The Absence of Tragedy in Ifigenia (1950) by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-141
Author(s):  
LORNA SHAUGHNESSY
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Political Context ◽  
World War ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Gonzalo Torrente Ballester ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s novella, Ifigenia (1950) has been read consistently as a critique of the consolidating Francoist state of the 1940s and an early example of his ‘demythologizing’ technique. This article seeks to open discussion on aspects of the text that have not attracted critical attention to date. It traces the unacknowledged legacies of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis in the text, most visible in both authors’ emphasis on the capacity of language for deceit. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, it argues that Torrente’s Ifigenia should be read not only in the context of post-Civil War Spain but also in the wider socio-political context of post-Second World War Europe. It argues that the consistent suppression of expression of emotion throughout the text produces an absence of tragedy in Torrente’s retelling of the myth, and outlines how this relates to the post-war contexts of Spain and Europe.

Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

scholarly journals A Spanish Genocide? Reflections on the Francoist Repression after the Spanish Civil War

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIUS RUIZ
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Military Justice ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

This article considers whether the Franco regime pursued a genocidal policy against Republicans after the formal ending of hostilities on 1 April 1939. In post-war Spain, the primary mechanism for punishing Republicans was military tribunals. Francoist military justice was based on the assumption that responsibility for the civil war lay with the Republic: defendants were tried for the crime of ‘military rebellion’. This was, as Ramón Serrano Suñer admitted his memoirs, ‘turning justice on its head’. But although it was extremely harsh, post-war military justice was never exterminatory. The article stresses that the institutionalisation of military justice from 1937, following the arbitrary murders of 1936, contributed to a relative decline in executions. Although the regime's determination to punish Republicans for ‘military rebellion’ inevitably led to the initiation of tens of thousands of post-war military investigations, only a minority of cases ended in execution. This was especially the case from January 1940, when the higher military authorities ended the autonomy of military tribunals over sentencing. This reassertion of central control in January 1940 was part of a wider policy to ease the self-inflicted problem of prison overcrowding; successive parole decrees led to a substantial and permanent decrease in the number of inmates by 1945. Allied victory in the Second World War did not mark the beginning but the end of the process of bringing to a close mass military justice.

scholarly journals Ο ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟΣ ΕΜΦΥΛΙΟΣ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΣ ΚΑΙ Ο ΙΣΠΑΝΙΚΟΣ ΤΥΠΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΦΡΑΝΚΙΣΜΟΥ

Μνήμων ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
ΖΩΗ ΜΕΛΛΑ
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
World War ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
The Us ◽  
Spanish Press ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

<p>Zoi Mella, The Greek Civil War and the Spanish Press during Franco's Dictatorship</p><p>In this article we would like to approach a quite unknown subject: the presence of the Greek Civil War in the Spanish Press. Our objective was to ascertain the impact this event had at the post war Spanish Press. How would react Spain in view of such a confrontation, especially since it had already experimented a Civil War? It was a complicated period for Greece, as well as for Spain, a time when both countries experienced problems of different nature but equally serious: Greece was suffering the devastating consequences of the Second World War and Spain was trying to encounter the contempt of the international political world. The Greek Civil War was the first confrontation between two worlds that were exiting reinforced from the Second World War. It became the field of conflict between the USSR and the Anglo-Saxon allies during several years. The interior problem of some rebels, who couldn't, or wouldn't, adapt themselves to the new post war situation or were discontented with the new regime, was transformed to an international matter of great impact, that managed to confront USSR, on one hand, and the US and Great Britain, on the other, in the International Organism of the United Nations. Our interest was centred in the various approaches that the newspapers and the magazines of the time made. Moreover we were interested in the points of view and the conclusions manifested by the diverse papers, according to their political and ideological affinities, without forgetting the strict regime of control and censure that was in force at that moment. This investigation forms part of a broader subject that is the bilateral relations of these two countries, rather different at first sight, that during the XX century were affected by very similar events, such as a civil war.</p>

scholarly journals Beppe Fenoglio’s I ventitre giorni della città di Alba – Personal Memory and Reflections on Civil War

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Christoph Söding
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
Narrative Strategy ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

The article examines I ventitre giorni della città di Alba, one of Beppe Fenoglio’s early texts about the Italian resistance during the Second World War. Largely ignored at the time of its first publication, it rose to fame only in the 1960s. This is strongly linked to the fact that Fenoglio depicts the resistance as a civil war, a rather controversial issue in post-war Italy. He deheroises the partisans and shows the inadequacy of social categories by adopting a specific narrative strategy that focuses on the mundane and the ridiculous.

Squatting: The Fight for Decent Shelter, 1970s–1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Housing Needs ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.

ABCs of the Revolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-291
Author(s):  
Egor A. Yesyunin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Development History ◽  
The People ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Revolution

The article is devoted to the satirical agitation ABCs that appeared during the Civil War, which have never previously been identified by researchers as a separate type of agitation art. The ABCs, which used to have the narrow purpose of teaching children to read and write before, became a form of agitation art in the hands of artists and writers. This was facilitated by the fact that ABCs, in contrast to primers, are less loaded with educational material and, accordingly, they have more space for illustrations. The article presents the development history of the agitation ABCs, focusing in detail on four of them: V.V. Mayakovsky’s “Soviet ABC”, D.S. Moor’s “Red Army Soldier’s ABC”, A.I. Strakhov’s “ABC of the Revolution”, and M.M. Cheremnykh’s “Anti-Religious ABC”. There is also briefly considered “Our ABC”: the “TASS Posters” created by various artists during the Second World War. The article highlights the special significance of V.V. Mayakovsky’s first agitation ABC, which later became a reference point for many artists. The authors of the first satirical ABCs of the Civil War period consciously used the traditional form of popular prints, as well as ditties and sayings, in order to create images close to the people. The article focuses on the iconographic connections between the ABCs and posters in the works of D.S. Moor and M.M. Cheremnykh, who transferred their solutions from the posters to the ABCs.

Western Ethnic Borderlands in the Influence of Russian-Soviet Propagangda Before and in the Years of the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (46) ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
Igor Lyubchyk
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World ◽  
Russian Identity

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR. Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics

“Product Not Available in Pre-War Quantities – but Quality Remains the Same”: Remarks on Advertisements as Historical Sources

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Press ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The article focuses on advertisements as visual and historical sources. The material comes from the German press that appeared immediately after the end of the Second World War. During this time, all kinds of products were scarce. In comparison to this, colorful advertisements of luxury products are more than noteworthy. What do these images tell us about the early post-war years in Germany? The author argues that advertisements are a medium that shapes social norms. Rather than reflecting the historical realities, advertisements construct them. From an aesthetical and cultural point of view, advertisements gave thus a sense of continuity between the pre- and post-war years. The author suggests, therefore, that the advertisements should not be treated as a source for economic history. They are, however, important for studying social developments that occurred in the past.

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