scholarly journals Epistemological approach to correspondence: silent history of intimate spheres

Menotyra ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vita Gruodytė
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Personal Communication ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Common Area ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

Cultural history, without which it is essentially impossible to speak about music, is composed, as we know, of a multitude of circumstances and coincidences affecting not only the musical artefacts but also the relations between those who create this history: Why did some people meet at some point? How was the link established between them? Why did this link last in some cases and why was it just punctual in other cases? What were the mutual influences? The project “The Nylon Curtain” is based on correspondence during the Cold War era, which was circulating between the Western countries and Lithuania. We allude to personal communication initiatives based on relationships, ideas, desires, and personal opportunities that helped create a “parallel history”. In the frame and context of official history, the formation of individual micro-spheres, namely the intimate world of correspondence, which would develop outside this framework, was one of a few publicly available tools to modulate the everyday environment. Thus, correspondence participated, independently of borders, in the establishment of a communication network, which functioned as an area without boundaries, and with its own specificities and problematics. This network became a “common” area, centred on cultural, professional and personal experiences. We should treat the correspondence of the Soviet period not only as a historical document but also as a reference to a certain emotional state of that period. The latter affects not only the language of the letters, but also what is read between the lines; not only what is said, but also what is implied by what is said: the silent language is the true discourse of the Soviet era. Consequently, the central element of our analysis, which allows us to make a link between the problems raised at the beginning, is emotional space: it is the key to understand that cultural acts in the Soviet era were carried out in spite of a greater or lesser presence of fear and in spite of the possibilities of the regime’s reaction.

scholarly journals Everyday Life Under Communism: Practices and Objects

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (02) ◽  
pp. 207-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Zakharova
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Basic Consumer

Why should we consider the everyday life of ordinary citizens in their countless struggles to obtain basic consumer goods if the priorities of their leaders lay elsewhere? For years, specialists of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies neglected the history of everyday life and, like the so-called “totalitarian” school, focused on political history, seeking to grasp how power was wielded over a society that was considered immobile and subject to the state's authority. Furthermore, studies on the eastern part of Europe were dominated by political scientists who were interested in the geopolitics of the Cold War. The way the field was structured meant that little attention was paid to sociological and anthropological perspectives that sought to understand social interaction.

The Politics of Everyday Life

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Trentmann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Turf Wars

As recently as 1985, the doyen of social science history in Germany, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, said the study of everyday life added little more than a bit of ‘gruel’ to the main course of history. Since then, the turf wars between social history, history from below, and cultural history have themselves become a thing of the past. It was during the 1950s–1970s that first sociologists, and then ‘new social’ historians, embraced the everyday. The flowering of consumption studies since would be unthinkable without the recognition that everyday life is an important – perhaps the most important – place people find meaning, develop habits, and acquire a sense of themselves and their world. This article offers an historical account of the changing scope and politics of everyday life. In contrast to recent discussions that have made the everyday appear the product of Western Europe after World War II, it traces the longer history of the everyday and the different politics of modernity which it has inspired.

The politics of phosphorus-32: A cold war fable based on fact

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN KRIGE
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Atomic Energy Commission ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACT In July 1949, and again in January 1950 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission shipped useful amounts of the short-lived isotope phosphorus-32 to a sanatorium in Trieste, Italy. They were used to treat a patient who had a particularly malignant kind of brain tumor. This distribution of isotopes abroad for medical and research purposes was hotly contested by Commissioner Lewis Strauss, and led to a bruising confrontation between him and J. Robert Oppenheimer. This paper describes the debates surrounding the foreign isotope program inside the Commission and in the U.S. Congress. In parallel, it presents an imagined, but factually-based story of the impact of isotope therapy on the patient and his doctor in Trieste, a city on the Italian-Yugoslavian border that was at the heart of the cold war struggle for influence between the U.S. and the USSR. It weaves together the history of science, institutional history, diplomatic history, and cultural history into a fable that draws attention to the importance of the peaceful atom for winning hearts and minds for the West. The polemics surrounding the distribution of isotopes to foreign countries may have irreversibly soured relationships between Oppenheimer and Strauss, and played into the scientist's loss of his security clearance. But, as those who supported the program argued, it was an important instrument for projecting a positive image of America among a scientifc elite abroad, and for consolidating its alliance with friendly nations in the early years of the cold war——or so the fable goes.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 196-204
Author(s):  
Tsolin Nalbantian
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Marginal Populations ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Societal Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Armenian Population

The conclusion returns to the need to reexamine the history of Lebanon and its Armenian population. To understand Lebanon in the years following independence one must engage deeply with their Armenian inhabitants and explore how they fashioned and refashioned belonging in the everyday in a variety of spheres: social, religious, cultural, and political. To understand Armenians one does not have to consider them as part of a larger diaspora, but rather as active local inhabitants engaged in layered power struggles. To grasp the complexity of the Cold War in the Middle East, one must examine not only how American and Soviet powers and state proxies engaged with one another, but also how this environment was used and manipulated by societal actors. Taken together, all this demonstrates not only the importance of studying Armenians in Lebanon but also the very necessity of doing so. Armenians Beyond Diaspora pushes Armenians from the margins into the center, not to insert them artificially into a larger history that has already been written, but into a space that calls for additional explorations of marginal populations, power struggles, changing notions of belonging, and the adaptability of the nation.

scholarly journals PSRS Literatūras fonda Latvijas republikāniskās nodaļas poliklīnika: ieskats atmiņu mantojumā un funkcijās

Letonica ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Agija Ābiķe-Kondrāte
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Support Function ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Basic Service ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Treatment Function ◽  
History Of ◽  
Domestic Lives

Respecting the ideological aspects of the totalitarian regime and interpreting the most significant functions of the institution, the article provides an insight in one of the institutions under the supervision of the Latvian Republican branch of the USSR Foundation for Literature—the Polyclinic of Latvian Republican Branch of the USSR Foundation for Literature—locally the most important medical institution for the representatives of creative professions and related persons. This polyclinic was one of the most prestigious medical institutions in the entire Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and was commonly referred to as the Polyclinic of Writers or the Polyclinic of Lit-Foundation. In the framework of the functions of this institution, the article sheds light on various memories of the previous employees and patients looking into their memoirs, memory literature and interviews. The article briefly examines the importance of the two leading or key persons—the Director of the LSSR Foundation for Literature Elvīra Zaķe (1909–1992) and the Head of the Polyclinic, Head Doctor Vitāls Oga (1924–1984), as well as their role in the domestic lives of the creative individuals and cultural history of the Soviet period. The most essential five functions, which characterise the activities and existence of the Polyclinic are the following: 1) basic—service or treatment function; 2) the psychological support function; 3) (LSSR) the ideological-prestige function; 4) the function of sustaining Latvian cultural environment; 5) the function of a cultural sign (entails the processes of the respective period and the history of literary circles).

Philippe Ariés, Childhood and the Everyday

2021 ◽  
pp. 097318492110531
Author(s):  
Nidhi Gulati
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
History Of Childhood ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Adult Protection

This commentary navigates the oeuvre of Ariés’ writings on childhood, family, private life and death, with a focus on interrogating ‘who is a child?’ Departing from the intellectual history prevalent at the time, Ariés deployed the psychogenic approach to study the cultural history of childhood and family. He examines the quotidian experience of aesthetics and other documents of culture to reveal ‘what was thought about' viz. the mentalities’ of childhood and family spanning a vast canvas from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries. Ariés provocatively proposes that childhood is a modern construct, highlighting that children were not always seen as precious, dependent and in need of adult protection. The magnitude of his intellectual adventure continues to be debated, particularly in childhood studies. The commentary includes an analysis of Ariés’ methods and insights about childhood that unsettle the narrow prisms that refract how we see, understand and educate children.

The Things of Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexey Golubev
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Soviet People ◽  
The World ◽  
Heritage Buildings ◽  
Model Aircraft ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spatial Imagination

This book is a social and cultural history of material objects and spaces during the late socialist era. It traces the biographies of Soviet things, examining how the material world of the late Soviet period influenced Soviet people's gender roles, habitual choices, social trajectories, and imaginary aspirations. Instead of seeing political structures and discursive frameworks as the only mechanisms for shaping Soviet citizens, the book explores how Soviet people used objects and spaces to substantiate their individual and collective selves. In doing so, the author rediscovers what helped Soviet citizens make sense of their selves and the world around them, ranging from space rockets and model aircraft to heritage buildings, and from home gyms to the hallways and basements of post-Stalinist housing. Through these various materialist fascinations, the book considers the ways in which many Soviet people subverted the efforts of the Communist regime to transform them into a rationally organized, disciplined, and easily controllable community. The book argues that late Soviet materiality had an immense impact on the organization of the Soviet historical and spatial imagination. The book's approach also makes clear the ways in which the Soviet self was an integral part of the global experience of modernity rather than simply an outcome of Communist propaganda. Through its focus on materiality and personhood, the book expands our understanding of what made Soviet people and society “Soviet.”

Broadening the Cultural History of the Cold War: The Emergence of the Polish Workers' Defense Committee and the Rise of Human Rights

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 104-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Brier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
International Context ◽  
East European ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opposition Group ◽  
The Cold War

The historiography of the Cold War has witnessed a revived interest in non-material factors such as culture and ideology. Although this incipient cultural history of the Cold War has focused mainly on the period from 1945 until the early 1960s, the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 turned ideas into potent factors of international politics when East European opposition groups began to expose how their governments violated the accord's human rights provisions. By putting the emergence of one such opposition group, the Polish Workers' Defense Committee, in an international context, this article extends Cold War cultural history into the 1970s and 1980s, tracing how human rights ideas affected international and domestic politics. The Communist states' willingness to put up with the human rights provisions in the Helsinki Final Act was not sufficient to “shame” them internationally. Instead, what happened is that Western leftists, after encountering East European dissidents, increasingly perceived human rights as a precondition for the success of their own political project and hence revoked what Robert Horvath calls the “revolutionary privilege” long granted to Communist regimes. Because Communism's identity was so closely related to its struggle with the West, this criticism was particularly damaging. Only within the dynamics of a cultural framework from earlier stages of postwar history did transnational human rights advocacy become effective.

Genealogy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson ◽  
Amy Nigh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technical Sense ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
As Effects ◽  
Empirical Material ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

In the everyday sense of the term, genealogy describes the study of ancestry and the tracing of a pedigree. As such, genealogy serves to follow the element in question to a singular origin which constitutes its source and guarantees its value. As a philosophical notion, however, genealogy is opposed to such tracing of a pedigree and instead describes the interrupted descent of a custom, practice, or idea, locates its multiple beginnings, and excavates the conditions under which it emerged. In this technical sense of the term, genealogy is a form of historico-philosophical analysis that mobilizes empirical material to uncover historically specific conditions under which the object under examination was able to emerge. Genealogy thus reverses customary explanations of objects of cultural history, according to which these objects are either necessary end points of historical development or results caused by some anthropological principle. Instead, genealogy reconstructs the history of their objectification—that is, of their contingent formation as an object of concern and intervention. Phenomena that are typically assumed to be the causes of certain practices, institutions, laws, norms, and so on are here revealed as effects of the very things they were thought to cause. The problems with which genealogy is concerned are historical formations that rely on and simultaneously make possible forms of knowledge, norms of behavior, and modes of being a subject. While the invention of genealogy in its technico-philosophical sense is usually attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, a genealogy of genealogy itself reveals its numerous beginnings in a wide range of discourses and practices that constitute its conditions of possibility.

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