scholarly journals Northern Cheyenne Exodus and Negroes Lynching: Historical Novels of Howard Fast in the USSR

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-226
Author(s):  
Olga I. Scherbinina
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Claude Mckay ◽  
Northern Cheyenne ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Concept Art ◽  
Close Study

The article deals with the historical novels reception of Howard Fast (a writer who was extremely popular in the 1950s, though he is almost forgotten now) in the Soviet Union. Once a USA Communist Party member loyal to the USSR, he became a fierce opponent of Soviet communism. The analysis of the American context uncovers the reasons why the author of left-wing beliefs turned to the genre of a historical novel and peculiarities of the literary market he faced. A close study of Soviet reviews demonstrates that the novels The Last Frontier and The Freedom Road were perceived by Soviet literary critics as Fasts protest against racial discrimination and growing right-wing sentiment. These problems were a matter of urgency against the background of the McCarthy campaign, which Fast fell victim to in 1947. His novel The Freedom Road was put on the stage in Moscow theaters. According to Soviet reviewers, the absence of decadent primitivism set Fast apart from other once-friendly Soviet writers such as Richard Wright and Claude McKay. Within this tradition of exoticism criticism, dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, novels about distant lands were highly appreciated only when ethnographic descriptions were used for consistent social criticism. Being a committed supporter of the concept art as a weapon developed in the Soviet Union, Fast perceived exaggerated exoticism, top-heavy descriptions of historical novels as a sign of escapist literature that ignores the method of dialectical materialism.

Two and Two Make Five

Red Britain ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 60-111
Author(s):  
Matthew Taunton
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Arthur Koestler ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Relationship

The Bolshevik Revolution induced British writers to rethink the politics of number, and this chapter considers the significance of the marked preponderance of numbers, equations, and arithmetic in discussions of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet State. It explores the obsessive use of statistics by the Soviet Union and its British defenders, as a utilitarian form of socialism came to dominate left-wing discussions of politics. The chapter theorizes a ‘Romantic anti-Communism’ that opposed itself to such calculations, and often to the principle of quantitative equality. The chapter also explores—partly via the equation ‘two and two make five’ (featured Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, but also in other texts that mediate the relationship between Russian and British socialism)—how the seemingly timeless propositions of mathematics were up for grabs in the debates around Marxist science and dialectical materialism. Writers covered include Orwell, Arthur Koestler, and Bertrand Russell.

The Trials of Arnošt K.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Gordin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Soviet Authority ◽  
The Soviet Union

The Prague-born philosopher and historian of science Arnošt Kolman (1892–1979)—who often published under his Russian name Ernest Kol’man—has fallen into obscurity, much like dialectical materialism, the philosophy of science he represented. From modest Czech-Jewish origins, Kolman seized opportunities posed by the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution to advance to the highest levels of polemical Stalinist philosophy, returned to Prague as an activist laying the groundwork for the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, was arrested and held for three years by the Soviet secret police, returned to work in Moscow and Prague as a historian of science, played vastly contrasting roles in the Luzin Affair of the 1930s and the rehabilitation of cybernetics in the 1950s, and defected—after 58 years in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—to Sweden in 1976. This article argues that Kolman’s biography represents his gradual separation of dialectical materialism from other aspects of Soviet authority, a disentanglement enabled by the perspective gained from repeated returns to Prague and the diversity of dialectical-materialist thought developed in the Eastern Bloc. This essay is part of a special issue entitled THE BONDS OF HISTORY edited by Anita Guerrini.

Warsaw Pact Countries’ Involvement in Chile from Frei to Pinochet, 1964–1973

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 56-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radoslav A. Yordanov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Warsaw Pact ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines the policies of Warsaw Pact countries toward Chile from 1964, when Eduardo Frei was elected Chilean president, until 1973, when Frei's successor, Salvador Allende, was removed in a military coup. The article traces the role of the Soviet Union and East European countries in the ensuing international campaign raised in support of Chile's left wing, most notably in support of the Chilean Communist Party leader Luis Corvalán. The account here adds to the existing historiography of this momentous ten-year period in Chile's history, one marked by two democratic presidential elections, the growing covert intervention of both Washington and Moscow in Chile's politics, mass strikes and popular unrest against Allende's government, a violent military coup, and intense political repression in the coup's aftermath. The article gives particular weight to the role of the East European countries in advancing the interests of the Soviet bloc in South America. By consulting a wide array of declassified documents in East European capitals and in Santiago, this article helps to explain why Soviet and East European leaders attached great importance to Chile and why they ultimately were unable to develop more comprehensive political, economic, and cultural relations with that South American country.

The Decline of the Finnish American Left 1925–1945

1983 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kivisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnic Community ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Repression ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
American Society ◽  
Major Factors ◽  
American Left ◽  
Significant Factors

Finnish immigrants have frequently been cited as the most politically radical ethnic group in America during the first three decades of the twentieth century, as indicated by the support they provided to the major left-wing organizations of the time. However, by 1945 this tendency was dissipating. Although political repression and nativist asperity were significant factors in undermining the left, they do not fully account for the downfall of leftist support. This article examines four other major factors: 1) the Bolshevization of the American left; 2) mass emigration to the Soviet Union; 3) the erosion of the ethnic community; and 4) the emergence of the “New American Society”.

British Labour in Search of a Socialist Foreign Policy

1950 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-214
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Moment

The thinking of Left Wing Labourites on foreign policy since 1945 reveals the frustration, and, withal, the persistence of Utopian hopes in a period of particularly rapid and alarming change on the world stage.The victory of the British Labour Party in the elections of July, 1945 opened up to Left Wing Labourites intoxicating vistas of permanent peace and socialist brotherhood. The moment of triumph was ironically favorable to the fervor of Socialist Utopian hopes. Fascist military power in Europe had been crushed, and thb feat had been accomplished by the combined endeavors of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union. Russia, so long the Janus of the socialists, socialist state and enemy of socialists, appeared to be ready for cooperation. Labourites gladly abandoned their “red-baiting” suspicions, and looked for the building of a socialist Europe, aided by the Resistance parties, whose work was generally exaggerated and, just as generally, claimed for socialism. Problems of economic reconstruction were of a magnitude to encourage believers in planning that the capitalist world would itself become socialist in its solutions; and the apparently imminent liquidation of old colonial empires made the radiance of freedom's dawn even more dazzling.

Philosophy in Russia

Philosophy ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 10 (38) ◽  
pp. 222-224
Author(s):  
Natalie Duddington
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Materialist Dialectic

In U.S.S.R. dialectical materialism is still the only subject discussed by writers on philosophy. Philosophical publications during the last year include Lenin’s Philosophical Note-books; Dialectical Materialism and the Theory of Balance, by Selektor; Marx’s Philosophical Development, by Lipendin; A Course of Dialectical Materialism, by Markuse; Dialectical Materialism and Social Democracy, by Rudash; The Idealistic Dialectic of Hegel and the Materialist Dialectic of Marx, by L. Axelrod. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Marx’s death the Communist Academy Institute of Philosophy has published a Symposium containing papers on materialistic dialectics, on the relation of Marxism-Leninism to culture and natural science, and discussion of those papers. A number of small textbooks on dialectical materialism, or Diamat as it is called for short, are issued for university schools not only in Russian but also in some of the languages spoken in the Soviet Union.

Left-Wing Wittgenstein

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 321-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Williams
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Force ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Rational Commitment ◽  
Cultural Minorities ◽  
Political Realities

Writing in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the moral philosopher Bernard Williams considers the opposing claims of Rawlsian liberalism, with its emphasis on pluralism and procedural fairness, and communitarianism, which instead promotes more or less culturally homogeneous societies formed around shared values. Williams shares the communitarians’ critique of Rawls’s theory as excessively abstract, questioning whether a rational commitment to pluralism as the most just social arrangement can serve as a sufficiently binding social force. He simultaneously resists, however, the conservative tendencies of the communitarians, particularly their dismissal of ethically motivated social critique. Grounded in the late philosophy of Wittgenstein, communitarians reject foundationalism, the notion that beliefs can be philosophically justified, instead regarding ideologically driven social arrangements as the result of inherently particular historical and environmental conditions. This perspective precludes rational reevaluation of a society’s status quo; if a society’s adoption of values does not depend on philosophically grounded principles, neither can those values be altered through a process of collective moral reasoning. For Williams, however, because pluralism is a condition of modern life with which even culturally homogenous communities must contend, members of modern societies are aware of alternatives to their own social model, leaving a space for self-critical reassessment. Finally, Williams suggests that the desire of cultural minorities for separate states in the post-Soviet geopolitical landscape underscores the limits of both pluralism and communitarianism, limits that all of us will need to grapple with as we confront the immediate social and political realities of modernity.

Plekhanov, Georgii Valentinovich (1857–1918)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. White
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Basic Feature ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Founder Member ◽  
Pass Through

Known as ’the Father of Russian Marxism’, Plekhanov was the chief popularizer and interpreter of Marxism in Russia in the 1880s. His interest in the philosophical aspects of Marxism made him influential outside as well as inside Russia. He was a prolific writer, and dealt with several aspects of Marxist thought. Plekhanov was an important figure in the Russian revolutionary movement. He was a founder member of the Russian Social Democratic Party, and a leading figure in its Menshevik wing after it split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1903. As a politician, Plekhanov was constantly involved in polemics with political and ideological opponents. Most of his theoretical works are to some degree polemical, and it was the conflicts among Russian revolutionary groups that shaped Plekhanov’s interpretation of Marx’s thought. A basic feature of this interpretation was that Russia’s historical development was like that of Western European countries, and would pass through a capitalist phase before progressing to socialism. Accordingly, Plekhanov gave prominence to those of Marx’s writings which could be presented in a deterministic way. Plekhanov insisted that Marxism was a materialist doctrine (as opposed to an idealist one) and as such recognized the primacy of matter in all spheres of existence. Plekhanov was in many ways an innovator, being the writer who first coined the term ’dialectical materialism’, and who drew attention to the Hegelian origins of Marx’s system. His writings were quickly translated into several European languages. His interpretation of Marxism was much admired by Lenin, and was to form the basis of the official ideology of the Soviet Union. The conception of Marxism that Plekhanov propounded continues to exercise a profound influence on conceptions of Marxism throughout the world.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

2020 ◽  
pp. 331-369
Author(s):  
Michael Goldfield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Complex Behavior ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Wing Movement ◽  
Left Group ◽  
The Soviet Union

Chapter 8 examines the role of the Communist Party, by far the largest Left group, during the 1930s and 1940s. It looks at the Party’s complex behavior, its many pluses and minuses, and its ties to the Soviet Union. In particular, it examines the role of CP activists as trade union militants and as the unabashed and unrelenting champions of civil rights, a role that distinguished them from the members of all other interracial organizations during this period. Yet it also looks at the Party’s role in demoralizing and destroying the left-wing movement in the 1930s and 1940s, even undermining many of the organizations and movements it had helped create, including those dedicated to civil rights.

Reconciling the Irreconcilable? Left-Wing Ukrainian Nationalism and the Soviet Regime

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-354
Author(s):  
Christopher Gilley
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Common Currency ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article examines the attempts by left-wing Ukrainian nationalists to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable: Ukrainian nationalism and Soviet socialism. It describes how leftist Ukrainian parties active during the Revolution and Civil War in Ukraine 1917–1921 advocated a soviet form of government. Exiled members of the two major Ukrainian parties, the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries, then took this position further, arguing in favor of reconciliation with the Bolsheviks and a return to their homeland. After the Entente recognized Polish sovereignty over Eastern Galicia and Soviet Ukraine introduced a policy of Ukrainization in 1923, many West Ukrainian intellectuals took up this call. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 and the Bolsheviks’ purge of Ukrainian Communists and intellectuals all but ended the position. However, it was more the Soviet rejection of the Sovietophiles that ended Ukrainian Sovietophilism than any rejection of the Soviet Union by leftist Ukrainian nationalists. Thus, an examination of the Ukrainian Sovietophiles calls into question the accounts of the relationship between Ukrainian nationalism and the Soviet Union that have common currency in today’s Ukraine.

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