Sexology and the national Other in the Soviet Union

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (20) ◽  
pp. 13-44
Author(s):  
Dan Healey
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Replacement Rate ◽  
Sex Research ◽  
Race Science ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Sexual Science ◽  
Therapeutic Measures

Historians have pointed to overseas colonialism and 'race science' as influential in the construction of European sexual science. Soviet sexology arose on a 'semi-periphery' between Europe and colonised societies. The 'Others' against whom Russian sexual ideals were forged would be 'internally colonised' peasants and non-Russian ethnicities of the Soviet Union's internal orient. Pre-Stalinist sexology blended the 'sexual revolution' with European sexual science focused on workers in the Slavic urban industrial heartland; nationalities beyond this perceived heartland lagged behind and their sex lives required modernisation. Stalin virtually curtailed sexological research. After 1945 the party revived it to spur fertility, especially in Slavic urban centres where births had dropped below replacement rate. Ideological control constrained sexologists, confining them to silos, limiting internationalisation and cramping research. But new, heteronormative therapeutic measures, some from Western science, and others devised at home, were developed. Less vocal than Western or Eastern Bloc sexology, Soviet sex research continued to display anxiety about internal national and ethnic Others into the 1980s and beyond.

The Trials of Arnošt K.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Gordin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Soviet Authority ◽  
The Soviet Union

The Prague-born philosopher and historian of science Arnošt Kolman (1892–1979)—who often published under his Russian name Ernest Kol’man—has fallen into obscurity, much like dialectical materialism, the philosophy of science he represented. From modest Czech-Jewish origins, Kolman seized opportunities posed by the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution to advance to the highest levels of polemical Stalinist philosophy, returned to Prague as an activist laying the groundwork for the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, was arrested and held for three years by the Soviet secret police, returned to work in Moscow and Prague as a historian of science, played vastly contrasting roles in the Luzin Affair of the 1930s and the rehabilitation of cybernetics in the 1950s, and defected—after 58 years in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—to Sweden in 1976. This article argues that Kolman’s biography represents his gradual separation of dialectical materialism from other aspects of Soviet authority, a disentanglement enabled by the perspective gained from repeated returns to Prague and the diversity of dialectical-materialist thought developed in the Eastern Bloc. This essay is part of a special issue entitled THE BONDS OF HISTORY edited by Anita Guerrini.

scholarly journals How successful was Joseph Stalin in establishing Soviet Union as a superpower?

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Jakub Majkowski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Impact

This essay will firstly address the extent of Stalin’s achievements in leading the course for domestic policy of the Soviet Union and its contribution towards maintaining the country’s supremacy in the world, for example the rapid post-war recovery of industry and agriculture, and secondly, the foreign policy including ambiguous relations with Communist governments of countries forming the Eastern Bloc, upkeeping frail alliances and growing antagonism towards western powers, especially the United States of America.   The actions and influence of Stalin’s closest associates in the Communist Party and the effect of Soviet propaganda on the society are also reviewed. This investigation will cover the period from 1945 to 1953. Additionally, other factors such as the impact of post-war worldwide economic situation and attitude of the society of Soviet Union will be discussed.    

Vâlâ Nureddin’s Comic Materialism and the Sexual Revolution: Writing across Turkey and the Soviet Union

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-319
Author(s):  
Nergis Ertürk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Soviet Republic ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Turkish Literature ◽  
Early Republican ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

Abstract Focusing on the life and work of the Turkish novelist and translator Vâlâ Nureddin (1901–67), this article provides a historical overview of Turkish and Soviet literary entanglement in the early twentieth century. A collaborator of the globally acclaimed Turkish communist poet Nâzım Hikmet, Vâlâ was educated at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East from 1922 to 1924. Returning to Turkey in 1925, he launched his career in the daily Akşam (Evening), bringing Soviet and Turkish literature into conversation in his serialized translations and literary adaptations of Soviet erotic fiction. In reading Vâlâ’s neglected 1928 erotic historical comedy Baltacı ile Katerina (Baltacı and Catherine), unique among Vâlâ’s writings in its direct and explicit imagination and specification of an entangled revolution, this article suggests, by way of specific attention to this work’s comedic elements, that Vâlâ imagined the collapse of both Russian and Ottoman imperial sovereignty in terms of sexual revolution. It argues that a study of this unjustifiably neglected erotic comedy not only deepens our knowledge of early republican Turkish literature and culture, but provides a more nuanced understanding of the Moscow-centered transnational literary space produced in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, or what scholars in Slavic studies have called the “Soviet republic of letters.”

scholarly journals La géopolitique des droits humains

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-486
Author(s):  
Jean-Louis Seurin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Third World ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Droits Humains ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Communist Countries

The universality of the ideology of Human Rights is presently enjoying increased interest inspite of the limited results and disappointing concrete realizations achieved in this area. At the time of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the universality of the doctrine of Human Rights was only an illusion and the problems raised by the application of subsequent international accords have made evident the political conflicts which are at play behind the human rights debate. Presently, one may accurately speak of a "geopolitic of human rights". Starting from the precept that the best way to resolve opposing points of view is to begin with reality, the author examines the relative situation of Human Rights in three groups which are each relatively homogeneous : the Atlantic zone regrouping the pluralist constitutional democracies; the totalitarian countries including the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc countries and the communist countries of Asia and, finally, the zone of non-aligned countries of the "third world".

The Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union in Transition: What of Services to Blind Persons?

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (6) ◽  
pp. 260-261
Author(s):  
S.J. Spungin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vocational Training ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Blind Persons

The author discusses the system of service to blind persons in the Soviet Union, based on trips to 2 of its 15 republics in the past year. This system, in which the factory is the major employer, offers immediate rehabilitation and vocational training, financed by factory profits. The author also discusses changes occurring in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries and how they could affect these countries’ blind populations.

Expanding E-Commerce into E-Ducation

2005 ◽  
pp. 295-298
Author(s):  
Kirk St. Amant
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Over Time

The fall of the Soviet Union created a series of new economic situations in Eastern Europe. Soviet-style Communism quickly gave way to a radical and unbridled form of capitalism that led many outsiders to refer to the region as the “wild East” (Pei, 1994; Brady, 1999; Miller, Grodeland, & Koshechkina, 2001). Over time, business practices began to settle as persons from the former Eastern Bloc focused on Western models of business and finance (Brady, 1999; Mikelonis, 2000; D’Anieri, Kravchuk, & Kuzio, 1999). Such a transition would not be easy, for 75 years of Communist rule left a limited framework upon which individuals could build capitalist-style industries.

East German Music and the Problem of National Identity

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Silverberg
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Awkward Position ◽  
East German

Caught between political allegiance to the Soviet Union and a shared history with West Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) occupied an awkward position in Cold War Europe. While other countries in the Eastern Bloc already existed as nation-states before coming under Soviet control, the GDR was the product of Germany's arbitrary division. There was no specifically East German culture in 1945—only a German culture. When it came to matters of national identity, officials in the GDR's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) could not posit a unique quality of “East Germanness,” but could only highlight East Germany's difference from its western neighbor. This difference did not stem from the language and culture of the past, but the politics and ideology of the present: East Germany was socialist Germany.

The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 1)

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 178-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
Collapse Of Communism

The largely peaceful collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 reflected the profound changes that Mikhail Gorbachev had carried out in Soviet foreign policy. Successful though the process was in Eastern Europe, it had destabilizing repercussions within the Soviet Union. The effects were both direct and indirect. The first part of this two-part article looks at Gorbachev's policy toward Eastern Europe, the collapse of Communism in the region, and the direct “spillover” from Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union. The second part of the article, to be published in the next issue of the journal, discusses the indirect spillover into the Soviet Union and the fierce debate that emerged within the Soviet political elite about the “loss” of the Eastern bloc—a debate that helped spur the leaders of the attempted hardline coup d'état in August 1991.

scholarly journals Promoting the Socialist Community: Efforts and Effects of the Socialist Camp’s Cultural Diplomacy

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oksana Nagornaia
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Hybrid Identities ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

Based on an analysis of modern Cold War historiography, the article considers current discussions, topics, and perspectives in the chosen research landscape. Taking into account the modern circumstances, the author concludes that in the latest publications, there is a tendency to reconsider the dichotomic model “Sovietisation vs Americanisation” and, instead, take a closer look at the representations of socialism and the structures and actors of cultural diplomacy in Eastern Europe. Referring to propaganda projects of socialist integration and intercultural spaces, the author demonstrates what was specifically socialist about the forms and instruments of representations of the Eastern Bloc, the conflicting spheres of collaboration, and independent initiatives of people’s democracies in the sphere of cultural diplomacy. The author concludes that at the end of the Second World War, the propaganda system in the Soviet Union was integrated into a larger scheme of presenting the world system of socialism where the Eastern European states became symbolically appropriated spaces and promising symbolic resources. The cultural initiatives of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe at the international level testify to the cultural pluralism in the Eastern Bloc. The independent steps the countries of the socialist camp took for self-realisation on the international arena testify to this cultural pluralism. The effectiveness of their symbolic messages was facilitated by the geographical proximity to borders, integration into the contexts of western culture, and better developed information resources. In the article, the author’s own analysis is preceded by a review of materials thematically related to the section of the journal on the cultural diplomacy of socialism. Articles referred to in the study and devoted to the projects of the socialist camp prove the thesis that the Eastern Bloc that emerged during the Cold War and the hybrid identities developed under its influence survived the breakdown of the bipolar order and are important for modern culture.

The Baltic Boundary

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Estera Mrozewicz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Baltic Sea ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Break Up ◽  
The Baltic

This chapter focuses on the films whose plots are set in the period following the break-up of the Soviet Union and in which the Baltic Sea undergoes symbolic transformation from a metaphor of liminal space into a space which links the Nordic peripheries of Europe with neighbours on the opposite shores. Rather than being positioned as small nations facing a large and dangerous neighbour, the small Nordic countries now find themselves among equally small neighbours that have (re)emerged in the northern consciousness after the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. In these pictures (such as Aki Kaurismäki’s Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana), Baltic is an expanse of ambivalence, reflecting both fear of and fascination with the newly opened borders and increasing globalisation. Plots structured on the cognitive binary of centre/periphery are examined as baselines for narratives showing various forms of distant neighbourhood. Here, the Nordic subjects are often ousted from the centre position they previously adopted. Filmic devices serve to compress the space in order to accentuate contiguity rather than distance between the Nordic and the Eastern European coasts of the Baltic.

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