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.
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.
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.
Maya Plisetskaya
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300088571
- eISBN:
- 9780300130713
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300088571.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Maya Plisetskaya, one of the world's foremost dancers, rose to become a prima ballerina of Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet after an early life filled with tragedy and loss. In this memoir, Plisetskaya ...
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Maya Plisetskaya, one of the world's foremost dancers, rose to become a prima ballerina of Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet after an early life filled with tragedy and loss. In this memoir, Plisetskaya reflects on her personal and professional odyssey, presenting a unique view of the life of a Soviet artist during the troubled period from the late 1930s to the 1990s. Plisetskaya recounts the execution of her father in the Great Terror and her mother's exile to the Gulag. She describes her admission to the Bolshoi in 1943, the roles she performed there, and the endless petty harassments she endured, from both envious colleagues and Party officials. Refused permission for six years to tour with the company, Plisetskaya eventually performed all over the world, working with such noted choreographers as Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart. She recounts the tumultuous events she lived through and the fascinating people she met—among them the legendary ballet teacher Agrippina Vaganova, George Balanchine, Frank Sinatra, Rudolf Nureyev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. She also provides fascinating details about testy cocktail-party encounters with Nikita Khrushchev, tours abroad when her meager per diem allowance brought her close to starvation, and KGB plots to capitalize on her friendship with Robert Kennedy.Less
Maya Plisetskaya, one of the world's foremost dancers, rose to become a prima ballerina of Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet after an early life filled with tragedy and loss. In this memoir, Plisetskaya reflects on her personal and professional odyssey, presenting a unique view of the life of a Soviet artist during the troubled period from the late 1930s to the 1990s. Plisetskaya recounts the execution of her father in the Great Terror and her mother's exile to the Gulag. She describes her admission to the Bolshoi in 1943, the roles she performed there, and the endless petty harassments she endured, from both envious colleagues and Party officials. Refused permission for six years to tour with the company, Plisetskaya eventually performed all over the world, working with such noted choreographers as Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart. She recounts the tumultuous events she lived through and the fascinating people she met—among them the legendary ballet teacher Agrippina Vaganova, George Balanchine, Frank Sinatra, Rudolf Nureyev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. She also provides fascinating details about testy cocktail-party encounters with Nikita Khrushchev, tours abroad when her meager per diem allowance brought her close to starvation, and KGB plots to capitalize on her friendship with Robert Kennedy.
Simon Bainbridge
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198187585
- eISBN:
- 9780191718922
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187585.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses poetry, war, and gender in Wordsworth's political sonnets. Wordsworth's political sonnets of 1802-1803 were part of the huge outpouring of verse produced to unite, inspire, and ...
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This chapter discusses poetry, war, and gender in Wordsworth's political sonnets. Wordsworth's political sonnets of 1802-1803 were part of the huge outpouring of verse produced to unite, inspire, and animate the nation during the invasion scares if 1797-1798 and 1802-1805, the period that has been named ‘the Great Terror.’ This vast body of verse played an important role in the wartime forging of the British nation, both mediating the war to the British public and providing a means of patriotic expression. If poetry shaped understandings of the war in these years, the war in turn shaped poetry, limiting the kinds of writing that could be produced in such an atmosphere of national crisis. The chapter also details one example of poetic construction of the manly nation and its links to the remasculinisation of poetry, Wordworth's political sonnets.Less
This chapter discusses poetry, war, and gender in Wordsworth's political sonnets. Wordsworth's political sonnets of 1802-1803 were part of the huge outpouring of verse produced to unite, inspire, and animate the nation during the invasion scares if 1797-1798 and 1802-1805, the period that has been named ‘the Great Terror.’ This vast body of verse played an important role in the wartime forging of the British nation, both mediating the war to the British public and providing a means of patriotic expression. If poetry shaped understandings of the war in these years, the war in turn shaped poetry, limiting the kinds of writing that could be produced in such an atmosphere of national crisis. The chapter also details one example of poetic construction of the manly nation and its links to the remasculinisation of poetry, Wordworth's political sonnets.
Yuri M. Zhukov
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199378296
- eISBN:
- 9780199378319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199378296.003.0018
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, International
This chapter explores how logistical costs shape the quantity and quality of violence against civilians. I distinguish between two types of supply systems: a reliance on local resources obtained from ...
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This chapter explores how logistical costs shape the quantity and quality of violence against civilians. I distinguish between two types of supply systems: a reliance on local resources obtained from within a conflict zone, and external resources shipped from outside. All else equal, the intensity of violence against civilians should be greater where external resources are available at relatively low cost. As the costs of obtaining external resources rise—due to poor infrastructure or sabotage—violence against civilians should decline. I evaluate the empirical evidence for these claims using disaggregated data on fifty-eight low-intensity conflicts since 1997 in African and several other states, archival data on Stalin’s Great Terror, and killings of civilians in Belarus by Nazi Germany in World War II.Less
This chapter explores how logistical costs shape the quantity and quality of violence against civilians. I distinguish between two types of supply systems: a reliance on local resources obtained from within a conflict zone, and external resources shipped from outside. All else equal, the intensity of violence against civilians should be greater where external resources are available at relatively low cost. As the costs of obtaining external resources rise—due to poor infrastructure or sabotage—violence against civilians should decline. I evaluate the empirical evidence for these claims using disaggregated data on fifty-eight low-intensity conflicts since 1997 in African and several other states, archival data on Stalin’s Great Terror, and killings of civilians in Belarus by Nazi Germany in World War II.
