scholarly journals “Russian” and “Soviet” Plot in the Literary Works of Yoko Tavada

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 364-382
Author(s):  
T. S. Simyan
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Heroine's Journey ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
Japanese Writer ◽  
The Given ◽  
Jimi Hendrix

In the article the concepts-signified as “Russian” and “Soviet” expressed in the works of the German-Japanese writer Yoko Tavada (born 1960) are touched upon. The concepts signified as “Soviet” and “Russian” do encompass everything that is connected with Russian culture, literature and the Soviet Union. The empirical material for the given depiction were the essay and novel by Tavada “Suspicious passengers of your night trains” (2002, 2009). Based on the example of this novel the attitude of the younger generation of the socialist countries of late 1980s to the Russian language is revealed. The transition of the socialist bloc (Yugoslavia) is described on the example of clothes (jeans, aluminum fork, and pizza), the younger generation (good manners vs. bad manners), and language skills (English vs. Russian). The heroine’s journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway (Moscow – Irkutsk – Khabarovsk) enabled the author to reveal the micro-historical realities of the last decade of the Soviet era. The plot of the novel showed that in the last decades of the Soviet era there was already a “nostalgia” for household goods, the style of clothing and music, and Western pop culture (Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley). During the contact with the main character, the Russian soul (benevolence, openness, hospitality) and low standards of eco-awareness and disrespect for non-smokers in public transport (train) are revealed. The Soviet era is also confessed at the level of smell and food (garlic, cheap cigarettes, onions, black bread, porridge, soup butter drips, vodka, etc.). In the course of the narrative and communication with the surrounding people the Siberian “real” world is indicated, i.e. the poverty of the interior of the Siberian villages of the Soviet era. In the course of describing the Siberian expanse its natural and climatic constants such as cold, snow, bathhouse and birch, the latter as a symbol of all of Russia with its mythological stratum, were presented. The attributive cycle of the Siberian natural-climatic and “material” world is completed by the theme of androgyny opened up in the Siberian bathhouse, which is a space for identifying all types of physical things, that is, of female and male in woman and man.

scholarly journals Postcolonial vision of Yaroslav Pavlyuk’s novel “The Garden of Drunk Cherries”

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Danylenko
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Postmodern Novel ◽  
Real Picture ◽  
Alter Ego

The relevance of the article lies in the study of the problem of the lost generation in modern Ukrainian literature, which remains insufficiently studied in literary criticism. The subject of the research is Yaroslav Pavlyuk’s postmodern novel “The Garden of Drunk Cherries”, to which the methods of postcolonial theory are applied. In the analysis, a literary character with a bifurcated consciousness stands out. This is the type of person in whom the traditional Ukrainian self-consciousness is combined with the Soviet one. The main result of the study is to identify the specifics of Ukrainian national identity in the Soviet Union, which was hidden and not exposed to the public, and Soviet identity became a social mask that people wore so as not to differ from generally accepted social standards. The novelty of the results of the study helps to reveal the social mask, which in Soviet-era Ukraine was the Russian language, which people had to use at the official level. The dramatic conflict between the novel main character, who is the author’s alter ego, and the librarian Oresta, is accompanied by letters from the artist Borys Zhdanyuk and famous directors Andriy Tarkovsky and Sergiy Parajanov, whose emotions and thoughts reveal the real picture of the absence of individual and national freedom in the USSR. Using the examples of people of art, it is shown how the Soviet system destroyed dissent and traumatized creative personalities. The bifurcation of the creative personality in Soviet-era Ukraine often led vulnerable people to their degradation. Censorship, control of dissent, the imposition of socialist realism in art, and the threat of arrest have forced writers, artists, and directors to adapt to the system or become dissidents. The novel depicts characters who do not accept the official ideology, trying to save their private world from state interference. The results of the study have the prospect for further analysis of the work of individual writers and generations who have become a lost force and have not used the creative potential inherent in them.

Alexandre Bennigsen in the Eyes of the Soviet Press

1986 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-18
Author(s):  
Michael Rywkin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Delivery Vehicles ◽  
The Moment ◽  
General Relations ◽  
The Given

Soviet reactions to Western writings on the Soviet Union are as old as the Soviet regime itself. They are handled in an organized manner, with targets, delivery vehicles and gradation of response carefully coordinated and measured.Soviet response is, moreover, not solely connected to the perceived degree of offensiveness of the given Western work; in addition, such considerations as general relations between the USSR and the country from where the publication came, as well as political opportunities of the moment, are given even more importance than the committed “offense.”

scholarly journals Do History Lessons Ever Pay off? A Diplomat’s Memoir

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodric Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Russian Language ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Moscow River

Sir Rodric Braithwaite was educated at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, from where he went to serve in HM Diplomatic Service, having worked in Jakarta, Moscow, Washington, Warsaw, Rome, and Brussels, where he was a member of the British delegation to the European Community. From 1988 to 1992, Sir Rodric served as HM Ambassador in the Soviet Union during the decisive years of the Perestroika and the first British ambassador in Russia. Subsequently, he was appointed foreign policy adviser to the Prime Minister in the second John Major ministry and chaired the UK Joint Intelligence Committee between 1992 and 1993. He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in 1994. As a career diplomat, Sir Rodric gained decades of insight into the troubled relations between Russia and West, having taken part in numerous negotiations on arms control. His affinity with the decision-making circles in both Russia and Britain alongside with the mastery of the Russian language allow him to skillfully dissect the underlying causes of ups-and-downs in Moscow’s relationship with the West, employing the works of both English- and Russian-speaking analysts. Among his recent books are Across the Moscow River (2002), Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War (2006), Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979–1989 (2012), Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation (2017). In this essay, Sir Rodric reminisces of the years spent as a diplomat and provides his view on the usefulness and applicability of historical lessons while devising a foreign policy course.

scholarly journals Viewing ‘the other’ over a hundred and a score more years: South Africa and Russia (1890–2010)

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
I Liebenberg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Auto Ethnography

Whether novel is history or history is novel, is a tantalising point. “The novel is no longer a work, a thing to make las t, to connect the pas t with the future but (only) one current event among many, a ges ture with no tomorrow” Kundera (1988:19). One does not have to agree with Kundera to find that social sciences , as his toriography holds a s tory, a human narrative to be shared when focused on a case or cases. In this case, relations between peoples over more than a century are discussed. At the same time, what is known as broader casing in qualitative studies enters the picture. The relations between the governments and the peoples of South Africa and Russia ( including the Soviet Union), sometimes in conflict or peace and sometimes at variance are discussed. Past and present communalities and differences between two national entities within a changing international or global context deserve attention while moments of auto-ethnography compliment the study. References are made to the international political economy in the context of the relations between these countries.Keywords: Soviet Union; South Africa; Total Onslaught; United Party; Friends of the Soviet Union; ideological conflict (South Africa); Russians (and the Anglo-Boer War); racial capitalism; apartheid; communism/Trotskyism (in South Africa); broader casing (qualitative research)Subject fields: political science; sociology; (military) history; international political economy; social anthropology; international relations; conflict studies

Attaining Primacy

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-208
Author(s):  
William O. Walker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
Smithsonian Institution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Soviet Union

This chapter explores Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s disdain for hegemony and search for primacy as they sought to refurbish America’s tarnished reputation. Through their pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union and China, their resort to the Nixon Doctrine (to exit as gracefully as possible from Indochina), and the meeting at the Smithsonian Institution in December 1971 to restore America’s global economic stature, they attempted to achieve U.S. primacy in world affairs. Their efforts to implement the novel grand strategy of strategic globalism fell short, as seen in the difficulty of extricating the United States from Vietnam, Nixon’s Watergate imbroglio, and the presence of competing visions of world order among allies, most notably in West Germany’s pursuit of Ostpolitik.

Tajikistan

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-69
Author(s):  
Barakatullo Ashurov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
State Control ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Missionary Movement

Christianity in modern Tajikistan is closely connected to the missionary movement of the Church of the East in the Central Asian landmass. The historical patterns of the ROC aimed to cover only European and Russian nationals with Russian language only. This has led to Christianity being dubbed a ‘Russian religion’. The Roman Catholic Church was in Central Asia since the thirteenth century. The first wave of Protestants came through the Mennonites (Brethren), along with Evangelicals and Baptists (who both eventually merged in 1941 into the Evangelical Baptists), and the second wave came through various Protestant mission organizations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Protestant churches in the country comprise both local converts from Islam and those of Russian Orthodox background. Although non-Tajik Christians are culturally acceptable, local converts are regarded as traitors. Many such restrictions apply equally to all religions. State restraint toward religious minorities are due to inherited Soviet tradition and fear of the extremist ideology that was a cause of the recent civil war. Current persecution in the country is largely a matter of social discrimination rather than state control. Nonetheless, the existing communities, particularly those with valid registrations, are thriving, albeit on a small scale.

scholarly journals Friends in war: Sweden between solidarity and self-help, 1939–1945

2020 ◽  
pp. 001083672090438
Author(s):  
Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou ◽  
Felix Berenskötter
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Winter War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This article scrutinizes the assumption that friends support each other in times of war. Picking up the notion that solidarity, or ‘other-help’, is a key feature of friendship between states, the article explores how states behave when a friend is attacked by an overwhelming enemy. It directs attention to the trade-off between solidarity and self-help that governments face in such a situation and makes the novel argument that the decision about whether and how to support the friend is significantly influenced by assessments of the distribution of material capabilities and the relationship the state has with the aggressor. This proposition is supported empirically in an examination of Sweden’s response to its Nordic friends’ need for help during the Second World War – to Finland during the 1939–1940 ‘Winter War’ with the Soviet Union, and to Norway following the invasion of Germany from 1940 to 1945.

The Decolonization of the Environment in Kazakhstan: The Novel Final Respects by Abdi-Jamil Nurpeisov

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Sharipova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Aral Sea ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fishing Village ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Sea Power ◽  
Entire World

AbstractThis article examines the novel Final Respects by Abdi-Jamil Nurpeisov from a postcolonial ecocritical perspective. Nurpeisov was one of the first Kazakh writers to discuss the decolonization of the environment and the “process of self-apprehension” by writing about the tragedy of the Aral Sea, power relations between the center and periphery, and the interconnectivity of humans and the environment in the Soviet Union. Through the prism of a small fishing village, he shows the tragedy of a nation that has an impact on the entire world. The novel is thus a critique of anthropocentric policies imposed by Moscow on Kazakhstan and other Soviet republics. Throughout the text, Nurpeisov reiterates the connection between the local and the global on one hand, and human culture and the environment on the other.

Laying Blame for Flight and Fight: Sino-Soviet Relations and the “Yi–Ta” Incident in Xinjiang, 1962

2019 ◽  
Vol 238 ◽  
pp. 504-523
Author(s):  
Charles Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Northern Xinjiang ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Major Flare ◽  
Party State

AbstractIn spring 1962, 60,000 individuals fled from northern Xinjiang into the Soviet Union. Known as the “Yi–Ta” incident, the mass exodus sparked a major flare up in Sino-Soviet relations. This article draws on declassified Chinese and Russian-language archival sources and provides one of the first in-depth interpretations of the event and its aftermath. It argues that although the Chinese government blamed the Soviet Union for the Yi-Ta incident, leaders in Beijing and Xinjiang also recognized the domestic roots of the disturbance, such as serious material deficits in northern Xinjiang and tensions between minority peoples and the party-state. The Chinese government's diplomatic sparring with Moscow over the mass exodus reflected Mao Zedong's continued influence on Chinese foreign policy, despite claims by scholars that Mao had retreated from policymaking during this period.

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