Heroic Sacrifice Research Articles

Examining University Students’ Self-Determination through the Lens of Spiritual Learning

The relationship between spiritual learning and self-determination ability is the research objective in this study, and this study develops a conceptional model of spirituality and self-determination ability through a systemic literature review. From the previous studies, self-determination ability is launched when human needs are supported by the social context, focusing on the satisfaction of the three basic needs of human beings, seeking happiness that needs are satisfied. A short peak experience is a spiritual pursuit, and each peak experience is heart-shaking and has a lasting effect on life. It is accompanied by epiphanies and is a successful learning experience. Thus, spirituality learns how to effectively provide the peak experience of humans "making warrior-like decisions" rather than impulsive heroic sacrifices. The results show that spiritual learning is associated with effective self-determination ability, and that epiphany is an important moment to reach the level of self-determination ability is the act of learning. The conclusion is that epiphany manifesting in three states: concentration, sharing, and aesthetic experience as a conceptional model of self-determination ability and spiritual learning is the vital moment whenever one wants to be self-determined.

Stories of our Grandmothers: How Modern Ukrainian Women's Literature Deconstructs the Soviet Myth about the Great Patriotic War

The article analyses how contemporary women’s literature deconstructs the Soviet myth of the Great Patriotic War under the influence of contemporary Russian aggression. This myth defined the narrative of World War II as a heroic sacrifice of the Soviet people. As a result, the diversity of experiences was suppressed and the memory of them was not formed. Since independence, Ukrainian culture has been restoring the gaps in history and memory, which has become especially important in the context of the ongoing war. Women’s literature participates in this process by focusing on women’s experiences, which are usually marginalized in the national-focused narrative. This study aims to identify the contribution of women’s literature to the process of decolonization. The object of the study is such women’s novels as The Museum of Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko (as a precursor to the modern treatment of the topic), Amadoka by Sofia Andruhovych, Because it Hurts by Yevgenia Senik, Eva’s Apples by Khrystyna Kotsira and Faride by Iren Rozdobudko. The study found that women’s literature most often addresses the topics of women combatants, deportations, and the Holocaust. In this way, the authors contribute to the process of returning to national history. At the same time, the study demonstrates the complex interaction of nationality and gender in contemporary women’s literature. As women’s literature also contradicts the traditional nationally oriented discourse, emphasizing female agency and appealing to multinational experience (except Ukrainian, Jewish, and Crimean Tatar). This understanding of the theme of the Second World War by contemporary Ukrainian women’s literature creates a context for the perception of the specifically female experience of the current war and resists attempts at ideological manipulation around women’s roles.

«Гайдар и сегодня в строю…» (о каноне советского детского чтения и его ресайклинге)

The article is devoted to the problem of demand and concomitant reinterpretation of the Soviet literary heritage in the 2000s. The work of Arkady Gaidar, recognized as the best Soviet children’s writer during his lifetime and as an author who fully expressed Soviet values — heroism in the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power and collectivism — in the Soviet period was widely available to readers-children. Both the print runs of his works and the number of reprints (including in school anthologies) were very significant: he was in the top ten in terms of the size of print runs and the regularity of reprints. Based on a study of the history of the publication of Gaidar’s texts from 1926 to 1984, publishing and pedagogical preferences in the selection of works for reprinting have been identified: most often, “The Tale of a Military Secret” was reprinted in impressive numbers, as its ideological content glorified heroic sacrifice in the name of establishing Soviet power. The story “Timur and His Gang” had the same number of reissues as “Military Secret”. In the 1990s, reprinting of Gaidar’s works was sharply reduced, and the choice of what was published also changed: the first place is occupied by “Chuk and Gek”, which depicted everyday family life. In 2000–2022, the story “Timur and His Gang”, which emphasizes the values of class mutual assistance and collectivism, becomes the most reprinted. Publication of other works by Gaidar also demonstrates a noticeable change in emphasis: there is a sharp drop in reissues of the stories “School” and “R. V. S.”, which have temporal contextualization in the historical events of the October Revolution and the Civil War. This allows us to say that the mobilization narrative, which is generally characteristic of Gaidar’s works, is losing its historical conditionality (the Revolution and the Civil War). At the same time, the reprinting of works about peacetime, which takes place in the immediate vicinity of hostilities that require mobilization efforts by both adults and children, have been renewed in the current book offerings for young readers. Recent initiatives to bring Gaidar’s works back into the school curriculum also testify to the reactualization.

Contested disaster nationalism in the digital age: Emotional registers and geopolitical imaginaries in COVID-19 narratives on Chinese social media

AbstractThis article examines how affective narratives of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese social media reinforce and challenge established scripts of national identity, political legitimacy, and international geopolitical imaginary. Taking theoretical insights from the scholarship on trauma, disaster nationalism, and politics of emotions, I structure the analysis of social media posts from state media and private accounts around three emotional registers: grief as a crucial site of control and contestation during the initial stage of the outbreak; gandong (being moved in a positive way) associated with stories of heroic sacrifices, national unity, and mundane ‘heart-warming’ moments; and enmity in narratives of power struggles and ideological competition between China and ‘the West’, especially the United States. While state media has sought to transform the crisis into resources for strengthening national belonging and regime legitimacy through a digital reworking of the long-standing repertoire of disaster nationalism, alternative articulations of grief, rage, and vernacular memory that refuse to be incorporated into the ‘correct collective memory’ of a nationalised tragedy have persisted in digital space. Furthermore, the article explicates the ways in which popular narratives affectively reinscribe dominant ideas about the (inter)national community: such as the historical imagination of a continuous nationhood rising from disasters and humiliation, positive energy, and a dichotomous view of the international order characterised by Western hegemony and Chinese victimhood. The geopolitical narratives of the pandemic build on and exacerbate binary oppositions between China and ‘the West’ in the global imaginary, which are co-constructed through discursive practices on both sides in mutually reinforcing ways. The lens of emotion allows us to attend to the resonances and dissonances between official and popular narrativisations of the disaster without assuming a one-way determinate relationship between the two.

Encountering a divine dance of solidarity at the Zalongo Monument

In this article, a combination of travelogue, personal narrative, archival research and cultural analysis, I contemplate the Monument to the Heroines of Zalongo, a sculpture by George Zongolopoulos that stands in the western Greek region of Epirus. It commemorates the Dance of Zalongo, a mass suicide, or heroic sacrifice, of women and children in 1803. The legend of the dance and the monument inspired by it evoke contradictory perspectives on the national identity of Greece and of Greeks that stretch back to the founding of the modern nation: the externally directed view of the philhellenes, and the introverted perspective of the Romii. Seen as an international, philhellenic cause, a mass suicide, the Souliote women’s leap signified helpless women and children, and a nation, in need of rescuing. Seen as a national, Greek narrative, a patriotic sacrifice, the Souliote women’s leap showed female warriors filled with pride and self-determination. The Dance of Zalongo has had many lives: as a nineteenth-century media event that sparked an outpouring of literature and art, a twentieth-century lifeline to the old country for Greeks in the diaspora and a twenty-first-century cultural meme bolstering resistance to economic austerity. The Zalongo Monument, a site for pilgrimage where Greek cultural memory is infused in stone and resonant in the air, recreates the presence of the dance, letting us feel what it means to be free. Visiting the monument as a philhellenic foreigner, I ponder its power as a tribute to solidarity among those everywhere who are pushed to the precipice.

Four Characteristics of Policing as a Practice

Abstract The purpose of this article is three-fold: (1) to provide an analysis of autoethnography as a method in policing research; (2) to distinguish between policing as a practice and policing as an institution; and (3) to outline the characteristics of policing as a practice. I deploy an autoethnographic method to identify the characteristics of the practice of city policing in democracies. These characteristics—heroic struggle, edgework, absolute sacrifice, and worldmaking—draw attention to a crucial mismatch between policing as a practice and policing as an institution. I conclude by suggesting ways in which the characteristics of the practice can provide a firm foundation for further research into the contemporary problems of policing as an institution.

Challenges of Clerical Sexual Abuse

Though the heroic strides, accomplishments and sacrifices of many clerics who have led exemplary lives in the Catholic priesthood remain indelible, we are faced today with a preponderance of allegations and claims of clerical sexual abuse suggesting that both the Catholic Church and priesthood are experiencing crises of different kinds. Clerical sexual abuse is a contradiction of the life of chastity, one of the evangelical virtues which are corollaries of responding to the call to the Roman Catholic priesthood. How those evangelical virtues concern us and the needed critical family roles for addressing the challenges of clergy sexual abuse are often overlooked; but our lives are inter-connected. This article has been prompted by the need to see the other side of the problem, which is general huge family failures, and to awaken our consciences to assume our own responsibilities that would, by collective action, help to bring about positive and peaceful change.

Gra na dwa fronty, czyli rozważania o lojalności. Tomasz Łubieński w okresie powstania listopadowego i Zygmunt Sierakowski na drodze do powstania styczniowego

Double-dealing, or considerations of loyalty. Tomasz Łubieński during the November Uprising and Zygmunt Sierakowski on the way to the January Uprising Tomasz Łubieński (1784–1870) is a hero of the Napoleonic campaings, active politically and enonomically in the Congress Kingdom. After the November Night, he worked to stop the insurrection movement and reconcile with Russia. His military activity in 1831 raises doubts as to his full involvement. The only member of the November Uprising generalship, after an audience with Nicolas I, was released, and then he continued his opportunist career. The dominant feature of the attitude was calculation, permeating a double betrayal (of the king‑tsar, a revolted nation) and, in accordance with principle of two consciences, double loyalty to the Russian monarch and own fellow countrymen. Zygmunt Sierakowski (1827–1863), during his penal service on the Orenburg line, decides to take up te career of a tsarist officer in order to use the opportunities thus gained for the benefit of the national irredent. After graduating from the Academy of the General Staff in St. Petersburg, a specialized employee of the Ministry of War tries to be “Wallenrod of the reform of the tsarist empire” as well as “Wallenrod of the Polish independence underground”. Loyalty to the Cause resulted in a “double existence” on the verge of mental exhaustion, and his heroic sacrifice made him a martyr for his countryman, an example of treason, falsehood and hypocrisy for Russians.

The Civil War Dead and American ModernityBattle Lines: Poetry and Mass Media in the U.S. Civil WarI Remain Yours: Common Lives in Civil War LettersThe Literature of Reconstruction: Not in Plain Black and White

The Civil War Dead and American ModernityBattle Lines: Poetry and Mass Media in the U.S. Civil WarI Remain Yours: Common Lives in Civil War LettersThe Literature of Reconstruction: Not in Plain Black and White

‘Kamikaze’ heritage tourism in Japan: a pathway to peace and understanding?

ABSTRACT Reflecting the wider belief that international tourism offers the opportunity to encourage peace and understanding amongst peoples and nations, one objective of Japan’s recent tourism development policy is the enhancement of mutual understanding and the promotion of international peace. The purpose of this paper is to consider the extent to which this objective is achievable, particularly in the context of continuing controversy surrounding the country’s confrontation of its twentieth century military heritage in general and its role in the Pacific War in particular. Based on research at two ‘difficult’ heritage sites, Chiran Peace Museum in Kagoshima Prefecture and Yūshūkan War Museum in Tokyo, it explores specifically how the kamikaze phenomenon is commemorated and interpreted for international visitors, in so doing revealing a significant degree of dissonance at both sites. Not only is a selective narrative of heroic sacrifice presented within a wider revisionist history of the Pacific War but also no attempt is made to acknowledge the prevailing cultural context that might underpin a more nuanced understanding of the kamikaze. Hence, the paper concludes that a meaningful opportunity to enhance international understanding has been missed.

Female “Lone Wolves”: The Anti‐Social Heroine in Recent Television Series

Female “Lone Wolves”: The Anti‐Social Heroine in Recent Television Series

Myth and the narrativization of cycle racing in popular literature

In his 1957 collection of essays Mythologies Roland Barthes famously discussed the world’s most prominent cycle race Le Tour De France. He critiqued its popular mythologization within media, which he argued masked the economic motives of the event in favour of myths of heroic ordeal. Following Barthes promptings, and some six decades on, we consider the contemporary narrativization of cycle racing within English language popular literature. This extensive body of literature features popular histories, exposés of drug scandals and autobiographies. We offer critical readings in light of the broader economic and cultural contexts of cycling. The dominant discursive framing accords with the myths that Barthes identified: emphasising a glorious history/heritage, ‘great men’, heroic sacrifice, and honour and fairness within cycle racing. Even accounts of the endemic spectre of performance enhancing drug largely accommodate the myth, framing drug taking as a threat to the integrity of the sport. In doing so, the literature both deproblematises the human experiences of cycle racing, and affirms what Wieting terms the ‘the fiction of pure sport’ (350). Simultaneously, we also document the complexities and flaws in the mythical edifice revealed in recent confessional autobiographies, and riders’ accounts of the harsh and insecure life worlds of professional riders which reveals the material realities of cycle racing to confound the romantic myths.

Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750) by Theresa Varney Kennedy

Reviewed by: Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750) by Theresa Varney Kennedy Sharon Diane Nell Theresa Varney Kennedy. Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750). routledge, 2018. 202 pp. in la poétique (1639), the French dramatic theorist and playwright La Mesnardiére wrote that women on stage should not be portrayed as heroic or clever, since these characteristics contradicted the rules of vraisemblance or verisimilitude (qtd. in Kennedy 2). But, as Theresa Varney Kennedy demonstrates, women playwrights often did not follow his recommendations. Continuing the work of scholars such as Perry Gethner, Nathalie Grande, and Erica Harth, Kennedy focuses on heroines in plays by women from 1637 to 1761. Kennedy is particularly interested in rationality as a possibility for women and the ways in which this theme is developed in plays by women in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. After a brief introduction, Kennedy launches into four chapters, each of which features one of four heroine types: irrational, dutiful, bold and brazen, and deliberative. In chapter 1, Kennedy analyzes the irrational heroine who derives from Jean Racine's female characters, particularly Phédre, but the irrational heroines in the plays that Kennedy includes are not all from tragedies, and not all of them are homicidal or suicidal or both. Also, the irrational actions of each are accompanied by an element of self-awareness, although these characters remain "one-dimensional" (46). Unlike the emblematic Phédre, Kennedy's irrational heroines are "free agents" (18) who wield authority usurped from the patriarchy (44) and, in the end, acknowledge their treacherous motives and take responsibility for their actions (45). For example, Tomyris—the female character penned by playwright Marie-Anne Barbier—fulfills the stereotype that women are unstable and, for that reason, should not wield political power. She also prioritizes her lustful desires over the security of her kingdom. Unlike Phédre, however, her "final violent act"—the execution of Cyrus—"does allow her to reestablish dignity and honor" (44, 30). Dutiful heroines, whose emblematic model is Pierre Corneille's Chiméne (55–56), are explored in chapter 2. Unlike Chiméne, who plays a secondary [End Page 299] role in Le Cid, the dutiful heroines that Kennedy analyzes are the main characters in their respective plays. They also exhibit intelligence and "leadership skills" (57). Yet, while they "challenge the norms and behavior traditionally associated with early modern women," the outcomes of the plays "reinforce patriarchal institutions" (91). For example, Théonise, in Françoise de Graffigny's La Fille d'Aristide (composed in 1758), stoically holds fast to her duty to marry a man she does not love; however, when she sells herself into slavery to save her beloved, the latter buys her from the slave trader and obtains her release from the man to whom she is betrothed so that the two can marry. Kennedy points out that "despite her show of independence and heroic sacrifice, Théonise still remains a commodity—an object of exchange between men" (90). Kennedy turns to bold and brazen heroines in chapter 3. The female leads in this chapter are studied together because they "act upon their emotions, especiallyin the name of romance" (128). All five of the plays that Kennedy analyzes in this chapter were either not performed at all or appeared in productions in "the salon, the théátres de société, and other venues outside Paris" (99). Whereas the irrational heroines of chapter 1 act impulsively out of "lust and vengeance," the bold and brazen heroines are motivated by love and desire (100). The results of their valiant actions are mixed. Triphine, in Françoise Pascal's Agathonphile martyr (published in 1655), defies the patriarchal system by refusing to marry the man chosen for her by her father and is executed (114). Even when things do work out well, as in the case of the Countess, who appears in Le Caprice de l'Amour by Mademoiselle Huau (also known as Madame La Grange de Richebourg), a play that was performed at the French Comedy in The Hague in 1739, not only does the play reinforce...

Olexander Gnilitsky on the “New Wave”: Artist in the late 1980s through early 1990s

The early stage of creativity of Ukrainian artist Olexander Gnilitsky (1961–2009) has been studied in the article. It is shown that his works should be viewed in close connection with the historical and everyday context, taking into account the circumstances, time, social and creative environment. It is noted that the early stage of creativity, and eventually the final formation of Gnilitsky as an artist, took place at crucial times in the history of Ukraine—when the established canons of painting prescribed by the Soviet Totalitarian regime prove to be archaic and are subjected to shattering doubt by the younger generation of artists. It is emphasized that the Gnilitsky’s works of the period are characterized with subjectivism, citations, self-irony, cynical rethinking of literary subjects, the use of grotesque techniques, motifs of macabre eroticism. On the material selected for processing, a historical and cultural and art criticism analysis was carried out in the context of the formation of Ukrainian art in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where the artist’s personality seems particularly relevant, since it symbolizes the specificity of this art: from surprise to shock, from complexity to the grotesque, from incorruptibility to despair and even blasphemy. An attempt is made to show all the genuine, heroic sacrifice of a true master. This is particularly eloquent in relation to contemporary art, whose fundamental self-appraisal is fixated in the judgments and statements of its representatives. The general picture of Gnilitsky’s life and work, his personality fit perfectly into the ideal or, rather, the norm of the “avant-garde”, with both its artistic and philosophical definitions. Analyzing the artist’s works shows, in particular, his creative formation in the context of the “New Wave” movement and the “Paris Commune” group.

Ruth Nisse. Jacob's Shipwreck: Diaspora, Translation, and Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. xiii + 235 pp.

Reviewed by: Jacob's Shipwreck: Diaspora, Translation, and Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval England by Ruth Nisse Robert Stacey Ruth Nisse. Jacob's Shipwreck: Diaspora, Translation, and Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. xiii + 235 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009418000661 Debates between Christians and Jews over the proper interpretation of biblical texts were staples of medieval Christian religious discourse. For the most part, Jews participated unwillingly in these debates; sometimes they did not participate at all, the Jewish position being supplied by the Christian author simply as a foil for his own exhibition of exegetical ingenuity. Over the past half century, the texts of these debates, real and imagined, have been studied by a number of notable scholars. We have all learned much from their efforts. But while new discoveries may yet be made, one cannot help but feel that most of the gold in this particular vein has by now been extracted. Ruth Nisse's extraordinary book, beautifully designed and produced by Cornell University Press, leads us in a new and altogether welcome direction in the study of the intellectual relationships between medieval Jews and Christians. Her focus is on England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, not generally regarded as a center of Jewish learning in this or any other time period. But evidence has been mounting in recent years that the Jewish scholars of medieval England were far more accomplished than we had previously realized, and that there are aspects of Jewish and Christian intellectual life in England that are both distinctive and important. This book pushes that discussion forward in exciting ways. Nisse's particular contribution is to draw our attention to the ways in which Jewish and Christian scholars sought to appropriate extrabiblical texts for their own religious traditions through translation, interpretation, and the creative compilation of diverse texts into anthologies. In her first chapter, Nisse looks at the tangled history of Flavius Josephus's Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War. Written in Greek in the first century of the Common Era, by the end of the fourth century Josephus's works had been epitomized by a patristic Latin author known as the Pseudo-Hegesippus, who presented the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE as God's punishment for the crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews. In the mid-tenth century, a Hebrew translation and rewriting of the Pseudo-Hegesippus had been composed in southern Italy, which circulated widely, together with several other ancient texts, in an anthology known as Sefer Yosippon. But Sefer Yosippon was no mere translation. As Nisse notes, "Yosippon … engages Hegesippus polemically and transforms this … Christian narrative about … the fate of Jerusalem into its own diasporic account of Jewish self-destruction and heroic sacrifice," creating "a new kind of Jewish spiritualizing rhetoric of resistance that later became particularly influential following the persecutions of 1096 during the First Crusade" (22). In twelfth-century England, these two competing versions of Josephus's work, one Latin and the other Hebrew, collided for the first time. Both versions laid explicit claim to present historical truth, a claim given additional weight by the fact that Yosippon was written in Hebrew, the sacred language of the Jews, [End Page 468] but acknowledged by many twelfth-century Christian scholars to be essential to interpreting the Hebrew Bible and hence to establishing the truth of the prophecies that proved Jesus to be the messiah. Yosippon, however, was a problematic text for Christian intellectuals. Not only did it omit the testimony to Jesus's messiahship that the Christianized Latin versions of Josephus and Pseudo-Hegesippus featured, it also included the Toledot Yeshu, a Hebrew version of Jesus's life that in Christian eyes was nothing short of blasphemous. Nevertheless, in twelfth-century England, any resulting suspicion of Hebrew as a language of mendacity, such as was expressed by Gerald of Wales, remained a minority position among English Christian intellectuals. By the mid-thirteenth century, however, this had become the majority view, not only of intellectuals but of the English Christian population at large, with serious consequences for Jewish-Christian relations and for the continuance of Jewish life in England. Among many other...

The Art of Revision: How Vera Inber Scripted the Siege and Her Self during World War II

The Art of RevisionHow Vera Inber Scripted the Siege and Her Self during World War II Alexis Peri (bio) “Today marks the completion of the most important year of my life,” Vera Mikhailovna Inber wrote in her diary on 24 August 1942.1 For 12 months, the poet had endured severe hunger, cold, and bombardment in blockaded Leningrad, home to one of the longest and deadliest sieges in modern history. Between September 1941 and January 1944, German and Finnish troops encircled Leningrad, cut it off from supply lines, and attempted to bombard and starve its residents into surrender. As many as 700,000 civilians perished from the starvation and hypothermia they suffered during the 1941–42 winter, when most received little more than 125 grams of bread a day. Although rations and evacuations increased in the spring of 1942, malnutrition and enemy fire persisted, and the blockade took over a million lives before it was lifted in 1944.2 Inber was undernourished and exhausted, and her husband near death. Yet, as she went on to explain in that August entry, 1941–42 was also an important year because it catapulted her career as a writer. “My dreams have come true!” she exclaimed.3 However, when Inber prepared her [End Page 143] diary for publication in 1944, she reduced this jubilant entry to a one-line observation: “I have been here for a year.”4 Professionally at least, Inber was in the right place at the right time inside besieged Leningrad. For the first time in her career, the 51-year-old achieved tremendous acclaim from readers, colleagues, and party leaders. Although she questioned whether she and her husband could survive a second siege winter, Inber refused to evacuate. “How strange it sounds, but things are good for me in Leningrad,” she wrote in May 1942.5 She reaffirmed her decision not to leave that autumn: “for me, this would be complicated and even more simply—bad.”6 She also cut these statements from the published diary. For her to have admitted that “Leningrad is good for me” when millions were suffering would have been an act of sacrilege against the hallowed myth of the blockade, a narrative she helped create.7 Through her wartime compositions, Inber became a principal author of what the historian Lisa Kirschenbaum called the myth of the siege of Leningrad.8 This narrative frames the blockade primarily as an epic battle between the barbaric fascists and the steadfast defenders of Soviet civilization who withstood the enemy’s assault by virtue of their heroic sacrifices, inspirational leaders, and commitment to socialism. Kirschenbaum’s pioneering research identifies the major tropes and phases that came to define this myth or masterplot.9 Below, I offer a detailed examination of the personal, literary, and political forces driving Inber’s contribution to it. By comparing published and unpublished editions of her principal wartime works, the [End Page 144] poem Pulkovo Meridian (Pulkovskii meridian) and the diary Almost Three Years (Pochti tri goda), I trace how her articulation of the siege story evolved in response to shifting personal, political, and aesthetic circumstances.10 Inber was both a creator and a captive of the blockade myth. I argue that the critical framework for understanding the twists and turns of her wartime writings, of her literary career, and of the siege masterplot more generally is revision. Inber’s writings on the siege were guided by both internal and external factors. First and foremost were her own creativity, ambition, and fear. However, cues from editors, readers, and policy makers as well as the evolving conditions of the blockade also shaped her writings. These elements are deeply interwoven on the pages of her diary and difficult to disentangle. Inber wrote and rewrote Pulkovo Meridian between October 1941 and November 1943, during which time the accepted themes of the blockade myth changed significantly. Drafts of Pulkovo Meridian, along with critiques and edits of it, are preserved in the notebooks of Inber’s unpublished diary.11 As she crafted the poem and tried to get it published, she uncovered tacit guidelines on how to present the siege and herself to readers. In 1944, she revised her diary...

War Remembered, Revolution Forgotten: Recasting the Sino-North Korean Alliance in China's Post-Socialist Media State

From October 1950 to July 1953, the nascent Chinese state entered into a strategic alliance with North Korea; hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers shed blood on the Korean peninsula in defense of the socialist homeland and advancing Communist internationalism. But since the end of the Korean War, China has moved from revolutionary idealism and political radicalism in Mao's era to the current post-socialist pragmatism and materialism. As the ideological winds shift, China's contemporary propaganda apparatus must redefine the Korean War in order to reconcile the complexity of the war and wartime alliance with contemporary political concerns and popular views. By focusing on a documentary film, The Unforgettable Victory, produced by China's leading state-run film studio in 2013, this article explores the ways in which the official media of the post-socialist era presents the past revolutionary war. The new film celebrates the splendid valor of Chinese soldiers, civilians' heroic sacrifices, and the war's nationalist legacy; however, it purposefully forgets the revolutionary fervor and internationalist sentiments that once forged the Sino–North Korean alliance and empowered wartime mobilization. This article examines the process of remembering and forgetting, and reveals government propaganda's latest efforts to demobilize contemporary viewers while infusing the past revolutionary war with ideological clarity and political certainty in post-socialist China.

Mao’s Lost Children: Stories of the Rusticated Youth of China’s Cultural Revolution, edited by Ou Nianzhong and Liang Yongkang, translated by Laura Maynard. Portland, ME: Merwin Asia, 2015. xv+364 pp. US$65.00 (cloth), US$28.00 (paper).

<i>Mao’s Lost Children: Stories of the Rusticated Youth of China’s Cultural Revolution</i>, edited by Ou Nianzhong and Liang Yongkang, translated by Laura Maynard. Portland, ME: Merwin Asia, 2015. xv+364 pp. US$65.00 (cloth), US$28.00 (paper).

Heavy Sacks, Cold Stores, and Black Marketing: Reminiscences of Female Retail Store Workers during World War II in Finland

Abstract This article analyzes interactions between women's experience narratives and the shared, cultural narrative of Finland in World War II (1939–45). The collective memory of World War II in Finland is based on a shared narrative of heroic sacrifice. This study questions this narrative by examining the reminiscences of retail store assistants whose work changed considerably when the war broke out in 1939. It uncovers the challenges they faced with regard to workplace fatigue, dishonesty, and black marketing. The use of oral-history methods allows the narrator to reflect and to produce a narrative of the past for today's audience. For the researcher, the materials reveal the connections of meanings and values to the time, place, and social environment. The article contributes to the growing scholarly challenge to the heroic narratives of World War II.

Normative and functional dimension of intergenerational solidarity in the narratives of young mothers

The paper analyses subjective expirience of normative and functional intergenerational solidarity dimensions trough young mother?s narratives on the expected and obtained assistance and support from their parents. Analysis had two goals. The first, a descriptive goal was to identify and describe 1. patterns of young mother?s expectations and 2. received help from their parents. The second goal was to ascertain the script standing behind expectations and received support. The sample consisted of twelve women - thirty years old mothers. With them was conducted semi structured interview. Gathered stories were interpreted using qualitative analysis. The findings show that respondents are counting on help from their parents. Expectations are based on a script about parenting as a heroic sacrifice and determined by the role of parents. Mothers are the dominant providers of assistance and support. They are asked to help with the children, in the housework, to provide emotional support and understanding. Fathers have an instrumental role - they are expected and provide material assistance. Recived support respondents perceived either as: full or sacrificing, dosed or assistance on call, and insufficient help. Expected and obtained kind in a large extent depends on the education, residency and employment status, and the degree of husband?s involvement in the housework and taking care of children. Indirectly, narrative analysis indicates a strong traditionalism in young mothers families.