a symbol of the unity of three brotherly nations — Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian. The celebrations of different anniversaries, such as the 750th anniversary of the “Tale” and 150th anniversary of its first publication were also typical of the Soviet era. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the “Tale” has become an object of rivalry between Russia and Ukraine. Each country claims to be the only true heir of the “Tale”, actively contributing to its popularization via publications, the organization of commemorative events and the introduction of its text into school curriculums. However, further prospects of the “Tale” commemoration-wise are quite obscure — the article argues that the “Tale” (as well as many other literary works) does not constitute an effective tool for building of national past.

Author(s):  
Aleksey Popov ◽  
Oleg Romanko

Introduction. The publication is a review of the monograph of British researcher V. Davis, dedicated to the Soviet and Post-Soviet memory of the Great Patriotic War in the hero city of Novorossiysk. Methods and materials. Based on a significant set of published materials and oral interviews, the author characterizes discourse, memorials, and practices related to the genesis and subsequent development of the “myth about Malaya Zemlya”. From the methodological point of view, the peer-reviewed monograph is written from the position of the popular direction of memory studies in the West and is characterized by interdisciplinarity, increased attention to the analysis of memorial discourse, visual representations and social practices, while completely ignoring the complex of archival sources on the research topic. Analysis and Results. The main conclusion of the author is that through its association with L.I. Brezhnev’s biography during his reign, the “malozemelniy myth” became an important part of not only local but also national historical memory. Generally, the reviewed book is a valuable contribution to the study of the collective memory of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet and Post-Soviet period, and the debatable nature of its individual provisions can serve as an incentive for the emergence of new studies. The main disadvantage of the book in terms of its scientific significance is the author’s desire to impose on the reader non-obvious political conclusions about the total mythology of the Soviet/Post-Soviet memory of the Great Patriotic War, as well as the permanent militarism of public consciousness in the USSR/Russia.


Author(s):  
Scott M. Kenworthy

The revolution of 1917 ended a dynamic period of monastic growth in Russia and brought to power a government that was militantly anti-religious. It eliminated all monasteries in the first decade after the revolution, and it persecuted monastics in the 1930s. A limited number of monasteries were tolerated after the Second World War until the end of the Soviet period. Since the collapse of communism, however, Russian monasticism has experienced a significant revival. In Romania, monasticism has always been central to Orthodoxy. Because Romania became communist after the Second World War, the persecution of monasticism was less severe there than in the Soviet Union, and there was greater continuity with the pre-communist past. Monasticism continues to enjoy a significant presence in contemporary Romania. Historians have only just begun to study the fate of monasticism under communism, and sociologists and ethnographers are engaging in promising studies of contemporary monastic life in Russia and Romania.


Author(s):  
Ирина Юрьевна Ямпольская

Формирование идентичности в современной Украине связано с выработкой отношения ко многим аспектам истории, прежде всего истории советского периода. Важнейший момент - отношение к Великой Отечественной войне. В 2014-2015 гг. после резкого ухудшения российско-украинских отношений в рамках декоммунизации была создана новая официальная концепция праздника. Отношение к реформированию Дня Победы является тестом на лояльность не только для политиков и рядовых граждан, но и для целых регионов, которые различаются по уровню пророссийской ориентации. Консервативная оппозиция, оказавшаяся включенной в процесс реформирования, но не имеющая возможности противодействовать ему открыто, часто выражает свою точку зрения через символические действия. Так, в Одессе «низовым» символическим высказыванием является подчеркнутое следование традиционным и «пророссийским» формам ритуальности, связанным с Днем Победы: игнорирование новой даты проведения праздника (на мероприятия, организованные центральной властью 8 мая, приходят значительно меньше одесситов, чем на традиционные мероприятия 9 мая); внимание к запрещенной символике (красным знаменам, советским воинским символам, советским военным песням, георгиевским лентам); демонстрация портретов ветеранов войны, что является следованием формату «Бессмертного полка» (формат возник как деидеологизированный, но в современной Украине воспринимающийся как «пророссийский»); использование в различных формах «нежелательной» лексики, например, выражения «Великая Отечественная война» вместо «Вторая мировая война» и др. The formation of identity in modern Ukraine is connected, in particular, with attitudes towards many aspects of its history, primarily the history of the Soviet period. The most important of these is the attitude towards the Great Patriotic War, the term used in former republics of the Soviet Union to refer to WWII. In 2014-2015, after the sharp deterioration in Russian-Ukrainian relations, a new official conception of Victory Day was developed as part of the process of de-communization. One’s attitude towards the reform of the holiday became a test of loyalty not only for politicians and ordinary citizens, but also for entire regions of the country, which, as is known, differ in their level of pro-Russian sentiment. The conservative, pro-Russian opposition to the reform process, which was drawn into it but was unable to oppose it openly, often expresses its point of view through symbolic action. In Odessa, for instance, the grassroots symbolic expression of this attitude is an emphatic adherence to the traditional and “pro-Russian” forms of the ritual associated with Victory Day. This includes ignoring the new date of the holiday, May 8 (many fewer Odessa residents turn out for the events organized by the central government on that date as compared to their participation in old-style events on May 9); the use of forbidden symbols such as red flags, Soviet military images and songs, and St. George ribbons (a traditional mark of remembrance of those who died in WWII); parading with portraits of war veterans, following the model of the “Immortal Regiment” (a patriotic society with its own special practice of street marching; while this practice began in Russia as ideologically neutral, in modern Ukraine it is perceived as “pro-Russian”); and the use of “undesirable” vocabulary, for example, use of the expression “Great Patriotic War” instead of “World War II.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-668
Author(s):  
Michael Nosonovsky ◽  
Dan Shapira ◽  
Daria Vasyutinsky-Shapira

AbstractDaniel Chwolson (1819–1911) made a huge impact upon the research of Hebrew epigraphy from the Crimea and Caucasus. Despite that, his role in the more-than-a-century-long controversy regarding Crimean Hebrew tomb inscriptions has not been well studied. Chwolson, at first, adopted Abraham Firkowicz’s forgeries, and then quickly realized his mistake; however, he could not back up. Th e criticism by both Abraham Harkavy and German Hebraists questioned Chwolson’s scholarly qualifications and integrity. Consequently, the interference of political pressure into the academic argument resulted in the prevailing of the scholarly flawed opinion. We revisit the interpretation of these findings by Russian, Jewish, Karaite and Georgian historians in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the Soviet period, Jewish Studies in the USSR were in neglect and nobody seriously studied the whole complex of the inscriptions from the South of Russia / the Soviet Union. The remnants of the scholarly community were hypnotized by Chwolson’s authority, who was the teacher of their teachers’ teachers. At the same time, Western scholars did not have access to these materials and/or lacked the understanding of the broader context, and thus a number of erroneous Chwolson’s conclusion have entered academic literature for decades.


Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.


Author(s):  
A. James McAdams

This book is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. The book argues that the rise and fall of communism can be understood only by taking into account the origins and evolution of this compelling idea. It shows how the leaders of parties in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and North Korea adapted the original ideas of revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to profoundly different social and cultural settings. The book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand world communism and the captivating idea that gave it life.


Author(s):  
Ilkhomjon M. Saidov ◽  

The article is devoted to the participation of natives of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in the Baltic operation of 1944. The author states that Soviet historiography did not sufficiently address the problem of participation of individual peoples of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War, and therefore their feat remained undervalued for a long time. More specifically, according to the author, 40–42% of the working age population of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. Such figure was typical only for a limited number of countries participating in the anti-fascist coalition. Analyzing the participation of Soviet Uzbekistan citizens in the battles for the Baltic States, the author shows that the 51st and 71st guards rifle divisions, which included many natives of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, were particularly distinguished. Their heroic deeds were noted by the soviet leadership – a number of Uzbek guards were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In addition, Uzbekistanis fought as part of partisan detachments – both in the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine, the Western regions of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and Moldova. Many Uzbek partisans were awarded the medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War” of I and II degrees.


Author(s):  
Elena A. Kosovan ◽  

The author of the publication reviews the photobook “Palimpsests”, published in 2018 in the publishing house “Ad Marginem Press” with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The book presents photos of post-Soviet cities taken by M. Sher. Preface, the author of which is the coordinator of the “Democracy” program of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Russia N. Fatykhova, as well as articles by M. Trudolyubov and K. Bush, which accompany these photos, contain explanation of the peculiarities of urban space formation and patterns of its habitation in the Soviet Union times and in the post-Soviet period. The author of the publication highly appreciates the publication under review. Analyzing the photographic works of M. Sher and their interpretation undertaken in the articles, the author of the publication agrees with the main conclusions of N. Fatykhova, M. Trudolyubov and K. Bush with regards to the importance of the role of the state in the processes of urban development and urbanization in the Soviet and post-Soviet space, but points out that the second factor that has a key influence on these processes is ownership relations. The paper positively assesses the approach proposed by the authors of the photobook to the study of the post-Soviet city as an architectural and landscape palimpsest consisting mainly of two layers, “socialist” and “capitalist”. The author of the publication specifically emphasizes the importance of analyzing the archetypal component of this palimpsest, pointing out that the articles published in the reviewed book do not pay sufficient attention to this issue. Particular importance is attributed by the author to the issue of metageography of post-Soviet cities and meta-geographical approach to their exploration. Emphasizing that the urban palimpsest is a system of realities, each in turn including a multitude of ideas, meanings, symbols, and interpretations, the author points out that the photobook “Palimpsests” is actually an invitation to a scientific game with space, which should start a new direction in the study of post-Soviet urban space.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 39-47
Author(s):  
S. I. Pukhnarevich ◽  

The article shows the formation of the legal basis for the formation, development and functioning of the system of training and retraining of judicial personnel in the country in the period from 1946 until the end of the USSR. The article also explores the forms and approaches to the organization of improving the quality of the staff of the judicial system. It was concluded that the Soviet Union has formed an ideologically oriented, strictly centralized Federal-Republican system of professional development of court employees.


2020 ◽  
Vol 955 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
A.V. Nikonov ◽  
T.V. Vashchalova ◽  
E.I. Dolgov ◽  
S.V. Sergeev

On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic war, the events of it continue to live in people’s memory, and its veterans are still the best examples of patriotism and true serving the Motherland. It seems relevant to take a look at the events of the first days of the war with the eyes of their witnesses. The authors describe the events of June and July 1941, presented in the memoirs of the militaries who served in the Red Army Military topographic service, and performed topographic works in the border zone in a significant separation from their military units and staffs. On the basis of the collected material the authors show the participation of topographic units in the fighting of the first days of the war, provide the data on the losses of the Red Army Military topographic service in the starting period of the war. The article is devoted to the memory of the officers and soldiers, who selflessly did their duty in the beginning of the Great Patriotic war.


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