4. The night Stalin and Churchill divided Europe

‘The night Stalin and Churchill divided Europe’ discusses the important meeting between Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill in Moscow on 9 October 1944, when they agreed a plan for the Balkan region. The diplomatic efforts of the latter stages of World War II are described with the negotiations between the Three Powers — Stalin's Russia, Churchill's Great Britain, and Franklin .D. Roosevelt's United States. FDR and Churchill understood that the needed Soviet victories would come with a price. They never contested the Soviet annexations under the Nazi–Soviet Pact. Nor did Roosevelt ever seriously challenge the personal diplomacy of Churchill and Stalin to divide Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.

Yours, Herman Hupfeld

Amid Casablanca’s many justly celebrated aspects is its soundtrack—the subject of much of this chapter. Surprisingly, Steiner hated the 1931 song “As Time Goes By,” which producer Hal Wallis insisted be featured in the underscoring (Max wanted to pen an original tune for Bogart and Bergman). But Steiner’s consummate professionalism is demonstrated by the ingenious ways he adapted Herman Hupfeld’s melody into one of the movies’ greatest love themes, in a score with many other musical highlights. This chapter also examines the ways in which Steiner’s music became part of Hollywood’s propaganda efforts during World War II, from the controversial, pro-Russia Mission to Moscow (which required the personal approval of Josef Stalin), to the sublime Americana of The Adventures of Mark Twain, one of Steiner’s most underappreciated scores.

Jósef Stalin y los ritos de poder: continuidad e infalibilidad, 1929-1953

El georgiano Jósef Stalin es una de las figuras más estudiadas e influyentes del siglo XX. Sobre él se ha publicado tanto que se hace imposible recopilar todo lo disponible actualmente, y que incluye biografías, libros de historia e incluso novelas (Lourie, 2001). Imposible es también hablar de la historia de Rusia sin mencionarle, omitirle al tratar la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la Guerra Fría; hasta una crónica de la Revolución Rusa quedaría a medio camino sin él. Es en este aspecto que subyace la dificultad de tratar a un personaje ya tan retratado, en que la abundancia de material suele poner trabas al abordaje de este tipo de temas.

Why are Stalin and Google alike? The Russian internet’s representation of Stalin

The aim of this paper is to examine how the image of Josef Stalin is presented on the Russian internet. The main focus of our study will be the macro images and memes published on social media. This article examines how memes were used to articulate an attitude towards Stalin and his time in modern day Russia. The article touches upon three groups of memes: the comparison of Stalin and Putin, Stalin as a victor in the Great Patriotic war and Stalin as a dictator. It is stated that memes are closely connected with the tradition of soviet anecdotes in form and in themes. It is concluded that three groups of memes analyzed are the new ways to express the political satire. The most direct is the first one, yet the last one is the most striking.

The Hungry Steppe

This book examines the Kazakh famine of 1930-33, one of the most heinous and poorly understood crimes of the Stalinist regime. As part of a radical social engineering scheme, Josef Stalin sought to settle the Kazakh nomads and force them into collective farms. More than 1.5 million people perished as a result, a quarter of Soviet Kazakhstan’s population, and the crisis transformed a territory the size of continental Europe. Drawing upon a wide range of sources in Russian and in Kazakh, the book brings this largely unknown story to light, revealing its devastating consequences for Kazakh society. It finds that through the most violent means the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan and forged a new Kazakh national identity. But the nature of this transformation was uneven. Neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves became integrated into the Soviet system in precisely the ways that Moscow had originally hoped. Seen from the angle of the Soviet east, a region that has not received as much scholarly attention as the Soviet Union’s west, the Stalinist regime and the disastrous results of its policies appear in a new light.

O Levante da Cortina de Ferro

No verão de 1957 a União Soviética recebeu mais de 30 mil jovens do mundo todo reunidos para o Sexto Festival Mundial da Juventude em Moscou. Os soviéticos se apresentavam para o mundo de uma nova forma, na tentativa de mostrar um socialismo renovado e muito mais humano, antagonizando com os anos de Josef Stalin no poder. Moscou não era uma capital comunista sombria e atrasada, mas uma cidade moderna e colorida. Durante o festival, todos os cinemas, circos, exposições, eventos esportivos e transportes públicos foram abertos ao público. Os partidos comunistas em todo o mundo foram instruídos a enviar tantos jovens não-comunistas quanto possível, a ideia é que todos poderiam participar independente das convicções políticas e religiosas. Os tradicionais símbolos da foice e do martelo e as faces de Stalin e Mao Tsé-Tung deram lugar à pomba branca de Pablo Picasso sob o lema “por paz e amizade”. Ainda em Moscou, criaram a Rádio Festival que transmitiu sua programação em espanhol e com diversas músicas latinas, o evento era todo voltado aos jovens do chamado Terceiro Mundo