Ethnographic Research in Soviet Latvia – The Source of a Stronger National Identity

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-70
Author(s):  
Anete Karlsone

Abstract This article* provides an insight into ethnographic research during the Soviet occupation of Latvia, viewed in the context of national self-consciousness. Ethnographic research in Soviet Latvia was conducted by the ethnographic sector at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR). By successfully using phrases appropriate to the political situation as well as the right quotations from Soviet ideological works, it was possible to maintain ideas and attitudes developed in interwar independent Latvia, for example, regarding Latvian national costume – in the works of Mirdza Slava. In turn, Aina Alsupe managed to carry out substantial new studies of the history and development of weaving in Latvia, and collect materials on the development of applied art in Soviet Latvia. The studies conducted by both Alsupe and Slava allowed researchers to keep applied folk arts and the folk costume topical, and in doing so to help maintain Latvian cultural identity.

Author(s):  
Temirkhanov Baxtiyar

The article is devoted to the history of the formation and development of science in Karakalpakstan. It is stated that in 1931 the Karakalpak Integrated Research Institute was established in Turtkul. In the pre-war period, this institute was reorganized several times, as a result of which difficulties arose in coordinating scientific and research work in Karakalpakstan. In 1947, it was transferred to the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. In 1959, the Karakalpak affiliate of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was organized on the basis of the Karakalpak Integrated Research Institute, which made it possible to coordinate and develop fundamental scientific research in the republic. The scientists focused on topical issues of the development of the economy and culture of the republic, in particular, the study of natural resources, material and spiritual culture of the Karakalpak people. The author claims that a new stage in the development of this scientific center begins in 1991, when the Karakalpak affiliate of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan receives the status of the Karakalpak branch. The author critically assesses the period of development of science in Karakalpakstan in the 1990s, while claiming that this scientific institution has risen to new stages of its development and certain achievements have been achieved. KEYWORDS. Science; history; scientific expeditions; Karakalpak Scientific Research Institute; reorganization; integrated institute; affiliate, branch; scientific research; department; prospects.


1988 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Prymak

Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866–1934) was one of the most important Ukrainian public figures of modern times. In the realm of scholarship, he was the greatest of Ukrainian historians whose ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rus' charted the saga of the Ukrainian people from antiquity to modern times. He was a prolific writer and essayist whose personal bibliography lists over 2,000 titles. He was also the principal organizer of an unofficial Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Austrian Galicia—the Shevchenko Scientific Society—and towards the end of his life became the single most important cultural figure in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.


Author(s):  
Deep K. Datta-Ray

The history of Indian diplomacy conceptualises diplomacy racially—as invented by the West—and restrictively—to offence. This is ‘analytic-violence’ and it explains the berating of Indians for mimicking diplomacy incorrectly or unthinkingly, and the deleting, dismissing, or denigrating, of diplomatic practices contradicting history’s conception. To relieve history from these offences, a new method is presented, ‘Producer-Centred Research’ (PCR). Initiating with abduction, an insight into a problem—in this case Indian diplomacy’s compromised historicisation—PCR solves it by converting history’s racist rationality into ‘rationalities’. The plurality renders rationality one of many, permitting PCR’s searching for rationalities not as a function of rationality but robust practices explicable in producer’s terms. Doing so is exegesis. It reveals India’s nuclear diplomacy as unique, for being organised by defence, not offence. Moreover, offence’s premise of security as exceeding opponent’s hostility renders it chimerical for such a security is, paradoxically, reliant on expanding arsenals. Additionally, doing so is a response to opponents. This fragments sovereignty and abdicates control for one is dependent on opponent’s choices. Defence, however, does not instigate opponents and so really delivers security by minimising arsenals since offence is eschewed. Doing so is not a response to opponents and so maintains sovereignty and retains control by denying others the right to offense. The cost of defence is courage, for instance, choosing to live in the shadow of nuclear annihilation. Exegesis discloses Balakot as a shift from defence to offence, so to relieve the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) leadership of having to be courageous. The intensity of the intention to discard courage is apparent in the price the BJP paid. This included equating India with Pakistan, permitting it to escalate the conflict, and so imperiling all humanity in a manner beyond history.


1997 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 177-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wilks

During the 1370s Wyclif wrote to defend a monarchy which made extensive use of bishops and other clergy in the royal administration and yet was faced with aristocratic factions encouraged by bishops like Wykeham and Courtenay who espoused papal supremacy, if not out of conviction, at least as a very convenient weapon to support their independence against royal absolutism. At first sight Wyclifs attempts to define the right relationship between royal and episcopal, temporal and spiritual, power seem as confused as the contemporary political situation. His works contain such a wide range of theories from orthodox two swords dualism to a radical rejection of ecclesiastical authority well beyond that of Marsilius and Ockham that it seems as if his only interest was in collecting every anti-hierocratic idea available for use against the papacy. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that a much more coherent view of episcopal power can be detected beneath his tirades if it is appreciated that his continual demand for a great reform, a reformatio regni et ecclesiae, is inseparably linked to his understanding of the history of the Christian Church, and that in this way Wyclif anticipates Montesquieu in requiring a time factor as a necessary ingredient in constitutional arrangements.


Author(s):  
D. V. Repnikov

The article is devoted to such an important aspect of the activities of the plenipotentiaries of the State Defensive Committee during the Great Patriotic War, as conflicts of authority. Contradictions between the plenipotentiaries of the State Defensive Committee and the leaders of party, state, economic bodies at various levels, as well as between the plenipotentiaries themselves, that were expressed in the emergence of various disputes and often resulted in conflicts of authority, became commonplace in the functioning of the state power system of the USSR in the war period. Based on documents from federal (State Archive of the Russian Federation, Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, Russian State Archive of Economics) and regional (Central State Archive of the Udmurt Republic, Center for Documentation of the Recent History of the Udmurt Republic) archives, the author considers a conflict of authority situation that developed during the Great Patriotic War in the Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which shows that historical reality is more complicated than the stereotypical manifestations of it.


2019 ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Anne Dykstra

Joost Halbertsma’s Lexicon Frisicum, published by his son Tjalling in 1872, was the first dictionary to contain modern Frisian, spoken in the Dutch Province of Friesland. As such, it is considered the basis of modern Frisian lexicography. In his dictionary, Halbertsma focuses much attention on the cultural and linguistic history of the Frisians. At the same time, he was very concerned with the Netherlands as a free civil state, and he used ancient Frisian customs and habits to comment on the national and political situation of his time. Dykstra addresses criticism levelled at Halbertsma’s dictionary, such as that it lacked internal consistency and coherence, tends to digress, and uses Latin as meta-language, making it largely inaccessible to Halberstma’s contemporaries. Even with its shortcomings, Dykstra evaluates the ways in which Halbertsma’s Lexicon Frisicum provides insight into various aspects of nineteenth-century linguistics, lexicography, culture, and cultural nationalism.


Al-Farabi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 154-167
Author(s):  
А. Aitenova ◽  
◽  
S. Kairatuly ◽  

The authors of the article make an attempt to analyze the events that took place on December 17–18, 1986 in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, using the methodology of “cultural trauma”. The December events are defined as a multifaceted social and humanitarian problem. It is shown that the December events must be assessed comprehensively as a historical, social, humanitarian phenomenon. The reasons for the December events were determined by the dismissal of Dinmukhamed Akhmedovich Kunayev, the crisis of communist political ideology, the political, economic voluntarism of totalitarian power, the narrowing of the scope of the Kazakh language, the ecological crisis of Soviet Kazakhstan, the emergence of the history of the third generation of the Soviet people. In general, the December events are viewed as an open form of healing the mental wounds of the Kazakh people inflicted by the administrative decisions of the Soviet red empire. Despite the fact that the December events as a social phenomenon are more than a quarter of a century old, the Decembrists and their activity do not leave the agenda in the public consciousness. The importance of using the December events as a universal tool in the formation of various forms of social practice is growing. The conceptualization of this point of view in the article is determined by the representation of the lessons of the December events in contemporary Kazakh art (sculpture, cinema, literature, theater). At the same time, the article also shows that the representation of the December events in art is the form and content of the “healing” of the trauma of the December events.


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