scholarly journals Production of popular science films in Leningrad: late 1940s – 1960s

Author(s):  
Mariya Vladimirovna Kalenichenko

This article is dedicated to the history of the Soviet popular science cinematography on the example of the Leningrad film studio “Lentekhfilm” / “Lennauchfilm"” during the late 1940s – 1960s.The goal of this work consists in tracing the development and production stages of popular science films at the Leningrad film studio “Lennauchfilm”.  The author sets the following tasks: follow the work of the film studio “Lennauchfilm” based on the archival materials, as well as determine the main plotlines of popular science films of the period under review. The article employs archival documents stored in the fund No. 243 of the St. Petersburg Central State Archive of Literature and Art. Namely, based on the materials of the annual financial and production reports of the film studio, using the quantitative methods, the author carries out the sampling of films that were classified as popular science. The author also applies the problem-chronological method for studying the stages of operation of the film studio. The novelty of this research consists in determination of production volumes of popular science films at a particular film studio, as well as their main themes. As a result, the author highlights six main plotlines: natural sciences, geography of the country, industry and agriculture, education of children and adolescents, history of culture and art, historical-revolutionary. The conclusion is made that the Soviet popular science cinematography was aimed not only at popularization of scientific knowledge (as follows from the definition of the term “popular science film” given in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia), but also performed the important political and civic functions on youth education, distribution of technical knowledge, as well as illustration of the achievements of the Soviet Union in economic and social policy.

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty


Author(s):  
Irina V. Sabennikova ◽  

The historiography of any historically significant phenomenon goes through several stages in its development. At the beginning − it is the reaction of contemporaries to the event they experienced, which is emotional in nature and is expressed in a journalistic form. The next stage can be called a retrospective understanding of the event by its actual participants or witnesses, and only at the third stage there does appear the objective scientific research bringing value-neutral assessments of the phenomenon under study and belonging to subsequent generations of researchers. The history of The Russian Diaspora and most notably of the Russian post-revolutionary emigration passed to the full through all the stages of the issue historiography. The third stage of its studying dates from the late 1980s and is characterized by a scientific, politically unbiased study of the phenomenon of the Russian emigration community, expanding the source base and scientific research methods. During the Soviet period in Russian historiography, owing to ideological reasons, researchers ‘ access to archival documents was limited, which is why scientific study of the history of the Russian Diaspora was not possible. Western researchers also could not fully develop that issue, since they were deprived of important sources kept in Russian archives. Political changes in the perestroika years and especially in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union increased attention to the Russian Diaspora, which was facilitated by a change in scientific paradigms, methodological principles, the opening of archives and, as a result, the expansion of the source base necessary for studying that issue. The historiography of the Russian Diaspora, which has been formed for more than thirty years, needs to be understood. The article provides a brief analysis of the historiography, identifies the main directions of its development, the research problematics, and defines shortcomings and prospects.


Author(s):  
Anna Vasil'evna Kuz'mina ◽  
Vadim Sergeevich Komogaev

This article is dedicated to the peculiarities of the use of archival documents in studying the history of Soviet industrial enterprises based on the large, city-planning enterprise of the local traditional industry – Sevastopol plant of shipboard lighting engineering “Mayak”. The authors meticulously examine different types of archival documents and their informational potential for studying operation of the enterprise. The focus of attention is the acts of acceptance and transfer report, annual reports on the workforce, salaries and regulation, as well as the materials of the trade union, and other documents. The article is based on previously unpublished archival documents on the history of Sevastopol industry that have not been previously introduced into the scientific discourse. The author explore separate episodes of the history of the plant, its establishment, evolution, and key results. The main conclusions lies in determination of the types of archival documents, which were most informative in studying the history of the enterprise. The authors indicate that archival funds, and annual reports in particular, are well preserved and contribute to examination of operation of the enterprise. It is underlined that Sevastopol plant of shipboard lighting engineering “Mayak”, which virtually ceased to operate after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was one of the most significant and dynamically developing industrial enterprises of the city in the 1960s – 1970s. It is worth noting that currently there are projects aimed at the revival of industrial potential of Sevastopol, one of which is the technology part on the territory of the former plant “Mayak”.


Author(s):  
Jean Lévesque

In February and June 1948, the Stalinist state issued two decrees aimed at a radical solution of the problem of labor discipline among Soviet collective farm peasants. Borne out of the initiative of the Ukrainian Communist Party Secretary N.S. Khrushchev, who found examples of community self-policing in tsarist legislation, the decrees granted collective farm general meetings the right to deport to distant parts of the Soviet Union peasants reluctant to fulfi ll the minimal labor requirements set by the state. Based on a wide array of formerly classifi ed Russian archival documents, this study draws the complete story of this little known page in the history of Stalinist repression. It demonstrates that despite the harshness of the measures employed, the decree did little to force peasants back to work on collective farms given the seriousness of the postwar agrarian crisis.


2021 ◽  
pp. 143-153
Author(s):  
Sergei S. Voytikov ◽  

The work introduces into scientific circulation the documents (autobiography and memoirs) from the personal file of L.A. Butkov, the Soviet Union Hero; his dossier being deposited inside the collection of Soviet Union Heroes (the Central State Archives of Moscow, F. P-8682). If the autobiography is an extremely formalized text, the memoirs mentioning the author’s hatred towards the Nazi invaders are written in easy language, reflecting the impressions of those ordinary fighters who, to a large extent, won the Great Patriotic War. The title of the Soviet Union Hero was awarded to the company commander of the 164th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 55th Guards Rifle Division of the 56th Guards Army senior lieutenant L.A. Butkov on May 16, 1944, for his distinction in the Kerch-Eltigen military operation. The company was the first to land on the shore occupied by the enemy and managed to hold the bridgehead, ensuring the successful landing of the entire division. During the battle, the company commander personally destroyed the machine gun with the gunners and 11 more enemy soldiers. The documentary collection, which holds L.A. Butkov’s file, was collected after the war by the Institute of Party History of the MC and MGK VKP(b), headed by the director of the Institute G.D. Kostomarov


Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Andrei Markevich ◽  
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya

Alessandro Stanziani’s article re-launches the discussion about the quality of Russian imperial statistics and the relevance of quantitative analysis for historical research at an important moment for Russia’s economic history, when a lot of new data are being compiled and used by scholars. Similar productive discussions took place at other critical junctions for the fields of history, economics, political science, and other social sciences. For example, Robert Fogel’s and Stanley Engerman’s “Time on the Cross” (1974) triggered a profound discussion of potential benefits and limitations of quantitative approach to studying the history of the United States. The punch line of that discussion can be illustrated by the justification of the 1993 Nobel Prize in economics dedicated to Fogel “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.” In the context of Russian history, similar discussions took place in the Soviet Union in the 1970s between Ivan Koval'chenko and Boris Litvak and then later in this journal in the 1990s.


2018 ◽  
pp. 630-639
Author(s):  
Irina A. Konoreva ◽  
◽  
Igor N. Selivanov ◽  

The review characterizes two collections of archival documents published in Belgrade and Moscow. They contain materials on the history of Yugoslavo-Soviet relations in 1964-1980s from the Archive of Yugoslavia and the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. The reviewed collections continue the series of publications of the Archive of Yugoslavia (‘Documents on Yugoslavia Foreign Policy’) and of the International Fund ‘Democracy’ (‘Russia: The 20th century’). The collections contain over 100 documents, most of which are published for the first time. They address problems of international relations and domestic policy of the two countries. These problems were discussed by the leaders of Yugoslavia and the USSR at their one-on-one meetings. These discussions allow to trace the process of establishment of mutually beneficial relations. There are materials on general problems of international relations, as well as regional issues: estimation of the role of the USA in the international affaires; impact of the Non-Aligned Movement; European problems; political situation in the Near, Middle, and Far East, and in the Southeast Asia; etc. The chronological framework include events of the Second Indo-Chinese War. The 2-volume collection includes I. B. Tito’s and L. I. Brezhnev’s assessments of the operations in Vietnam and their characterization of the American policy in the region. Its name index and glossary of abbreviations simplify working with documents. The materials of these collections may be of interest to professional historians, Master Program students specializing in history and international relations, who may use them as an educational resource, and post-graduate students researching issues of World and East-European history.


Author(s):  
Francesco Mazzucotelli

This essay discusses the role played by Church institutions and leaders in the history of the Armenians of Lebanon after their settlement in the country. The development of Armenian institutions in Lebanon is marked since the period of the French Mandate by the pervasive role played by political parties based on mass mobilisation. Through alliances and expediency, these parties managed to carve out their own quotas in Lebanon’s peculiar power-sharing system. However, Armenians in Lebanon remained highly vulnerable to domestic volatility and regional tensions. Church deliberative organs became a site of conflict among opposed political agendas related to the definition of Armenian and Lebanese national identities, Lebanon’s foreign policy, and the relation between the Soviet Union and the Armenian diaspora in the Middle East. Despite these constraints, Armenian Churches remained a vital component in the preservation of Armenian culture and heritage.


Author(s):  
V.S. Tikunov ◽  

In the study of the history of early Soviet religious studies (1917–1931), one of the urgent problems is the question of the relationship between the science of religion and ideology, the competence of atheist authors and the scientific nature of their works. Studying the history of science is a fundamental process and religious studies are no exception. An attempt to reconstruct the way in which Soviet scientists carried out an approach to the study of religion in the USSR is of great scientific importance for the formation of modern religious studies. For modern Russian religious studies, the problem of studying its own history, the search for an original tradition in the Russian science of religion, the formation of a general idea of the place that it occupies in the humanities is very urgent. The main applied methods used in the writing of this article were comparative, systemic and structural-func-tional methods. The materials of archival data on the biography and work of the Soviet researcher of religion and an appeal to the current Russian discussion about the Soviet study of religion made it possible to determine in what way Soviet scientists carried out an approach to the study of religion. In the article, we turned to the well-known discussion between K. M. Antonov and M. M. Shakhnovich on the Soviet study of religion. The first position is K. M. Antonova, who expresses that the Soviet study of religion is not scientific in nature. The second position is that it is too early to draw any conclusions, since there is a lot of unexplored archival data that could present religious studies in the Soviet Union in a new light – refer to M. M. Shakhnovich. Taking both sides into account, we turn to the debut work “Essays on the History of Atheism” by one of the first Soviet researchers of religion – A. T. Lukachevsky, who was not only a scientist, but also known as the deputy chairman of the Union of Militant Atheists of the USSR, the International of Proletarian Freethink¬ers, deputy editor of the journal Anti-Religious. In modern religious studies, you can often find references to the works of Lukachevsky, but despite this fact, there are no special works devoted to the activities of the Soviet re¬searcher (or propagandist?), And the references did not go beyond formal statements. The purpose of our work is to find out whether Lukachevsky pursued religious studies in his work, or whether the work is predominantly propagandistic in nature. The analysis of the “Sketches ...” is supported by the recon-struction of the researcher’s biography, which for the first time in the history of Russian science is introduced into scientific circulation, thanks to the archival documents found in the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this article, we turned directly to the representatives of scientific atheism, thanks to which, as we think, influ-enced the study of this phenomenon. This article contributes to modern religious studies discourse about whether the Soviet science of religion was a science in the full sense of the word.


Author(s):  
Nina Vashkau ◽  
◽  
Andrei Lakiziuk ◽  

Introduction. This research focuses on the previously unexplored Nazi crimes on the territory of the modern Lipetsk Oblast in the fall and winter of 1941. It is conducted as part of the nationwide project “Bez sroka davnosti” (No statute of limitation). Newly declassified information from the archives as well as historical evidence from both sides of the conflict allowed us to present a detailed description of those events. Methods and Materials. We used the principles of historicism and objectivity in order to explain the concept of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg against the USSR. We also employed the quantitative method to analyze the structure and equipment of German troops, their readiness for the upcoming battle. Analysis. The leadership of Nazi Germany initially considered the territory of the Soviet Union as their future possessions. Based on this, a policy of treatment of the local population and state property was built, which fits the definition of genocide. The Plans and legal basis for future crimes were developed prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Army corps 45, 134, 95, 262 and 293 Wehrmacht Infantry Divisions, which fought against the 34th and 35th army corps (Red Army), committed various atrocities against the civilian population, as evidenced in detail by archival materials and interrogations of German prisoners of war. Results. The system of the occupation regime was planned in such a way that it was possible to squeeze the maximum out of the occupied lands in favor of Nazi Germany. The behavior of the Wehrmacht soldiers in the occupied territory was destructive in relation to the Soviet population, cultural values and the economy. Technically and morally, the German troops were unable to recover from the defeat received in November-December 1941, while the Red Army was building up its forces and gaining the necessary experience in the fight against the enemy.


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