Soviet Era Research Articles

Social and criminological factors in the introduction of criminal liability for disclosure of medical secrets

The article examines the social and criminological factors of criminalization of disclosure of medical secrets. Social factors show that criminalization of unlawful disclosure of medical secrets is in line with the main trends of state and public. The social factors are also determined by the importance of relations that ensure the protection of information on the health status of a person, the intimate and family aspects of his/her life. It is found that scientific and technological progress in medicine gives rise to new phenomena that require their own ethical guarantees. Of particular importance is the secrecy of such medical procedures as sex reassignment, artificial insemination, transplantation, etc. However, in our country, since independence, some negative aspects of the health care system have remained unchanged, having been preserved from the Soviet era. Such manifestations include authoritarianism in the relationship between doctor and patient and, as a result, the disregard for the rights of the latter, irresponsibility of medical staff, and declarative nature of the vast majority of of legal norms. When establishing the criminological factors that influenced the establishment of criminal liability for unlawful disclosure of medical secrets, the social danger of such an act, its prevalence and level of level of latency. It is concluded that the high degree of public danger of disclosure of medical secrets is evidenced by the legislator’s provision of liability for this act in Section II of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine “Criminal Offenses against of the Criminal Code “Criminal offenses against life and health of a person”. Accordingly to Article 3 of the Constitution of Ukraine, a person, his or her life and health, honor and dignity are recognized in Ukraine as the highest social value. It is substantiated that the social danger of an of an act is not limited to the importance of the social relations which it encroaches upon, and it is necessary to establish the consequences which may be caused by such encroachment. In Article 145 of the Criminal Code, the legislator has provided for liability for unlawful disclosure of medical secrets if it has caused serious consequences. However the law does not stipulate what kind of consequences should be classified as grave, i.e. this concept is evaluative. It has been proven that such consequences can be significant harm to health, as well as moral harm. It is established that the criminal offense under study is not widespread and has a significant level of latency.

Исследование структурно незавершённых высказываний в речи советской и российской молодёжи

The aim of the study is to compare the oral speech of Soviet and Russian young people aged 13 to 23 years. The analysis was carried out according to a single indicator: the abundance of structurally incomplete statements in transcribed oral messages. Speech samples of both Soviet and modern Russian teenagers are taken from the media. As a result of the study, it was shown that Soviet schoolchildren and students used structurally incomplete statements in their oral speech 7 times less than modern youth. The study is a continuation of a more extensive comparison of the oral speech of schoolchildren and students of the Soviet and Russian eras, as well as speech role models that were broadcast by the Soviet and Russian media. The basis for the choice of research material was the non-trivial task of establishing the role of the influence of the modern media environment on the speech of adolescents. If Soviet schoolchildren and students consumed media content with the best linguistic role models for their time, then modern teenagers are formed in the free Internet environment. In the course of the study, a method was developed for objective comparison of the speech of different speakers. Text corpora were compared by the number of occasionalisms, author's syntagmas, phraseological units, professionalisms, clericalisms, vulgarisms, structurally incomplete statements, obscene vocabulary, etc. In a series of studies, it was shown that the speech samples of the Soviet era, that is, the Soviet group, are better both quantitatively and qualitatively than modern ones. The scientific novelty lies in the assessment of the oral speech of the speakers of information and entertainment media products of the media of one Russian-speaking country, but in different eras, although close in time, using a new complex method of linguistic analysis. The key factors that influenced the speech approaches of the creators of these media products were rapid social and technical changes.

The mouse, the snake, and the devil’s collar: Soviet symbols in the memory of Old Believers of the Upper Kama region

The Soviet project of creating the “new man” included the construction of a collective memory which was not only a legitimate version of the past, but also a repository of cultural values, and the background or space for celebrating Communist rituals. The project itself was rather uniform, but had multiple local incarnations that were determined mostly by the ethnic and religious identity of the local population. The Old Believers’ communities of the Russian North shared with the rest of the country symbols of the past, sites of memory, and commemorative rituals. Still, local perceptions of the Communist regime and its symbols depended in this milieu on a variety of factors: first, the high literacy rate of the deeply religious Old Believers, as well as their erudite knowledge of Christian, and specifically Old Russian literature; second, the very critical attitude toward Soviet power; and third, local beliefs. This article analyzes the process of adaptation of the Communist project to Old Believers’ persistent religious and cultural traditions and seeks to explain how Communist symbols symbiotically coexisted with hostile local attitudes and why they even survived the collapse of the regime. Mutual adjustment of the imposed Communist project and the local symbolic language took many decades, yet finally, by the end of the Soviet era, when three or four generations had seen no other reality than that they were surrounded by, the strong rejection of this reality was smoothed out, everyday tensions mostly disappeared, and the earlier alienation itself became part of collective memory on both family and community levels. The article is based on interviews with Old Believers of the Upper Kama region (Verkhokamie), conducted by the author in 2011 and 2013.

Художня реалізація радянських ідеологем у повісті Олександри Свекли «Надломлені серцем»

The article attempts to analyse the novel «Brokenhearted» in terms of its ideological, thematic, figurative and stylistic dominants in the context of social realism. Social realism as a style was primarily created for political, non-artistic needs, such as the construction of people of the new era, for which art became a tool. That is why in the work of many authors of the period we can observe the development of themes and techniques that meet the objectives of the ruling party. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the elements of Oleksandra Svekla’s textual creation as those that show a strong influence of the ideas of the Soviet era, but are mastered and transformed. The study examines the rejection of the past as a characteristic temporal category for socialist realism works, the separation of private and collective spaces. An attempt is made to describe the types of characters in the story as part of the textual element of a socialist realist work. It is revealed the author’s modelling of the inherent canonical image of the «new man», which is realised through the characters of the Soviet Pantheon of heroes: the warrior hero, the worker hero, the party member hero. Through the image of a new woman, Iryna, who is the centre of the whole story, the author describes the idea of female emancipation, which is realised not only through the rejection of marriage, highly paid female labour, and the desire to raise a child on her own, but also at the plot level: the protagonist’s journey, which is an important part of personality formation. The study revealed a spontaneous ideologisation of the semiosphere. That is, in our opinion, Oleksandra Svekla consciously/unconsciously reproduced ideology in connection with her own political position and an attempt to describe the socio-historical reality.

Коммунальная квартира (коммуналка) в референтном поле современной художественной литературы для детей и подростков

Representation in the modern culture of the Soviet past is associated with such a phenomenon as a communal apartment, which is also in demand in modern literature for children and adolescents. In the article, based on the material of the Corpus of Russian Prose for Children and Youth, as well as the most representative examples from the works of the last decade for children and adolescents, an attempt is made to determine the specifics of the topos of a communal apartment, which has become a “system sign” (referent) of Soviet childhood. The vectors of interpretation of a communal apartment set the ideological and spatial “us vs them” and “individual vs common” oppositions and their assessment. At the same time, various attributes of a communal apartment are significant for artistic modeling, defining the subject organization (neighbor, family member, etc.), the organization of space (room, corridor, kitchen, etc.), subject realities (bell, door, etc.). Modern writers’ work with the topos of a communal apartment is based on the tradition that developed in children’s literature of the Soviet period. The child hero, reproducing the stable components of the associative field of the concept “communal apartment” necessary for the objectification of the attribute, translates a potentially conflict situation associated with the concept of neighbor and determined by a stable set of plot situations and motifs into a comic one. In children’s and adolescent literature, the process of blurring the boundaries between anomaly and norm under the influence of communal life is reflected (the character type “crazy old woman”, zoomorphic images of neighbors, the acquisition of supernatural significance by things, the process of segmentation of “our” space, etc.). The transformation of the binary opposition “us vs them” can occur due to the inclusion of the element “nobody’s”, fixed in the definition of a unique type of character - “nobody’s grandmother”. In modern children’s literature, the situation associated with the marginal position of “nobody’s” old people in communal apartments, due to inclusion in the context of children’s play, loses its negative assessment, due to the functional connection of the types of “nobody’s grandmother” and “nanny”, which leads to the correlation of “nobody’s” and “common” in the picture of the communal world. The semantics of the “common” is more often manifested in relation to referents defining the spatial organization. The allocation of certain loci in a communal apartment that transmit ideas about one’s own and someone else’s or about one’s own and common, returns us to the description of relations with neighbors in the apartment, more precisely, to the predominance of emotive characteristics of the topos in question, objectified through the motif of quarrels and conflicts over the use of common places and property. “Common” loci (kitchen, corridor, restroom), being a boundary space, can, depending on the plot situation, actualize the “own” or “alien” semes. For example, a corridor, in accordance with the strategy of mastering and appropriating someone else’s space during the game, can also act as “own” space. The representation of the topos of a communal apartment in children’s literature, of course, reflects the realities of the Soviet era and the everyday life of the “inhabitants” of the communal apartment, with its “conflict zones”, but the child’s consciousness, acting as a focalizer of the narrative, allows emphasizing the semantics of the common. We can talk about the transformation of the opposition “us vs them” according to the laws of dialectics. The realities of the time, seen through the eyes of a child, allow us to consider the topos of a communal apartment/kommunalka as a “system sign” (referent) of Soviet childhood, as a dialectical image expressing the collectivist pathos of Soviet culture and metaphorically reflecting Iosif Vareikis’ idea of a communal apartment as the USSR. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

Роль литературного текста в трансмедийном повествовании: роман «Небесный Стокгольм» в системе авторских проектов О. Нестерова

Transmedia narrative has been a widely known and used narrative practice since the second decade of the 21st century. Its existence is conditioned by the peculiarities of the multimedia environment and convergence processes. The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of two transmedia projects: Heavenly Stockholm and From the Life of the Planets created and produced by Oleg Nesterov. The projects are dedicated to the Soviet era of thaw, in both of them we note reflection on the problem of unrealized future. In total, the projects involve seven media channels. They are positioned by the author as independent, but our analysis has shown that the projects are connected with each other by the commonality of the idea, the author’s tone of expression, and are permeated with mutual allusions. The projects share the same ethics, unfold in the same time period, and their narratives are also connected and complementary. The example of the Heavenly Stockholm project shows in detail how different media participate in the formation of a unified and programmed experience of a transmedia story. Each of the involved media channels, having a high degree of independence, complements and expands the common space of meanings. The article pays special attention to the role of the literary text. The analysis has shown that the novel Heavenly Stockholm is not only a structuring medium for the project of the same name but also contains allusions to another project – From the Life of the Planets. All this allows us to perceive the two seemingly different projects as a single transmedia narrative, which took the author more than ten years to create. The result of the analysis is the construction of a schematic architecture of the project, indicating the logic of movement through various media platforms.

Агитрейс на Чукотке: «Энергию планов и замыслов – в энергию дел». К 90-летию фотографа Н.Н. Боброва

The article examines a unique phenomenon of the Soviet era - the so-called agitreis. These were marches through the coastal Chukotka villages, which pursued the usual goal for a Soviet citizen, a person of that time - political educational work among the newcomers and indigenous population of the Chukotka Peninsula. Ag-itreises combined mobile and stationary in a special way. Soviet correspondents, photographers, and representatives of the local creative intelligentsia took part in the propaganda campaigns. The authors reveal the essence of this Soviet-era phenomenon through the example of a specific agitreis, which took place in the summer of 1985, and passed along the coast of Chukotka on the ship “Captain Sotnikov” from Anadyr to Uelen. Using a microhistorical approach, the authors propose to look at the events through the lens and memories of direct participants of the agitreis in Chukotka - photographers N.N. Bobrov and V.V. Sertun. The article reconstructs the route, participants and key events of the Chukotka agitreis of 1985. This agitreis performed not only the function of informing, but also allowed for operational monitoring of the processes and changes taking place in Chukotka. The cruise participants had the opportunity to compare the progress of the village improvement process, find out plans for the future, understand the local context and identify specific problems. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

АНАХРОНИЧНЫЙ САУНДТРЕК: РЕСАЙКЛИНГ СОВЕТСКИХ ПЕСЕН В ВИДЕОИГРЕ «ATOMIC HEART»

the article examines the soundtrack of the game Atomic Heart (Mundfish Studios, 2023) from the perspective of recycling Soviet pop songs. The obvious oddity is due to the fact that most of the sounding schlager songs were written much later than the time in which the game is formally set. The author summarizes the functions of an anachronistic soundtrack. First, popular songs create a sense of multiworldliness, the coexistence of non-intersecting realities. Second, anachronistic songs are designedfor the disconcerting effect caused by the mismatch between their established perception and the context of the video game. Third, Atomic Heart’s invocation of an anachronistic soundtrack captures the problem of historical memory, which is the philistine oblivion of the internal gradations of the Soviet era. The two types of presentation of Soviet pop songs in “Atomic Heart” are atmospheric and action types. In the first case, the songs appear as a background that creates the general atmosphere of the space, and in the second case, they become a kind of show-stopper, which has a strong influence on the perception of the action gameplay. The author illustrates his observations with a detailed analysis of specific songs and peculiarities of their arrangement.

«Дистанционный монтаж» Артавазда Пелешяна в семиотической перспективе (на основе теоретических работ режиссера)

The article explores the renowned Armenian documentary filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian (born 1938), whose acclaim surged in 1988, marking the end of the Soviet era, when many figures of Armenian culture became peripatetic. Through a semiotic lens and metalanguage, the article delves into the core elements of “Montage-at-aDistance,” examining the interplay between image and sound/music, and the generative potential inherent in the director’s cinematic language. It particularly emphasizes a distinct montage language, founded not on coupling, docking, and splicing film frames (akin to Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein), but on decollage, influenced by Marcel Merien’s principle. Pelechian employs a theory of distance to deconstruct the narrative, thus embedding the emotional depth of documentaries. His “Montage-at-aDistance” aligns typologically with T.S. Eliot’s theory of personalized poetry and emotion. A theory of distance catalyzes for the viewer's intellectual engagement, as it eliminates everything deemed “superfluous” and “noise” (in a semiotic context) from the visual series. The author’s message is dispersed throughout the film text and, at the structural and pragmatic level, is crafted into a “frame” structure, assembling a cinematic “picture” within a frame.

Constructing the image of the USSR in traditional media (on the example of Argumenty i Fakty): Experience of statistical and qualitative analysis of communication strategies

The article defines the communication strategies of creating the image of the USSR on the basis of statistical and qualitative analysis of the Argumenty i Fakty content. The empirical basis of the article is based on the material of the newspaper published from 1992 to 2022. The use of statistical methods to analyze all issues (by continuous sampling) made it possible to identify the range of articles that mention the lexemes “USSR”, “Soviet Union”, “Union Soviet”, “country Soviet”. Communication strategies are determined by analyzing the frequency of mentioning certain word forms in the media content. The use of the thematic modeling algorithm, namely, the method of machine learning allowed us to analyze the corpus of documents, to detect patterns of words and phrases that occur most often and thus characterize the content of Argumenty i Fakty, and to automatically group articles in which terms close in meaning occur. Thus, 5757 articles were classified and 95 clusters were identified, which in turn were reduced to 16 large thematic blocks: sports, cinema, economy, music, memory, ideology, politics, education, space, debts and credits, products, man, war in Afghanistan, intelligence, atomic project. The most prominent images of the USSR in the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty appear to be the following: the winner in World War II and the geopolitical rival of the USA in the Cold War. Statistical analysis of the articles proves the importance of the Soviet experience for understanding Russia’s domestic and foreign policy. Qualitative discourse analysis shows the prevalence of positive representation of the Soviet era, which allows to label the USSR as a significant “other” for contemporary Russia. Argumenty i Fakty is characterized as an important agent/subject of the contemporary politics of symbolic identification. Keywords: image of the USSR, quantitative content analysis, Argumenty i Fakty, traditional media, communication strategies.

Культурные традиции России в сфере семейно детерминированного воплощения представлений о лидере

Along with worldwide tradition of understanding the leader/ head of state, an important tradition is understanding paternalism as the basis for either hard or more or less soft interaction between a person in power and the population of the country. The article is based on the tradition of scientific comprehension in the context of its artistic and figurative embodiment. Applying interdisciplinary methodology, the author actualizes the tradition of studying the mentioned interaction. Numerous and diversified in terms of content studies of the Soviet era are taken into account. This tendency is considered in relation to long-standing art experience (e.g., of A. Pushkin) and to the XX century experience. Outstanding directorial and acting works are mentioned – Lenin (and his embodiment by actors, from B. Shchukin to O. Yankovskiy), Stalin (the paradoxical and grotesque nature of the actors’ work, from S. Zakariadze to G. Khazanov).

Creation of a multimedia electronic system "Wagon Building Plant"

Currently, large-scale projects are being implemented in the Russian Federation to preserve the rich historical and cultural heritage. Digitization (scanning, preparation for machine processing, open access placement) of newspaper and documentary materials fully corresponds to this trend of state policy, fully contributes to the implementation of one of its directions – the preservation of the industrial heritage of the Soviet era. The digitized materials of the newspaper "Vagonostroitel" make up most of the issues of this small-circulation publication that have been preserved in the region. When combining the resulting array of digitized newspaper files with incomplete sets stored in the regional scientific library and the regional state archive, a full-fledged database of materials on the production activities of one of the largest enterprises in the region and the lives of its workers is created. Digitized materials with an effective search system are posted on the Internet (on the server of the I. Kant BFU). The implemented project makes the newspaper "Vagonostroitel" accessible to all those interested in the fate of the plant, helps the descendants of factory workers to learn about the lives of parents, grandparents, which contributes to the education of patriotic feelings and family values. The discovered and digitized office documentation transferred to the archive significantly complements the existing archival fund of the plant, expands the possibilities for a comprehensive and objective study of its history. During the implementation of the project, foreign and domestic, including leading Russian libraries and regional scientific libraries, experience in scanning and posting periodicals and scanning archival materials on the Internet was taken into account. Bitrix, Phyton, html, Python-tesseract, and Yandex Disk 360 programs were used to create the website of the Vagonzavod newspaper and the search engine for the digitized Vagonostroitel newspaper.

Усадьба-санаторий и город-сад: «счастливые пространства» в романе Н.А. Островского «Как закалялась сталь»

The article examines modifications of the “estate topos” in the novel by N.A. Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered (1932–1934), which is a landmark for the socialist realist canon.. In the first part of the work, the estate is a “heavenly” topos, a place separated from the unprepossessing working outskirts, a “shelter for the persecuted,” a secluded “happy space,” according to G. Bachelard’s definition. At the same time, the estate and the surrounding wild nature — lake and forest — are the birthplace of the socialist dream of a future happy society. The second part of the novel reveals the transformation of the “estate topos” in the literature of the USSR: “happy spaces” for the collective life of the new society are organized in the former owner’s estates. Ostrovsky’s novel demonstrates features of “crypto-estate mythology” characteristic of the estate topics of the Soviet era. The research shows a continuity of the “happy space” of the former owner’s estate with the phenomenon of the “collective paradise” of the Soviet sanatorium. In Russian and foreign literature of the 20th century, it becomes the place of initiation of heroes as writers (there is a parallel with the sanatorium utopia in T. Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain, 1924). However, in the socialist realist novel, the sanatorium is perceived not as a solitary locus of subjective self-determination but as part of a larger world of united fighters for a bright future for humanity. Blind Pavel is introduced into the connection of spaces, a kind of “heterotopia,” by the radio receiver given to him, which returns the hero to the world as a large construction site, a “world plant.”

MEDIOS DE VIDA RURALES, POBREZA Y PROTECCIÓN SOCIAL EN UN ANTIGUO PAÍS SOVIÉTICO, KIRGUISTÁN

In Kyrgyzstan, many rural families have tried to escape poverty by migrating to urban centres within the country or abroad. Although the poverty rate has tended to decline over the course of this century, it has recently increased significantly, mainly due to the COVID pandemic and its aftermath. A few years after independence from the USSR (1991), the national government reintroduced a model of social protection, albeit less generous than that of the Soviet era. With some partial reforms, this model has been maintained until today. Its effectiveness seems insufficient, especially the noncontributory component, which supports poor rural and urban families. The situation of the latter is aggravated by the limited scope and coverage of free public health services. Despite tight national budget margins, fiscal space could be created to refinance some national priorities. These include the social protection system. However, this system should also be redesigned to become more progressive and poverty-oriented.

PRECONDITIONS FOR THE FORMATION OF A HUMOROUS APPROACH IN THE RUSSIAN PEDAGOGY OF THE XX CENTURY

Methods. In the course of the study, the methods of historical and pedagogical research were used: retrospective, historical-structural, historiographical, historical-genetic, comparative-comparative, the method of historical periodization, which together made it possible to conduct a systematic analysis of the development of the use of humor in the educational and upbringing process.
 Results. The historical prerequisites for the formation of a humorous approach in the domestic theory of education and upbringing are summarized. The chronological stages of the development of pedagogical thought in relation to the place of humor in the educational and educational process are highlighted. The works of figures of Russian pedagogy (Lunacharsky A.V., Makarenko A.S., Sukhomlinsky V.A., Amonashvili Sh.A.), revealing the attitude to humor as a pedagogical tool, are considered. The interpretations and opinions of various teachers about the place of humor in the theory of education and upbringing are presented, key techniques and methods are considered. The experience of the Soviet era in the use of humor in pedagogical practice is summarized.
 Practical implications. The obtained results can be applied in the creation of a unified overview of historical and pedagogical work devoted to the formation and development of a humorous approach in Russian pedagogy, as well as in solving applied didactic tasks in secondary and higher schools.

Городской кинотеатр советской эпохи: трансформация социального пространства (на примере Москвы, Ленинграда, Челябинска)

The study provides the main theses of a historical study of city cinemas of the Soviet era (on the example of Moscow, Leningrad, and Chelyabinsk). In this study, the cinema is studied as a social space, which, which French sociologist Henri Lefebvre believed consisted of three levels: how it is planned and implemented in a material form; how it functions in the actual conditions of its time; and how it is experienced and interpreted by its the users (audience). Based on this concept, the study investigates the system of Soviet management of cinemas, their architectural images in the urban landscape, the problems of operating cinemas, and audience’s opinion on ‘going to the cine­ma’. The key conclusions of the study indicate that, on the one hand, cinemas were a social space of cultural recreation for Soviet citizens, and, on the other hand, films, cinemas' architecture, and the events hosted in the cinemas were aimed at promoting Soviet ideological beliefs.

Собор святых, в земле Красноярской просиявших. К вопросу иконографии

At the turn of the XX-XXI centuries the list of saints of the Orthodox Church has been replenished with an impressive number of names of new martyrs and confessors who suffered during the Soviet era. In this regard, such a phenomenon as the "Synaxes of the Saints of the Diocese" has spread widely. As you know, each Catholic memory of saints established in the Church involves veneration, therefore, new celebrations appear dedicated to the Synaxes of the ascetics of the Russian Church in various regions of the country. And this means that right now new iconographic images of the New Martyrs and locally venerated saints are being born. Modern icon painters are actively engaged in the creation of icons and temple paintings that glorify the new saints and tell about the torment and executions to which they were subjected. In 2015, the Synaxe of Saints of the Krasnoyarsk Metropolis was established. To date, only three icons dedicated to the Synaxe of the Krasnoyarsk Saints are known. The article for the first time examines the process of adding the iconography of the Synaxe of the Krasnoyarsk Saints within the framework of church canonical art, defines its historical and partly theological aspects, analyzes compositional and stylistic devices, shows the role of symbolism in revealing the image, determines the uniqueness of the figurative solution, identifies some problems and trends in the development of modern church art. painting in Krasnoyarsk. The author for the first time introduces new names of Krasnoyarsk masters and their works into scientific circulation.

How much does spoken language affect spelling among primary school pupils? Quantitative research on spelling over the period of 1950–2021

Quantitative analysis of spelling among primary school pupils revealed that the spelling of primary school pupils was highly variable, but not chaotic. Despite deviations from norms, primary school pupils, probably based on the internal consistency of spelling, attempted to establish uniformity in their spelling by writing the same sounds or their combinations with the same orthographic codes. The theoretical consistency, grounded in spelling conventions, was statistically significantly higher in the essays of older primary school pupils compared to their younger counterparts, suggesting a potential influence of superior cognitive abilities in older children.The analysis confirmed the assumption that spoken language is a primary factor contributing to spelling variations in our primary school children. Its impact is particularly prominent in grades 1–2. Although teachers use corrections to maintain spelling consistency, only one-seventh of primary school children’s spelling remains unaffected by it.It was determined that spoken language alone accounted for spelling variations in one-fifth of primary school pupils. Additionally, one-fifth exhibited a stronger influence from causes other than spoken language, indicating a diverse range of factors affecting spelling. A small portion of primary school children had spelling influenced exclusively by factors unrelated to spoken language.Contrary to common assertions in the public sphere, the data of this research did not support claims of a decline in literacy among schoolchildren. No statistically significant difference was observed in the frequency of words failing to meet norms when comparing the spelling of primary school pupils from the Soviet era to the current period. Current primary school children do not exhibit a significantly higher tendency to write based on spoken language than their counterparts in the Soviet era.

En svensk röst från Kaunas och Vilnius1939–1940: Lennart Kjellbergs brev

In this article, I intend to publish a series of letters by Lennart Kjellberg (1913–2004) who had worked as a Swedish lecturer in Lithuania at the University in Kaunas and Vilnius before World War II, in 1939–1940. I met Lennart Kjellberg several times in the early 90s when I, a young scholar after completing Swedish and Nordic studies and a doctorate in historical linguistics, came to Vilnius and started teaching at the University of Vilnius and set up the Department for Scandinavian Studies. We met several times in Uppsala, and Lennart Kjellberg gave me a bundle of copies of his letters, mainly to his bride Ann-Mari Stridbeck written in 1939, encouraging me to publish them. Kjellberg’s letters are an incredibly exciting source of information and insight for those interested in the cultural and political life of Lithuania during that time and in its perception by a young Swedish intellectual. For me, meeting Lennart Kjellberg, besides everything else, was an unexpected collision with the past which had been cut away by Soviet oppression. For those who grew up during the Soviet era, the period before and during the Soviet presence was sort of divided into then and now (before and after World War II). The loss of continuity in Lithuania’s history is perhaps one of its greatest traumas caused by the Soviet period. For this reason, Kjellberg’s letters, most of which are being published here for the first time, not only give us a lively picture of pre-war Lithuania but also contribute to our better understanding of our past and of ourselves.

Marco BUTTINO, Samarkand: Living the city in the Soviet era and beyond. Rome: Viellia, 2020, 353 p.

Marco BUTTINO, Samarkand: Living the city in the Soviet era and beyond. Rome: Viellia, 2020, 353 p.