Michael David-Fox
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199794577
- eISBN:
- 9780199932245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794577.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter traces Soviet cultural diplomacy through three radically divergent periods: the mid-1930s height of the Popular Front, the Great Terror and show trials from 1936–38, and the Nazi-Soviet ...
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This chapter traces Soviet cultural diplomacy through three radically divergent periods: the mid-1930s height of the Popular Front, the Great Terror and show trials from 1936–38, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939–41. Although the Soviet system for receiving foreigners that had emerged in the 1920s was not fundamentally reworked in the 1930s, prewar Stalinism was marked by sea-shifts in ideology and attitudes toward the outside world. The first was the rise of a “superiority complex,” in which virtually everything Soviet was deemed the best in the world, at least officially. The second was a decisive internal Soviet tilt, underway already at the height of European anti-fascism in the mid-1930s, away from the optimistic Soviet quest to engage and dominate Western cultural politics in favor of “vigilance,” ideological xenophobia, and the hunt for hidden enemies. During the Great Terror, international contacts that had previously brought prestige to Soviet cultural mediators suddenly became the grounds for mass physical annihilation as VOKS and Soviet international organizations were decimated; during the Pact period of Soviet cultural diplomacy, reduced to a shadow of its former self, became largely a matter of sending symbolic signals to the Nazis.Less
This chapter traces Soviet cultural diplomacy through three radically divergent periods: the mid-1930s height of the Popular Front, the Great Terror and show trials from 1936–38, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939–41. Although the Soviet system for receiving foreigners that had emerged in the 1920s was not fundamentally reworked in the 1930s, prewar Stalinism was marked by sea-shifts in ideology and attitudes toward the outside world. The first was the rise of a “superiority complex,” in which virtually everything Soviet was deemed the best in the world, at least officially. The second was a decisive internal Soviet tilt, underway already at the height of European anti-fascism in the mid-1930s, away from the optimistic Soviet quest to engage and dominate Western cultural politics in favor of “vigilance,” ideological xenophobia, and the hunt for hidden enemies. During the Great Terror, international contacts that had previously brought prestige to Soviet cultural mediators suddenly became the grounds for mass physical annihilation as VOKS and Soviet international organizations were decimated; during the Pact period of Soviet cultural diplomacy, reduced to a shadow of its former self, became largely a matter of sending symbolic signals to the Nazis.
Sergei Prozorov
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474410526
- eISBN:
- 9781474418744
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410526.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Chapter 4 addresses the aftermath of the Great Break known as the period of High Stalinism. This period was marked by the tempering of the apocalyptic pace of the Great Break, which we analyse in ...
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Chapter 4 addresses the aftermath of the Great Break known as the period of High Stalinism. This period was marked by the tempering of the apocalyptic pace of the Great Break, which we analyse in terms of the three negative inflections of its rationality. Firstly, the period was marked by a series of policy reversals that have come to be known as the Great Retreat: the rehabilitation of pre-revolutionary Russian history, the shift towards a pro-natalist family policy, the reaffirmation of hierarchy and discipline in schools and factories, the revival of conspicuous consumption, etc. Secondly, the aftermath of the Great Break was marked by the introduction of the official artistic canon, known as socialist realism, which authorised the representation of Soviet reality ‘in its revolutionary development’, as if socialism were already attained. Finally, the mid-1930s were the period of the gradual unleashing of the Great Terror that peaked in 1937-1938. While the violence of the Great Break was subordinated to the positive biopolitical project of constructing socialism, the Terror of the 1930s had no positive content: rather than exemplify the forcing of ideal into the real, the compromise with it or its derealization, the Terror was pure negation of the real and marked the transformation of biopolitics into thanatopolitics.Less
Chapter 4 addresses the aftermath of the Great Break known as the period of High Stalinism. This period was marked by the tempering of the apocalyptic pace of the Great Break, which we analyse in terms of the three negative inflections of its rationality. Firstly, the period was marked by a series of policy reversals that have come to be known as the Great Retreat: the rehabilitation of pre-revolutionary Russian history, the shift towards a pro-natalist family policy, the reaffirmation of hierarchy and discipline in schools and factories, the revival of conspicuous consumption, etc. Secondly, the aftermath of the Great Break was marked by the introduction of the official artistic canon, known as socialist realism, which authorised the representation of Soviet reality ‘in its revolutionary development’, as if socialism were already attained. Finally, the mid-1930s were the period of the gradual unleashing of the Great Terror that peaked in 1937-1938. While the violence of the Great Break was subordinated to the positive biopolitical project of constructing socialism, the Terror of the 1930s had no positive content: rather than exemplify the forcing of ideal into the real, the compromise with it or its derealization, the Terror was pure negation of the real and marked the transformation of biopolitics into thanatopolitics.
Viacheslav Bitiutckii
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097560
- eISBN:
- 9781526104441
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097560.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
This paper discusses the search for, exhumation and identification of the remains of victims of mass political repression during the Stalinist Great Terror (1937-1938) in the USSR, concentrating on ...
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This paper discusses the search for, exhumation and identification of the remains of victims of mass political repression during the Stalinist Great Terror (1937-1938) in the USSR, concentrating on those who were subjected to the severest form of repression, that is, those who were shot following sentencing during judicial or extrajudicial processes. Even if historians now agree on the number of victims of Stalin's Great Terror (1937-1938) during which nearly 800,000 people were executed by gunshot, we still know little about the ultimate course these victims took as the full trial procedures, executions and burials were marked with the seal of state secrets. By restoring the history of exhumations undertaken from 1989 - quite exceptionally for Russia - in the Voronezh region 500 kilometres south of Moscow, and in focussing more specifically on the discovery of a site where 62 graves were discovered containing the remains of 2,889 individuals, this text lifts the veil on the Soviet logistics of the production of mass death. It sheds light on the human and material resources mobilized by the NKVD for these executions and illegal burials, utilising the repetitive tasks of dozens of individuals.Less
This paper discusses the search for, exhumation and identification of the remains of victims of mass political repression during the Stalinist Great Terror (1937-1938) in the USSR, concentrating on those who were subjected to the severest form of repression, that is, those who were shot following sentencing during judicial or extrajudicial processes. Even if historians now agree on the number of victims of Stalin's Great Terror (1937-1938) during which nearly 800,000 people were executed by gunshot, we still know little about the ultimate course these victims took as the full trial procedures, executions and burials were marked with the seal of state secrets. By restoring the history of exhumations undertaken from 1989 - quite exceptionally for Russia - in the Voronezh region 500 kilometres south of Moscow, and in focussing more specifically on the discovery of a site where 62 graves were discovered containing the remains of 2,889 individuals, this text lifts the veil on the Soviet logistics of the production of mass death. It sheds light on the human and material resources mobilized by the NKVD for these executions and illegal burials, utilising the repetitive tasks of dozens of individuals.
David Brandenberger
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199655663
- eISBN:
- 9780191757518
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199655663.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Political History, Social History
Did the Great Terror contribute to party ideology? Between the late 1920s and early 1930s, Soviet ideology underwent a major reorientation as the previous decade's focus on anonymous social forces ...
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Did the Great Terror contribute to party ideology? Between the late 1920s and early 1930s, Soviet ideology underwent a major reorientation as the previous decade's focus on anonymous social forces and Marxist–Leninist materialism was supplanted by a new, more animated line, populated by an array of concrete historical personalities. Heroes from the ranks of the party, the Red Army, industry, and agriculture came to personify Soviet socialism. A successful approach to popular mobilization, it was subsequently hamstrung by the purge of members of the new Soviet Olympus between 1936 and 1938. Paralysis within the Soviet ideological establishment was so complete that Stalin was forced to reorient ideology back to anonymous schematicism—‘theory,’ as he called it—something epitomized by the notoriously dense and plodding Short Course, which emerged in 1938.Less
Did the Great Terror contribute to party ideology? Between the late 1920s and early 1930s, Soviet ideology underwent a major reorientation as the previous decade's focus on anonymous social forces and Marxist–Leninist materialism was supplanted by a new, more animated line, populated by an array of concrete historical personalities. Heroes from the ranks of the party, the Red Army, industry, and agriculture came to personify Soviet socialism. A successful approach to popular mobilization, it was subsequently hamstrung by the purge of members of the new Soviet Olympus between 1936 and 1938. Paralysis within the Soviet ideological establishment was so complete that Stalin was forced to reorient ideology back to anonymous schematicism—‘theory,’ as he called it—something epitomized by the notoriously dense and plodding Short Course, which emerged in 1938.
W. D. Edmonds
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198227496
- eISBN:
- 9780191678714
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198227496.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Although much has been written about Lyon during the Great Terror of 1793–1794, this is the first study of the four turbulent years which left France's second city marked out for savage repression by ...
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Although much has been written about Lyon during the Great Terror of 1793–1794, this is the first study of the four turbulent years which left France's second city marked out for savage repression by the Jacobin Republic. Taking account of recent research, the book emphasizes the interaction of social tensions with political rivalries in the succession of crises which set Lyon on a collision course with the national government. Deep social divisions had a close bearing on the two most notable features of the city's revolutionary history: the precocious emergence of a popular democratic movement, and the violent radicalism of the Lyonnais Jacobins. Through close study of these factors, the book contributes to the history of Jacobinism and political participation during the first European democratic revolution. It also throws light on Lyon's part in the ‘federalist’ revolt against Jacobinism in 1793 and on the causes of the Great Terror. A postscript surveys the impact of the Terror on the defeated city.Less
Although much has been written about Lyon during the Great Terror of 1793–1794, this is the first study of the four turbulent years which left France's second city marked out for savage repression by the Jacobin Republic. Taking account of recent research, the book emphasizes the interaction of social tensions with political rivalries in the succession of crises which set Lyon on a collision course with the national government. Deep social divisions had a close bearing on the two most notable features of the city's revolutionary history: the precocious emergence of a popular democratic movement, and the violent radicalism of the Lyonnais Jacobins. Through close study of these factors, the book contributes to the history of Jacobinism and political participation during the first European democratic revolution. It also throws light on Lyon's part in the ‘federalist’ revolt against Jacobinism in 1793 and on the causes of the Great Terror. A postscript surveys the impact of the Terror on the defeated city.
Andrew Kahn, Mark Lipovetsky, Irina Reyfman, and Stephanie Sandler
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199663941
- eISBN:
- 9780191770463
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199663941.003.0037
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The chapter considers how, beginning with the Revolution and continuing across the centry, new narrative forms in prose and poetry fashion a discourse of national destiny. As narratives conceptualize ...
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The chapter considers how, beginning with the Revolution and continuing across the centry, new narrative forms in prose and poetry fashion a discourse of national destiny. As narratives conceptualize historical change and convey the meanings of catastrophe, they develop new plotlines, metaphoric systems and mythological visions. The chapter argues that Russian literature on the Great Terror, collectivization, and Gulag achieves a focus on historical and personal trauma comparable to Holocaust literature. Soviet narratives of World War II also form an important trend from the 1940s through twenty-first century, serving simultaneously as the source of social criticism and the sustained attempt to redefine national identity.Less
The chapter considers how, beginning with the Revolution and continuing across the centry, new narrative forms in prose and poetry fashion a discourse of national destiny. As narratives conceptualize historical change and convey the meanings of catastrophe, they develop new plotlines, metaphoric systems and mythological visions. The chapter argues that Russian literature on the Great Terror, collectivization, and Gulag achieves a focus on historical and personal trauma comparable to Holocaust literature. Soviet narratives of World War II also form an important trend from the 1940s through twenty-first century, serving simultaneously as the source of social criticism and the sustained attempt to redefine national identity.
Alan Barenberg
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300179446
- eISBN:
- 9780300206821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300179446.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This chapter examines the growth of the Vorkuta camp complex from the first discovery of coal in the summer of 1930 until 1942, when the nominal completion of a rail line linking Vorkuta to Moscow ...
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This chapter examines the growth of the Vorkuta camp complex from the first discovery of coal in the summer of 1930 until 1942, when the nominal completion of a rail line linking Vorkuta to Moscow made it an important part of the Soviet home front in the Second World War. It examines how Vorkuta was transformed over the course of the 1930s from a project of internal colonization into a camp for the Soviet Union's most dangerous prisoners. By the beginning of the war, Vorkutlag had become one of the Soviet Union's largest camp complexes, yet was threatened by mass starvation.Less
This chapter examines the growth of the Vorkuta camp complex from the first discovery of coal in the summer of 1930 until 1942, when the nominal completion of a rail line linking Vorkuta to Moscow made it an important part of the Soviet home front in the Second World War. It examines how Vorkuta was transformed over the course of the 1930s from a project of internal colonization into a camp for the Soviet Union's most dangerous prisoners. By the beginning of the war, Vorkutlag had become one of the Soviet Union's largest camp complexes, yet was threatened by mass starvation.
Inna Klause
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780197266151
- eISBN:
- 9780191860034
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266151.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
It has generally been supposed that the repressions of the Stalinist period affected musicians and composers to a far lesser extent that other artists. The researches carried out by the author of the ...
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It has generally been supposed that the repressions of the Stalinist period affected musicians and composers to a far lesser extent that other artists. The researches carried out by the author of the present chapter indicate that this assumption is not altogether tenable. The reminiscences of former prisoners, the archival holdings of the Memorial organisation and a variety of other sources allude to numerous names of musicians who were either shot or who served sentences in labour camps between the 1920s and 1950s. The chapter focuses in particular on composers, analysing the grounds for their arrest and the conditions that they experienced in the camps.Less
It has generally been supposed that the repressions of the Stalinist period affected musicians and composers to a far lesser extent that other artists. The researches carried out by the author of the present chapter indicate that this assumption is not altogether tenable. The reminiscences of former prisoners, the archival holdings of the Memorial organisation and a variety of other sources allude to numerous names of musicians who were either shot or who served sentences in labour camps between the 1920s and 1950s. The chapter focuses in particular on composers, analysing the grounds for their arrest and the conditions that they experienced in the camps.
Seth Bernstein
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501709883
- eISBN:
- 9781501709388
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501709883.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
During the Great Terror, youth faced suspicion not only for their connections with supposed enemies of the people but because of alleged acts of degeneracy like drinking. Thousands of young people ...
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During the Great Terror, youth faced suspicion not only for their connections with supposed enemies of the people but because of alleged acts of degeneracy like drinking. Thousands of young people found themselves accused of hooliganism, a malleable crime that encompassed various forms of social disorder. In the Komsomol, the arrest of youth leaders as Trotskyist degenerates impressed upon young communists that their social behavior was part of their political identity. The older cohort of Komsomol members, the pererostki, also fell under suspicion for subscribing to the old norms of youth activism. Among youth, the Great Terror became a moral panic that aimed to shape young people’s behaviour.Less
During the Great Terror, youth faced suspicion not only for their connections with supposed enemies of the people but because of alleged acts of degeneracy like drinking. Thousands of young people found themselves accused of hooliganism, a malleable crime that encompassed various forms of social disorder. In the Komsomol, the arrest of youth leaders as Trotskyist degenerates impressed upon young communists that their social behavior was part of their political identity. The older cohort of Komsomol members, the pererostki, also fell under suspicion for subscribing to the old norms of youth activism. Among youth, the Great Terror became a moral panic that aimed to shape young people’s behaviour.
Jon K. Chang
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824856786
- eISBN:
- 9780824872205
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824856786.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Chapter 6 covers the period 1931–1937. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. This greatly increased Soviet fears of invasion and espionage being carried out in the Russian Far East. At the same time, ...
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Chapter 6 covers the period 1931–1937. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. This greatly increased Soviet fears of invasion and espionage being carried out in the Russian Far East. At the same time, Soviet Koreans were great in education and higher education. By the early 1930s, there were three institutes of higher education for Koreans and other institutes with Korean “sections” such as in Khabarovsk. In 1937, Raisa Nigai (who was interviewed) withdrew from the Nikolsk Ussuriisk Teacher’s College in anticipation of the deportation of Koreans. Nikolai Nigai, an NKVD officer began his work in the first phase of the deportation which consisted of arresting and sentencing some 2000 of the Soviet Korean elites and intellectuals. Afanasii A. Kim, the leader of the Soviet Koreans had been arrested earlier on January 1936. On 21 August 1937, the first resolution for the deportation of the Koreans was signed by Stalin and Molotov. Their deportation was part of the Great Terror.Less
Chapter 6 covers the period 1931–1937. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. This greatly increased Soviet fears of invasion and espionage being carried out in the Russian Far East. At the same time, Soviet Koreans were great in education and higher education. By the early 1930s, there were three institutes of higher education for Koreans and other institutes with Korean “sections” such as in Khabarovsk. In 1937, Raisa Nigai (who was interviewed) withdrew from the Nikolsk Ussuriisk Teacher’s College in anticipation of the deportation of Koreans. Nikolai Nigai, an NKVD officer began his work in the first phase of the deportation which consisted of arresting and sentencing some 2000 of the Soviet Korean elites and intellectuals. Afanasii A. Kim, the leader of the Soviet Koreans had been arrested earlier on January 1936. On 21 August 1937, the first resolution for the deportation of the Koreans was signed by Stalin and Molotov. Their deportation was part of the Great Terror.
