«The staff is abundant, there is no order again»: on the history of separation of the Institute of History of The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1968

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Igor Yu. Kotin ◽  
Nina G. Krasnodembskaya ◽  
Elena S. Soboleva

The authors of this contribution analyze the circumstances and the history of a popular play that was staged in the Soviet Union in 1927-1928. Titled Jumah Masjid, this play was devoted to the anti-colonial movement in India. A manuscript of the play, not indicating its title and the name of its author, was found in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences among the papers related to A.M. and L.A. Meerwarth, members of the First Russian Expedition to Ceylon and India (1914-1918). Later on, two copies of this play under the title The Jumah Masjid were found in the Russian Archive of Literature and Art and in the Museum of the Tovstonogov Grand Drama Theatre. The authors of this article use archival and published sources to analyze the reasons for writing and staging the play. They consider the image of India as portrayed by a Soviet playwright in conjunction with Indologists that served as consultants, and as seen by theater critics and by the audience (according to what the press reflected). Arguably, the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia in 1927 and the VI Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1928 encouraged writing and staging the play. The detailed picture of the anti-colonial struggle in India that the play offered suggests that professional Indologists were consulted. At the same time the play is critical of the non-violent opposition encouraged by Mahatma Gandhi as well as the Indian National Congress and its political wing known as the Swaraj Party. The research demonstrates that the author of the play was G.S. Venetsianov, and his Indologist consultants were Alexander and Liudmila Meerwarth.


Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Marianna Shakhnovich

By the end of the 1920s, more than 100 anti-religious museums had been opened in the Soviet Union. In addition, anti-religious departments appeared in the exhibitions of many local historical museums. In Moscow, the Central Anti-Religious Museum was opened in the Cathedral of the Strastnoi Monastery. At that time, the first museum promoting a comparative and historical approach to the study and presentation of religious artifacts was opened in Petrograd in 1922. The formation of Museum of Comparative Religion was based on the conjunction of the activities of the Petrograd Excursion Institute, the Academy of Sciences, and the Ethnographic department of Petrograd University. In this paper, based on archival materials, we analyze the methodological principles of the formation of the exhibitions at the newly founded museum, along with its themes, structure, and selection of exhibits. The Museum of Comparative Religion had a very short life before it was transformed into the Leningrad anti-religious museum, but its principles were inherited by the Museum of the History of Religion, which was opened in 1932.


1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Sonn

Bandali al-Jawzi (1871–1943) has been regaining popularity recently, particularly among his native Palestinians and Muslim nationalists of his adopted home, the Soviet Union. In 1977, for instance, the Union of Palestinian Journalists and Writers, in cooperation with the Oriental Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, commemorated Jawzi as an outstanding Palestinian author. At that time a collection of various of his articles on the Arabic language and history was published in Beirut, as well as an edition of his only book, Min Tārīkh al-Harakāt al-Fikriyyat fi'l-Islām (The History of Intellectual Movements in Islam), first published in 1928. It is this recent exposure which was to take its rightful place in Islamic intellectual history.


2020 ◽  
pp. 492-518
Author(s):  
Andrey A. Kudryavtsev ◽  
Nikita S. Gusev

Within the framework of the Balkan archaeological and ethnographic expedition of the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences in January-February of 1946 scientists of the Institute for the History of Material Culture and the Institute of Ethnography carried out works in Bulgaria to establish scientific contacts and to organize joint archaeological researches. This country was considered as a region, the study of which will give new information about the early stage of the history of the Slavs, and was also important in view of the increased importance of Byzantium for Soviet historical science. The Bulgarian authorities paid great attention to the visit of Soviet scientists. They were supported by state and scientific organizations, and the press covered their trip around the country. Members of the expedition gave public lectures in Sofia, then published a separate collection of articles. On his return, the head of the expedition, P. N. Tretyakov submitted a closed report to the Presidium of the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences, in which he rather critically assessed the level of Bulgarian archaeology. This, however, can be explained by opportunistic reasons. Although the results of the expedition were approved by the leadership of the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the planned joint archaeological research did not take place. Despite this, the conduct of the Balkan expedition was of great importance for both the Soviet side and the Bulgarian scientists, despite of the factfinding character of the Balkan expedition and the unrealized plans for the joint archaeological research. The expedition laid the foundation for further cooperation in archaeology field. Later it came true in several joint expeditions to the territory of the USSR and Bulgaria, they had a diverse scope of work goals. The article also informs of the Bulgarian archaeology achievement before the visit of Soviet delegation, its preparatory stage and investigation in Bulgaria.


1984 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-200
Author(s):  
Juhan Kahk

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, historians in various parts of the Soviet Union began to explore the use of mathematical methods and computer technology in historical studies. This development occurred not only in Moscow, Leningrad, Novosibirsk, and Kiev, but also in Tallinn. A small group of historians at the Institute of History of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, in close collaboration with their colleagues in Moscow, made an effort to apply mathematical methods to the study of history. Thanks to the comradely support of the research centers of the Soviet Union, it was possible for the historians of this small republic to progress rapidly. As a result, their work has become known not only in the Soviet Union but abroad as well.


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


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Tatsiana Hiarnovich

The paper explores the displace of Polish archives from the Soviet Union that was performed in 1920s according to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 and other international agreements. The aim of the research is to reconstruct the process of displace, based on the archival sources and literature. The object of the research is those documents that were preserved in the archives of Belarus and together with archives from other republics were displaced to Poland. The exploration leads to clarification of the selection of document fonds to be displaced, the actual process of movement and the explanation of the role that the archivists of Belarus performed in the history of cultural relationships between Poland and the Soviet Union. The articles of the Treaty of Riga had been formulated without taking into account the indivisibility of archive fonds that is one of the most important principles of restitution, which caused the failure of the treaty by the Soviet part.


Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. This book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. It shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. The book explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.


Author(s):  
A. James McAdams

This book is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. The book argues that the rise and fall of communism can be understood only by taking into account the origins and evolution of this compelling idea. It shows how the leaders of parties in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and North Korea adapted the original ideas of revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to profoundly different social and cultural settings. The book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand world communism and the captivating idea that gave it life.


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