Soviet History

In the spring of 1944, the Yiddish poet and partisan Avrom Sutzkever was airlifted into the unoccupied Soviet Union. With him he brought more than new information about the Holocaust. He brought a distinct approach to witnessing, one that summoned Soviet Jews, and refugees especially, to tell him their stories in response. Sutzkever’s testimony differed from other important testimonial publications that appeared in
the Soviet media at the time. In the latter, we find a stylistic and conceptual separation between the voice of Jewish victim and Jewish advocate, observer and interpreter of catastrophe. By contrast, Sutzkever’s work, the epic poem “Kol nidre” in particular, emphasizes dialogue and reciprocity among different witness perspectives. His writing also
ascribes dignity and poetic beauty to the voice of the Jewish victim from Poland-Lithuania. In this essay, these observations about Sutzkever’s writing are set in conversation with
epistolary responses to the author from Soviet Jewish refugees.

The Soviet historian and philosopher of science Boris Hessen (English spelling also Gessen) is well known for the paper “On the Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia” he gave in 1931 to the Second International Congress of the History of Science in London. Its focus on the socio-economic aspects of the development of science – later called “externalism”– was regarded as groundbreaking. We present here an English translation of a lecture he gave in Moscow in April 1936, recently discovered in Russian archives, and believed to be one of his last works. He was arrested in August that year, admitting to “participation in counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activity” and “animosity toward Comrade Stalin”.  He was subject to torture and eventually executed in December, after denying “creating a terrorist cell at Moscow State University”. The lecture shows that despite being under enormous psychological pressure he coninued working on the history of physics but also returned to the philosophical questions of his earlier writings. We give a brief introduction to the lecture, attempting to place it in its context, and linking to his earlier work on the philosophy of physics from a Marxist standpoint which we have previously translated into English.

L’intento di questo lavoro è presentare un quadro che sia il più completo possibile nell’analizzare il percorso dell’Unione delle Repubbliche Socialiste Sovietiche dalla sua nascita, nel 1922, fino al suo crollo, nel 1991 e, successivamente, la delicata fase di transizione russa dal comunismo all’economia di mercato, cercando di mettere in luce i problemi incontrati dal Paese nell’instaurare la democrazia. L'ultima parte analizza la figura della Banca Europea per la Ricostruzione e lo Sviluppo ed il suo ruolo specifico nella delicata fase di transizione economica della Russia.

This study examines the role of political factors in attitudes toward World War II in contemporary Ukraine. The question under examination is which factors determine public views of the principal warring sides and their leaders in Ukraine. This paper uses a representative national survey specifically designed for this research project and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2012. It analyzes the roles of regionalism, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, age, and sex in attitudes toward the Red Army, Soviet partisans, the German Army (Wehrmacht), and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during the war, as well as toward the wartime leaders of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the UPA. The analysis of the survey data shows that regional values, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, and age have significant effects on views of the Soviet Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the war and attitudes toward the wartime activities of Joseph Stalin and Roman Shukhevych. Public perceptions of the German Army and Adolf Hitler in Ukraine do not vary much across regions, political parties, and ethnic, language, age, and sex groups.

O presente artigo, baseado nos recentes avanços historiográficos, pretende analisar sinteticamente os aspectos mais significativos de um episódio sombrio da história europeia. Assim, serão abordadas as transformações sócio-económicas desencadeadas no final dos anos 1920, decorrentes do triunfo de Estaline e dos seus partidários na luta pelo poder, o processo de decisão política, a sequência dos acontecimentos e o nível de responsabilidade do poder central. Por outro lado, será apresentada uma interpretação global deste crime de massas e uma reconstituição do longo e difícil processo de revelação e de reconhecimento.

"The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist" is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader Stepan Bandera and the first in-depth study of his political cult. In this fascinating book, Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe illuminates the life of a mythologized personality and scrutinizes the history of the most violent twentieth-century Ukrainian nationalist movement: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Elucidating the circumstances in which Bandera and his movement emerged and functioned, Rossolinski-Liebe explains how fascism and racism impacted on Ukrainian revolutionary and genocidal nationalism. The book shows why Bandera and his followers failed—despite their ideological similarity to the Croatian Ustaša and the Slovak Hlinka Party—to establish a collaborationist state under the auspices of Nazi Germany and examines the involvement of the Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust and other atrocities during and after the Second World War. The author brings to light some of the darkest elements of modern Ukrainian history and demonstrates its complexity, paying special attention to the Soviet terror in Ukraine and the entanglement between Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Russian, German, and Soviet history. The monograph also charts the creation and growth of the Bandera cult before the Second World War, its vivid revivals during the Cold War among the Ukrainian diaspora, and in Bandera's native eastern Galicia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Wayne Vucinic Book Prize 2007, "for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences." 

Endorsement by Slavoj Zizek:

"Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More immediately seduced me by its very title with a profound philosophical implication that eternity is a historical category--things can be eternal for some time. The same spirit of paradox runs through the entire book--it renders in wonderful details the gradual disintegration of the Soviet system from within its ideological and cultural space, making visible all the hypocrisy and misery of this process. I consider Yurchak's book by far the best work about the late epoch of the Soviet Union--it is not just history, but a pleasure to read, a true work of art." (Slavoj Zizek, author of In Defense of Lost Causes)

Abstract:

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.

Nel paese ove sarebbe in costruzione l'economia socialista non solo dunque esistono i rubli, coi quali il salario dei lavoratori viene pagato, ma esiste anche il risparmio sul salario, il deposito di esso nelle casse statali o nelle banche, la possibilità di investire l'accumulato risparmio in titoli fruttifero, da cui ogni sei mesi la salda mano dell'operaio, come quella delle vecchie signore che si affollano nei saloni delle banche, taglierà esitante la "cedola" dell'interesse, il borghesissimo "coupon". E con tutto ciò esiste del pari il pieno diritto di negoziare i titoli, venderli e comprarli, accumulare in quantità illimitata, e passare da stakhanovista a fannullonissimo "rentier".

Im Zentrum des Beitrages steht die Analyse der Kategorie des „Vertrauens der Partei“ in der Etablierung der sowjetischen Subjektivitäten im frühen Sowjetrussland. Basierend auf den verschiedenen Typen von Bittschriften der BürgerInnen an die Partei- und Staatsautoritäten werden die Techniken des autobiographischen Schreibens in die Prozesse der bolschewistischen Persönlichkeits-, Staats- und Gesellschaftsbildung eingebettet. Der Autor zeigt, wie das „Vertrauen der Partei“ moralisiert und materialisiert, personifiziert und beglaubigt, visualisiert und geschlechtsspezifisch definiert wurde. Insbesondere während des Großen Terrors wurde es zum alltäglichen Kampfbegriff, um über das Leben und den Tod einer Person zu entscheiden.

Данный выпуск журнала создан по итогам двух исследовательско-образовательных программ «Лаборатория городских исследований», проведенных в городе Ош и городе Алматы в апреле-мае 2017 г. В рамках Лаборатории участники познакомились с современными подходами изучения городской среды, художественными исследовательскими практиками и реализовали свои проекты, результаты которых вошли в новый
выпуск. Программа реализовывалась культурной организацией Лабораторией си (Бишкек).

Журнал выпускаемый Лабораторией си – это периодический электронный журнал о культуре и искусстве, посвященный художественным исследованиям и осмыслению
социально-культурных процессов.

В статье рассмотрены точки зрения на проблему восприятия населением РСФСР товарного дефицита в 1950-е—1980-е гг., сформулированные в современной отечественной историографии. Структурно выделены различные исследовательские ракурсы анализа заявленной темы: от рассмотрения протестных настроений граждан, являющихся реакцией на перебои в снабжении товарами, до выявления индифферентного отношения населения к проблемам дефицита, и даже восприятия экономических трудностей как привычных, являющихся частью обыденной повседневности. Проведен критический анализ предложенных точек зрения, позволивший выделить наиболее аргументированные позиции.

This is the text of a presentation delivered at the New Challenges, New Ideas and New Requirements Conference held in Baku, Azerbaijan September 28-30, 2017. In it, I explore British Library efforts to account for early 20th century Azeri-language publications in a manner that is reflects the needs of computer-based cataloguing as well as the diverse expectations of a global readership.

Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Shver, the well-known Vyborg architect who played a key part in restoring Alvar Aalto’s library following the war, died on February 9th, 2015. Shver came to Vyborg in 1957 and was for a long time head of the Vyborg branch of Lengrazhdanproekt, the Leningrad Civil Construction Institute. He loved Vyborg and was one of its most respected residents. They say that it is not place which embellishes man, but
man which embellishes place. As an architect and citizen, Aleksandr Shver did everything he could to ensure that his ‘place’ preserved its unique beauty. Here Project Baltia publishes part of a conversation with the architect from November of 2014.

In 1963, after studying at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad, Dmitry Fridlyand arrived in Vyborg to take up a job assigned him by the state [as was the practice at the time]. He stayed there for many years [instead of the usual three], becoming the head of the 2nd workshop at the Vyborg branch of Lengrazhdanproekt. Below, Project Baltia talks to Fridlyand, who now lives in Israel, about what it was like to be a practising architect in the old
and new parts of the city in Soviet times.

'Edwin Bacon's first hand access to the archives has enabled him not only to unravel many of the mysteries of population figures but also conditions in the camps and the contribution of the labour camp system to the Soviet war economy...a work of singular importance and harrowing illumination.' John Erikson The Times Higher Education Supplement
'Bacon's contribution is of great value...almost unique as a serious contribution to the sounding and measuring of the abysses of Stalinist falsification and terror.' Robert Conquest, The Times Literary Supplement
The Gulag at War reveals for the first time official documents kept in the archives of the Soviet forced labour system. An assessment of previous western and Russian studies of the Gulag is followed by a description of its origins. The bulk of the book then concentrates on the labour camps during the Second World War years. New information is revealed regarding prisoner numbers, living conditions, the organisation of forced labour, economic production, and rebellion in the camps.

The article deals with the public perception of the 1965 economic reform project in the Urals. This analysis focuses on diverse evaluative judgements generated by different categories of the Ural population and the overall dynamics of the public opinion on this subject. The analysis covers a wide range of sources: documents of the Party bodies, minutes of factory meetings, and letters of Ural inhabitants in the period between 1965 and 1968. Our analysis has shown that initially the general public response to the reform was enthusiastic. The reform was perceived as a milestone event that drew the demarcation line between the new and old managerial practices. In the subsequent years of 1966-1968, however, Ural inhabitants faced problems caused by the implementation of the reform such as difficulties in dealing with subcontractors and limitations imposed on the economic independence of enterprises. These downsides of the reform contrasted with the population’s initial expectations and were subject to justified criticism.

В статье рассматриваются оценочные суждения различных категорий уральского социума относительно проекта хозяйственной реформы 1965 г. Выявлена динамика взглядов уральцев по вопросу практической реализации данной реформы. Предпринятый анализ источников (документов партийных органов, материалов собраний и совещаний на предприятиях, писем уральцев периода 1965-1968 гг.) позволил прийти к выводу, что в 1965 г. проект реформы был принят уральцами с воодушевлением. Реформа воспринималась как важное, рубежное событие, четко разграничивающее прошлые и будущие практики хозяйствования. В течение последующих лет (1966-1968) уральцами фиксировались трудности в реализации реформы: сложности взаимодействия со смежниками, ограниченная хозяйственная самостоятельность предприятий. Выявленные недостатки реформы противоречили изначальным ожиданиям уральцев о проекте хозяйственных преобразований, вызывая справедливые замечания.

Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina und Edison Denisov
zählten seit den 1960er Jahren in der Sowjetunion und
im Westen zu den namhaftesten Komponisten.
Sie galten als „Erben Šostakovčs“und schufen für viele
Sowjetbürger aufregende Klänge, die dem oftmals
widersprüchlichen und überfordernden Leben im
Spätsozialismus Sinn und Bedeutung gaben. Die drei
Komponisten prägten die musikalische Welt der
Sowjetunion und wurden deshalb schon bald unter dem
Namen „Moskauer Trojka“ bekannt. Dieses Buch zeigt,
dass Komponisten, Musiker und ihre Hörer ein wichtiger
Teil der sowjetischen Gesellschaft waren, die im
ausgehenden 20. Jahrhundert einen hyper- und
schließlich instabilen Zustand annahm.

Представленные в книге очерки посвящены выяснению истории постижения человеческого разнообразия СССР, в ходе которого оно анализировалось, формулировались идеи, формировались на их основе представления и политические символы, разделявшиеся исследователями, а затем политиками, публицистами, посредством которых СССР репрезентировался его гражданам и внешнему миру.

This is a second part of my essay which was published last summer. This first Bolkhovitinov’s trip to the United States in 1968 changed completely not only his skeptical perception of the “country which killed its best politicians like Kennedy,” but also his understanding of the nature of the “historian’s craft” and “methodology of collecting and analyzing the historical sources.”