Soviet Citizens Research Articles

Милиция/полиция в (пост)советской массовой культуре (к исторической иконографии власти)

The idea of the police as a “good order” from the Polizeiwissenschaft of absolutism was developed in the biopolitical model of caring for the population of the Modern era, engaged in ensuring safety and well-being. Being a product of mass society, the modern state has focused on influencing public opinion. In the XIX–XX centuries, there was a counter-movement of police supervision and art which gave rise to ‘police aesthetics’. Cinematography was an effective means of forming a desirable image of the Soviet militia in the post-war period of normalization of public life. By contributing to the Soviet myth of developed socialism, militia cinema contributed to a screen-to-life transfer of a new norm of trust between representatives of power and citizens. This constructivist cinema involved the viewer in the cinematic reality by likening them to the main character, a militiaman who acts as a moral guide. In addition to forming the image of the ‘familial militia’, intellectual militia cinema—with its focus on professionalism—is actively developing. The most popular version of the latter is militia cinema that thematizes the moral rightness of militia officers fighting crime in the name of Soviet citizens. Involvement in the cinematic reality through assimilation, novelty, memory, and imagination included the romanticization of the historical events of the revolution. Militia cinema was inverted during the years of the perestroika. It exploited the effect of novelty associated with the viewer's immersion in emerging market relations. The viewer's interest was focused on the wrong, criminal, side of public life. Crime is romanticized, the militia is stigmatized. From constructing the myth of cooperation between the government and the population, militia cinema moves on to deconstructing the myth, achieving an effect of denigration. The fashion for American cinema brings elements of action, thriller, horror. The viewer is no longer included in the imperious project of transforming reality; they are attracted by the illusion, the spectacle. The latest police cinema, overcoming total deconstructionism, is busy reconstructing the spirit of Soviet militia cinema in modern settings. Oscillating between the intention to generate positive images of the police and the demonstration of the “truth of life”, modern police cinema contains the natal shoots of a new cinema in which the image of the police is important for the normalization of public life.

Two Communist Esperantists: A Bulgarian-Japanese Dialogue

The Japanese Kurisu Kei (1910–2009) and the Bulgarian Nikola Aleksiev (1909–2002) never met. They were devoted to communism (for which they were imprisoned several times) and at the same time enthused about Esperanto. In 1933–34, Kurisu received a coded warning from a Soviet citizen (a veteran Communist and Esperantist) against Stalin’s terror regime. Kurisu put this experience aside for a long time. In the 1930s, he used Esperanto to spread Georgi Dimitrov's plea for an anti-fascist popular front in Japan. He became a renowned translator from Czech literature and maintained a worldwide correspondence. It was not until 1951 that he left the Japanese Communist Party. His Esperanto involvement contributed significantly to the departure from communist beliefs. In 1992, after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, he got in touch with Aleksiev, who had been a leading figure for the party in Bulgaria and for the Esperanto movement as well. Kurisu accused him of having unswervingly defended the imperialist policy of the Soviet Union. Aleksiev exercised some self-criticism. He admitted that communist rule had not been brought down by the class enemy , but by its own mistakes and crimes , and recalled an old taboo: the murder of Soviet Esperantists under Stalin.

Lithuania‘s relations with the West within the KGB Web

The mechanisms for maintaining control of the Soviet territory and information, the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’, were very diverse (political, legal, coercive, agency networking) and were supported by certain institutions. The aim will be to describe the role played by this institution in controlling relations with the West during personal, tourist trips both domestically and abroad, and on official missions. The Soviet system sought to classify information that could damage the image of the Soviet-as-advanced system and reveal strategically important (political, economic, military, social) information that the West could supposedly use against it. Therefore, it was important that sensitive information would not be known by persons staying in Lithuania and that it would not be disseminated by Lithuanians going abroad. In view of this, the procedure of movement of foreigners on the territory of Lithuania (what cities and sites were allowed to be visited, with which people communication was allowed) and the rules of the presence of Lithuanians abroad (tourists, missions, etc.) were drawn up. To achieve these objectives, the KGB used its own methods: operational-technical tools, agency network and various instructions. According to the KGB, the greatest threat from arrivals was potential espionage, so all attention was paid to preventing possible espionage. The KGB, using all its means, had been monitoring where foreigners were going, who they were communicating with and how they behaved. Diplomats and journalists arriving in the country were particularly scrutinized. They were almost automatically equated with special service agents, as were scientists and industry professionals. The control of the movement and communication of foreigners with the local population was to be ensured by agents accompanying them, trusted persons (guides, interpreters, bus drivers, restaurant and hotel workers), disguised workers working incognito, and secret operational technical devices. The KGB’s intelligence agency activities were no less important than the fight against the regime’s internal enemies. It included not only espionage, but also propaganda-disinformation campaigns in the West. The agents were the eyes of the KGB and the perpetrators of their plans abroad. It was important for them to protect Soviet citizens from Western temptations, recruitment and escape, as this could damage the image of the Soviet system and allow for the flow of important information to the West. However, the facts of the violation of the order of the presence of tourists in Lithuania, and the cases of escape of Soviet citizens, recorded by the KGB, show that even the KGB did not have such opportunities to follow each tourist, prevent espionage and reveal the potential intentions of departing persons. It was even more difficult to control the departing Lithuanians, as evidenced by the escapes to the West, even by KGB agents.

Education of Deported Lithuanian Children

As a result of Soviet repression about 40,000 Lithuanian children with their families were deported to Siberia, where they had started or continued their education. The Soviet, with knowledge of education importance of the new regime loyal generation, spend a lot of attention, increased funding, and enforce compulsory education. The education system was affected by World War II: the number of pupils in schools fell by as much as 25%, pre-war levels were reached again by 1950. School conditions were poor – children did not have learning tools, there was a lack of premises, textbooks, teachers. The situation started to get a little better in the postwar period, but no major changes took place until about the early 1960s. Teachers had the greatest influence to the quality of learning. Ideological education played an important role to the learning system turning children into loyal Soviet citizens. However, adults were teaching their children at home in case of possible ideology affection, loss of national identity. The opportunities of deported people to study at higher schools were limited, nevertheless, a number of them entered higher education and completed their studies.

KGB Agents: their Types, Functions and Objectives

KGB agents are one of its pillars and sources of power since on the basis of the information they provided, the operative work was organized, which ensured that the atmosphere of fear and obedience pervade society. The goal of this research is to name and define the types of agents, the tasks they had to carry out, the goals to be achieved as well as in what segments of the population they were most active. The definition of an agent in KGB documents is a Soviet citizen, a foreign country national (subordinate) or an individual who has no citizenship, who collaborated secretly with the KGB organs and fulfilled its tasks ensuring internal security in the USSR. The committee’s apparatus consisted of agents, residents, owners of apartments for secret meetings, and owners of conspiracy apartments who were not on the staff of the agency. KGB secret agents are divided into certain types by the nature of their activities and the tasks they were to carry out. Agents infiltrated into the clergy controlled the Church and seminaries’ activities, attempted to exert influence on anti-Soviet priests as well as to form a positive position of the Vatican and the community of the devout that was in favour of the Soviet regime. Among the émigré communities their goal was to harm the organisations of the diaspora and discredit the cause of Lithuania’s liberation for which they fought. The objective of the agents who were in charge of monitoring resistance activities was to uncover anti-Soviet schemes, especially the ways and organizers of samizdat. They aimed to influence people so that they avoided resistance, and those who got involved would abandon it. Agents using various instruments such as spreading disinformation about individuals, compromising them, trying to “reeducate” them took efforts to discredit non-conformists in the eyes of the public. The role of agents was particularly important for explaining the activities of resistance both in Lithuania and the West. After 1953, requirements for agents were more demanding than before. However, constant search for secret collaborators demonstrates that the work was complicated and the results could not satisfy the KGB although separate individuals suffered harm.

Navigating the Housing Bureaucracy in Late Soviet Moscow: A Housing Order as a Document of Socialist Desire

Many scholars have drawn attention to the large housing programme at play in the late Soviet period. However, this programme did not solve the housing shortage, and the housing order (zhilishchnyi order) remained an object of desire for Soviet citizens. This document was an official guarantee of accommodation in the USSR, where there was no housing market. Based on archival sources and interviews, this article focuses on the history of the housing order and people’s strategies for obtaining it. It reveals the specifics of the public housing delivery system and the means through which ordinary Soviet citizens navigated its bureaucracy.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Beginning of World War II as Perceived by Soviet Citizens: New Sources and Interpretations

Abstract After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, a new historical phase began for the whole of Europe, marked by a sharp escalation of international conflict and the imminent outbreak of World War II. For Soviet citizens, these events were particularly traumatic because they also meant a sudden turn toward peace with Germany. The news of the signing of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression pact was received by Soviet citizens with mixed feelings. Many of them did not understand why yesterday’s Enemy No. 1 was suddenly turned into Ally No. 1, and what to expect from this partnership. In searching for the rationale for this agreement, the Soviet people were inclined to take a positive view of the pact, and then a negative one. A detailed analysis of the transformation of the public mood makes it possible to identify the internal problems of Soviet society, which manifested themselves expressively in the first weeks of World War II. This study also draws attention to the problem of Soviet people’s trust in official sources of information; to the impact of war scares of the interwar period on Soviet society; and to the influence of the ideas of the world proletarian revolution on the perception of the events of late August and early September 1939. The study is based on the accounts of the predominantly Russian population of the Soviet Union and presents the perspective of this ethnic group.

Text, time, and travel: temporal pathways of postsocialism and Islam

AbstractAs the concept of postsocialism faces increased scrutiny, there is a call to expand its spatiotemporal scope beyond socialist contexts in order to reclaim its analytical capacity. In Azerbaijan, the quiet resurgence of tezkirahs – biographical anthologies rooted in both the Islamic and Soviet traditions – presents an opportunity to explore how former Soviet citizens can bridge different histories, countries, and cultural traditions to nurture an expansive sense of collective presence and moral dignity after seventy years of communist rule and disconnect. These texts help Azerbaijanis chart their diverse roots in the former imperial domains of Persians, Turks, and Russians and absorb them into their vision of who they once were and could be again. Writers and readers of tezkirahs establish connections to non‐socialist pasts and places through what I refer to as temporal pathways, where traversing time becomes a journey to another place, and vice versa. By exploring this spatialized historical sensibility through the capacious ethnographic‐textual lens of an Islamic genre, this article sheds fresh light on postsocialist possibilities.

Post-war Soviet elections 1947–1953: features of conduct and social significance (based on materials from the city of Gorky)

The article examines the features of the conduct and social significance of elections to Soviet authorities in 1947–1953. The importance of studying this topic is associated with the need to study the state of Soviet society during the designated period. The study of elections to local authorities allows us to reconstruct the tasks that the Soviet authorities set when conducting election campaigns, the features of their conduct in different localities, the reaction of citizens, their orders and expectations from election campaigns and electoral actions. In the course of the study, using new data from archival documents, it was possible to establish the dates and features of the election campaigns to the Soviet authorities in 1947, 1950, 1953. It was noted that regular election campaigns contributed to increasing the political knowledge of citizens, introducing them to Soviet political culture, and also formed a «positive image» of the authorities in the eyes of Soviet citizens. At the same time, election campaigns revealed that Soviet citizens had a number of critical comments about the nominated deputies, which suggests the existence of dissatisfaction with certain aspects of everyday life that did not affect the main directions of Soviet state policy.

От имперского к советскому школьному образованию: проблемы становления трудовой школы на Кубани в 1920 году

The cultural growth of the Soviet multinational people resulted from the purposeful work of the RCP(b) – VKP(b) to eliminate the illiteracy of the population and organize universal education for school-age children. The policy of the Bolsheviks in the 1920s provided Soviet citizens with ac-cess to free education and the right of national minorities to study in their native language. The country faced internal and external challenges that required the diversion of serious state re-sources, but the field of education remained a priority for the Communist Party and was provided with state support. Understanding the Soviet experience of organizing school education in the conditions of the economic crisis of the early 1920s and the socialist modernization of the 1930s remains an urgent topic on the example of the not always successful results of educational reforms in the post-Soviet period. The concept of social justice, which was at the heart of the Soviet school, allowed Russian science to become the leading one in the world. USSR formed school ed-ucation based on the traditional Russian educational concept and those innovations that were im-plemented by the Bolsheviks in the 1920 s and 1930 s. At the same time, it should be noted that the organization and functioning of the Soviet school pursued clearly expressed ideological goals.

ART OF DIPLOMACY AND POLITICAL SYMBOLISM: FROM THE HISTORY OF GIFTS TO TOP STATE OFFICIALS

Gifts are an integral part of human communication, given and exchanged in various situations and transactions. At the same time, official or state gifts to top officials of the state represent a unique category of gifts. They are primarily of symbolic value, and the giving and exchange of gifts between the parties involved shapes the nature of the relationship that develops between them. Moreover, for centuries, the exchange of gifts between foreign leaders has been a tradition closely associated with the delicate work of international diplomacy. Diplomatic gifts, often formally presented during state or courtesy visits, have the potential to forge closer ties between countries. The article examines the history of one of the integral parts of the protocol practice of each state, a symbol of attention to a distinguished guest – gifts to the first persons of the state during the Soviet period and independent Kazakhstan. Based on the analysis, some features have been identified in the practice of presenting gifts based on certain traditions of a certain historical period. The article contains a previously unpublished interesting episode from the life of an ordinary Soviet citizen while his visiting the exhibition of gifts to top officials of the state, in Moscow in 1950. This excerpt from the letter clearly demonstrates what gifts were given to the heads of the state, as well as what impression they made on ordinary people. The publication of the material became possible owing to the daughter of the author of the letter, who carefully preserved and provided documents from the family archive, a veteran of archiving of the Kazakh SSR and the Republic of Kazakhstan, Elena Mikhailovna Gribanova.

Pigs, planners, and potato peels: the Soviet Scheme to feed pigs with urban food waste as a waste regime under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev

ABSTRACT In this article, I study why and how Soviet planners organized a scheme to collect food waste from Soviet residential buildings and food service establishments in Moscow and other cities and utilize it as a feedstock for pork production. By relying on sociologist Zsuzsa Gille’s “waste regime” concept and a great variety of primary sources, I analyze the Soviet “garbage feeding scheme” as a social institution that patterned the social behavior of actors who engaged with food waste in the USSR from the early 1930s until the beginning of the 1980s. I argue that Soviet planners, informed by zootechnics, perceived garbage feeding as a way to reconcile their goal to increase meat production with the reality of continuous grain shortages. As such, they imparted food waste with the economic meaning that it could be turned into other commodities – wheat and meat. I demonstrate that the Soviet garbage feeding scheme never became a success, as the collection of food waste that laid dispersed across many locations in cities posed too big of an organizational challenge for the USSR’s centralized bureaucracy, and because planners did not succeed at integrating Soviet citizens into its scheme.

Змиёвская балка (Ростов-на-Дону): память о Холокосте в конкуренции жертв

The paper focuses on the memory conflicts surrounding Zmiyovskaya balka in Rostov-on-Don, which became the site of the most mass extermination of Jews on the territory of the RSFSR during the Nazi occupation. The local authorities resist attempts to designate Zmiyovskaya balka as a Holocaust memorial site. The reasons for this resistance lie in Soviet memory politics and contemporary historical policy. The Soviet narrative of the war, where Jews were not singled out as a separate category of victims or were portrayed as victims of lesser significance than Slavs, still influences the historical perceptions of citizens. Many are still unaware that the Nazis had a special policy towards Jews and are convinced that the invaders were exterminating all Soviet citizens on equal grounds. This influence of the Soviet narrative is fueled by modern memory politics. Although Russia, unlike the USSR, has long recognized the Holocaust, the idea of the exclusivity of the Soviet, Russian, or Slavic sacrifice in the WWII is as important to modern Russia as it was to the USSR. The status of the people that suffered the greatest losses in WWII is the symbolic capital that many Russians are used to consider their own. Therefore, the classical concept of the Holocaust, as an event unique not only in the history of WWII, but also in world history, hardly fits into the modern Russian narrative of the war. Attempts to designate the memorial on Zmiyovskaya balka as a Holocaust memorial are perceived by many officials and ordinary citizens as an attack on the status of the main victim of the war.

«Глазами друзей»: использование международной повестки в советском праздничном пропагандистском дискурсе (по материалам юбилейных торжеств 1957 г. в Ленинграде)

Based on the material of the periodical press, texts of festive radio broadcasts and documents of the Soviet and party authorities of Leningrad, the features of using the international agenda as one of the tropes of festive propaganda discourse are recreated. On the example of jubilee celebrations in 1957 In the USSR, the author comes to the conclusion that the use of international themes in the information coverage of holidays contributed to strengthening the positive image of the USSR as an international leader in the eyes of Soviet citizens, and also allowed creating impressions of the celebrations as world-wide events.

Взаимоотношения с союзниками по антигитлеровской коалиции в процессе репатриации советских граждан: трудности и противоречия (1944–1945)

The article examines the problems of the history of relations between the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition in the process of repatriation of Soviet citizens at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War and after its end. The reasons that prevented the return of Soviet citizens to their homeland in 1944–1945 due to the fault of the Anglo-American allies are investigated.

Attitudes of Soviet Citizens towards State Loans 1946-1957 after their Cancellation (Based on Personal Source Materials)

The article explores the issue of public attitudes of Soviet citizens towards measures of state financial policy. It examines the sentiments of USSR citizens after the cessation of campaigns related to the issuance of government bonds from 1946 to 1957. The primary sources of information were letters from citizens addressed to Soviet government bodies, as well as diary entries. The study relies on methodological achievements in the “history of emotions.” It was revealed that after the abolition of compulsory subscription campaigns for domestic state loans, the key issue became the repayment of the state debt. It is shown that citizens placed high hopes on the revision of decisions by N. S. Khrushchev after his resignation in 1964. Their attempts to engage in dialogue with authoritative structures and leaders were made repeatedly before the official redemption began, but they did not contribute to a review of earlier decisions until 1974. The study demonstrates that the gradual redemption of bonds in the 1970s-1980s contributed to the establishment of a social compromise, and the practice of mass loans transformed from a measure of current financial and social policy into a subject for historical reflection, discussion, and nostalgia.

Восприятие Блеза Паскаля и его наследия советской официальной культурой 1920–1930-х гг.

The perception of Blaise Pascal by the official Soviet culture of the 1920–1930s has not yet become the subject of a special study. At a new historical turn, the scientific and spiritual legacy of the French thinker was inevitably subject to revision. The authors set themselves the task of revealing the peculiarities of constructing the image of Pascal and interpreting his ideas in the society of mass intellectual culture. The main material for the article was information about Pascal, which a Soviet citizen could obtain from encyclopedic dictionaries, textbooks, popular science articles and periodicals. It is concluded that the personality and works of the French genius of the 17th century were important in arranging a dialogue between the new Soviet culture and traditional European culture in general, and the French culture in particular. In the 1920–1930s the “Soviet traditionalism” was emerging, i. e. the practice of the Soviet state to create boundaries of loyalty for traditionalism, which, first of all, affects intellectual culture. The European bourgeois culture and the specific case of Pascal were inscribed into the new coordinates. The “boundaries of loyalty” set for the legacy of the French genius brought to the fore Pascal the scientist and Pascal the philosophizing writer. The emphasis on the Descartes/Pascal opposition, which reflects the spiritual, philosophical, cultural and ideological conflicts of the new Soviet state, is meaningful. In this conflict, Pascal became a kind of “hidden man”, whose spiritual experience is disguised under the proclaimed atheistic mundanity. However, the essence of the internal structure of Pascal’s personality turns out to be close to the asceticism and anti-bourgeois nature of the Soviet culture. Pascal becomes a role model for the Soviet people in terms of shaping themselves on the path to a bright and just society.

Историко-правовой анализ категории «гражданственность»

This article is devoted to the formulation of the question of citizenship as a legal value of a Soviet person. The legal activity of the commission on the departure of Soviet citizens abroad, which operated under the Smolensk Regional Committee of the CPSU in the first half of the 1980s, is considered. Using the example of the Smolensk Region, the authors highlight the work of organizations that controlled the departure of Soviet citizens abroad. The study was conducted on the basis of archival sources stored in the State Archive of the Modern History of the Smolensk region (hereinafter GANISO), many of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The shortcomings and problems of traveling abroad are revealed, and it is also possible to conclude that there have been no cases of treason or refusals to return to their homeland on the part of residents of the Smolensk region. The authors also attempt to compare the concept of citizenship and the institution of plurality of citizenship, relevant in the modern history of our state.

The movement of worker correspondents in the USSR in the 1920s–30s and their impact on the functioning of the newspaper.

The article examines the movement of worker and rural correspondents. Worker correspondents operated in cities, and rural correspondents worked in villages and rural areas. In addition, the movement of junior correspondents and pioneer correspondents began to appear. Ten years later, the state no longer needed such specialists. But, people’s correspondents continued to work in many newspapers. In the 1950s and 1960s the state tried to revive the work of worker correspondents. A number of documents were adopted that were supposed to help restore the worker correspondents movement, thereby improving the quality of the Soviet press. In the 1970s and 1980s worker correspondents actively wrote for the benefit of society and covered problems that worried Soviet citizens. In the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century worker correspondents practically disappeared from the pages of newspapers. Currently, some newspapers continue to publish readers’ letters. For example, in the newspaper “Gudok” there are columns “Letters” and “Worker Correspondents”. But it looks more like a tradition.

History of formation in Kazakhstan and the combat path of the 310th infantry division during the Soviet-German war (1941-1945)

The purpose of the article is to analyse the formation and combat path of the 310th Infantry Division, formed in 1941 in the territory of Soviet Kazakhstan. Topicality of the paper was determined by the need to study the history of the formation of the Kazakhstani division, from the date of issuance of the order of the Supreme Command of the USSR, the implementation of this order by the leadership of Soviet Kazakhstan, the participation of the military authorities of the republic in the implementation of the planned goals on the ground through the organisation of interaction between local government and military administration, the command of the division, the Central Asian Military District in the territorial responsibility of which included the republic. The authors of the Soviet period as well as modern Kazakhstan and Russia studied the topic in different years. The researchers’ works devoted to the history of the war against the Axis, historical documents of the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Almaty), the State Archive of Almaty and the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (Podolsk) are used in the work. The peculiarities of the ongoing work on the formation of the 310th rifle division are given, the tendencies of staffing the military units of the division with senior, junior commanding and rank-and-file personnel of the units are revealed. The combat path of the Kazakhstani division during the war is revealed, some pages of heroism of its soldiers and commanders on the battlefields which became a personal example to raise the patriotic feelings of Soviet citizens, are established. It is concluded that the 310th Infantry Division from Kazakhstan made a contribution to the achievement of the Soviet victory over Germany.