Soviet Institutions Research Articles

Testing Meldonium: Assessing Soviet pragmatic alternatives to the randomized controlled trial.

Current research largely tends to ignore the drug-testing model that was developed in the "Second World" as an explicit alternative to the randomized controlled trial. This system can be described as "socialist pharmapolitics," accounting for the specific features of state socialism that influenced the development and testing of experimental drugs. The clinical trials model employed in the "Second World" was heavily influenced by the Soviet Union, which was by far the most influential player in the socialist bloc during the Cold War. Based on extensive archival research, this article presents an empirical case of a late Soviet clinical trial as a pragmatic alternative to the randomized controlled trial model. It accounts for the divergences between the official model prescribed by the Soviet authorities and the messy realities of healthcare practice. It further outlines different factors that ultimately shaped how clinical trials were organized in Soviet institutions "on the ground." Accordingly, this article presents a "real-life" history of "socialist pharmapolitics" and outlines the problems that this system faced in practice. Archival research was conducted at the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation in Moscow. Archival files include scientific, technical, and registration documentation such as biochemical, pharmacological, and clinical descriptions of the experimental drug Meldonium, letters between various hospitals, research institutes and the Soviet regulatory body, as well as 26 reports of completed clinical trials. Manual content analysis was used for the interpretation of results. This article presents an empirical case of a late Soviet clinical trial as a pragmatic alternative to the randomized controlled trial model. It demonstrates some key differences from the randomized controlled trial model. This article also highlights some of the discrepancies between the model that was officially prescribed by the Soviet authorities and the realities of experimental drug testing in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In particular, it notes some elements of randomization, double-blinding, and the use of placebo that were present in Meldonium trials despite being formally denounced by Soviet bioethics. The Soviet model for testing experimental drugs differed from the Western one substantially in a number of respects. This difference was not only proclaimed officially by the Soviet authorities, but was for the most part enforced in clinical trials in practice. At the same time, our research demonstrates that there were important differences between the official model and the clinical realities on the ground.

Funeral Reform and the Materiality of Death in the Russian Civil War

Based on documents produced by various Soviet institutions in Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and Yaroslavl’ in 1917–1922, this paper looks at the transformations of the Soviet funeral industry during the Civil War. After the October Revolution, a series of decrees proclaimed the secularization of funeral practices and attempted to purify them of monetary relations and hierarchy. The funeral ranks, or razryady, were eliminated, and Soviet institutions were obliged to provide equal services for all citizens regardless of their social background. This initiative was part of a larger project of creating a new man with new values by changing everyday practices. Due to administrative difficulties caused by the regime change and wartime challenges, the implementation of the funeral reform was fraught with perturbations at state, local, and family level. In Moscow, these problems led to the fullfledged “funeral crisis” of 1919, when the rise in mortality, serious shortages in supplies, and bureaucratic prevarications resulted in dead bodies being left unburied for prolonged periods of time. In the smaller towns of Ivanovo-Voznesensk and Yaroslavl’, the crisis was less intense, and the funeral industry, while being transformed in accordance with the decrees, could still cope with popular demands. Several factors might explain this difference, including town size and the less rigid attitude of the provincial authorities to the implementation of funeral innovations. The ambitious funeral reform was not entirely successful: this paper argues that the attempts to change this death-related industry did not concern the fundamental norms of dealing with the dead, namely the idea shared by both the Soviet officials and the population that a dead body deserves personal space, privacy, and respect.

Tomsk Judge Alexander Levberg: The Facets of Collaboration with Bolsheviks at the Beginning of the Civil War

In 1917, the Soviet regime began to introduce new forms of state and legal relations. The former system of justice was being violently destroyed, which led to a split in the judicial community and caused significant changes in the legal culture of practitioners, who were thrown into unavoidable political and professional choices. In this article, the author refers to the story of judge A. E. Levberg and studies the professional paths of Siberian judicial figures who joined Soviet institutions, finding out the motives governing their actions and evaluating the repressive measures employed. The study makes it possible to add new information to data on the mechanisms of revolutionary transformations, helps explain the patterns of how state legal systems functioned, and increases knowledge about human behaviour during a deep social and political conflict. A central focus on everyday life, micro-historical analysis, and the use of various sources (print media, private sources, and archival documentation introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time) make it possible to comprehensively consider reports on the liquidation of pre-revolutionary courts and the transfer of their employees to work for the Bolsheviks. Such decisions did not necessarily entail the intentional participation of judicial personnel in the construction of the new regime, as it could have been caused by material need; moreover, it allowed judges to continue their judicial practice and fulfill their professional duty to society. Many might have considered their work in the Soviet state apparatus as subversion against it. The judicial community itself considered cooperation with the Soviets a betrayal of the principles of corporate solidarity and ideals of justice. After the Bolsheviks had been overthrown, their collaborators from among the judiciary were prosecuted. Despite social and professional hostility towards them, these people avoided severe punishment: the legal framework did not classify their actions as a crime, and no provision existed for sanctioning moral or political choices.

РАДЯНІЗМИ В СЕРІАЛІ “CHERNOBYL”: ПЕРЕКЛАДАЦЬКИЙ ТА ЛІНГВОКУЛЬТУРНИЙ АСПЕКТИ

The article examines the Sovietisms used in “Chernobyl” miniseries produced by HBO. Lexical semantic groups as sets of paradigmatically and semantically related lexical means are detected and analised. The key role in the text part of HBO’s miniseries “Chernobyl” produced by HBO is played by the nominations of Soviet authorities (23% of the researched Sovietisms), Soviet awards (7%), Soviet authorities’ positions (25%), NPP workers’ positions (9%), Soviet institutions and buildings (11%), Soviet phrases and slogans (25%). The article discusses the Sovietisms’ ambivalence as perceived by the representatives of post-Soviet countries and other lingvocultures. The Sovietisms’ identification in modern Ukrainian society is checked through a survey of 40 respondents of two age groups: the generation that was born in post-Soviet independent Ukraine (aged from 14 to 25) and older generation, people who were born and lived in USSR (aged from 37 to 65). The results of the survey show that older generations identify the Soviet realia clearer than young generation that recognizes only up to 51% sovietisms. These issues include, but are not restricted to, the reception of the given audiovisual methods, techniques and transformations, and the different ways in which the translation process is accomplished in different countries. The data obtained must be thoroughly considered when adapting audiovisual products for different audiences. The main means of the Sovietisms’ adaptation for English (original) version of the miniseries contextual interpretation (84%) and transliteration (16%). The discussion of the study will contribute to assessing the potential multinational studies in audiovisual translation, thus offering indications on future methodological developments and enabling more detailed and structured comparisons. The material analysed in the article can be used for adaptation of audiovisual products for the Ukrainian audience and for tourist services’ improvement, including accompanying foreign tourists to the Chornobyl Zone.

Administrative Justice in the Soviet Period (Analysis of the Doctrine, Legislation and Procedure of the First Half of the 20th Century)

Socio-political significance and legal status of the institute of administrative justice are widely understood in the context of the thorough analysis of Soviet theory, legislation and practice of the first half of the last century. The choice of the subject matter of the study is preconditioned by the universally recognized periodization, according to which administrative justice in the Soviet period reached the highest level of development in the first half of the 20th century after the foundations of civil proceedings of the Union of the SSR and the Soviet Union Republics were approved in 1961. From this point of view, it is very interesting and useful to study the objective circumstances that took place in the first half of the last century. The study covers the beginning of the Soviet path of development and improvement of the institute of administrative justice, the lower border of which constitutes the final moment of the establishment of Soviet power, and the upper border covers the post-war period of the Soviet Union. The grounds, conditions and procedure of settlement of complaints against actions of Soviet institutions and officials are identified by various bodies. The selected subject matter was actualized during the development and adoption of the first Administrative Procedural Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as well as in the course of institutional reform aimed at ensuring the rule of law, including in the areas of public administration and local government.The purpose of this paper is to study the issues of regulation of public relations arising between the Soviet State represented by public authorities, their officials, state officials, on the one hand, and Soviet citizens and their associations, on the other. To achieve this goal, the following tasks are set: studying the normative legal acts of the Soviet power issued by the central election commissions, All-Russian congresses of councils, people's commissariats, workers'-peasants' inspectorates, councils of workers'-and-peasants' defenses and many other Soviet institutions regulating administrative justice in the first half of the 20th century; determination of grounds, conditions and procedure for appealing or challenging the legality of acts, decisions, actions or omissions to act on behalf of Soviet institutions and officials; analysis of the legal thought of the first half of the 20th century.

"Not Just Tea Drinking": The Red Teahouse and the Soviet State Public in Interwar Uzbekistan

"Not Just Tea Drinking"The Red Teahouse and the Soviet State Public in Interwar Uzbekistan Claire Roosien (bio) In April 1928, speaking at the Third Convention of Uzbekistan's Communist Youth League (Komsomol), a young activist registered a serious critique of the Red Teahouse. Red Teahouses were the foremost institution for Marxist-Leninist instruction in Uzbekistan.1 By all accounts, Red Teahouses enjoyed a great deal of popularity, in part because ordinary, "black" teahouses had already been a fixture of Central Asian social life for centuries. But the activist complained that in some Red Teahouses, Uzbekistan's youth were not studying the books that had been sent to them for political education. Instead, the books had been hung from the ceiling with ropes—dusty, torn, and unread.2 To be sure, he added, some Komsomol activists had managed to attract popular participation through other entertainments: he specifically mentioned donkey races and competitions among players of the dutar, a local stringed [End Page 479] instrument. But if teahouses were to become properly Soviet, they needed both to remain popular and to align themselves with party agendas. There is no way of knowing why those communist books ended up on ropes rather than on shelves—or, even better, in the hands of readers. Perhaps teahouse administrators felt the books would be better appreciated as decorations than as reading material. Perhaps, as Komsomol activists complained elsewhere, the books' pages were being used as wrappings for food, and hanging them from the ceiling kept the pages close at hand for patrons in need of a napkin.3 Whatever the reason, the dangling Marxist-Leninist tracts represent the central problem the Bolsheviks faced in creating state-sponsored mass institutions in Uzbekistan. On the one hand, the institutions functioned to assert state control: to promulgate Marxism-Leninism and, more importantly, to mobilize Uzbekistan's masses for collectivization and the cotton monoculture. On the other hand, mobilizing the masses required creating an institution that was truly popular: one that would get Central Asians in the door voluntarily and facilitate enthusiastic participation in state projects. The challenge facing Central Asian activists was to take advantage of the teahouse's popularity while also making the teahouse Red. In this article, I examine the institution of the Red Teahouse in the early Soviet period. Red Teahouses mushroomed in Uzbekistan's countryside especially during the years of the first two five-year plans, totaling more than 3,000 by 1934.4 I take seriously Soviet activists' claim that the Red Teahouse existed [End Page 480] to promote mass participation even as they sought to exert state control. I term this space for popular participation the "state public," foregrounding at once its comparability to the public spheres of interwar Western Europe in an age of mass politics, and the Soviet state's unprecedented aspirations to control. But by promoting participation, the Red Teahouse created the conditions of possibility for forms of public life that the state could neither predict nor control. In particular, the Red Teahouse provided harbor for modes of teahouse sociability that had roots in pre-Soviet practices. Sometimes, these off-label uses of the Red Teahouse supported state agendas; other times, they undermined those agendas. To make this dynamic clear, I begin with a discussion of teahouse culture before the Soviet period. I then proceed to examine the adoption of the Red Teahouse model in the Soviet period, the changing expectations for how Red Teahouses would function during the five-year plans, and the ways that popular participation both facilitated and undermined those expectations. In the conclusion, I pan out to a broadly comparative view, suggesting that the Red Teahouse should be considered neither a communist nor a Central Asian aberration but rather a case study of the tensions inherent in modern projects of mass publicity around the world.5 In examining the Red Teahouse as a Soviet institution, I draw on two main source bases. First, reports housed in the Russian State Archive of Sociopolitical History (RGASPI) and the Uzbekistan National State Archive (O'zMDA) offer the perspective of the primarily Russian-speaking administrators who supervised the construction and functioning of Red Teahouses. Archival sources provide indispensable statistical...

Female Pilgrimage to the Middle East during Global Transformation, or How Lost Female Pilgrims in the Holy Land Fell in the Sphere of Soviet Interests

The research focuses on establishing and personifying the rather shady and marginal group of “Russian female pilgrims” that decided to stay in the Holy Land in 1910—1920’s and caught the attention of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the formation of the state of Israel. In our research, we are introducing previously unpublished documents that give us the opportunity to examine this marginal group of elderly, religious women, who unexpectedly became acting figures in the Soviet-Israeli diplomatic relations and the Soviet struggle for Russian property in Palestine. The interest of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in attaining property that previously belonged to institutions and representatives of the Russian Empire in Palestine naturally sparked the USSR’s keen interest in Russian nuns and female pilgrims in the region. The condition under which these women were granted Soviet citizenship was the recognition of Patriarch Alexius I of Moscow, which in itself is an expression of the new role, played by the Russian Orthodox Church under Stalinist leadership in the international (namely — Middle Eastern) arena. In this research paper we will demonstrate the mechanism of discussion and decision-making within the Soviet institutions, which pertained to the granting of a special kind of citizenship, one that officially forbade the entrance to the USSR. Among the documents published is the list of the female pilgrims, who lived in the Holy Land in 1952 and who were willing to receive Soviet citizenship.

Mario Vargas Llosa in Soviet Union. Dedicated to Llosa’s 85th anniversary

The present article is a publication of a report by Tamara Zlochevskaya, a translator of the Foreign Commission of the Union of Soviet Writers, on the stay of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa in the USSR in 1968, provided with a introduction by the researcher and explanations to the text. This is the first publication of a document preserved in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art (RGALI). It’s known that at the end of the 60s the writer found himself disappointed in socialism, although the reasons for this disenchantment could be various factors from visits to socialist countries to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the reaction of the Cuban leadership to those events. The accompanying translator's report is a rare source about Llosa's visit to Moscow, which we hardly know about. The testimony of T.Zlochevskaya, as well as the analysis of the correspondence between M. Vargas Llosa and the Foreign Commission, shed light on the misunderstandings between the writer and Soviet institutions related with the censorship and author’s emolument for the novel "The Time of the Hero".

Қазақстандағы «әскери коммунизм» кезеңіндегі кеңестік саяси режим

The article deals with the emergence and activity of Soviet power institutions in Kazakhstan during the period of «war communism». During the years of «war communism», the construction of the Soviet state apparatus continued. An important feature of this process, researchers call the wide involvement of workers and peasants in state bodies. There was a change in the national composition of civil servants - after the revolution, they began to include representatives of many peoples of the former Russian Empire. In addition, many officials continued to work in Soviet state structures that began their careers during the Provisional Government or even the tsarist regime. The escalation of the civil war led to the emergence of emergency authorities not provided for by the Constitution of the USSR. On the ground, the functions of emergency services were performed by revolutionary committees. During the years of the Civil War and «war communism», the RCP (b) became the core of the Soviet political system. Thus, under the influence of wartime emergencies, a rigid military command system began to form in the country. The article reveals the specifics of the implementation of the policy of «war communism» in Kazakhstan, carried out by the Bolsheviks during the civil war of 1918-1920. As a result of the analysis, it was possible to determine that the policy of «war communism» in the regional aspect was carried out in line with general Soviet trends. It represented a set of measures of the Soviet government in the field of industry, agriculture, and social relations aimed at militarizing production and ensuring the combat capability of the Red Army. The specifics of the implementation of the policy of «war communism» in Kazakhstan were determined by the economic backwardness of the region and the nature of hostilities. These features should include: later than in the whole Soviet Union, the inclusion of the regions of Kazakhstan in the process of implementing measures of «war communism», their extension to the indigenous population, more rigid forms and methods of implementing military-communist construction. The result of the policy of «war communism» in Kazakhstan was a drop in production, especially in the agricultural sector of the economy, the famine of 1920-1922, which led to demographic losses of the population, mass migration of nomadic peoples outside the country, widespread peasant anti-Bolshevik protests and resistance of the indigenous population in the form of Basmachism. Based on archival materials and published works, the authors analyze the activities of Soviets and revkoms. In conclusion, conclusions are drawn that determine the nature of the origin and purpose of the Soviet institutions of power.

Soviet-Tajik Writing Intelligentsia in the Late 1930s

This paper looks at the formation of a Tajik-Soviet writing elite in the 1930s, exploring how a new generation of Soviet writers in the late 1930s emerged out of new state institutions. Prior to their emergence, the founders of Tajik literature - Sadriddin Aini and Abolqosim Lahuti - used their unique position vis-à-vis Moscow to shape the direction of Tajik literature. Despite the former’s important place in Soviet hagiography, it was the younger generation of Tajik writers - including writers like Mirzo Tursunzoda, Jalol Ikromi, Sotim Ulughzoda, and others - that emerged on the all-Union writing scene in the late 1930s and became key cultural and political fi gures in the post-war era. While the role of the Tajik writer inevitably became the portrayal of the national subject in the modern context of Soviet development, this article shows how comparing the themes and writings of these two generations in the 1930s demonstrates how Tajik national identity building related to the nationalities policies of the early Soviet Union and, in particular, the relationship between Tajik national identity and territory. This paper relies on a few primary source materials the Central State Archive of the Republic of Tajikistan, but also online archives, newspapers/periodicals, and published Books and collections. This paper fi nds that the mobilization of a younger generation of Tajik-Soviet Writing Intelligentsia led to the creation of a new vision of Tajik national identity unfolding in a Soviet space. Unlike the early writers Sadriddin Aini and Abolqosim Lahuti, these younger writers emerged in new Soviet institutions and therefore projected a new Soviet-Tajik identity in the late 1930s and eventually became leaders of Central Asian literature in the post WWII period

Technological inequalities and motivation of Soviet institutions in the scientific-technological cooperation of Comecon in Europe, 1950s–80s

ABSTRACT This article examines Comecon’s scientific-technological cooperation via the lens of the so-called ‘direct contacts’ of Soviet industrial and research institutions and specialists. It emphasizes two particular questions: the place of institutional and technological inequality in the attempt to integrate socialist Europe; and the motivations of Soviet research and industrial institutions. The paper studies from a local perspective the way in which regional integration was to provide modern technologies to help both the bloc and the Soviet technological system beat the West. It demonstrates that technological integration of the bloc was complicated by institutional inequalities on the local level that contradicted the design and bureaucracy of cooperation that had initially been based on the principle of equality. As a result, in many cases, cooperation was not an opportunity for mutually beneficial technological development, but a formalized necessity and a source of individual benefits. It gave Soviet specialists motivation to see better techniques and higher working and living standards, which sometimes became an important incentive for cooperation.

Демократизм как характеристика квазисудебных учреждений 1920-х гг. в период новой экономической политики

The article considers principles of organizing quasi-judicial institutions established all over the country in the early years of New Economic Policy. The research objectives are as follows: to identify and describe features of democracy in Soviet institutions. The author focuses on studying activity of comrades’ courts, land commissions, courts of conciliation and rural courts of conciliation, rate-and-dispute commissions established on democratic principles, avoiding governmentalisation. Scientific originality of the paper lies in the fact that the researcher for the first time analyses normative legal acts regulating activity of the mentioned institutions, examines archival documents describing process of their formation in Tambov province. The conducted research allows concluding that activity of quasi-judicial institutions was equally associated with democracy and ideological indoctrination. The author shows how quasi-judicial institutions of the 1920s correlate with the existing alternative forms of conflict resolution.

Newly independent, path dependent: The impact of the Soviet past on innovation in post-Soviet states

Though vastly divergent in size, natural resource endowment and human capital, all of the 15 former Soviet states inherited Soviet institutions. The decision to shed those structures and ideas, however, has been anything but uniform across the post-Soviet region. This article aims to expand what limited understanding we have of the extent to which path dependency in research and development (R&D) institutions can explain the divergence in national innovation performance in three post-Soviet states: Estonia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. This study finds that those countries, which retained the institutional R&D model of the Soviet Union, demonstrate subpar national innovation performance compared to the countries that chose to actively reform their R&D systems post-independence. This presents an important theoretical and practical contribution to the scholarship on path dependency and national innovation.

The New Powers of the Pedsovet: Social Control during the Thaw and the Transformation of Disciplinary Practice in a Town School, 1953–68

There has been a recent upsurge of interest to the Krushchev’s Thaw as not only the period of ideological liberalization, but also as a moment of broadening and deepening of social control. Yet the primary Soviet institution responsible for the social control of children and adolescents, the school, has been largely overlooked in this respect. In this paper I position the school disciplinary practices of the Thaw in the context of the high‐profile discursive and institutional trends of the epoch, including hooliganism, obshchestvennost’, and outsourcing of social control to vigilante brigades and comrades’ courts. The data come from a case study of documented disciplinary action in one rank‐and‐file school in the town of Toropetz in 1953–68. The part played by the school in the ensemble of formal and informal institutions that regulated adolescent behavior is analyzed by the systematic inquiry into the accusations worded, punishments meted out, and references to other institutions made in the disciplinary records. I argue that one of the effects of the broadening of horizontal supervision during the Thaw was a more pronounced in‐school disciplinary reaction to the out‐of‐school infringements. Seeing the school as the primary institution to exert peer pressure on the adolescent and his parents, as obshchestvennost’, the teachers felt the urge to duplicate the functions of the official penal system by their own quasi‐judicial disciplinary procedures.

Polish Delegations in Kazakhstan During the Second World War in Documents of the Almaty and Semipalatinsk Archives

Introduction. The article investigates the versatile activities of Polish diplomats on the example of the representative offices of the embassy of Poland (delegations) in Alma-Ata (Almaty) and Semipalatinsk (Semey). Documents in the Kazakhstani archives indicate the presence of nine delegations created during the war in Kazakhstan to facilitate the formation of the Polish army (Anders Army). Polish “delegates” – diplomats, military, civilian employees – helped to rescue the Poles from places of detention and settlements, to draw up their documents for further sending to the army. Materials. Documents of the “especially valuable” fund of the Semipalatinsk Archive (currently the Documentation Center of Modern History of the East Kazakhstan Region, Semey), which are put into scientific circulation for the first time, testify to the versatile activities of Polish delegations in a large space in the east of the country. Analysis and Results. Polish delegates organized not only military-political and consular issues, but also economic, social, humanitarian activities. Polish employees worked in contact with Soviet institutions. They provided social support to both the military and displaced, evacuated, orphans, and disabled people. The organization of orphanages and shelters for Polish children was carried out, including by the efforts of Polish diplomats. The Poles who returned after the war to their homeland organized societies of the so-called “sybyraki”. Today they act as a kind of bridge in relations between Kazakhstan and Poland.

The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation, 1917–41 ed. by Lara Douds, James Harris and Peter Whitewood

Reviewed by: The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation, 1917–41 ed. by Lara Douds, James Harris and Peter Whitewood Ivan Sablin (bio) Lara Douds, James Harris, and Peter Whitewood (Eds.), The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation, 1917–41 ( New York; London: Bloomsbury, 2020). 319 pp. Select Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-350-11789-1. The three editors of this book, Lara Douds (Northumbria University), James Harris (University of Leeds), and Peter Whitewood (York St. John University), have assembled a comprehensive collection of sixteen essays on the history of Bolshevism and the early Soviet state. Their main genre is intellectual and political history. The authors, predominantly from North America and Europe, include both established scholars and early career researchers. The volume works well as a whole and makes a good addition to literature on the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet Union, while the individual essays intersect and engage with each other thematically and conceptually. In the introduction, the editors seek to reconsider the notion of the intentional choice between authoritarianism and democracy (P. 2) by putting the early Soviet experience into the broader European context of democracy's troubled history. The editors make use of the Bolsheviks' own argumentation against contemporary political democracy. Reformulating the idea of proletarian dictatorship as "illiberal liberation," they suggest decoupling democracy from liberalism by looking at the Bolshevik order as alternatively democratic. They understand this alternative democracy as rule in the interest of the majority rather than rule by the majority (P. 5). I wonder if the use of the term "democracy" is analytically productive. The idea of the Bolshevik regime as a democracy is in fact challenged already in chapter 1. Furthermore, at the Third Congress of Soviets, which constituted the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin explicitly dismissed democracy altogether, implying that it could not be decoupled from capitalism when debating with other socialists.1 The introduction could also benefit from a critical reflection on the key concepts it employs, beginning with "the working masses": for one thing, the proletariat was a minority in Russia, while most peasants were classified as "petty bourgeoisie." Furthermore, even though peasants were gradually included in Soviet institutions, they were represented unequally there: hence, the early Soviet regime, not unlike the prerevolutionary [End Page 307] one, not only practiced selective representation but also marginalized the peasants. This was pointed out by contemporary socialist critics of the Bolshevik autocracy.2 Another fundamental flaw of the introduction is its homogenizing and thus implicitly Russifying reading of the Russian Revolution, rather than treating it as an imperial phenomenon.3 Indeed, the ideas of democracy differed across the former empire, and the main political targets of the Bolsheviks were not the liberals but other socialist parties, which were very popular and often integrated into national movements. The introduction ignores the problem of federalism in the Russian liberation movement, which the Bolsheviks' initial program blatantly discarded and only later in the Civil War embraced as an appropriation of the competing socialist discourse.4 Finally, instead of a longue durée perspective on the Soviet period that spanned most of the twentieth century, the introduction skips everything between the early 1920s and 1991 (P. 10). This telescopic optics contributes to the text's advancement of a homogeneous and static vision of the Soviet regime. Aside from the introduction that narrows rather than broadens the perspective on modern approaches to the Bolshevik Revolution, the rest of the volume is well structured and thematically rich, with most of its sixteen chapters written in a critical and nuanced manner. The first two chapters form Part 1, "Bolshevik Ideology and Practice," and discuss the authoritarian inclinations in the Bolsheviks' theory and practice. Erik van Ree (University of Amsterdam) convincingly argues against reading Lenin as a democratic thinker, demonstrating the flawed nature of his ideas about the state and radical democracy and that his 1917 writings were conducive to autocracy (Pp. 17–18). Lenin favored etatism and centralization, brought about by the Great War, and envisioned socialism as a state-capitalist monopoly – the sole employer of the workforce (Pp. 21–22). In Lenin's interpretation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's ideas, self-government was replaced...

Художники «Джон Рид клуба» в СССР: к истории забытых культурных связей конца 1920-х — начала 1930-х годов

This paper is devoted to a poorly studied question of the emergence, in the late 1920s and early1930s, of strong ties between Soviet cultural institutions and American ‘revolutionary’ artists that primarily worked in left-leaning periodicals (such as The New Masses and The Daily Worker) and began to unite in the John Reed Clubs following the outbreak of the Great Depression. Against a backdrop of a whole range of problems in the economic and social system of the USA, the USSR attracted American left-wing artists and intellectuals as a country that had eliminated the barriers of class, ethnicity, and race, and where culture was created by workers for the working class. Their sympathies for the USSR derived to a certain extent from the paternalistic model of interrelationship between the authorities and art that had developed there, and which they could only dream of in the middle of the crisis. In 1929, the first and most influential John Reed Club was established in New York, soon to become affiliated with the Comintern and begin implementing its directives.Focusing on the exhibitions of the John Reed Club artists that took place in the Soviet Union between 1931and 1936, this paper also examines the interconnections between American artists with leftist sympathies and various Soviet institutions, among which are VOKS (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries), IBRA (International Bureau of Revolutionary Artists) and GMNZI (State Museum of New Western Art). Other goals of the paper are to follow up on the transformation of the very concept of ‘revolutionary art,’ occurring both in the USSR and the USA, and to trace the reception of American political art by Soviet critics in the decisive years of formation of the socialist realism canon.

Перший рейд Селянської армії Н. Махно на Старобільщину у вересні 1920 р. та його наслідки

The article considers the course and results of N. Makhno`s Peasant Insurgent Army raid to Starobilsk region in 1920. The author states, that the military activities of N. Makhno, in the then Starobilsk district of Kharkiv province in 1920, are the least covered in the works of Ukrainian and foreign historians among the aspects of the research the Makhnovist movement in 1917–1921. The importance of studying is that exactly in this region N. Makhno had made a number of significant strategic decisions that influenced the future fate of the peasant guerrilla movement. Additionally, in Starobilsk, on October 2 1920, N. Makhno signed an agreement with the Bolsheviks on a joint campaign in the Crimea, where were units of the White Army at the same time that led by General P. Wrangel. Prehistory review of these events is the object of studying in this article. The research presented in the article founded largely on the analysis of published documentary materials and historical works of Ukrainian representatives and foreign historiography. As a result of the research, the author concludes, that N. Makhno`s acceptance of Starobilsk in September 1920 was not related to the solution of core strategic problems. That was apparently due to necessity of the rest and reformed the army after the battles in the Izium region. The seizure of the locality was also owing to the desire to clear the rear of the Insurgent Army from the Bolshevik forces before the decisive attack on Luhansk, where the ataman hoped to replenish ammunition. Concomitantly, there were spontaneous requisitions of Soviet institutions property, warehouses and enterprises located here carried out in the city. The important factor similarly was considered the seizure of Starobilsk contributed to the consolidation of previously disparate local pro-Makhnovist detachments.

Hävituspataljonidest Eestis 1941. aasta sõjasuvel [Abstract: The Destruction Battalions in Estonia in the Summer War of 1941

Hävituspataljonidest Eestis 1941. aasta sõjasuvel [Abstract: The Destruction Battalions in Estonia in the Summer War of 1941

“Labor as freedom, labor as burden”: on the early period of women’s professional employment in Russia

This article discusses the emergence of the Russian working woman employed in skilled labor from the second half 19th century until the 1930s. In Russia, educated women entered the sphere of socially significant labor during the Great Reforms. The subsequent development largely explains the position of the working woman in modern Russia - hence the topicality of the present paper. Sources for this article are record-keeping documents of tsarist and Soviet institutions, statistical information, press materials as well as memoirs. Among the factors that influenced the formation of the Russian female working class in the pre-revolutionary period were a social movement for the development of female education, the emergence of special vocational schools for women, the Zemstvo reforms, industrialization and, eventually, World War I. The article shows changes in the nature of the employment of women after the 1917 Revolution. The authors document the rapid growth of women’s participation in all spheres of the USSR’s national economy in the 1930s, in particular health care, education, and work in the apparatus of state, party and economic bodies. As a result, during this period the professional traits of the three main types of Soviet female workers were formed: the woman-doctor, the woman-teacher and the womanfunctionary. At the same time, the authors come to the conclusion that Soviet rule brought no fundamental changes in the conditions of everyday life, so that the Soviet woman-intellectual turned out to be a “fighter of two fronts” - labor and domestic.