scholarly journals Stalinizmas ir etnokultūros institucionalizavimas. Pirmoji Dainų šventė sovietinėje Lietuvoje 1946 m.

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019/1 ◽  
pp. 127-144
Author(s):  
Vladas Sirutavičius
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Soviet Ideology

decided to re-establish the tradition of song festivals and organize the first such festival in 1946; and to what extent the implementation of the said idea was successful. Analysis of the history of the first Soviet song festival and circumstances surrounding the preparation for the event is based on the little known or practically unknown documents kept in the archives of Lithuania and the Russian Federation. The government of Lithuania viewed the organization of the “first Soviet song festival” as a possibility to demonstrate its concern with Lithuanian folk culture, its development, and promotion. This kind of policy was intended to strengthen the legitimacy of the Soviet government and make it seem more “Lithuanian”. The fact that Lithuanian folk culture helped spread the new Soviet ideology also cannot be ignored. The song festival was not only amply decorated with Soviet symbols, attempts were made to couple the attributes of the Soviet culture with the values of folk culture. On the other hand, organizing the festival the leadership of Soviet Lithuania wanted to show that the Soviet political regime can be in “harmony” with Lithuanian ethno-culture and the new government was a natural successor of former ethnic traditions. However, alone, without the approval of the Lithuanian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the support from Moscow, the government of Lithuania was unable to organize the festival. This suggests that the leadership of the Soviet Union was rather tolerant to the manifestations of “national Communism” not only in the countries of Central Europe that fell under Moscow’s influence but also in Lithuanian SSR. Besides, the decision to organize the festival in Vilnius was not a random one. Crowds of singers that came to the city from all around Lithuania changed its national composition – Vilnius for once became more Lithuanian. This not only demonstrated the government’s aspiration to show off its “Lithuanian” nature but also its ambition to make Vilnius the centre of Lithuanian (Soviet) culture. Finally, the government of LSSR was satisfied with the organization and course of the festival and believed that it managed to achieve its goals and objectives. Probably the success of the first Soviet song festival resulted in them being organized periodically.

scholarly journals Yugoslavia on the pages of the journal Slavyane (1942–1958)

2021 ◽  
pp. 100-126
Author(s):  
Aleksandr V. Zaytsev
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
Cover Up

The journal Slavyane was created by the Central Committee of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) as an organ of internal and external political propaganda aimed at Russian-speaking Slavs. It reflected the pullback of Soviet foreign policy from proletarian internationalism. The policy of its editorial board towards Yugoslavia repeated the one of the Party, but sensitive subjects were avoided or covered with a delay on the pages of the journal. Josip Broz Tito as spokesman for the aspirations of Yugoslav peoples was extolle since 1943 while D. Mihajlović’s activities had not been covered until his condemnation in October 1943. The journal supported the government of the People’s Federative Republic of Yugoslavia until early 1948, condemned it since late 1949 to early 1953, kept silence on Yugoslavia for several months in 1948–1949, 1953–1954, 1956, 1957 and 1958. Each time such deliberate silence had been caused by the aggravation or, on the contrary, by attempts to break ice in relations between the Soviet Union and People’s Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) / the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia / the Union of Yugoslavian Communists. The only exception from the rule seems to be Issue 5/1953 of the journal which contains anti-Tito insults but they may be due to struggle on top of the Soviet government. Overall, the policy of the editorial board was marked by more caution and desire to cover up problems than the policy of Party newspapers.

scholarly journals Mythologization of the History of the 1920-30s Festivities

2020 ◽  
pp. 180-193
Author(s):  
Elena V. Barysheva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Spiritual Values ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Current Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The Revolution

The article discusses techniques and methods used by the Soviet government to formulate the historical myth of the revolutionary movement in Russia and of the 1917 revolution. Holidays in Soviet Russia and later in the Soviet Union were not just days of relaxation. They served educational function, formed new spiritual values, instilled a sense of engagement with the events of 1917. As one of the ways to influence the mass consciousness, the festive events of the first decades of the Soviet power formed public opinion and influenced perception of historical and current events by the population. Popularization of the emerging official history of the new socialist state, which had begun in 1917, was especially effective during celebrations owing to their inherent emotional component. The use of historical plots in various dramatizations, mass actions, political processions, carnivals, and demonstrations of workers created an appearance of the new government’s legitimacy, contributed to the formation of the collective memory of the revolutionary days within the frameworks of their official interpretation. The article uses archival materials of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.), which testify to the importance that the party authorities attached to the scenarios of the festive events. Memoirs of the direct participants in the events played their role in creating heroic myth of the revolution. An obligatory element of the celebration of the anniversaries was meetings with workers revolutionaries and witnesses of the revolutionary events that were arranged at the enterprises. Participation in these “evenings of remembrance” became a way of “self-identification” of an individual in new, socialist society, for speakers, as well as listeners. During these festive meetings, appearance of belonging, not only to the heroic past, but also to the epic present, was created. Specifics and ideological implications of the 1920s–30s memoirs contributed to the use of the “memorial boom” in the forming official narrative of the revolution.

scholarly journals The Supply Crisis in the USSR in the Early 1970s: Mass Consciousness and Government Reaction

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-85
Author(s):  
Dar'ya Viktorovna Yakupova ◽  
Roman Aleksandrovich Yakupov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Mass Consciousness ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government

The research subject of this study is the reciprocal influence of the problems of food supply and the social stability of the Soviet state with an analysis aiming to establish the relationship between the onset of the provision crisis and the massive politicization of economic processes in the USSR on the part of society during the examined period.The article is directed at studying the degree of impact the unfulfilled consumer expectations had on the social perception of power by the population of the Soviet Union during the agrarian crisis of the early 1970s.Particular attention is paid to the interaction between the government and society on questions of food supply, as well as the alleviation of the provision crisis through imports.The methodological basis of this work is founded on the basic principles of scientific knowledge - objectivity and historicism, which allowed the authors to study the evolution of the population's mass consciousness in a dialectical relationship with the era's phenomena. Upon implementing the above-mentioned principles, a number of both general scientific and specific historical research methods were applied (historical-situational, historical-comparative, historical-systemic, and statistical methods). The scientific novelty of this work is its attempt to reflect on the course of the socio-political development of the USSR under the influence of changing internal and external factors caused by the consumer crisis.The authors note that under difficult conditions, the authorities of the USSR and the CPSU Central Committee were forced to meet the social needs of the population in order to maintain a certain level of food provisions, as well as to support welfare. Evidence supports that increased social payments and higher wages in the early 1970s temporarily reduced the population's discontent with the Soviet political regime. The authors conclude that the concentration of the population’s attention on the low level of meeting their urgent needs was the basis of social inversion and the revision of the Soviet government approval index.

The pushback against state interference in science: how Lysenkoism tried to suppress Genetics and how it was eventually defeated

Genetics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasily V Ptushenko
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Key Events ◽  
State Interference

Abstract Genetics in the Soviet Union (USSR) achieved state-of-the-art results and had reached a peak of development by the mid-1930s due to the efforts of the scientific schools of several major figures, including Sergei Navashin, Nikolai Koltsov, Grigorii Levitsky, Yuri Filipchenko, Nikolai Vavilov, and Solomon Levit. Unfortunately, the Soviet government distrusted intellectually independent science and this led to state support for a fraudulent pseudoscientific concept widely known as Lysenkoism, which hugely damaged biology as a whole. Decades of dominance of the Lysenkoism had ruinous effects and the revival of biology in the USSR in the late 1950s–early 1960s was very difficult. In fact, this was realized to be a problem for Soviet science as a whole, and many mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and other scientists made efforts to rehabilitate genetics and to transfer biology to the “jurisdiction” of science from that of politics. The key events in the history of these attempts to pushback against state interference in science, and to promote the development of genetics and molecular biology, are described in this paper. These efforts included supportive letters to the authorities (e.g., the famous “Letter of three hundred”), (re)publishing articles and giving lectures on “forbidden” science, and organizing laboratories and departments for research in genetics and molecular biology under the cover of nuclear physics or of other projects respected by the government and Communist party leaders. The result was that major figures in the hard sciences played a major part in the revival of genetics and biology in the USSR.

Purges and Forced Retirements of Soviet Party Elites as Power Tools of Social Mobility

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-345
Author(s):  
Katya Vladimirov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
History Of ◽  
Power Tools ◽  
High Social Status

The article presents a tumulus seventy-year history of the top party élite, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC CPSU), by profiling the anatomy of historical generations that embodied it. Five district generations in power and various political “teams” had been locked in ferocious battle for access to political capital, high social status, coveted positions, ranks, and privileges. Their survival and advancement demanded perseverance, bargaining skills, and ruthless elimination of competitors. Purges and forced retirement were essential power tools used in their generational struggle for power and status. The article discusses these methods of compulsory “exclusion” and offers innovative and revealing perspective on the nature of the Soviet political structure as well as on the techniques of its internal combat.

Book Reviews: La Penseé Politique de Kant, Fabian Socialism and English Politics 1884–1918, The Conservative Enemy: A Programme of Radical Reform for the 1960s, Out of Stagnation: A Policy for Growth, The Politics of Influence: British Ex-Servicemen, Cabinet Decisions and Cultural Change (1917–57), The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Salaries in the Public Services in England and Wales, A Metropolis Votes, Power and Politics in Belgian Education: 1815–1961, A History of Italian Fascism, The Government of Italy, A Short History of Italy, The American Secretary of State, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets, The Revolution in World Politics, Ideology, Politics and Government in the Soviet Union: An Introduction, The Soviet Union 1922–1962, The U.S.S.R. and the Future, Leninism, The Private Life of Josif Stalin, Politics and Society in India, Modern Indian Political Tradition, Prophet of Indian Nationalism. A Study of the Political Thought of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh 1893–1910, Local Government in China under the Ch'ing, Legislatures, Senatorial Politics and Foreign Policy, Procedure in the Canadian House of Commons, Approaches to the Study of Political Participation, Public Opinion and Congressional Elections, Groups in Theory and Practice

1963 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-364
Author(s):  
John Day ◽  
Frank Bealey ◽  
Justin Grossman ◽  
Allen Potter ◽  
Edgar Thomas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Politics And Government ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

Stalin and Wheat: Collective Farms and Composite Portraits

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Margolin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Collective Farm ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cult Of Personality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Collective Farms

In late 1939, USSR in Construction, the Soviet propaganda magazine, published a special issue on the Stalin Collective Farm in the Ukraine. The inside front cover of the magazine contained an anonymous paean to socialist farming, attributing its success to the foresight and support of Joseph Stalin, the nation's leader. On the page flanking the euphoric opening text was a near full-page portrait of Comrade Stalin composed of multi-hued grains including millet, alfalfa, and poppy. Grain, or the absence thereof, was fundamental to the development of collective farms in the Soviet Union. By early 1929, government pressure to form large state-run farms had increased and Stalin declared war on the kulaks, or rich peasants. The kulaks responded by killing their livestock, destroying their crops, and demolishing their homesteads. Nonetheless, collectivization, backed by the Party apparatus, continued relentlessly. Needless to say, none of the resistance to collectivized agriculture was evident in USSR in Construction's depiction of life on the Stalin Collective Farm. At the end of the issue, the apparent happiness and prosperity of the workers were attributed to the virtues of socialism. In the later 1930s, with the inauguration of Stalin's "cult of personality," the nation was consistently equated with Stalin himself, hence the choice of his profile for the composite grain portrait. The seamlessness with which a multitude of grains could become a composite portrait of the nation's leader shows how successfully the Soviet government was able to rewrite the history of agricultural collectivization. The pain, loss, and resistance of the small landowners was successfully obliterated and replaced by a new narrative in which collective farm workers prospered and found happiness within a political system that was now synonymous with the beneficence of a single individual, Joseph Stalin.

Początki konspiracji wojskowej i cywilnej na Wileńszczyźnie w latach 1939-1941

2021 ◽  
pp. 213-239
Author(s):  
Aleksander Głogowski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
Resistance Movement

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MILITARY AND CIVIL UNDERGROUND IN THE VILNIUS REGION IN 1939-1941 The first years of the occupation of the Vilnius Region were an unusual period in terms of the history of the Polish Underground State and the Polish armed resistance movement. This area was occupied after September 17, 1939 by the Soviet Union, but part of it was transferred to the Republic of Lithuania, along with which it was re-incorporated into the Soviet Union. The Lithuanian occupation was a considerable challenge both for the Polish authorities in exile and for the inhabitants of the Vilnius Region. Meeting such a challenge required certain diplomatic talents (not to worsen the situation of Poles living in this area) as well as knowledge of the relations in the area, which was a problem for the Polish authorities in France, and especially in Great Britain. The Polish inhabitants of the Vilnius Region considered the legal status of their land to be illegal occupation, while the Lithuanians claimed that thanks to a new agreement with the USSR, the period of occupation of these lands by Poles ended. These opinions, together with the mutual resentments and stereotypes flourishing for nearly 20 years, made the peaceful coexistence of two nations difficult, or even impossible. The government of the Republic of Poland tried to prevent the attempts to start an anti-Lithuanian uprising, not wanting to provoke the other two occupiers into military intervention. To this stage, it sought an intermediate solution between the abandonment of any conspiracy (which carried the threat of forming armed groups beyond the control of the legal Polish authorities) and its development on a scale known, for example, from the German or Soviet occupation. The Vilnius Region was to become the personnel and organisational base for the latter. The dilemma was resolved without Polish participation at the time of the annexation of the Republic of Lithuania by the Soviets. Then the second period of the Soviet occupation began, characterised by much greater brutality than the first one, with mass arrests, executions and deportations. The policy of repression primarily affected the pre-war military staff and their families, who were the natural base for the resistance movement of the intelligentsia. Fortunately, this process ended at the time of the German aggression against the USSR. Those that survived the period of the “second Soviet invasion” could in the new conditions continue their underground activities and prepare for an armed uprising in the circumstances and in the manner indicated by the Home Army Headquarters and the Polish Government in London.

The Flaming Sunflower: The Soviet Union and Sean O’casey’s Post-Realism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Cannon Harris
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Proletarian Literature ◽  
Sean O'casey ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance

Sean O’Casey came to see the Soviet Union as a market for the kind of ideologically-committed and antirealist drama that neither the Abbey Theatre’s directors nor London’s commercial producers wanted. Many of the plays O’Casey wrote after his move to England in 1928 become legible only in the context of the history charted during this book’s first four chapters, the Stalinised British left organizations with which O’Casey worked, and the genre of socialist realism. Investigating the genesis and performance history of O’Casey’s 1939 Communist play The Star Turns Red, this chapter shows how O’Casey’s post-realist aesthetic derives from the literary tradition of queer socialism, which reached him through Shelley and Larkin. Analyzing O’Casey’s nondramatic writing about and for the Soviet Union as well as his American supporters’ insistence that he remained artistically independent of Soviet ideologies about literature, this chapter shows that O’Casey’s ambivalence about British left culture masks an unbounded admiration of the kind of proletarian literature which O’Casey believed – thanks to his limited and misleading contact with it – was represented by socialist realism. O’Casey was also strongly drawn to the heroic and heterosexual masculinity cultivated by official Soviet culture.

Problems and Unproblems in Soviet Social Theory

Slavic Review ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis S. Feuer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Intellectual Community ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Mathematical Sciences ◽  
The Government ◽  
Life Work

The status of sociology and philosophy in the Soviet Union is radically different from that of the physical and mathematical sciences. The sociologists and philosophers are still regarded by the government as ideologists, whereas the mathematicians and physicists are considered scientists; and the ideologist is in low repute in the Soviet intellectual community. Thirty years ago, Nikolai Bukharin observed in a remarkable essay that the cultural style of the current Soviet period would be technicism, and that the humanities and historical sciences would be relegated to the background. He believed that this “one-sidedness“ was founded on the economic requirements of the time. Probably, however, the hollowness in the life of the Soviet ideologist is equally responsible for his low estate. The sociologists and philosophers are not regarded as independent thinkers; their job as ideological workers is to provide a documentation and footnoted commentary on the decisions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Young men of ability consequently tend to avoid choosing a life work in the social sciences and philosophy. Why, they say, should they sacrifice their intellectual independence at the outset of their lives?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document