The transfer of state functions in the field of physical culture and sports to public organizations in the 1960s

The article examines public organizations that functioned and performed state functions in the field of physical culture and sports. Special attention is paid to previously little-studied issues of interaction of the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations of the USSR with state bodies. The source base of the article is the normative legal acts regulating the activities of this organization, as well as documents of the Kaliningrad regional Union of Sports Societies and Organizations that were not previously introduced into scientific circulation. The liberalization of public life during the Thaw period had a significant impact on the position of public organizations in the Soviet political system. The scientific literature of that time actively discussed the issues of involving citizens and public organizations in solving the problems facing the country. One form of such involvement was the transfer of state functions to public organizations. As a result, public organizations were able to make important decisions in a certain segment of the public sphere. The Union of Sports Societies and Organizations of the USSR became a unique organization that completely replaced the state body in the field of physical culture and sports. Based on the material studied, the author comes to the conclusion that the liquidation of the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations of the USSR in 1968 coincided with other processes aimed at curtailing liberal principles in the USSR. Almost 10 years of activity of this organization have shown that the transfer of state functions into the hands of the public is indeed possible.

Power and public life in Karelia during the “thaw” period (mid-1950s – mid-1960s)

The article investigates the relationships between authorities and the society during the “thaw” period, which launched liberalization in public life and radical changes in public consciousness. Regional material from the Republic of Karelia was used to demonstrate the situation in the region’s political and public sphere, and the response of people to the activities of central and local governments. The study highlights that liberalization processes were contradictory and inconsistent, and the life of the society remained under strict ideological control.

ANALYSIS OF FIELDWORK OF EXPEDITIONS AND TEAMS FROM THE MOSCOW BRANCH OF THE INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF MATERIAL CULTURE / INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY, USSR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, IN 1945-1964

В статье представлен обзор и анализ работ полевых экспедиций московского отделения центрального археологического учреждения страны - Института истории материальной культуры / Института археологии АН СССР в первые два послевоенных десятилетия. Этот период истории страны характеризуется общим восстановлением после трагедий войны в 1940-е - начале 1950-х гг., активным экономическим подъемом во время «оттепели», что прямым образом сказывается на организации полевых работ столичными археологами. Основой для анализа стала национальная карта «Археологические памятники России», материалами для создания которой выступают научные отчеты, хранящиеся в Научно-отраслевом архиве ИА РАН. В качестве дополнительных сведений привлекаются документы из фонда внутренней документации Института (приказы по экспедициям). Подобный подход позволил наметить и продемонстрировать тенденции и основные направления научных интересов сотрудников ИИМК/ИА. The paper provides an overview and analysis of the field expeditions organized by the Moscow Branch of the country's central archaeological institute - the Institute for the History of Material Culture/Institute of Archaeology, USSR Academy of Sciences -during the first postwar decades. This period in the country's history is characterized by rebuilding of the country in the 1940s - early 1950s after the war tragedies, and economic upturn during the thaw period which directly influenced the organization of fieldwork by archaeologists from the capital. The analysis was driven by the efforts to compile a national map of Archaeological Sites of Russia using the excavation reports from the Scientific Archives of the Institute of Archaeology, RAS. Documents from the internal documentation archive (directives related to the expeditions) were used as additional information. This approach helped identify and describe the trends and the main areas of research conducted by the Institute for the History of Material Culture / Institute of Archaeology.

Microbial Interactions and Roles in Soil Fertility in Seasonal Freeze-Thaw Periods under Different Straw Returning Strategies

With the increase of world food demand, the intensity of cultivated land use also increased. To improve soil nutrient concentrations and crop yield, several straw returning techniques have been developed. Studies have shown that straw returning is beneficial to soil, but few studies have focused on the relationship between microbes and fertility in seasonal freeze-thaw periods. A two-year cropland experiment was set up that comprised three different straw return strategies, namely covering tillage with straw return for two years (CS), rotary tillage and straw return for two years (RS), rotary covering tillage with straw return (first year covering and the second year rotary tillage) (CRS), and conventional tillage with no straw return (CK). Illumina Miseq high throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA was applied to assess bacteria community structure. The relationship between bacteria community structure and changes in soil fertility induced by different straw incorporating during seasonal trends was studied. Our results showed that soil bacterial communities varied significantly during the soil seasonal freeze-thaw period in the northwest of Jilin province, China, and were influenced, to some extent, by the different straw returning procedures. Multidimensional analysis revealed that total phosphorus (TP), available nitrogen (AN), and total nitrogen (TN) were the major drivers of bacterial community structure. The co-occurrence network was divided into several modules. Notably, the major bacterial modules varied significantly in different sampling periods and different treatments. These results suggested that specific bacterial groups could contribute to soil fertility in relation to environmental fluctuations. Some bacterial groups (e.g., Pyrinomonadales, Rhizobiales, Sphingomonadales, and Xanthomonadales, in order level) were directly linked with specific environmental factors, indicating the key roles of these groups in soil fertility. In summary, the soil bacterial communities varied significantly during the freeze-thaw period and might play important roles in the degradation of straw. Thus, the straw return could enhance soil fertility.

Arheologii ale prezentului în Istoria literaturii române contemporane: 1990-2020

The paper disscusses the literary-historiographical enterprise of Mihai Iovănel’s History of the Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2000 as a turning point in respect with the twofold aesthetic and ethnocentric dominant of this genre in Romania, whose tradition that is traceable back to the pos-Thaw period prolongs into postcommunism. Iovănel’s self-claimed ”postmarxist” approach puts under a deconstructive lens the ideological embededness of the Romanian literary space, whose postcommunist avatar still owes largely to its communist heritage by its indebtment to dominantly conservative and right ideologies. It also switches the analytical focus of the literary history towards the material (i.e. social, institutional, and so forth) conditions of the literary production per se. My essays develops two basic critical points derived from the above-mentioned premises. One concerns the topicality of the literary historian’s leftist vantage point in the view of deciphering long-engrained myths of the national literature and of its criticism, thus providing a clearer, more realist picture of its concrete phenomena. The other debates the utility and eventual drawbacks of the retrospective analysis the historian is forced to assume in order to achieve his deconstructive task, a retrospection that pushes his investigation way behind the confines of ”contemporaneity”.

Social Sciences in Hungary During the Cold War and After

Based on various types of recently explored empirical evidence, this study attempts to account for the complex and ever-changing relationship the social sciences in Hungary have entertained with their foreign counterparts, both institutionally and through their intellectual references since their birth in the early 20th century. Historically, up until Communist times, Hungary was a German intellectual colony of sorts while remaining receptive mostly to French and other influences as well. This changed fundamentally after 1948 with the process of Sovietization. This implied the outright institutional suppression of several social disciplines (sociology, demography, political science, and psychoanalysis) and the forceful intellectual realignment of others along Marxist lines. Contacts with the West were also suspended and the exclusive orientation to Soviet social science enforced through­out the long 1950s. A thaw period after this attempt at Russian cultural colonization followed the years after the 1956 anti-Bolshevik uprising. From 1963 on, the Hungarian social sciences saw the reestablishment and state-supported promotion of disciplines that were suppressed earlier, the softening of the ascendancy of official Marxism, and the opening of channels of exchange with the West. In spite of the continuation of political censorship, ideological surveillance, and occasional expulsion of politically dissident scholars until 1989, Hungarian social scientists could benefit more often and intensively from Western sponsorship (such as study grants from the Ford foundation) and collaborations. After the fall of Communism, the expansion and reorientation of the social sciences to the West, dominated by Anglo-Saxon contacts, are demonstrated by various indices, such as data on the book market of the social sciences and books purchased by libraries, translated, or cited in major reviews.

Extremely wet summer events enhance permafrost thaw for multiple years in Siberian tundra

Permafrost thaw can accelerate climate warming by releasing carbon from previously frozen soil in the form of greenhouse gases. Summer precipitation extremes have been proposed to increase permafrost thaw, but the magnitude and duration of this effect are poorly understood. Here we present empirical evidence showing that one extremely wet summer (+100mm; 120% increase relative to average summer precipitation) enhances thaw depth by up to 35% and prolonged the thaw period in a controlled irrigation experiment in an ice-rich Siberian tundra site. The effect persisted over two subsequent summers, demonstrating a carry-over effect of extremely wet summers. Using soil thermal hydrological modelling, we show that precipitation-induced increases in thaw are most pronounced during warm summers with mid-summer precipitation peaks. Our results suggest that, with summer precipitation and temperature both increasing in the Arctic, permafrost will likely degrade and disappear faster than is currently anticipated based on rising air temperatures alone.

Žurnāla „Inostrannaja Literatura” rezonanse Latvijas literārajā telpā politiskā atkušņa laikā

The paper is devoted to a parallel description of the literary processes in the Soviet Union and Soviet Latvia during Nikita Khrushchev’ reign, also known as the period of political thaw or the liberalisation of the communist regime (1953–1964). The main object of the research is the literary magazine Inostrannaja literatura (Иностранная литература), issued in the Soviet Union since 1955, dedicated to foreign literature and its translations; the principles of creating its content and structure during the political thaw period. The aim of the research: with concrete examples, to show the role of this legendary Russian literary periodical in the Iron Curtain period, expansion of freedom of thought, decanonization of socialist realism dogmas in general in the USSR, and also in the Latvian SSR. The methodological basis of the research consists of a comparative literature approach and a new historicism position that the literary text is important in studying different lines of history. The analysis of the publications clearly shows the replacement of the so-called periods of thaw and freezing. The article proves that the appearance of translations, reviews, previews, and research articles of foreign literature in this journal is closely connected with various political peripeteia of the USSR. In Latvia, there is a great resonance of Inostrannaja literatura, and it had an eventual influence on overcoming the dogmas of socialist realism in Latvian literature. The publications about the journal in Latvian literary editions and the study of the reception of one text example, a comparison of various editions of the writer Ēvalds Vilks’s (1923–1976) story “Twelve Kilometers”, prove it.

“Khrushchev Constitution”: The path of a new constitutionalism

Introduction. Scientific research on the process of preparing and developing the draft Constitution of the USSR in 1964 began to appear only in the post-Soviet period. In Soviet times, this topic was banned, and the project itself, being in the archive, was not available for research. The study of the “Khrushchev Constitution” only started in the post-Soviet period. Since the constitutional reforms carried out in the last decade (2008, 2014, 2020) caused a heated discussion in the scientific community, the study of the draft Constitution of the USSR in 1964 is gaining new relevance, allowing us to look at the process of development of domestic constitutionalism more comprehensively. Theoretical analysis. The study on the development of Russian constitutionalism results in new theoretical material that can be used in Russian state building. The purpose of the publication is to summarize the experience of constitutional design of the Khrushchev Thaw period. The tasks of the research: finding the reasons for the emergence of a new need to develop the Basic Law; defining the attitude of Soviet society to the institution of the presidency; analyzing the content of the draft Constitution of the USSR in 1964. Еmpirical analysis. The end of the era of Stalinism and the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw period required a conceptual revision of the foundations of the constitutional order in the Soviet state. During the reign of N. S. Khrushchev, there were clear trends towards decentralizing economic management and public administration, and a return to the idea of “socialist legality” became relevant. To solve these problems, the creation of an appropriate legislative base was required, which was supposed to proceed from the Basic Law of the country. However, the existing Constitution of the USSR in 1936 could not provide support for a broad liberalization of the state-party system. As a result of the challenges of the new era, the idea of adopting a new Basic law, called the “Khrushchev Constitution”, arose. Results. This article examines the development of Soviet constitutionalism during the reign of N. S. Khrushchev and concludes that the draft Constitution of the USSR of 1964 made a significant contribution to the formation of the constitutional image of the Soviet state until its collapse. In addition, the content of the “Khrushchev Constitution” allows us to emphasize its much greater democratic potential, in contrast to the USSR Constitutions of 1936 and 1977.