On horror and care: Francesca Archibugi’s adaptation of Elsa Morante’s La Storia

Soviet culture during the Great Patriotic War and the postwar period is conventionally divided into two periods: Soviet culture during the war years 1941-1945; and Soviet culture in the postwar period 1946-1950s. Of course, these stages of the evolution of Soviet culture differ from each other in many respects, as well as in the most important, that is, in their substantive relation. What suffered during the war during the first stage was either restored or rebuilt after the end of the war. Soviet culture during the Great Patriotic War suffered greatly in material and organizational terms. However, at the same time, the culture of the USSR in the years of the war acquired a great deal spiritually and morally. Previously unprecedented patriotism raised the whole country, the entire multinational Soviet people, to fight against the common worst enemy of all progressive humanity - fascism. Soviet culture reflected this rise in patriotism in music, painting, theater and cinema, on stage, in sculpture and architecture, etc. This time was the heyday of the multinational character of the Soviet people, the time of the epochal upsurge of folk culture, folk art, and the consciousness of the masses of the Soviet people.

ABSTRACTThe key concern of this article is to explore how the history of twentieth‐century violence forces us to reflect on how we interpret the acts of those who find themselves attempting to prevent violence, as mothers have done in relation to their children, in the context of violence and atrocity. A focus on mothers and maternity redirects our analysis to gendered aspects of a history of violence and war that do not concentrate solely on bodily violent acts or physical inflictions upon women—crucial as these remain to histories of violence—but shifts the attention to examining women and violence within another aspect: that of women as active agents negotiating violent contexts. It builds on the considerable scholarship that argues that mothers in war have invariably been represented only as victims or spectators in war, and yet they have also demonstrated agency both individually and collectively. This is significant because to ignore this dimension of scholarly endeavor misses an opportunity to write women into histories of violence in ways that complicate their role in war and make them central to the story. To marginalize mothers in the broader canvas of war and violence, as scholarship often does, is also to narrow our focus of understandings of agency and the negotiation of violence itself. I explore these wider questions by focusing on the cataclysmic events of war, in the first instance in the context of a total war in the early twentieth century, the First World War, and in the second—the Greek Civil War—a civil war that took place in mid‐century. Although these are vastly different conflicts, they both illuminate the decisions of mothers to attempt to prevent further violence in war, especially in relation to their children, and to highlight the contested notion of “responsible motherhood” in war.

BackgroundIt is believed that total reported suicide rates tend to decrease during wartime. However, analysis of suicide rates during recent conflicts suggests a more complex picture, with increases in some age groups and changes in method choice. As few age and gender specific analyses of more distant conflicts have been conducted, it is not clear if these findings reflect a change in the epidemiology of suicide in wartime. Therefore, we examined suicide rates in Scotland before, during and after the Second World War to see if similar features were present.MethodsData on deaths in Scotland recorded as suicide during the period 1931 – 1952, and population estimates for each of these years, were obtained from the General Register Office for Scotland. Using computer spreadsheets, suicide rates by gender, age and method were calculated. Forward stepwise logistic regression was used to assess the effect of gender, war and year on suicide rates using SAS V8.2.ResultsThe all-age suicide rate among both men and women declined during the period studied. However, when this long-term decline is taken into account, the likelihood of suicide during the Second World War was higher than during both the pre-War and post-War periods. Suicide rates among men aged 15–24 years rose during the Second World War, peaking at 148 per million (41 deaths) during 1942 before declining to 39 per million (10 deaths) by 1945, while the rate among men aged 25–34 years reached 199 per million (43 deaths) during 1943 before falling to 66 per million (23 deaths) by 1946. This was accompanied by an increase in male suicides attributable to firearms and explosives during the War years which decreased following its conclusion.ConclusionAll age male and female suicide rates decreased in Scotland during World War II. However, once the general background decrease in suicide rates over the whole period is accounted for, the likelihood of suicide among the entire Scottish population during the Second World War was elevated. The overall decrease in suicide rates concealed large increases in younger male age groups during the War years, and an increase in male suicides recorded as due to the use of firearms. We conclude that the effects of war on younger people, reported in recent conflicts in Central Europe, were also seen in Scotland during the Second World War. The results support the findings of studies of recent conflicts which have found a heterogeneous picture with respect to age specific suicide rates during wartime.

The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Strategy for Victory: The Development of British Tactical Air Power, 1919-1943examines the nature of the inter-Service crisis between the British Army and the RAF over the provision of effective air support for the army in the Second World War. Material for this book is drawn primarily from the rich collection of documents at the National Archives (UK) and other British archives. The author makes a highly original point that Britain's independent RAF was in fact a disguised blessing for the Army and that the air force's independence was in part a key reason why a successful solution to the army's air support problems was found. The analysis traces why the British army went to war in 1939 without adequate air support and how an effective system of support was organized by the RAF. As such, it is the first scholarly survey of the origins and development of British air support doctrine and practice during the early years of the Second World War. The provision of direct air support was of central importance to the success enjoyed by Anglo-American armies during the latter half of the Second World War. First in North Africa, and later in Italy and North-West Europe, American, British and Empire armies fought most if not all of their battles with the knowledge that they enjoyed unassailable air superiority throughout the battle area. This advantage, however, was the product of a long and bitter dispute between the British Army and the Royal Air Force that began at the end of the First World War and continued virtually unabated until it was resolved in late 1942 and early 1943 when the 2nd Tactical Air Force was created. Battlefield experience and, in particular, success in North Africa, combined with the hard work, wisdom and perseverance of Air Marshals Sir Arthur Tedder and Arthur Coningham, the active co-operation of General Bernard Montgomery, and the political authority of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, produced a uniquely British system that afforded the most comprehensive, effective and flexible air support provided by any air force during the war. The book is divided into two equal parts of five chapters. Part one surveys how the British Army went to war in 1939 without adequate air support, and part two explains how an effective system of air support was organized by the middle years of the war. The analysis traces Britain's earliest experience with aircraft in the Great War 1914-1918, the inter-war period of doctrinal development and inter-Service rivalry, and the major campaigns in France and the Middle East during the first half of the Second World War when the weaknesses in Army-RAF co-operation were first exposed and eventually resolved. As such, it is the first scholarly survey of the origin and development of British air support doctrine and practice during the early years of the Second World War.

Rollins, Representation and Reality

The article is devoted to the assessment of the results of the Bolshevik modernization of Russia in the 20-30s of the 20th century in its military-technological, personnel and political aspects on the example of the struggle of Soviet Russia with Nazi Germany in the first years of World War II and the Great Patriotic War. The relevance of the topic is due to the contradictions in the assessments of the Bolshevik transformations of the 20-30s. In historiography and in the public mind, disputes about the role of these transformations for victory in the Second World War and WWII are not abating. This is especially true of the first years of the Second World War, which led the USSR to disaster. This problem was analyzed by an outstanding theoretician, leader of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and a figure of the Russian intellectual emigration V.M. Chernov. As historical sources, the article considers a number of such interesting documents as the letter of V.M. Chernov to I. V. Stalin in 1942 and issues of the emigre magazine “For Freedom!ˮ published in the USA. Using these sources as an example, the position of V.M. Chernov on the successes and failures of the Bolshevik reform of Russia and the related victories and defeats of the Red Army in the early years of the War. It is proved that the failures of the USSR in the first years of the War were the result of a number of political and personnel problems, some of which were caused by the accelerated "assault" nature of the Bolshevik modernization of the 1920s and 1930s.

The article is devoted to everyday life of the school society in the Barnaul during the First World War. The relevance of the topic is determined by the importance of studying people’s behavior in times of crisis caused by the war. The purpose of the work is to study the practice of everyday life of the school community in the Barnaul during the war. The research was carried out on the basis of a socio-cultural approach. The main methods of research are institutional and positional analysis. During the war, various forms of charitable work entered the daily life of students and teachers. This happened under the influence of state and public institutions. The war led to a drop in the standard of living of students’ and teachers’ families. That is why the solution of social issues began to occupy an important place in the daily activities of the heads of educational institutions. The appearance of refugees in Barnaul formed of socially responsible behavior of school chiefs, ordinary teachers and parents of refugee students. As an emerging social practice of military time, one can consider the organization of pre-conscription training of school students. As a conclusion, the author formulates the idea that practices of everyday life in war conditions were determined both by the state policy and by the reaction of the school community to deteriorating living conditions. But not all new phenomena of the social life of the war years were able to gain a foothold in the period under consideration as durable examples of everyday life. An example of this is pre-conscription training. Keywords: World War I, everyday life, school community, charity, refugees, social practices, military-sports Committees

During the Second World War, almost 150,000 church bells from towers all over Europe were melted down to support the Nazi war effort. These bells, taken from the Third Reich itself as well as from the occupied territories, were processed in the great refineries at Hamburg, labelled “the Belsen of Bells” by British observers in the postwar period. The bell confiscation campaign — though effective in providing valuable non-ferrous metals for German armaments production — proved challenging and controversial, not only during the war years, but also in the immediate postwar period.

During the various fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the second world war, culminating in D-Day, VE and VJ Day commemorations, many Americans, with participants from other nations, remembered countrymen who died in the years following Pearl Harbor. Others also looked back nostalgically to the second world war which, according to some observers, was 'the Good War', America's 'finest hour', and 'the most popular war in American history'. The historical profession, having for long ignored the war altogether, is writing increasingly of it as a glorious and, in modern parlance, defining moment in modern American history, shaping a 'postwar era' which lasted up until the 1970s.' In this article I want to attempt some assessment of the war's impact on American society and try to locate it in relation to the pre-war and postwar periods. An increasing volume of scholarship has contributed to a subtle but persistent shift in emphasis in the writing of modern American history. Where once contemporary United States history was seen to begin in the New Deal era with the creation of the modern presidency, the formation of new political alliances, the rise of organized labour, and development of a welfare system, increasingly it is the second world war which is used to mark the emergence of modern America. While the limitations of the New Deal's achievements have been endlessly debated by revisionist historians, the war years are seen in a comparatively more positive light. According to Geoffrey Perrett, the war

The British Royals in Australia

The period of the First World War and interwar years was both a watershed for women and a period of backlash against women’s achievements. This chapter examines the possibilities, paradoxes, and challenges of military women’s lives and activities in the First World War and interwar years. It addresses the service of women physicians, nurses, and women workers with the military and voluntary organizations. The chapter assesses the activities of women in revolutionary, nationalist struggles and civil war beyond the First World War years. It analyzes the roles of women in the military in the interwar years and as veterans of military institutions. In France the Service de sante militaire worked with the Red Cross and Catholic nursing orders prior to the war and so plans were in place to mobilize nurses at the start of the conflict. Keywords:first world war; military; nurses; voluntary organizations; women auxiliaries; women physicians; women’s mobilization

Jeans and their Fashionable Meanings: Revisiting Beverly Gordon's Cultural Conceptual Framework

During the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s there was a prevalent perception that at least since the Second Balkan War of 1913 the West had developed an image of a Balkan propensity for extreme war violence that had remained unchanged ever since. This article challenges the presumptions of continuity and uniformity that inform such views of the history of Western–Balkan contacts. It reveals that more often than not Western attitudes to violence in the Balkans varied considerably, reflecting different ideological or strategic assessments. While in 1912–3 there developed indeed a common Western image of the two Balkan Wars, subsequently the two World Wars led to a diversification of the Balkan images on national lines. Especially the victorious Allies’ postwar myths, both after 1918 and 1945, were closely connected with a positive view of Balkan war violence. The Second World War and the Cold War established new standards of extreme violence, pushing even further back any negative public associations of the Balkans, which became instead an international backwater, known more for its tourist attractions than for its violent history.

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR.
 Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics