Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Krista A. Goff
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Geographical Range ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

This chapter seeks to explain why history writing about nontitular minorities in the Soviet Union and in Azerbaijan has proven to be problematic. It looks at the variety of nontitular communities that live in Azerbaijan and the many ethnic conflicts that emerged during its transition to independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It also focuses on the state structures and the people living within Soviet Union and Azerbaijan, as well as their geographical range that intersects with the history of Iran, Turkey, and neighboring republics in the Soviet Caucasus. The chapter describes a regional world that extended beyond Soviet borders and argues that uncovering nontitular histories helps to better understand both Soviet and post-Soviet ethnic conflicts. It mentions the Soviet state that supported the development of minorities to counter the colonial legacy of Great Russian chauvinism.

scholarly journals “Forward to the bright future of socialism!”: the role of images and symbols in promoting collectivization in Soviet Ukraine

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 10003
Author(s):  
Oksana Zhukova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Information ◽  
The State ◽  
Bright Future ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Heritage ◽  
National Flag ◽  
The Village

In every country, state symbols such as the national flag, emblem, and national anthems represent the independence and sovereignty of the state. In the Soviet Union as well as in other autocratic states symbols also played an important role in propaganda, influencing peoples’ attitudes to the actions of the state at all levels. These symbols could also be found, together with powerful imagery in posters, on buildings, monuments and many other things visible and incorporated in the routine life the people. Ukraine has huge historical heritage of symbolism and propaganda from when the country was a major part of the USSR. After the creation of the USSR a political, socio-economic, cultural and spiritual experiment on the construction of a communist society, which in the case of Ukraine was unprecedented in scale and tragedy, began. The collectivization of the village is one of the most tragic pages in the history of Ukraine. As the most important grain-growing region of the country at the time its production was vital to feed the growing cities and industrialisation. The forced collectivisation led to starvation in the 1930s and millions of people died. In order to counter this most public information showed people another side of collectivization. Propaganda was used, such as posters and slogans, to persuade the peasants to join the collective farms and to promote the real or fictitious results of the workers, and, conversely, to attack people who did not want to believe in the “bright future” of the USSR and to denounce “kulaks” and “saboteurs”. Materials from archives and published sources show many examples of Ukrainian images and symbols of that time which shed a light on the way the collectivisation process was portrayed and promoted.

scholarly journals Demographic Development of Russia in Geopolitical Coordinates of the XX – Early XXI Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-154
Author(s):  
Leonid L. Rybakovsky ◽  
◽  
Natalia I. Kozhevnikova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
Demographic Development ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Demographic Dynamics ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The One

The article shows that due to the fact that Russia has the largest territory among the rest of the world, the richest natural resources, making it a self-sufficient, advantageous geographical position, as well as a kind of history of the creation and development of the state, in the past, and still causes hostile attitude to it a number of states. Thanks to sufficient human potential, Russia, constituting the core of a state united with other peoples in pre-revolutionary and Soviet times, was able to defend its homeland, even from such an enemy as Nazi Germany. The increase in the population of Russia has always been the most important factor in ensuring the security of the state. The paper provides a detailed description of the demographic development of Russia, both as part of the Soviet Union and as an independent state. The dynamics of the population of Russia is considered, on the one hand, in the group of countries with a predominance of the Slavic ethnos, and on the other hand, it is compared with the demographic dynamics of the English-speaking group of countries.

The Voices of Keti Chukhrov: Radical Poetics after the Soviet Union

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-478
Author(s):  
Marijeta Bozovic
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Future Challenge ◽  
Institutional Critique ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Many ◽  
State Socialist

Abstract The newest Russian poetic avant-garde wields highly aware appropriations and remediations in stark opposition to mainstream cultural phenomena, including nostalgia for the imperial and militant aestheticized politics of the Soviet Union. Efforts to think leftward beyond the state socialist past to a global egalitarian future challenge both Russian and “Western” narratives in our increasingly interconnected world. The Georgian-born Russian-language poet Keti Chukhrov, in particular, theorizes powerlessness in deeply local yet globally familiar ways. Despite the many voices rumbling through her work, Chukhrov’s theses are consistent: art must be communist; all desire, even faked, is political eros; and the post-Soviet subject is not even dead. Chukhrov embeds her politics in institutional critique, lends her labor to collectives and collaborations, and refracts her poetic voice into multitudes.

A Separate Moldovan Language? The Sociolinguistics of Moldova'sLimba de Stat

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 575-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Ciscel
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Language And Power ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Soviet Russia

The politics of language identity have figured heavily in the history of the people of the Republic of Moldova. Indeed the region's status as a province of Russia, Romania, and then the Soviet Union over the past 200 years has consistently been justified and, at least partially, manipulated on the basis of language issues. At the center of these struggles over language and power has been the linguistic and cultural identity of the region's autochthonous ethnicity and current demographic majority, the Moldovans. In dispute is the degree to which these Moldovans are culturally, historically, and linguistically related to the other Moldovans and Romanians across the Prut River in Romania. Under imperial Russia from 1812 to 1918 and Soviet Russia from 1944 to 1991, a proto-Moldovan identity that eschewed connections to Romania and emphasized contact with Slavic peoples was promoted in the region. Meanwhile, experts from Romania and the West have regularly argued that the eastern Moldovans are indistinguishable, historically, culturally, and linguistically, from their Romanian cousins.

scholarly journals Situation of Tatars and other Muslim minorities in communist Bulgaria

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Eldar Kh. Seidametov ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The State ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
Muslim Minorities ◽  
The Way

The article examines the situation of the Tatars and other Muslim minorities in Bulgaria during the communist period. The policy of the state in relation to Muslim minorities after the proclamation of the People`s Republic of Bulgaria and the establishment of socialism in the state according to the Soviet model, when the political, economic and social models of the USSR were imported and introduced without taking into account the national characteristics of Bulgaria, are analyzed. As in the Soviet Union (especially in the early stage of its formation, religion was banned and this applied to all confessions without exception. The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) made every effort eradicate religious identity and, in particular, Islamic identity. It was planned to replace the religious ideological fragment with a socialist one, and then, on its platform, form and stimulate the development of the national, modernist and Soviet identity of Muslims. Moreover, the emphasis was also placed on improving the way of life and the material situation of the Muslim population, which, according to the Marxist theory of culture, should have contributed to a more effective formation of socialist consciousness. The ruling party saw in the Muslim religious consciousness and rudiments of the Ottoman past, an obstacle on the way of socialist progress and formation of socialist consciousness. Emasculating elements of the religious worldview from the mind of people, the BCP set itself the task of creating a modern, secular, socialist personality. To this end, in 1946–1989 the government implemented a number of economic, educational and cultural establishments.

scholarly journals The 1957 Domestic Loan and the Completion of the Era of “Voluntary-Obligatory Loans” (Middle Ural)

2020 ◽  
pp. 435-449
Author(s):  
V. N. Mamyachenkov ◽  
E. A. Ivanov ◽  
V. V. Shvedov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Economic History ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Modern Economy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of

The purpose of this article is to investigate events related to a significant fact in the economic history of the USSR - the actual refusal by the state of its obligations on previously placed domestic loans in 1957. The relevance of the study is due to the interest shown in researching the experience of overcoming the financial crisis. The scientific novelty of the study is seen in the fact that archival materials not previously published are introduced into the scientific circulation. It is stated that from the point of view of the modern economy, government borrowing is an indispensable and mandatory attribute of public finances. It is stated that the reason for the need for such borrowing lies in the property of a loan to reduce the time of realization of personal and social needs. It focuses on the fact that the culmination and final moment of the era of permanent state internal borrowing was the factual default of the state declared in the spring of 1957. A review of the statements of citizens characterizing their attitude to this event is carried out. It is proved that the default did not have a significant impact on the state of the family budgets of citizens of the country. It is concluded that in the history of the Soviet Union the mentioned event will remain an event of the passive-palliative type.

The Role of the National Problem in the Disintegration of the Soviet Union

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-69
Author(s):  
Chaim Shinar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Charismatic Leadership ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Polity ◽  
Political Idea ◽  
Independent States

‘The Soviet Union, like the United States, was a country established to serve and promote a political idea, not to be a state for nations. The United States was founded in order to be a modern democratic polity; the Soviet Union in order to promote Marxism-Leninism. The Soviet Union thus began as a ‘modern,’ post-imperialist state. The cement holding the state together was a compound of ideology, a hierarchical, disciplinary party, charismatic leadership, and external treats. [In the 80s] this cement was crumbling… [The Soviet] state had lost its raison d’être and the people turned to the traditional and conventional basis of the state – that is, the nation. But since this was a multinational state – and unlike the multiethnic United States, most peoples in the USSR have distinct languages and territories of their own – [they returned to them to establish independent states.]’1

Let's Perform a Miracle: The Soviet Yiddish State Theater in the 1920s

Slavic Review ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-397
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Veidlinger
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
World War ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of

The history of the Soviet Yiddish State Theater (Gosudarstvennyi evreiskii teatr, or Goset) provides an illuminating glimpse into the life of Jewish entertainers and the position of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. While Solomon Mikhoels, the theater's star actor and director from 1929 until 1949, is well known for his role in chairing the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II, and for becoming the first victim of Stalin's anti-Semitic purges with his 1948 execution, little research has been conducted on the theater to which he dedicated his life. Art and theater historians have evaluated the theater's aesthetic approach to selected productions, and Mikhoels's contemporaries have provided anecdotal glimpses into that artist's life by writing biographies of him, but there has not yet been an attempt to assess the theater's relationship to the state during its heyday or to place the theater within the context of Soviet culture of the 1920s.

scholarly journals Deportations and distribution of Polish citizens of the Mosaic faith in the territories of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1939-1943

2020 ◽  
Vol 198 (4) ◽  
pp. 749-762
Author(s):  
Zdzisław Cutter
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Statistical Method ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
History Of

The presented article addresses the history of the Second Polish Republic’s political relations with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1939-1943. The study aims to characterize the mass deportations and the distribution of Polish citizens in the territory of the Soviet Union, with emphasis on the population of the Mosaic faith. The statistical method was used to analyze and assess the fundamental issues related to the exploration of the Jewish population against the background of the national structure of Poland in the years 1918-1939, mass deportations of the people of the Eastern Borderlands by the Soviet authorities in 1940-1941, and the areas of the Soviet state where people from the occupied territories of the Second Polish Republic were deployed. The substantive considerations also indicated that mass deportation actions and everyday life on “inhuman land” reached not only Poles but also Polish citizens of the Mosaic faith.

Stalin and the Politics of Kinship: Practices of Collective Punishment, 1920s–1940s

2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Golfo Alexopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Repression ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
Criminal Legislation ◽  
Collective Punishment

At a Kremlin reception on 7 November 1937, Stalin declared that enemies should be eliminated as kinship groups: “And we will eliminate every such enemy [of the state and peoples of the USSR]… . we will eliminate his entire lineage (rod), his family! … Here's to the final extermination of all enemies, both themselves and their clan (rod).”1In the Soviet Union, political enemies were rounded up in groups of kin, family ties marked people as disloyal, and “counterrevolutionary” charges against one person threatened also his or her relatives. The Soviet security police or OGPU-NKVD issued detailed instructions regarding the punishment that should be assigned to the spouses, children, siblings, parents, and even ex-wives of state enemies. Campaigns against anti-Soviet elements rounded up kinship groups, whether these counterrevolutionaries were identified as so-called kulaks, enemies of the people, or traitors to the motherland. To be sure, the collective punishment of kin did not accompany every act of Stalinist repression. The regime's draconian criminal legislation also constituted a form of terror, yet persons sentenced under such laws as those punishing theft of socialist property were dealt with individually; their relatives were not targeted. Only the “politicals,” that is, people accused of disloyalty, treason, or other counterrevolutionary activities experienced terror as family units. It was the collective punishment of kin that made political repression under Stalin truly a mass phenomenon.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document