scholarly journals The hunger games: famine 1932–1933 in the historical policy of Ukraine and Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Viachaslau I. Menkouski ◽  
Michal Šmigel’ ◽  
Lizaveta Dubinka-Hushcha
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Memory ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
State Of Affairs

The modern historical policy of Ukraine and the Russia is analysed. The study uses the methodology of historical memory studies, specifically, research of historical consciousness, collective and historical memory. The methodology is based on the analysis of a situation when ideas about the past as national history depend on the mentality and goal setting of a particular social, national or other group. The object of the study is the modern socio-political situation in Ukraine and Russia associated with the understanding and assessment of the famine of 1932–1933 both in the Soviet Union as a whole, and in Ukraine in particular. The authors consider the modern memorial culture of the two nations, highlight issues of regional and national identity and the formation of myths of national memory as central issues in the paper. The transformation of memorial practices and the legal framework of the Russia and Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union is considered. The authors arrive at the conclusion that the discussion between the Russian and Ukrainian sides to this day has turned into constructing a scheme of the «reverse history» based on the projection of the present state of affairs into the past. It is not possible to find any fundamentally new evidence as long as the Russian archives remained classified, and the parties increasingly resort to a nationalist type of argumentation. Punning on the name of the famous Hollywood blockbuster, we can say that the «hunger games» have become a reality in the modern politics of memory of post-Soviet states.

‘Long live the friendship between the Soviet Union and Finland!’ Irony, nostalgia, and melodrama in Finnish historical television drama and documentary series

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Pajala
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
East West

In critical studies on historical television programmes, the affective qualities of televisual memory have been discussed mainly in terms of nostalgia. This article argues that conceptualizing the affective modes of relating to the past in more varied ways can help us to better understand the politics of memory on television. As a case study, the article analyses Finnish Broadcasting Company Yleisradio’s historical drama and documentary series that deal with the relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union. The article identifies three affective modes in the programmes: irony, nostalgia and melodrama. Each of these modes offers different possibilities for critiquing, understanding and justifying the past. By studying televisual memories of the Soviet Union in a non-socialist country with important political, economic and cultural ties with the socialist bloc, the article moreover questions a clear East–West binary in studies on post-socialist memory.

scholarly journals Does Latvia Matter in Regional Geopolitics?

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
Jeremy W. Lamoreaux ◽  
Nicholas Dyerly
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Baltic States ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Near Abroad ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

AbstractAs early as 1994, scholars, analysts and policymakers began to wonder the extent to which the Baltic States mattered in the relationship between Russia and the West. The general consensus for the following 20 years was that the Baltic States matter considerably, especially following their inclusion in both the EU and NATO in 2004. However, in the past few years two trends have emerged which begin to call this accepted knowledge into question. First, the relationship between Russia and the West has turned more hostile following nearly 20 years of detente. The West insists (especially NATO) insists that it is within its right to protect states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union/Russia’s “near abroad”. Russia, on the other hand, insists that NATO incursion into the “shared neighborhood” is a violation of trust and overstepping normal geopolitical bounds.Second, the Baltic States who once presented something of a united front for the West against Russia, no longer appear to have a common approach to foreign policy. While Estonia leans toward Scandinavia, and Lithuania leans toward Poland and Ukraine, Latvia is a bit of an odd man out with nowhere to turn. Furthermore, even other states in the Shared Neighborhood no longer seem to see Latvia as a valuable ally within the West. Considering this state of affairs, this paper considers whether Latvia matters anymore in regional geopolitics, or whether they are losing relevance.

Legacies of Stalin or Putin? Public Opinion and Historical Memory in Ukraine

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110416
Author(s):  
Vitali Shkliarov ◽  
Vera Mironova ◽  
Sam Whitt
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Reflection ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Negative Appraisals

Our research considers the relationship between historical memory and political evaluations of the past and present. We first examine how historical reflection on the Soviet Union under Stalin is influenced by memories of familial suffering during World War II and victimization under the widespread Soviet gulag prison system. Based on a 2019 representative survey of Ukraine, we show that respondents who recall family members being injured or killed fighting during World War II and those who recount families being imprisoned in Soviet gulags have increased positive and negative appraisals of the Soviet Union under Stalin respectively. However, we also find that favorable opinions of Stalin are strongly predicted by approval of Vladimir Putin, who has actively promoted rehabilitation of Stalin’s legacy to bolster personalist rule at home and justify revisionist agendas abroad, including in Ukraine. Our results underscore interactions between the present and past in shaping historical memory such that what appears as enduring legacies of the past could also be a function of present political circumstances.

Heroic National Memory: The Story of a Participant in the Great Patriotic War

2020 ◽  
pp. 32-40
Author(s):  
Юрий Алексеевич Азаров
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Military Service ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Memory ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Ideological Attitudes

В статье, приуроченной к празднованию 75-летия окончания Великой Отечественной войны, рассматривается народное отношение к войне за свободу своего отечества, которое, наряду с людскими ресурсами, качеством вооружения, стратегическим и тактическим руководством, стало одним из истоков Победы. Такое отношение к войне унаследовано из прошлого и связано с представлением о героическом - важнейшей категории традиционной культуры, составляющей доминирующее смысловое и эмоциональное начало высоких жанров. В эпопее, традиционном народном эпосе описываются и превозносятся поступки, свидетельствующие о бесстрашии героев, способности преодолеть инстинкт самосохранения, пожертвовать собой ради общего блага, мужественно встретить смерть. Сформировавшаяся за более чем три десятилетия традиция ветеранского рассказа порождает свои оригинальные тексты, распространяющиеся как в устной (аудиовизуальной записи), так и в письменной форме, причем оба канала передачи в данном случае тесно переплетаются и становятся равноправными коммуникативными типами. Одна из их главных особенностей состоит в том, что эпическая героизация прошлого в ряде случаев сочетается со стремлением открыть новую правду о войне, преодолением шаблонного восприятия ее событий, которое было обусловлено цензурными ограничениями и идеологическими императивами советской эпохи. Многие из обозначенных признаков характерны и для сохранившегося в семейном архиве рассказа Героя Советского Союза А. Н. Азарова, который охватывает значительный отрезок исторического времени: начиная с его призыва на действительную военную службу в1940 г. и заканчивая операцией по взятию Берлина в составе 6-го танкового корпуса. This article, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War, examines the people’s attitude toward the war, which, along with human resources, the quality of weaponry, strategic and tactical leadership, became one of the sources of the victory. Their attitude to wars of liberation was inherited from the past and is associated with the idea of the heroic - a most important category of traditional culture, which is the dominant semantic and emotional core of high genres. The traditional folk epic, for example, describes and extols actions that demonstrate the fearlessness of heroes, their ability to overcome the instinct of self-preservation and sacrifice themselves for the common good. The tradition of stories by veterans that have been collected over more than the last three decades generates its own original texts in both oral (audio-visual recording) and written form; both channels of transmission are closely intertwined and equally important. One of their main features is that the epic heroization of the past in some cases combines with the desire to reveal new truth about the war, to overcome its stereotypical perception due to Soviet censorship and ideological attitudes. These features are also characteristic of the story told by Hero of the Soviet Union A. N. Azarov that has been preserved in his family’s archive. It covers a significant period of history, from his conscription for active military service in 1940 to his participation in the operation to capture Berlin as part of the 6th tank corps.

Development of the Legal Framework for Regulating Relations for the Training and Retraining of Judges in the Soviet Period (1946–1991)

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 39-47
Author(s):  
S. I. Pukhnarevich ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
The Soviet Union

The article shows the formation of the legal basis for the formation, development and functioning of the system of training and retraining of judicial personnel in the country in the period from 1946 until the end of the USSR. The article also explores the forms and approaches to the organization of improving the quality of the staff of the judicial system. It was concluded that the Soviet Union has formed an ideologically oriented, strictly centralized Federal-Republican system of professional development of court employees.

Populism and Memory: Legislation of the Past in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542095080
Author(s):  
Nikolay Koposov
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Democratic Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Holocaust

This article belongs to the special cluster “Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka. The rise of historical memory, which began in the 1970s and 1980s, has made the past an increasingly important soft-power resource. At its initial stage, the rise of memory contributed to the decay of self-congratulatory national narratives and to the formation of a “cosmopolitan” memory centered on the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity and informed by the notion of state repentance for the wrongdoings of the past. Laws criminalizing the denial of these crimes, which were adopted in “old” continental democracies in the 1980s and 1990s, were a characteristic expression of this democratic culture of memory. However, with the rise of national populism and the formation of the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the politics of memory has taken a significantly different turn. National populists are remarkably persistent in whitewashing their countries’ history and using it to promote nationalist mobilization. This process has manifested itself in the formation of new types of memory laws, which shift the blame for historical injustices to other countries (the 1998 Polish, the 2000 Czech, the 2010 Lithuanian, the June 2010 Hungarian, and the 2014 Latvian statutes) and, in some cases, openly protect the memory of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity (the 2005 Turkish, the 2014 Russian, the 2015 Ukrainian, the 2006 and the 2018 Polish enactments). The article examines Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian legislation regarding the past that demonstrates the current linkage between populism and memory.

scholarly journals From DP Camps to the “Green Continent”

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexey Antoshin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Information ◽  
National Archives ◽  
National University ◽  
National Archives Of Australia ◽  
The Government

This review focuses on a monograph written by Jayne Persian, lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland (Australia). The work is the first complex study devoted to the adaptation of former “displaced persons” (more particularly, émigrés from the Soviet Union) in Australia between the 1940s and 1960s. The work refers to an extensive complex of documents from the National Archives of Australia, the National Archives (United Kingdom), the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University, and interviews with former “displaced persons” residing in Australia. The study is very important because it provides new information on the second wave of Soviet emigration, which is seldom examined by contemporary Russian scholars. Persian demonstrates that political factors played an important role in how the Australian government granted immigration permission. Quite frequently, Australia preferred people who shared anti-communist positions. Therefore, many former collaborators of the World War II era came to Australia; this hindered cooperation between the USSR and Australia. Persian shows that “new Australians” had difficulty integrating into society. The government tried to assimilate them, which pushed the immigrants to seek isolation in their communities. This book helps us understand the controversial character of the state policy of historical memory, a problem that is also very important for contemporary Russia.

Reliability of the Plot Related to the Conversation with Deng Xiaoping on the Sino-Soviet Territorial Issues in the Memoirs of E. Shevardnadze

2021 ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Deng Xiaoping ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
History Of ◽  
Territorial Claims

In 2009, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and President of Georgia E.A. Shevardnadze published his memoirs in Russian, which contain an “explosive” plot: while visiting China in February 1989, during his meeting with Deng Xiaoping, a lengthy dispute over border and territorial issues occurred. At that time, Deng allegedly expressed his point of view that vast lands of the Soviet Union, from three to four million square kilometers, belonged to China. Chinese can wait patiently until someday the lands return to China. This content is cited in scientific works by many historians from different countries as an argument. However, there is no other evidence which can prove this recollection. Many details in it contradict the well known historical facts or are completely illogical. There is a good reason to believe that the plot in the memoirs of Shevardnadze is an incorrect recollection. It could even be considered as a made-up story. Moreover, it is possible that it was fabricated for some reasons. Hence, the plot is not worthy of being quoted as a reliable source. At the Sino-Soviet summit Deng Xiaoping did have expressed the point of view that in the past Russia and then the Soviet Union cut off millions of square kilometers of land from China, but at the same time he promised the leader of the Soviet Union that China would not make territorial claims. Since the mid-1980s Deng Xiaoping actively promoted the settlement of the Sino-Soviet border issues through negotiations, which led to the result that 99% of the border between Russia and China was delimited on a legal basis in the last years of his life. At present, the problems of the Sino-Russian border have been finally resolved long ago. There is no doubt that the scientific research and discussions on issues related to territory and borders in the history of Sino-Soviet relations can be made. However, such research and discussions should be based on reliable sources.

The Role of Historical Memory in the Socio-Political Processes of Chechnya (1986—1994)

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10 (108)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Cécile Druey
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Autonomous Republic

During the years that preceded and followed the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Autonomous Republic of Chechnya in the south of Russia has experienced an intensive movement of civil society mobilisation, nationalist radicalisation and armed conflict. Referring to the case of the society “Kavkaz” as an example for the emerging movement of civil society, this paper traces the mobilising role of history and historical memory during the period of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev in the late-1980s, until the onset of the first Chechnya War in 1994. It argues, that the use of historical memory is not that much a cause, than it is an indicator of conflict and radicalisation in society, and that these processes of radicalisation are closely linked to their context at a local, national and international level. Drawing on data collected from interviews with representatives of the Chechen national movement, from local newspapers and legal acts, the paper tracks the evolution of civil society movements in Chechnya in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Doing so, it departs from a relational approach to conflict analysis (della Porta, 2018; Alimi, Bosi, and Demetriou, 2012; Tilly and Tarrow, 2015; Hughes and Sasse, 2016). Located at the intersection between conflict- and memory studies, the paper thus adds insights to the study of the pre-war period in post-Soviet Chechnya, and in general to the conceptual discussion about the link between historical memory, mobilisation, radicalisation and conflict.

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