"People are Crying, but I Can’t Stop Laughing": Protest Reaction of the Deportees of Tomsk region to Joseph Stalin’s Death

The research featured special reports from the Tomsk Department of State Security about the “anti-Soviet” protest movement of Tomsk deportees in the first months after Joseph Stalin's death. The analysis revealed how the deportees adapted to the authority demands and imitated their loyalty to the system, even when the regime positions was clearly weakened. The author analyzed the sanctions imposed on the deportees and the behavior of the local punitive officials, who received no instructions from Moscow. Most likely, the “anti-Soviet” behavior was not so much a purposeful protest as an irrational reaction to such an extraordinary event as Joseph Stalin's death. The responsive actions of the Regional Department of State Security did not follow the new course of Soviet policy but rather the behavioral patterns formed during the Stalin era: violators were identified and punished severely and demonstratively.

D. Portnova. The dotted line of distant joys

The review deals with a book of reminiscences by Dalila Portnova, a niece of the writer Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978), a preeminent master of prison camp prose who wrote extensively about Stalin-era repressions. The chapters devoted to the author’s family include Portnova’s memories of her late uncle that were first printed in the Noviy Mir journal in 2017; a sensation at the time, they also provoked a mixed reaction of surviving family members and people who knew Dombrovsky well. Yet no coherent attempts were made to disprove the publication (other than comments on Facebook), even though Portnova’s account is not without flaws and inaccuracies. In his review, Igor Duardovich points out the valid new facts recounted in Portnova’s memoir as well as its discrepancies and explains why the book is relevant for a complete reconstruction of Dombrovsky’s biography: a project as yet unaccomplished, either in the form of separate publications or as a monograph.

Developments in Russian Historical Studies in China since Reform and Opening-up

It was not until China’s reform and opening-up that the study of Russian history in China really began. From the reform and opening-up to the present, the study of Russian history in China could be divided into two stages: from the reform and opening-up to the disintegration of the Soviet Union as the first stage; from the disintegration of the Soviet Union to the present is the second stage. During the first stage, Russian history researchers in China basically aimed to throw off shackles on their academic minds, set the chaotic academia straight, and break through the rigid research paradigm set by the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): A Short Course. However, due to the lack of information exchange and new materials for reference, some articles published at that time appeared to be vague and general with very limited perceptions. Some articles completely broke the connection between Lenin era and Stalin era, and often judged Stalin by Lenin as a standard, and without taking Lenin and Stalin both as subjects for academic research. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a large numbers of research results and new materials were published, which greatly promoted China’s Russian history studies into a new stage. Compared with the first stage before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the second stage in Soviet history studies features more in-depth research and more specific research questions with basic innovation achieved in historical facts. China's study of Russian history in the future should focus on using new materials, sorting out historical facts and innovating research methodology, aiming to build an academic system, discourse system and discipline system for itself.

Splitting Apart: How the Soviet-Albanian Relations Came to an End

Albania was the only Eastern European country to exit from the Warsaw Pact and consequently become diplomatically isolated by its member states by late 1961. Such an event was the result of the continuous accusations exchanged between the Albanian and the Soviet Leaders, primarily between Enver Hoxha and Nikita Khrushchev. In the midst of the turbulent Soviet-Albanian relations, China offered its alliance to Albania which only worsened the situation. This study aims to illustrate how the curve of the Albanian-Soviet partnership changed over time, starting from the Stalin era and finishing with the Khrushchev era. More precisely, this study explains how Khrushchev’s decision-making concerning other countries, especially Yugoslavia, pushed the Albanian leaders into changing attitude towards the Soviet Union and make alliances with Mao Zedong. Received: 2 May 2021 / Accepted: 15 June 2021 / Published: 8 July 2021

Why pioneer camps survived the collapse of the Soviet Union

The article analyses the survival of the children’s centres, Artek and Orlyonok, during the post-socialist transformation. It is based on 50 interviews with employees who worked there starting in the late-Soviet era. Artek and Orlyonok were exemplary children’s camps, subordinated to the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Since the early 1960s, they have functioned as schools for distinguished teenagers who were considered ‘good examples’ for other children. In this article, I have made an ethnographic analysis of Artek and Orlyonok employees’ late-Soviet experiences. This analysis shows how the agency of Soviet counsellors and camp directors became a creative interpretation of the governmental order to raise the children as active Soviet citizens. Camp educators transformed it in line with the idea to base their agency on ‘common human values’, which was spread in the Soviet educational field in the post-Stalin era. As a result, the Soviet teaching experiences gained in these education centres were heterogeneous. When a child-centred paradigm was later introduced to the post-Soviet educational system, the camps adopted the most applicable practices from their Soviet experiences.

Ratmansky

This chapter explores how the work of post-Soviet choreographer Alexei Ratmansky pursues what he calls “a brilliant development that wasn’t actually fulfilled.” With a paradoxical faith in historical continuity (given the Stalin-era “interruption”), this Russian émigré takes up not only where early Soviet ballet left off in the mid-1930s but even before, with Marius Petipa before twentieth-century gigantism got its hands on him. Whether through the relaxed posture, the dizzying but nonchalant steps, the crosshatched steps, or the corps in relation to the soloist, Ratmansky’s ballets bring out what an authoritarian system—of nation, ballet troupe, or ballet—represses. This applies to all his work: the original creations, adaptations, and historical reconstructions. The chapter treats a wide swath of his ballets, with particular attention to Swan Lake, Russian Seasons, and The Shostakovich Trilogy.

Ludic Love

This chapter discusses the single movie made at Lenfilm by one of the USSR’s most important avant-garde directors, Kira Muratova. As she worked on the script, Muratova transformed a mild and sweet story about a pretty young factory worker, Lyuba, who was in love with two men at once, into a philosophical meditation on love. Yet any aspirations to deep thinking were constantly called into question by the playful nature of the representation. Music-hall effects, comedy repetition, and parodic echoes of Stalin-era official films jostle film noir and citations from new wave. Reactions at Lenfilm were wary, and the collaboration with Muratova ended at one film. But Getting to Know the Wide World remained Muratova’s favorite film even at the end of her life; though she resented the criticism that she got at Lenfilm, the frustration that it generated turned out to be creative.

Fr. Pyotr Shipkov

This chapter concerns the stories of Vera Vasilevskaia and Elena Men, who seamlessly weave their own journeys into the framework of a community that functioned apart from the state in the Stalin era. In the process, they offer a larger view of the catacomb community, such as its personalities, circumstances, and activities. It details how Vera and Elena searched for a solid anchor that would give them hope and a sense of well-being in tumultuous times, politically and socially. It also describes the two women as uncompliant persons that do not bend with the prevailing political winds, noting that in different ways Vera and Elena were rebels. The women struggled against the political winds of their times and looked for their own meaning, which they found in the natural world, in poetry, in their work, and eventually in Orthodoxy.

Ukrainian Art of the Totalitarianism Epoch: the Case of the “Zhovten” Association

The present article focuses on the transformation of style and sense of Ukrainian art in the 1930s, in the context of the “Zhovten” Association designers’ creativity. Ideological pressure became determinant in the work of Ukrainian artists. Period of repressions led to decay of art in general, and dramatic reduction in style directions. Industrialization in the USSR, carried out in the 1930s, and measures to accelerate the development of industry were the main themes imposed on artists. Ideologically biased theoretical foundations of the new artistic style typical for the 1930s were clearly manifested in the declaration of the “Zhovten” Association. The ranks of this association, founded in 1930, included some former members of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine and the Association of Contemporary Artists of Ukraine. The theory spelled out in the declaration of unification was significantly ahead of its practical implementation, the artists themselves gradually switched to new forms and content in their works, without breaking ties with the national and European school. The “Zhovten” Association became a true litmus test of those phenomena that dominated in the art of the Stalin era. At the same time, it crossed out all the achievements of the associations-predecessors, creating a version of the all-Union ideologically engaged associations in Ukraine. A sharp change took place in the artistic environment when the question of form ceased to be a vital topic. The attention was focused on the content of artworks. The ostentatious elated mood of works of art hid the realities of the time like a screen. It camouflaged serious constraint in artistic statements, offering the only “correct” chartered way forward that made it impossible for any artist to make their own graphic statements. A tangible ideological pressure prompted the artists to abandon their creative originality, and strive for maximum realism. They added cliché images to their works: portraits of ideologists, workers, flags, Soviet symbols, and the like. At the same time, the authors lost their creative identities, and their artworks were deprived of any artistic value.