scholarly journals Polska mniejszość narodowa na Białorusi w okresie BSRR jako czynnik bezpieczeństwa narodowego ZSRR (1945-1985)

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadeusz Kruczkowski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Society ◽  
National Minority ◽  
State Security ◽  
Polish Question ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
Former Soviet Republics

The Polish national minority in the USSR, including the BSSR, was viewed from the aspect of state security as an unreliable, subversive element. In this regard, it had to be Sovietized and Russified. In the conditions of the BSSR, there was also a specificity of the solution of the Polish question: first, the Poles were subjected to Sovietization and Byelorussification, and then to Russification. It was not possible to fully implement the plan for Sovietization and depolonization of the region and thus turn the Polish national minority into a Soviet society of power. The cultural and national specificity of the Poles of the BSSR and especially in the Grodno region has been preserved. However, the Soviet legacy in relation to the Polish national minority in independent Belarus has survived, including in the post-Soviet imperial complex “Great Belarus”, a character-istic complex of “small empires” for most of the former Soviet republics.

The Soviet Legacy in Thinking about Fascism

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
Second World

This chapter goes back in time to look at the Soviet construction of the Russian term fashizm and some of the ambiguities that the Soviet society cultivated toward the term and its historical personification, Nazi Germany. It recalls that the term fascism (fashizm), in Soviet times, belonged more to an emotional than to an analytical lexicon. The chapter also discusses Russia's history and Russians' memories of the Second World War, called the Great Patriotic War in Russian (Velikaia otechestvennaia voina) and Victory Day (Den´ pobedy). It reviews how the cult of war is intimately linked to the Brezhnev era and provided the context in which commemoration of the Great Patriotic War was institutionalized as a sacred symbol of the Soviet Union, a confirmation of the soundness of the socialist system and the unity of its peoples. The chapter then argues that the very solemnity of Soviet anti-fascism, and its centrality to the country's political identity constitute the fundaments inherited from Soviet times on the basis of which the notion of fascism is operationalized in today's Russia. Ultimately, the chapter further elaborates the three main sources of the Soviet's cryptic fascination with Nazi Germany and source of knowledge about fashizm: the Nazi propaganda, criminal culture, and cinema and culture.

Public Sentiment among the Population of the City of Leningrad and the Leningrad Region in June - August 1941: From Situation Reports of the NKGB of the USSR

2018 ◽  
pp. 1051-1059
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Bogdanov ◽  
◽  
Vladimir G. Ostapyuk ◽  
Natalya A. Zhukova ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Leningrad Region ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
State Security ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

The article considers one aspect of everyday life of the population of Leningrad and the Leningrad region in the first months of the Great Patriotic War, which had been carefully concealed by official Soviet propaganda. Throughout all postwar decades up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian historical science continued to reproduce the myth of absolute unity of the Soviet society and mass patriotic enthusiasm of the working class, kolkhoz peasants and intelligentsia in the face of enemy aggression. And yet archival documents of the state security agencies reveal numerous facts and distinctive features of anti-Soviet manifestations among various socio-professional groups of the population of Leningrad and the Leningrad region in the first months following the German invasion in the Soviet territory. These facts show that the imminent war had a serious impact on the inner world of the inhabitants of the Northern capital of the Soviet Union, exacerbating numerous problems that had accumulated in the Soviet society in the decades before the war. The article mostly draws on the recently declassified situation reports of the People's Commissariat of State Security for the city of Leningrad and the Leningrad region from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense. It deals with such occurrences of anti-state sentiment as panic rumors, anti-Soviet agitation, listening to the radio-broadcasts of hostile states, distribution of anti-Soviet leaflets, planning pogroms of local party and state leaders. It analyses key features of anti-Soviet manifestations among urban and rural population. It contains information on the first manifestations of collaboration among those inhabitants of the Leningrad region, who had ended up in the territory occupied by the German troops. It studies mechanics of repressive activities of state security bodies caused by restructuring of Soviet society, while the military operations began.

Russia and the Baltic states: problematizing the Soviet legacy discourse

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Nikitina
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Baltic States ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Former Soviet Republics ◽  
Post Soviet Space

Most studies of the post-Soviet space often explicitly or implicitly analyze Russia not as a new independent state but as the political successor of the USSR, thereby almost automatically leading to conclusions about Russian neo-imperialism. This paper explains how distorted discourses on the Soviet legacy originated and how they obstruct equal relations between Russia and other former Soviet republics using the example of the Baltic states.

Popular Religiosity in the “Closed City” of Soviet Ukraine: Cultural Consumption and Religion during Late Socialism, 1959-1984

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
Sergei I. Zhuk
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
State Security ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
Popular Religiosity

Part of a larger research project about Soviet cultural consumption and identity formation, this article explores the connection between rock music and religiosity in the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, in the late socialist period. The Committee of State Security [Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, KGB] closed Dnepropetrovsk to foreigners in 1959 when one of the Soviet Union’s biggest missile factories opened there. Because of its “closed” nature, Dnepropetrovsk became a unique Soviet social and cultural laboratory where various patterns of late socialism collided with new Western cultural influences. The closed city of Dnepropetrovsk can be seen as a microcosm of Soviet society as a whole. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, including archival documents, periodicals, personal diaries and interviews, this article demonstrates how popular fascination for Western rock music, such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, spurred interest in Christianity. Local Protestant and Orthodox church leaders skillfully promoted such interest, even as the Party bosses tried to quash it. This study stands as a reminder of the continued draw of Christianity in Orthodoxy’s heartland—even through alternative, modernizing media—despite the official promotion of atheism.

scholarly journals Inherited National Questions: The Soviet Legacy in Russia’s International Law Doctrine on Self-determination

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-66
Author(s):  
Tero Lundstedt
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Community ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
National Question ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
The Right ◽  
Former Soviet Republics

All 15 former Soviet Republics share a unique federal history with a particular understanding of the right to self-determination. Moreover, seven of them were federalised during the Soviet era, amounting to a major challenge to their territorial integrity after independence. While these states confronted their minorities in different ways, the Russian solution to its inherited national question has been the most comprehensive. This has made Russian understanding on self-determination essentially different from the mainstream of the international community, which in turn explains Russian persistent objections over the Kosovo independence (2008) and partly clarifies the events in Georgia (2008) and Crimea (2014). This article analyses how the former Soviet Republics coped with the transformation from the ethnofederal state to independence. The focus will be on Russia as the most affected of them and on the persistent Soviet legacy in its interpretations of self-determination and, consequently, its policies towards its post-Soviet neighbours.

scholarly journals WAR ON THE «IDEOLOGICAL FRONT». THE YEAR 1968

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-49
Author(s):  
I. Patryliak ◽  
A. Sliusarenko
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
External Shocks ◽  
Ussr Council ◽  
State Security ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Party Central Committee ◽  
Council Of Ministers

The ideological struggle against the "counter-revolutionary manifestations" accompanied the entire history of Soviet society. However, there have been times when the war on the "ideological front" has intensified. For the most part, this was under the influence of major external shocks or during major ideological campaigns in the middle of the country. One of the episodes when foreign perturbations influenced the ideological confrontation within the USSR was the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia. The special impact of the Prague Spring was felt in Ukraine, which was directly bordered by the Czechoslovak Republic, and had its powerful traditions of anti-Soviet ideological struggle. It is not surprising, therefore, that the State Security Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers has been particularly vigilant about the "ideological front" in Ukraine. Based on their understanding of the "ideological war" as an external sabotage, KGB analysts prepared relevant documents for top party leadership. The readers are invited to submit an archaeographic publication of the KGB document: "Memorandum. On some trends in the ideological diversion that is being carried out by the enemy in Ukraine". Separate 17-page typewritten document prepared specifically for the needs of the Communist Party Central Committee on September 11, 1968. The document contains six major challenges to the "ideological war" in Ukraine - confrontation with foreign "nationalist centers", confrontation with "internal ideological enemy", confrontation with "opposition" »Increase in the number of educated youth among anti-Soviet groups, opposition to the emergence of such phenomenon as anti-Soviet postcards, opposition to a part of the“ pro-stalinist ”society, confrontation organized strike of workers and farmers.

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