scholarly journals The Cultural Legacy of Usher Chiter and Elyukim Maltz in the Context of the Development of Jewish Ethnography and Museum Practice in the Interwar Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-118
Author(s):  
Eugeny Kotlyar
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Field Trips ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
Museum Practice ◽  
Private Collections

The article examines the interwar period in the life and work of two architects, Usher Chiter (1899–1967) and Elyukim Maltz (1898–1973), both graduates of the Odessa School of Architecture. During that time the architects were doing work for the Mendele Moicher Sforim All-Ukrainian Museum of Jewish Proletarian Culture in Odessa. Based on documents and visual materials from a number of museums and archives located in Ukraine, Russia and Israel, as well as on private collections (including those of families of architects from Moscow, where Chiter and Maltz moved in the late 1920s),the author attempts to trace and reconstruct the two architects’ research expeditions across the former Pale of Jewish Settlement.A total of seven field trips were conducted in Podolia and the Soviet part of Volhynia – with the aim of collecting materials and exhibition items for the museum and of making nature drawings and watercolors showing Jewish sites, such as synagogues, cemeteries and residential buildings.This empirical approach exemplifies the method of preserving and representing disintegrating Jewish shtetls, commonly practised during the interwar period. The work of both architects is viewed through the prism of musealization of Jewish heritage in the early Soviet period which was closely connected to the formation of state ideology and its transition from «building of the national identity» to class paradigm and atheistic upbringing.

Propagana competition between “Prosvita” and The A. Dukhnovych Society for the Rusinian audience of Subcarpathian Rus during the interwar period

Rusin ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 176-200
Author(s):  
O.M. Kutska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Oral Transmission ◽  
Radio Broadcasting ◽  
The Social ◽  
Limited Application ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
Personal Understanding

This article analyzes the informational activity of two societies – “Prosvita” (Eng. Enlightenment) and The A. Dukhnovych Society among Rusinian population of Subcarpathian Rus using modern approaches to the propaganda analysis, which implies answering the questions of who, whom on, what methods and forms are used. In particular, it has been found out that both societies had similar structures, with their members being representatives of intelligentsia with Ukrainophile and Russophile views respectively. They were also joined by the representatives of emigration and local population. The Rusinian audience had a relatively low educational level, and many residents of Subcarpathian Rus could not make up their minds whether they were of Rusinian ethnicity and what religion they practiced. The main forms of informing were printed press, oral transmission and radio broadcasting. Most often, the societies used polygraphic means of propaganda, since they were the easiest to produce. Oral transmission also proved quite productive, since it did not require significant expenditures. Radio was of limited application due to lack of receiving equipment. The author’s perspective of the propaganda methods has been formed through the analysis of individual episodes, informational and visual materials about the social and political life of Carpathian Rus and the activities of “Prosvita” and The A. Dukhnovich Society. Among the most popular methods were persuasion, suggestion, manipulation, and disinformation. However, it is possible to speak about their application only conditionally, since there was no propaganda technique in its modern understanding. The representatives of the societies under analsysis acted out of their personal understanding of campaigning methods and responding to the information needs of the Rusin community.

scholarly journals ETHNIC SELF-IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN IN INTERETHNIC FAMILIES (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE ORENBURG REGION)

2020 ◽  
Vol 6(16) (3) ◽  
pp. 324-331
Author(s):  
R. Sh. Akhmetov ◽  
N. Yu. Sviatokha ◽  
Yu. Filimonova
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Traditional Society ◽  
Orenburg Region

The Orenburg region is a multi-ethnic region with a large proportion of inter-ethnic marriages. The authors conducted the sociological survey in order to determine the specifics of national identity of children from interethnic families in Orenburg region and identify trends in the formation of national identity. The survey allowed to make conclusions: ethnic self-determination in such families is developing in the form of refusal to associate a person with a certain ethnic group. At the same time, this form of ethnic self-determination is observed not only in inter-ethnic families, where it prevails, but also in single-ethnic families. According to the authors, we are witnessing a process of transition from a traditional society with mandatory registration of ethnicity by birth to a modern civil nation, with a freer attitude to ethnic self-identification, which was launched by the abolition of mandatory indication of nationality in the passport during the Soviet period.

scholarly journals RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ETHNO-NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF UKRAINE

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-24
Author(s):  
Viacheslav Каlаch
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
National Development ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Religious Identification

The article discusses the peculiarities of the formation of religious identity in the dynamics of geopolitical processes in Ukraine, which depend on historical conditions, features of the economic and socio-political structure, democratic and cultural traditions of society, the level of legal and moral development of its members and the ambitions of its leaders. It is proved that religion is a decisive factor in the ethnic life of Ukrainians, and the controversial role of Christianity in ethno-identification and ethno-consolidation processes is noted. The modern world-wide political, economic and spiritual crisis imposes its imprint on Ukraine as well. As one of the transitional countries of the post-socialist space, our state has not yet found a single-minded vector of its own development, in particular, the ecclesiastical. Ukraine is only on the verge of forming a united national idea and crystallizing its own self-identification on the religious marker. Religion is the basic semantic-forming component of a unified national identity. Today, religious and ethnic identities are closely intertwined. Therefore, the problem of the ethnorelain factor always attracts significant attention of leading scholars, statesmen and church hierarchs. In Ukraine, a significant number of religious groups completely coincide with the boundaries of a separate ethnic group. The lack of civic consensus on the country's foreign policy, cultural identity, separate sovereign positions of the Ukrainian state, the diverse views of the past and the future at the present makes it impossible to formulate unanimous interests, which negatively affects external and internal policies. Compared with the Soviet period, religious identity today is a relatively new category. On opposition to the state-civilian benchmark for many Ukrainians, religion is on the forefront. Undeniably, Orthodoxy played a very important role in the formation of the Ukrainian nation and our religious identity. However, today, multiconfessional diversity and inability or reluctance to negotiate, to be tolerant, break Ukraine into several regions. The negative tendency of loss of awareness of Ukrainians of the unity of religion, nation, common spirit is traced. The formation of religious identity is a long process of formation of society as a whole, and is a consequence of the historical formation of Ukraine as a nation. Religious identification is the reproduction of accumulated social and religious experience in all spheres. World and domestic scholars are unequivocal in the conclusions that the central place in the formation of national identity belongs to religiousness. Religious beliefs that have an indelible imprint of an ethnic group living on a particular territory are precisely the center of the formation of a new national-religious identity of Ukrainian society.

Stalin: authoritarian populist or great Russian chauvinist?

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 749-756
Author(s):  
David R. Marples
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The State ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Mass Level ◽  
Russian Identity ◽  
Historical Accident

David Brandenberger argues that contemporary Russian identity was mainly a result of a “historical accident.” He maintains that this national identity was a product of the twentieth century rather than the nineteenth, which is more commonly cited, and that in terms of the state formulating a conception of what it meant to be Russian, the first decade of the Soviet period achieved little. However, by the late 1920s Soviet ideologists began to seek something more appealing than the mundane party slogans and eventually added non-proletarian, historical Russian heroes to the Soviet pantheon, particularly after the purges when the latter group was sorely depleted. This campaign was largely successful in inducing an understanding of national identity from a non-proletarian past as is evident today. He perceives this process as the formation of a Soviet populism, designed to mobilize society “on the mass level” and compares Stalin's USSR with Latin American dictatorships in this regard. Stalin, he argues, “was an authoritarian populist rather than a nationalist.” By 1953, Russians had a much better idea about their identity than in the period before 1937.

Jewish Heritage and the New Belarusian National Identity Project

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Waligórska
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
Grassroots Initiatives ◽  
Repressive Regime ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania

Focusing on three contemporary grassroots initiatives of preserving Jewish heritage and commemorating Jews in Belarus, namely, the Jewish Museum in Minsk, Ada Raǐchonak’s private museum of regional heritage in Hermanovichi, and the initiative of erecting the monument of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in Hlybokae, the present article discusses how local efforts to commemorate Jews and preserve Jewish heritage tap into the culture of political dissent, Belarus’s international relations, and the larger project of redefining the Belarusian national identity. Looking at the way these memorial interventions frame Jewish legacy within a Belarusian national narrative, the article concentrates in particular on the institution of the public historian and the small, informal social networks used to operate under a repressive regime. Incorporating the multicultural legacy of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth into the canon of Belarusian national heritage and recognizing the contribution of ethnic minorities to the cultural landscape of Belarus, new memory projects devoted to Jewish history in Belarus mark a caesura in the country’s engagement with its ethnic Others and are also highly political. While the effort of filling in the gaps in national historiography and celebrating the cultural diversity of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania overlaps in significant ways with the agenda of the anti-Lukashenka opposition, Jewish heritage in Belarus also resonates with the state authorities, who seek to instrumentalize it for their own vision of national unity.

From analogue collection to multifunctional access

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Kwiatek
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Audiovisual Archives ◽  
Private Collections ◽  
Public Tv

Polish audiovisual heritage is a very important part of the cultural legacy of the country. Unfortunately the use of and access to Polish audiovisual archives is still in its initial phases. The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has made great strides towards solving the problems of access and limitations of use. In 2009 the ministry established the National Audiovisual Institute (NInA), which prompted several digitization projects including collaborations between Polish Public TV, National Archives, museums and private collections. This paper highlights some of the creative uses of Poland’s audiovisual heritage and demonstrates how NInA has become an innovator and a leader in the audiovisual field in Poland and Eastern Europe.

Primary Language of Communication as a Secondary Indicator of National Identity: The Ukrainian Parliamentary and Presidential Elections of 1994 and the “Manifesto of the Ukrainian Intelligentsia” of 1995∗

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaroslav Bilinsky
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Minor Element ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Irish Identity ◽  
National Survival ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Russian Identity

In a famous article during the Soviet period, Walker Connor once asked, rhetorically:The Ukrainians, as a method of asserting their non-Russian identity, wage their campaign for national survival largely in terms of their right to employ the Ukrainian, rather than the Russian, tongue in all oral and written matters. But would not the Ukrainian nation (that is, a popular consciousness of being Ukrainian) be likely to persist even if the language were totally replaced by Russian, just as the Irish nation has persisted after the virtual disappearance of Gaelic, despite pre-1920 slogans that described Gaelic and Irish identity as inseparable? Is the language the essential element of the Ukrainian nation, or is it merely a minor element which … has been elevated to the symbol of the nation in its struggle for continued viability? [Emphasis in the original]

scholarly journals A Paradoxical Convergence: National Identity and Gender in 'The Topp Twins' Exhibition and the New Zealand Rugby Museum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Chelsea Torrance
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Final Part ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Museum Practice ◽  
Contemporary Context

<p>In May 2017, there was a strange convergence inside Palmerston North’s Te Manawa museum. As visitors arrived on the first floor, they were left with two options. Turn left for the New Zealand Rugby Museum, or turn right for an exhibition on Jools and Lynda Topp. Left for masculinist rugby history. Right for radical activist lesbians. While both exhibitions have very different subject matter, themes of gender and national identity are prevalent within them both. Using this convergence as an entry point, this thesis considers the ways national identity and gender are put on display within the permanent exhibition at the New Zealand Rugby Museum and The Topp Twins exhibition.  Using data from interviews with key people involved with the two exhibitions, documentary research, and analysis of the two exhibitions, this thesis asks how New Zealand national identity and gender are narrated and displayed within The Topp Twins and the New Zealand Rugby Museum, and considers what this means for museum practice. In so doing, the thesis begins with an overview of key literature looking at nation, discourse and gender in museum and heritage scholarship. It also considers literature of New Zealand identity formation and gender. The intellectual foundation of this thesis resides in the idea that gender, nation and museums are intimately bound.  In the second part of the thesis, an investigation into the historical and contemporary context of the two exhibitions is conducted. This section provides an overview of the content and design of the exhibits. In combining both the context and content of the exhibitions, the thesis is able to consider intentions as well as the outcomes of the two. The final part of the thesis considers the ways national identity and gender have been presented within The Topp Twins exhibition and the New Zealand Rugby Museum. This chapter shows that while gender is presented in very different ways, the museums have a very similar narrative about ‘New Zealandness’.</p>

Arbiters of Value: The Nationalization of Art and the Politics of Expertise in Early Socialist Romania

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 656-676
Author(s):  
Emanuela Grama
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Art Collections ◽  
National Network ◽  
The Public ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Private Collections ◽  
Art Experts

In 1948, immediately after the Communist Party came to power in Romania, state officials commissioned a group of art experts to radically transform the existing public and private art collections into a national system of museums. These professionals became the new regime’s arbiters of value: the ultimate authority in assessing the cultural and financial value of artwork, and thus deciding their fate and final location. Newly available archival evidence reveals the specific strategies that they employed, and the particular political needs of the state they were able to capitalize on in order to survive and even thrive under a regime that, in principle, should have disavowed them. Even though many of them had professionally come of age during the interwar period, the art experts managed to make themselves indispensable to the new state. They functioned as a pivotal mediator between state officials and a broader public because they knew how to use the national network of museums to put the new state on display. Through the rearrangement of public and private collections across the country, and the centralization of art in museums, they produced a particular “order of things” meant not only to entice the public to view the socialist state as the pinnacle of progress and as a benefactor to the masses but also to validate their expertise and forge a new political trajectory for themselves. The strategic movement of art objects that they orchestrated reveals the material and spatial dimensions of state-making in early socialism.

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