scholarly journals Wat w Polsce powojennej. Tezy

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Piotr Pietrych
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Realism In Literature ◽  
Literary Output

Wat in postwar Poland. Theses A postwar period (1946–1953) in Wat’s literary output is usually omitted by the critics (exceptions are Venclova and Ritz). Difficulties in making comments on this period perhaps stem from that which does not usually fit what critics write about Wat (for instance, that fact that since his arrival from Kazakhstan he was a confirmed anticommunist) and what he published then. A puzzling is the presence in Wat’s works (e.g. in Antyzoil) unanimous declarations of the support for the postwar political order. However, when Wat followed some voice of disagreement, it sounded silent, unconvincing (criticism of the project of realism in literature). A positive involvement in Polish reality at that time was certainly connected with Wat’s personal experiences who, having arrived from his wandering from the Soviet Union to Poland, felt it as “paradise” (this is the name he referred to Poland in Mój wiek [My Century]), seemed not to perceive that it was only a “sham” of paradise. Besides, Wat wanted to participate in Polish cultural life, especially because in postwar years he started to feel literary unfulfilment and a strong need to return to writing. A particularly meaningful example in this context is Wat’s unsuccessful drama of Kobiety z Monte Olivetto [Women from Monte Olivetto] – the writing of which was for the poet the act of desperation and it created a paradox: wanting to participate in postwar literary life in Poland, Wat decided to “collaborate with Social Realism” (Zdzisław Łapiński’s definition), in order to achieve his goal.

Atskaņotājmākslas attīstība Liepājā un Otrā pasaules kara ietekme uz mūziķu likteņiem

2021 ◽  
pp. 338-351
Author(s):  
Vēsma Lēvalde
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Soviet Union

The article is a cultural-historical study and a part of the project Uniting History, which aims to discover the multicultural aspect of performing art in pre-war Liepaja and summarize key facts about the history of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. The study also seeks to identify the performing artists whose life was associated with Liepāja and who were repressed between 1941 and 1945, because of aggression by both the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. Until now, the cultural life of this period in Liepāja has been studied in a fragmentary way, and materials are scattered in various archives. There are inaccurate and even contradictory testimonies of events of that time. The study marks both the cultural and historical situation of the 1920s and the 1930s in Liepāja and tracks the fates of several artists in the period between 1939 and 1945. On the eve of World War II, Liepāja has an active cultural life, especially in theatre and music. Liepāja City Drama and Opera is in operation staging both dramatic performances, operas, and ballet, employing an orchestra. The symphony orchestra also operated at the Liepāja Philharmonic, where musicians were recruited every season according to the principles of contemporary festival orchestras. Liepāja Folk Conservatory (music school) had also formed an orchestra of students and teachers. Guest concerts were held regularly. A characteristic feature of performing arts in Liepaja was its multicultural character – musicians of different nationalities with experience from different schools of the world were encountered there. World War II not only disrupted the balance in society, but it also had a very concrete and tragic impact on the fates of the people, including the performing artists. Many were killed, many repressed and placed in prisons and camps, and many went to exile to the West. Others were forced to either co-operate with the occupation forces or give up their identity and, consequently, their career as an artist. Nevertheless, some artists risked their lives to save others.

scholarly journals The Gulag of Poets: The Experience of Exile, Forced Labour Camps, and Wandering in the USSR in the Works of Polish-Yiddish Writers (1939–1949)

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Magdalena Ruta
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Psychological Burden ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Times ◽  
Literary Output

The literary output of the Polish-Yiddish writers who survived WWII in the Soviet Union is mostly a literary mirror of the times of exile and wartime wandering. The two major themes that reverberate through these writings are: the refugees’ reflection on their stay in the USSR, and the Holocaust of Polish Jews. After the war, some of them described that period in their memoirs and autobiographical fiction, however, due to censorship, such accounts could only be published abroad, following the authors’ emigration from Poland. These writings significantly complement the texts produced during the war, offering plentiful details about life in Poland’s Eastern borderlands under Soviet rule as it was perceived by the refugees, or about the fate of specific persons in the subsequent wartime years. This literature, written in – and about – exile is not only an account of what was happening to Polish-Jewish refugees in the USSR, but also a testimony to their coping with an enormous psychological burden caused by the awareness (or the lack thereof) of the fate of Jews under Nazi German occupation. What emerges from all the literary texts published in post-war Poland, even despite the cuts and omissions caused by (self)-censorship, is an image of a postwar Jewish community affected by deep trauma, hurt and – so it seems – split into two groups: survivors in the East (vicarious witnesses), and survivors in Nazi-occupied Poland (direct victim witnesses). The article discusses on samples the necessity of extending and broadening of that image by adding to the reflection on Holocaust literature (which has been underway for many years) the reflection on the accounts of the experience of exile, Soviet forced labour camps, and wandering in the USSR contained in the entire corpus of literary works and memoirs written by Polish-Yiddish writers.

Armageddon and the Gulag, 1939–1945

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
Total War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of

This chapter focuses on the Gulag during the Armageddon of the Great Patriotic War. It shows how the institutions, practices, and identities of the Gulag shifted in accord with the demands of total war. The war was an era of mass release on an unprecedented scale side by side with the highest mortality rates in the history of the Gulag system. After four years of brutal, exhausting warfare and a disastrous initial stage, the Soviet Union emerged from its Armageddon victorious. The early postwar period offered no indication that the Gulag would cease to be a mass social phenomenon within fifteen years. Rather, the Gulag remained a pillar in the reestablishment of the Soviet system, following the Red Army into liberated territories, so that every liberated district received its own corrective labor colony. By 1944, the camp and colony population began to grow again.

Political utopia or Potemkin village? Italian travellers to the Soviet Union in the early Cold War

Modern Italy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Lee
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Italo Calvino ◽  
Western Society ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Italian Politics ◽  
Post War ◽  
Shed Light

Situated on the border between the capitalist West and Communist East, and with the largest Communist party in Western Europe, Italy found itself at the centre of global ideological struggles in the early Cold War years. A number of Italian writers and intellectuals who had joined the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) during the Resistance had hoped that the party would play a central role in the post-war reconstruction of Italy and were attracted to the Soviet Union as an example of Communism in action. This article centres on accounts of journeys to the USSR by Sibilla Aleramo, Renata Viganò and Italo Calvino. It will argue that although their writings portray a largely positive vision of the USSR, they should not be dismissed as naive, or worse, disingenuous travellers whose willingness to embrace Soviet-style Communism was based on a wholescale rejection of Western society and its values (see P. Hollander's 1998 [1981] work, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society). Rather, the article shows how their accounts of the USSR shed light on the writers' relationship with the PCI and argues that the views expressed in the travelogues emerge from the writers' personal experiences of war and resistance, a fervent desire to position themselves as anti-Fascist intellectuals, and their concerns regarding the direction that Italian politics was taking at a pivotal moment in the nation's history.

scholarly journals Is the shaman indeed risen in post-Soviet Siberia?

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 350-387
Author(s):  
Olle Sundström
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Altai Republic ◽  
Southern Siberia ◽  
Religion And Theology ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Exhaustive Study

In his exhaustive study of ‘shamanism’ among the Altaic peoples in Southern Siberia, the renowned Soviet ethnographer Leonid P. Potapov contends that ‘under the present conditions there are no remnants or survivals of Shamanism as such left in Altai’. What remains are legends and reminiscences, but these can no longer be told by people with personal experiences of Altaic ‘shamans’ and their rituals. According to Potapov, modern socialist culture has changed the minds of the Altaic peoples to the degree that they are now a materialistically thinking people, and ‘shamanism’ has completely disappeared. In addition, he contends that there are no prospects of its return after the deathblow dealt by Soviet anti-religious repression in the 1930s ‘shamanic’ rituals were forbidden and ritual paraphernalia such as drums and costumes were expropriated by the authorities. Considering that Potapov in his study follows Altaic ‘shamanism’ through 1500 years, depicting it as a ‘religion’ and ‘theology’ which stayed more or less intact over the centuries, his statement seems more like a pious hope based on the Soviet vision of a society liberated from superstition, religion, and spiritual exploitation. Potapov himself delineates Altaic ‘shamanism’s’ development from a ‘state religion’to a ‘folk religion’. From this perspective it might seem remarkable that ‘shamanism’ should not have survived 70 years of atheist repression, missionary work and the Soviet transformation of society. Already by the time Potapov’s book was published, during the very last months of the existence of the Soviet Union, there had, in fact, appeared a number of persons claiming to be ‘shamans’, with an ancestry dating from the time of ‘shamans’ of the first half of the twentieth century. These individuals were also part of organisations and movements promoting the revival of ‘shamanism’ in the autonomous Altai Republic. In other parts of the former Soviet Union similar processes took place. Today, in post-Soviet Altai, as well as in many other parts of Siberia, shamanism exists in the same sense that there is Buddhism, Christianity and Islam in the region.

scholarly journals “To the Keeper of the Ufimian Museum...” The Letter by D. D. Burlyuk to A. A. Cherdantsev August 3, 1923. New York

2019 ◽  
pp. 199-206
Author(s):  
Yu. S. Podlubnova
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Active Member ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Futurism ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Artistic Heritage ◽  
The Village

The letter from the poet, the founder of Russian futurism David Davidovich Burliuk (1882– 1967) was written on August 3 of 1923. His addressee was Aleksander Alekseevich Cherdantsev (1871–1943). The letter is kept in the collection of the writer, local historian and a collector of documentary materials Alexander Kuzmich Scharts (1906–1986) in the Ural Writers Museum. The content of the letter is associated with a famous episode of the biography of David Burliuk, his lfe in 1915–1918 in the village of Buzdak near Ufa. Here he created more than 200 paintings. Also he was the active member of the Ufa art circle (1913–1918) at the provincial museum (he communicated with local artists, organized exhibitions). In 1918 Burliuk traveled from Siberia, then emigrated first to Japan (1920) and then to the USA (1922). His paintings remained in Buzdyak. Some of them after 1918 ended up in museums (mainly the Ufa Art Museum) while the other part was scattered. The fate of the abandoned paintings was worried Burliuk. He established correspondence with A. A. Cherdantsev and then replaced him as director of the museum Ylius Yulievich Blumenthal (“My dear, old, but forever young friend, David Burliuk!” Moscow, 2018). Obviously this letter was only a bit in the correspondence which was conducted in 1923. The letter is important for determining the degree of involving of the poet and the emigrant artist in the cultural life of Ufa and more broadly the Soviet Union in the 1920s. This demonstrates his attitude to his own artistic heritage. The letter in an allows to reconstruct some contexts that were not disclosed in the previously published correspondence of Burliuk.

СHILDREN'S LIBRARIES: THE CASE OF TOMSK, 1960–1970

2021 ◽  
pp. 272-282
Author(s):  
Alexsandra I. Ermolova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Tomsk Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

The paper discusses the activities of children's libraries in Tomsk in the 1960s and 70s. The main goal of this study is consider the history of children's libraries in the city and reveal the role of libraries in educational, cultural, political and ideological components of the everyday lives of young Tomsk residents. There are several reasons for addressing this problem. In the USSR, children were always not only in the care of the state, but also part of the political discourse about the happy childhood and the man of the future who was expected to live under communism. In this context, children's libraries were given a special status as places that successfully combined educational, cultural, political and ideological activities for children. The Tomsk Region has always been considered the intellectual center of Siberia. Therefore, it seems obvious that there has always been a special focus on the development of libraries in Tomsk. For example, the number of public libraries in the Tomsk Region increased from 135 in 1945 to 495 in 1964. This study addresses the history of children's libraries in the city. The thematic focus of their collections, and According to the regional archive, in the 1960– 70s, there were four active children's libraries in the city. The main ones were City Children's Library No. 1 located at 167 Lenin Avenue, and Marshak Children's Library No. 2 located at 17a Nikitina Street, The two other were smaller in size: Library No. 3 (81 Michurina) and City Children's Library No. 6 (9 Kolkhoznaya). The statistical reports of libraries demonstrate the increasing interest of young Tomsk residents in library activities: the number of readers, as well as number of visits grew from year to year. The libraries had quite diverse collections, which included not only books, but also periodicals. Some interesting observations can be made about the distribution of genres: socio-political publications are the second most popular genre, after fiction. Libraries were not only a place where children could receive and read books, but also hosted a variety of cultural, educational and leisure events, such as matinees, debates, exhibitions, and poetry evenings. There were Young Readers Clubs which arranged book discussions and meetings with interesting people. All this evidence suggests that children's libraries were an essential part of the city's social and cultural life. They acted as a kind of educational centers where young Tomsk residents could find answers to their questions. They were also places of leisure where children could spend their free time. Moreover, libraries inculcated some ideologically correct attitudes. Meetings, disputes, and quizzes held in libraries always addressed topics related to Lenin, communism, and activities of the Commuunist Party of the Soviet Union.

Sonic Overload

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Schmelz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Information Overload ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Materials ◽  
Film And Literature

Sonic Overload presents a musically centered cultural history of the late Soviet Union. It focuses on polystylism in music as a response to the information overload swamping listeners in the Soviet Union during its final decades. The central themes are collage, popular music, kitsch, and eschatology. The book traces the ways in which leading composers Alfred Schnittke and Valentin Silvestrov initially embraced and assimilated popular sources before ultimately rejecting them. Polystylism first responded to the utopian impulses of Soviet doctrine with utopian impulses to encompass all musical styles, from “high” to “low.” But these initial all-embracing aspirations were soon followed by retreats to alternate utopias founded on carefully selecting satisfactory borrowings, as familiar hierarchies of culture, taste, and class reasserted themselves. Looking at polystylism in the late USSR tells us about past and present, near and far, as it probes the musical roots of the overloaded, distracted present. Sonic Overload is intended for musicologists and Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian specialists in history, the arts, film, and literature, but it also targets a wider scholarly audience, including readers interested in twentieth- and twenty-first century music; modernism and postmodernism; quotation and collage; the intersections of “high” and “low” cultures; and politics and the arts. Based on archival research, oral historical interviews, and other overlooked primary materials, as well as close listening and thorough examination of scores and recordings, Sonic Overload presents a multilayered and comprehensive portrait of late-Soviet polystylism and cultural life, and of the music of Silvestrov and Schnittke.

APPENDIX 2: Russian Legal Instruments Relating to Cultural Valuables Displaced as a Result of the Second World War, 1990–2009

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-491
Author(s):  
Patricia Kennedy Grimsted
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
European Context ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World

The following list is limited narrowly to post-1991 Russian legal instruments relating to cultural valuables of foreign provenance seized and transported to the Soviet Union from Germany and Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, or in the immediate postwar period. Widely known in Russia as the “trophy” valuables, officially those cultural objects (art, books, and archives) are usually referred to in Russia more euphemistically as “cultural valuables displaced [or relocated] to the USSR,” although most frequently translated in a European context as “displaced cultural valuables.” The term “displaced” is used here, and may include some cultural property and archives that came to the USSR during the war itself, as well as those removed from Germany and Eastern Europe by Soviet authorities at the end of or immediately after the war. Many items involved were actually twice captured, or “twice saved,” as the saying goes in Russia, having been first captured by the Nazis, mostly from “enemies of the regime,” and then captured a second time and “safeguarded” by the Soviets.

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