Totalitarian Communist Regime Research Articles

Modern domestic historiography of the repressive policy of the Soviet State regarding the peasantry of the Ukrainian SSR, 1921-1939: the regional aspect

The policy of the Bolsheviks in relation to the peasantry of the Krai is an actual direction of research of modern domestic repressology. In the article the current state of Ukrainian historiography reflection of the regional aspect of the Communist totalitarian regime’s repressive policy regarding the peasantry of the Ukrainian SSR in 1921-1939 years is analyzed. It is established that the researchers paid the greatest attention to clarification of the causes, forms, consequences of the use of punitive measures of the Communist-Soviet power against peasants of the South Ukraine, Dnieper, Podolia, South-Eastern Volhynia, Donbas, North-Eastern region of Ukraine, Kirovohrad, Kyiv regions during the grain procurement crisis of 1927/1928, 1928/1929, the forced continuous collectivization and the Holodomor of 1932-1933. Moreover, due to research it is established, that the implementation of the «kulak operation» of 1937-1938 years in the majority of regions are unexplored. Research of modern Ukrainian historians, who specialize in this issue, shows that the political repression against the peasantry of the Ukrainian SSR in 1921-1939 focused on solving economic problems, suppressing all forms of resistance, and modeling social processes and regional peculiarities of repressive politics depended on combinations of the directives of the center, initiatives of the local authorities and the public security authorities. The repression was not limited to a specific group of the richest peasantry but was directed against the peasantry opposing a forced collectivization.The author of the article is the author of the letter of appreciation of the specifics of the implementation of the Operative Punishment of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Social Security Service of the USSR, M. Єzhova, No. 00447, "On the operation of reprimanding the number of kurkulists, carnies of evil and the anti-Radar elements" dated 30 June 1937.

A Baltic Struggle for a “European Memory”: The Militant Mnemopolitics of The Soviet Story

ABSTRACTThis article examines the Latvian documentary The Soviet Story (by Edvīns Šnore, 2008) as a militant Baltic memory project which seeks to establish the parity of East and West European experiences with totalitarian crimes in the pan-European memory narrative of twentieth-century wars and genocide. The film offers a useful vantage point for investigating the interaction between memory politics and identity-building across the post-communist space and beyond. Claiming the inner similarity and moral equitability of Soviet communism and German National Socialism, The Soviet Story constitutes an epitome of the Historikerstreit in the Baltic fashion, debating the uniqueness of the Holocaust next to the crimes of communism. The so-called Holocaust template has been essential for the makers of the documentary in their insisting on the pan-European condemnation of totalitarian communist regimes in Europe, along with an invitation to critically review the role of the USSR in the Second World War. The Soviet Story is particularly critical about the Western discriminative standard of remembering the mass killings of Nazi Germany and the USSR, claiming such position’s unsustainability on intellectual, moral, and political grounds. The article investigates The Soviet Story as an example of the cultural front in the Baltic-Russian “memory war” over remembering the Soviet legacy, reading the film’s message in the context of the broader East European politics of seeking pan-European condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes. It further discusses the transnational efficacy of such mnemopolitical projects against the backdrop of intensified activity on the information operations front in the Baltic-Russian relations in recent years.

Propaganda stories in Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s: Believe it or not?

The collapse of the communist totalitarian regimes in Eastern and Central Europe and the end of the Cold War is one of key historical milestones in the history of the 20th century. However, the process itself and the consequences differed immensely from state to state: e.g., from peaceful so-called Velvet Revolution in former Czechoslovakia to the brutal civil war in former Yugoslavia. Our aim was to analyze the preconditions of the political and societal change in the Czechoslovak media – were there any signs of the change? How did the ruling party present the Soviet perestroika, which signalized a step towards democratization? The nomenklatura (ruling elite) was rather surprised by Gorbachev’s plans and feared the resemblance with the Prague Spring 1968. Nevertheless, they had to comply with the official Soviet dictate. We used Wodak’s discoursive–historical approach to analyze official propaganda reports and press agency news. We found that the Czechoslovak official nomenklatura used several argumentation and persuasive strategies to present perestroika not as a political change, but as an ongoing path towards Communism. Perestroika was presented as an accelerated path towards a classless society, however, the words were often vague or meaningless. We show that the nomenklatura welcomed perestroika verbally, but the disparity between the words and actions was omnipresent. Citizens could “read between the lines”, which meant that they revealed inner inconsistencies and problems of the regime from discoursive strategies. The aim to communicate perestroika thus served merely as an evidence of the inner disintegration of the system.

ARCHETEPATIVE BASIS OF INTERACTION AUTHORITIES AND OPPOSITIONS IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DECOMMUNIZATION POLICY IN UKRAINE

In the article, in the context of the archetypal approach, the interaction of the authorities and the opposition in the course of implementing the decommunization policy was analyzed. An integral part of a decommunization policy was changing the Soviet names of toponymic objects in residential places bearing the Communist totalitarian regime symbols that consecrated persons involved in the crimes of the latter, also the events related to the activities of the Communist Party, the development of Soviet power in Ukraine, the persecution of participants in the struggle for Ukraine’s independence in the XX century. The Soviet archetypal basis of decommunization methods in Ukraine is revealed, which it was testified to the rapid pace of policy, the lack of information support, explanations, especially for the population of the central and eastern regions of Ukraine, for which the Soviet symbolices was continues to be valuable. The imperial/Soviet archetypes of interaction between the authorities and the opposition are defined by the example of renaming of Soviet names for objects of toponymy of settlements containing symbols of the communist totalitarian regime. Polarized regionalism of Ukrainian society, two distinct national identities based on different systems of political values, have formed various archetypes. Thus, in Uzhgorod and Kirovohrad, the influence of the imperial (respectively, Austrian and Russian) archetypes was reflected. The opposition of some city councils of the Naddnipryanshyny and eastern Ukraine to the parliament’s decisions was sometimes determined not by the number of opposition, but by the Soviet identity of the deputy corps. The existence of a confrontational type of the interaction between parliamentary opposition and government/president is substantiated; also between the opposition, embodied by the local political and management elite of Kirovohrad, Kharkiv and Komsomolsk of Poltava’s region, and the state power, personified by the head of the relevant regional state administration/parliament. It is proved that the conformal type is inherent of interaction the opposition, which is represented by the city council of Dnipropetrovsk and the authorities represented by the respective mayor/parliament; also the interaction between opposition, which represented by the city council/mayor of Uzhhorod and the authorities, which is represented by the chairman of the Transcarpathian Regional State Administration.

A Russian Perspective on Theoretical Archaeology: The Life and Work of Leo S. Klejn. Stephen Leach. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2015, 221 pp. $79.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-62958-138-5.

<i>A Russian Perspective on Theoretical Archaeology: The Life and Work of Leo S. Klejn</i>. Stephen Leach. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2015, 221 pp. $79.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-62958-138-5.

The European Union as a Totalitarian Nightmare: Dystopian Visions in the Discourse of the UK Independence Party (UKIP)

Abstract Based on an analysis of UKIP’s discourse on the EU, particularly that of leader Nigel Farage, this paper argues that the party depicts the EU in dystopian terms; in particular it compares it to dystopian narratives such as Orwell’s 1984, totalitarian communist regimes, Nazi Germany and ‘failed states’ such as North Korea.

Rózsa Ignácz’s &lt;i&gt;Torockói gyász&lt;/i&gt; [‘Torockó Mourning’]: Identity Beyond the Borders of Time and Space

Rózsa Ignácz’s historical novel Torockói gyász [‘Torockó Mourning’] (1958) deals with the staggering tragedy of Transylvanian Torockó in 1702. But the referential pattern that emerges from the dramatic plot clearly points beyond eighteenth-century time and space in partly overt and mostly covert ways: to the early twentieth-century post-Trianon fate of the Hungarians in Transylvania, and beyond, to the destructive post-1945 totalitarian communist regime in Hungary, as well as to the backlash of the 1956 anticommunist and anti-Soviet revolution and war of independence. The narrative techniques of expanding early eighteenth-century time and space will be examined through the ways in which thematic threads of collective identity are woven in the novel in general, and the customs, habits, and the religious affiliation of the community are handled in particular. Theories of Jan Assmann, Michael Bamberg, David Herman, Erving Goffman, Fritz Heider and Anselm L. Strauss as well as observations of Ignácz researchers such as Lajos Kántor, Gabriella F. Komáromi, and Erzsébet Dani will be used.

Ukrainian national oppression during the russification of language and cultural space of the USSR: the 60's - 70's of the XXth century

In the article the author studied the russification and ideological language and cultural space of the Ukrainians during the 60's - 70's of the XXth century, showed the displacement of Ukrainian by widespread introduction of Russian, highlighted public policy of the totalitarian communist regime aiming to eliminate national differences, to move towards the nations, to achieve their full unity and creation of an indivisible soviet people. The soviet authorities directed all efforts to strengthenRussia's national political advantage inUkraineand the implementation of the thesis of the Russian language as a second mother and thereby destroying the natural human sense of belonging to the Ukrainian nation. Those who spoke only Ukrainian, attracted the attention of the respective services, which could cast doubt on their political loyalty and cultivate an inferiority complex. Gradually, the ruling communist party elite considerably narrowed the scope of the Ukrainian language and formed the status of its inferiority. Abruptly decreasing percentage of the Ukrainian printed word, the Ukrainian theater lost its national face, the Russian language filled the radio and television. However, Ukrainian educators, writers, literary critics, filmmakers, painters, scientists and public figures stood actively against the process of russification ofUkraine's population and the theory of bilingualism. The result of the confrontation between the national conscious Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Soviet bureaucracy was the appearance of the sixtiers, which eventually led the national revival of the late 1980's - early 1990's.

Maryjna droga kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego

Kard. Stefan Wyszyński odegrał bardzo ważną rolę we współczesnej historii Polski, a szczególnie w czasie trwania komunizmu. Uważany był przez wielu za duchowego przywódcę narodu. Dzięki niemu Kościół katolicki w Polsce oparł się naciskom ze strony komunistycznego aparatu państwa. Artykuł ten analizuje rolę jego pobożności maryjnej w tych trudnych zmaganiach. Kulminacyjnym momentem na maryjnej drodze kard. Wyszyńskiego było złożenie aktu całkowitego ofiarowania się Maryi w duchu św. Ludwika Marii Grignion de Montfort, co uczynił podczas swojego uwięzienia w intencji ocalenia Kościoła w Polsce i ducha narodu. Programy duszpasterskie, które powstały jako owoc tego aktu, odegrały decydującą rolę w podtrzymaniu wiary w narodzie polskim oraz wpłynęły na Kościół powszechny.

An institutional palimpsest? The case of Cambodia’s political order, 1970 and beyond

How do continuity and change coexist and coevolve? How does continuity enable change and change reinforce continuity? These are central questions in organizational and political research, as organizational and institutional systems benefit from the presence of both reproduction and transformation. However, the relation between the processes of change and continuity still raises significant questions. To contribute to this discussion, we analyse the coexistence of deep institutional continuity and radical political change in the second half of twentieth-century Cambodia. Over a two-decade period, Cambodia was ruled by radically different political systems of organization: a traditional monarchy with feudal characteristics, a failing republic, a totalitarian communist regime, and a Vietnamese protectorate, before being governed by the UN and finally becoming a constitutional monarchy. We use an historical approach to study how a succession of radical changes may in reality signal deep lines of continuity.

Poland and the Holy See. Contribution to the Justice and Peace. Approach to the Concordatory Law

The article contains the explication of the very important questions respecting the normalization of relations between the democratic Poland and the Catholic Church using the international agreement between the Holy See and the supreme authority of Polish State, called „concordat”. This event is considered in the historical context of political transformations from the communist totalitarian regime to liberal democracy and at the same time from atheistic state based on the hostile separation to the secular one based on the friendly separation. In complains the following issues: 1) notion and classification of concordats, 2) axiological and formal dimension of its conclusion between the Holy See and Poland (1993–1998), 3) compliance Concordat’s with the Constitution of Poland, 4) the stabilization function of Concordat, 5) financial clauses.

From the Age of Fear to the Age of Shame

If the twentieth century was the age of fear, the twenty-first is the age of shame. This is the most succinct way to describe how the dominant form of repression has changed. The twentieth century was full of terrible events and fearless heroes. The twenty-first century has not yet lasted long enough to exclude the possibility of similar tragedies and resultant challenges for the brave, but so far it seems to be a time of ordinary stories and ordinary people. As in the previous century, we live in a mass society, but the dominant emotion is no longer fear, but shame. Shame, unlike fear, is an emotion that can be hidden, and that is the entire point. It arises from a sense of inferiority. Fear does not necessarily violate dignity. In the twentieth century, fascist and communist totalitarian regimes perpetrated terrible crimes, but they ultimately failed because they could not effectively control people’s identities. Too many individuals were able to maintain their inner freedom and dignity. Fear did not humble them.

A Tale of “Two Totalitarianisms”: The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism

On June 3, 2008, a group of conservative Eastern European politicians and intellectuals signed the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism in the Czech parliament. The signatories to this Declaration proclaimed that the “millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism have been morally and politically recognized” and that there should be “an all-European understanding . . . that many crimes committed in the name of Communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity . . . in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal.” The signatories addressed their demands to “all peoples of Europe, all European political institutions including national governments, parliaments, [the] European Parliament, [the] European Commission, [the] Council of Europe and other relevant international bodies.” The Prague Declaration contains a list of demands, including compensation for victims. There are also calls for the establishment of a European “day of remembrance of the victims of both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, in the same way Europe remembers the victims of the Holocaust on January 27th.” The Prague Declaration further advocates for the creation of a supranational “Institute for European Memory and Conscience” as well as increased support for memorials, museums, and national historical institutes charged with investigating the crimes of communism. Finally, the Prague Declaration demands the “adjustment and overhaul of European history textbooks so that children could learn and be warned about Communism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes.” Over the next four years, and against a backdrop of growing social unrest in response to the global financial crisis and Eurozone instability in Spain

Antonín Mandl – svědek diskusí mezi katolíky ve druhé polovině 60. let 20. století

The general character of the memory of the contemporary witnesses and the fact that nearly no Christian samizdat of the 1960s has been preserved do not allow to offer a closer look to the topics discussed by the priests released from prison with their friends. We can only offer it through the witness of one of them, Antonín Mandl (1917–1972). His work from 1965 to 1967 is only a voice of an individual, but we can suppose that it echoes a broader debate, in which the experience of the earlier years has been confronted both with the contemporary form of the Czechoslovak society ruled by the Communist totalitarian regime and with the results of the Vatican Council II. The paper focuses on Mandl’s answer to the following three questions: In the relation to the Communism, is it proper to choose opposition, or collaboration? How should the priesthood in the contemporary society look like? What are the major axioms of Christian life, pastoral work and evangelisation?

Criminalizing Communism: Transnational Mnemopolitics in Europe

The Eastern enlargement of the European Union has intensified calls for the reconstruction of a common European remembrance of the continent's multiple totalitarian legacies. Various political initiatives to condemn, along with counter-attempts to re-legitimize, the legacy of communism have emerged at the pan-European level. Each aspires to leave an imprint on the symbolic moral order and the legal regime of the broader European community. This article builds a conceptual framework for understanding the contestation of political and juridical regulation of the transnational remembrance of totalitarian communist regimes in Europe. Critically engaging the concept of cosmopolitanization of memory, it is argued that mnemonic identity in Europe is being transformed via new claims on “European memory.” These claims are being made by various East European actors seeking recognition of the region's particular historical legacies as part of the pan-European normative verdict on twentieth-century totalitarianisms.

Adolescents During and After Times of Social Change

The paper introduces a set of four studies focused on adolescents in the Czech Republic. In the first part, authors reflect on the cultural background, the political, social, and psychological factors that have had influence on several generations of adolescents in the period of the communist totalitarian regime. They also describe the social changes brought by the democratization of Czech society since the early 1990s. Second part of the paper reviews the life and changes in the behavior of Czech adolescents over the past 20 years. Based the findings of three studies representing three cohorts of adolescents (1992, 2001, 2010), it is argued that current Czech adolescents are becoming more like their Western peers. Compared with the 1990s adolescents, the current cohort is more realistic in their expectations, oriented more on achievement, social pleasure, and material values. Their relationship to formal authorities is weaker; especially, the relationships with parents and teachers are more liberal.

Baptism and Secularization in the Context of the Communist Totalitarian Regime within the Czechoslovak Republic

Baptism and Secularization in the Context of the Communist Totalitarian Regime within the Czechoslovak Republic

Teaching gender and geography in Romanian universities

The fall of communism in Central–Eastern Europe in 1989 brought major political, social, economic and cultural changes that reshaped the Romanian society as it transitioned from the totalitarian communist regime to a democratic one. The entire process of transition, eventuating in Romanian access to the European Union, brought important changes at all levels of the society, economy and culture. Among the most marked were in freedom of speech, introduction of the free market and a new class structure, changes that operated from institutional levels to private ones. The Romanian educational system had to accept that major changes needed to be made in the curricula, methods of teaching and the application of knowledge after graduation. It is in this context that a gender and geography class began to be taught in 2004 at the West University of Timisoara and in 2007 at the Iasi University. Although well received by students, questions remain about the legitimacy of the field in national promotion bodies.

A Tale of Two Cities: Reestablishing Cultural Identities in Eastern Europe

My paper is based on the author's observations of contemporary cultural landscapes in the cities of Krakow (Poland) and Lviv (Ukraine), which prompted the analysis of the observed differences through the prism of Jewish minority dynamics. Having gone through the centuries of parallel histories, which resulted in the creation of convergent landscapes, Krakow and Lviv experienced dramatic changes in the twentieth century, associated with the Nazi occupation, the Holocaust, and communist totalitarian regimes, which reduced the cities' Jewish population from a pre-war twenty-five to thirty-two percent of the total to nearly nonexistent. After the return of democracy to Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, Krakow and Lviv acquired distinctively dissimilar cultural identities, characterized by the revival of Jewish culture in Krakow and its obliteration in Lviv. The suggested explanation of the observed differences is drawn from the unevenness of nation-building processes in Eastern Europe, which resulted in the advancement of Polish cultural plurality and Ukrainian nationalism. While Polish pluralism allows for the minorities to reestablish their cultural identities, Ukrainian nationalistic movement, aimed primarily at national unity, temporarily stifles the minority discourse. The dynamics of Jewish minority identities, expressed through the evolution of cultural landscapes in Krakow and Lviv, demonstrate the array of democratization pathways in contemporary Eastern Europe.

The Flight to Rights: 1990s China and Beyond

Abstract A recent spate of exposés about Mao Zedong's China, in English and Chinese, announces a finality to the tendency toward the temporal-spatial conflation of twentieth-century Chinese and global history. This sense was confirmed when the New York Times reported in late January 2006 that George W. Bush's recent bedtime reading had been Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's Mao: The Unknown Story,1 or when, later in 2006, according to a column in the British paper The Guardian, “the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the ‘crimes of totalitarian communist regimes’, linking them with Nazism.”2 The temporal-spatial conflation hence is,…