Stalin Era Research Articles

Dissent on the Belarusian Literary Front

Dissent on the Belarusian Literary Front Barbara Martin Tatsiana Astrouskaya, Cultural Dissent in Soviet Belarus (1968–1988): Intelligentsia, Samizdat, and Nonconformist Discourses. 232 pp., illus. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2019. ISBN-13 978-3447111881. €48.00. In recent years, the historiography of Soviet dissent has undergone a clear renewal and deideologization. Emancipation from Manichean Cold War era tropes of moral opposition to communism has allowed historians to enlarge their focus to manifestations of cultural dissent, study dissident cultures, but also explore the gray areas between the official and unofficial fields. Geographically, however, the focus is only beginning to shift from Moscow and Leningrad to the Russian peripheries and other Soviet republics. Belarus, with its image of political loyalty to Moscow, seems an unlikely place to look for manifestations of dissent or nonconformism. Yet, as Tatsiana Astrouskaya demonstrates in her study, the Belarusian intelligentsia found ways to voice its concerns over the status of its national language and history in both censored and uncensored publications. Far from delivering heroic narratives about Soviet dissidents, Astrouskaya brings to the reader's attention a case study characterized both by its liminality and peripherality. As the author underlines, "it is probably more challenging for the case of Belarus than in any other to merely divide intellectuals into two rival camps of nonconformists and collaborators, fighters and trimmers, Communist Party functionaries and opponents of the Party's monopoly, advocates of Russification and those who were 'nationally conscious'" (2). Using Homi Bhabha's concept of "third space," she writes that Belarusian intelligentsia "meandered between dissent and conformity, between self-printing and the state publishing houses" (11). While Belarusian writers were well-integrated into the Soviet system, mastered its codes, and knew how to navigate its hierarchies, they could also use this knowledge to circumvent accepted norms and introduce nonconformist ideas into censored print. Moreover, [End Page 650] authors who benefited from the privileges attached to the status of Soviet writer could also circulate their uncensored writings in samizdat. While such scholars as Ann Komaromi or Sergei Oushakine have explored the blurred boundary between official and unofficial fields, Astrouskaya shows that nationalist cultural discourse could also occupy this "third space."1 The notion of peripherality is no less important for Astrouskaya. It conditions the type of cultural dissent that is central to her study: discourses produced by the nationally conscious intelligentsia, set in opposition to the more universal democratic and moral opposition of Soviet human-rights activists in Moscow. Although she does not elaborate on this thesis, the author suggests that Russification was a product of "cultural colonization by Russian and Soviet imperialism" (116). Hence at the periphery, the task of national liberation superseded the more universal struggle for freedom that characterized dissent in the Russian capitals. Moreover, she emphasizes, the Belarusian intelligentsia was also marginal in so far as its national language and culture were always located at the crossroads of the Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Jewish, and Ukrainian worlds. Historically, Belarusian nationalists often took part in other national projects, only to realize that they did not fit, and incorporated these different perspectives into their own national project. Peripherality also imposed additional hurdles on Belarusian dissenters, such as the lack of access to channels of dissemination of their uncensored writings across the Iron Curtain and more limited access to samizdat from the capital. In addition, the lack of a significant Belarusian diaspora in the West, coupled with a lesser interest from Western radio stations, explain the relative paucity of Belarusian tamizdat. Being a borderland area, Belarus was also under stricter political control than more central areas of the Soviet Union. Astrouskaya states from the outset that she concentrates on "the intelligentsia that understood itself as national, wrote and published predominantly in the Belarusian language and perceived itself as deeply rooted in Belarusian tradition" (4), with a closer focus on "the writers' community and nonconformism" (8). The authors she considers, however, were variously integrated into the system, ranging from the acclaimed writer Vasyl´ Bykaŭ, who received the status of People's Writer of Belarus in 1980, to the poet Larysa Heniush, incarcerated in the Stalin era and with very few works that made their way into censored print. Astrouskaya convincingly shows...

Middle East Direction in the Diplomatic Mission of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1943 — the mid-1950s

The article analyzes the practice of restoring church contacts between the Russian Orthodox Church and the patriarchs of the Orthodox East and the reconstruction of the church infrastructure in the Holy Land after the break in the Second World War in 1943 until the end of the Stalinist era. Russian Orthodox Christianity was able to regain its presence in the Holy Land through the organization of diplomatic visits and gifts to the new head of the Russian Church, Patriarch Aleksei I, with the support of the Soviet government. This "return" after the formation of the State of Israel and with its support was accompanied by the displacement of the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the redistribution of church property in the region. The restoration of the presence of the USSR and the ROC in the region had long-term consequences for state-church relations in the USSR.

ТЕМА ВЗАИМООТНОШЕНИЙ ХУДОЖНИКА И ВЛАСТИ В ДИЛОГИИ СЕРГЕЯ МАКСИМОВА «ДЕНИС БУШУЕВ» И «БУНТ ДЕНИСА БУШУЕВА»

This article examines the unique solution to the problem of the relationship between the creative personality and the state in the dilogy of the émigré writer Sergei Maximov. The author believes that this question is axiological, as it is related to the moral choices of the artist.The relationship between the artist and the authorities is directly linked to the historical situation and the political regime. The novels show different characters through the dialogue between the authorities and the artist. The choice of heroes is largely due to the Stalinist era, which totally restricted the artist's freedom of personal expression. One variant of the characters' behaviour is toadapt to the regime, with the consequent loss of individuality, writing to social order, creating stereotyped socialist-realistic texts, participating in establishing the «Stalinist myth», but living comfortably in the material world and without state repression. Maksimov speaks about the degradation of the artistic level in socialist realistic works that follow an invariant model, which results in the unification of creative individuality. Another important issue to the novelist is the artist's ethical authority, the idea of the moral responsibility of the writer strengthening the position of the criminal regime through his works. Alternatively, one can choose to find freedom of expression, opposition to power, leading to the destruction of the artist by the system. What both choices have in common is that it is a relationship of initially unequal forces, so their dialogue is not constructive.

Following the Pages of an Unknown Book. General A. N. Bogolyubov and his Monograph “The Defeat of Kolchak”

This article focuses on a newly discovered military history: the monograph The Defeat of Kolchak, authored by famous Soviet military leader General Alexander N. Bogolyubov. Published in 1939 by the General Staff Academy of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, this book was one of the first full-fledged special works focused on an analysis of military operations on the Eastern front during the Russian Civil War. Due to a number of circumstances, Bogolyubov’s printed work has not been in circulation until today, and has remained an unknown variable for Russian historical science. The book is considered in two dimensions: as a typical creative phenomenon of the Stalin era, with its characteristic request for a uniform, unified interpretation of the events of 1917–1922; as a special phenomenon in the official activities of Bogolyubov, who, despite his personal aspirations and desires, was forced to turn to scientific and teaching work at the General Staff Academy of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. Consideration of the set of issues associated with a previously unknown book helped the author come to the following conclusions: in the scientific sense, the work of Bogolyubov appears to be an important phenomenon in the early historiography of the Civil War, certain expressions of the book to this day retain their relevance and novelty; the fact of the presence of the mass of controversial theses and obvious mistakes in the work is a reflection of the ideological attitudes and stereotypical approaches to the interpretation of the events of the war that prevailed in historiography in the 1930s; the creative way of the monograph was directly attributable to the development of official activities of its author, reflects the varieties of fortune of General Bogolyubov.

‘Stalinist Russocentrism’: An Interview with David Brandenberger about the Second Russian Edition of his Monograph National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. viii, 378 p.)

David Brandenberger holds a doctorate in history (PhD.) and is professor of Russian and Soviet history in the Department of History at the University of Richmond (USA). He is also an associate researcher at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” in Moscow. He is the author of books on the formation of Russian national identity during the Stalin era and on the infl uence that party propaganda and mass culture had on that process. In this interview, David Brandenberger discusses the arguments and methodologies that contributed to his monograph that was initially published in English and then in two Russian editions: National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), Natsional-bol’shevizm: stalinskaya massovaya kul’tura i formirovaniye russkogo natsional’nogo samosoznaniya, 1931-1956 gg. (St Petersburg: Akademicheskiy proekt, 2009) и Stalinskiy russotsentrizm: Sovetskaya massovaya kul’tura i formirovaniye russkogo natsional’nogo samosoznaniya, 1931-1956 gg . (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2017). Among other things, the author discusses how his thoughts on the topic of this book have evolved since its fi rst publication in light of scholarly debate and the increased availability of primary and secondary sources.

The Fate of Educators in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic During the Struggle Against “Bourgeois Nationalism” (1937-1938)

This article discusses the political repressions of 1937-1938 in the fi eld of public education, with the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as its case study. The author assembles new archival documents, mass media materials and memoirs of contemporaries to illuminate the regional specifi cs of repression in the broader context of the Stalinist era. Particular attention is paid to how “enemies of the people” were identifi ed. The author argues that the Bashkir Regional Party Committee, the media, and the party committees of educational institutions, as well as the organs of the NKVD worked in unison to expose “hostile elements” and Trotskyists among directors of educational institutions, specialists in higher education, and public school teachers. The media, as well as the decisions of closed party meetings, were imbued with the spirit of ideological intolerance; they provided the moral and ideological justifi cation for the arrests. This article traces a trend that was characteristic of national autonomous republics in general: the persecution of regional leaders and members of the national intelligentsia on charges of “local bourgeois nationalism.” The author also examines how purges in the party, state and educational bodies of the republic targeted “nationalists” directly or indirectly associated with “national and local deviationists” of the revolutionary years. The article also discusses the fate of Bashkortostan’s People’s Commissars of Education who were subjected to repression. Reconstructing the complex social and political situation in the educational sphere of the BASSR allows us to draw important conclusions, and better understand contemporary social and political processes.

Ideology and science: The story of Polish psychology in the communist period

This article presents a fragment of the history of psychology in Poland, discussing its development in the years 1945–56, which saw sweeping political and geographical transformations. In that maelstrom of history, psychology was particularly affected by the effects of geopolitical changes, which led to its symbolic ‘arrest’ in 1952, when psychological practice was prohibited and all psychology courses were abolished at universities. Amnesty was declared only in 1956, with the demise of the so-called Stalinist ‘cult of personality’ and the onset of a turbulent period when the crimes of the Stalinist era were prosecuted. We have adopted three time frames for our description and analysis of this dramatic period in the development of psychology in Poland. ‘The past’ is a story about the flourishing of Polish psychology before World War Two and the hopes for the discipline’s restoration after the war. ‘The present’, as the core of this narrative, represents the events of 1950–56. ‘The future’ refers to the period when Stalinist abuses were prosecuted during the Thaw, following the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorship, and the resurgence of Polish psychologists’ hopes for resurrecting their discipline. In all these periods, the narrative is interwoven with the story of the Polish psychologist Mieczysław Kreutz, who offers a model example of the hypothesized dependence of scientific research on sociopolitical change.

Soviet statistics as a historical source

The main purpose of the article is to identify capabilities of soviet statistics as a historical source. Basic information on this type of historical sources is represented. The article is concerned with a significant tradition of the soviet society studying. Research methods: comparative, logical, historical, analysis and synthesis, systematic, historical-genetic, method of historiographical image. Main results. The article describes a large toolkit for working with statistics: mathematical correction of censuses, research on falsifications and political pressure. A number of themes are considered including soviet statistics as mass historical source. The article reports on relevance and accessibility of soviet statistics nowadays. Concise conclusions. Ukrainian and foreign historians have created a large number of conceptual reviews of Soviet statistics. The author outlines some classification types of soviet statistics. It is specially noted on little-known aspects of soviet sources studying. Special attention is given to the verification of statistics of the USSR for authenticity and representativeness. Internet sites with open access to soviet statistics are considered. The paper studies leading concepts about changing the accounting of economic and demographic indicators of Soviet Union. Stalin era is described as main factor in the development of soviet statistics. The article reveals this concept and scrutinize it critique in historiography. Practical significance: recommended for use by authors of articles about the economic and the population history. Originality: the practical experience of scientific research and reference materials devoted to the features of statistical (mass) sources is generalized. Scientific novelty: the first of proposed the image of development soviet statistics with source problems in historiography. The formation of central and local statistic bodies in Ukrainian and foreign studies is described. The article reveals the main statistic sources and scrutinize their critique in historiography. Article type: descriptive.

“ETERNITY SMELLS OF OIL”. THE OIL AND THE KHANTY: RESISTANCE OR OPPORTUNISM?

The author of the paper shows how differently oil mining affects the Khanty who live in different Western Siberia state administrative districts. According to the opinion taken in the international anthropology, extraction of raw materials within the Russian “mining course” is able to give rise to conflicts and create “crude domination”. The author agrees with Florian Stammler’s opinion that the concept of conflict cannot describe the current situation in the West Siberian region (the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area or “Yugra”; the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area) for a number of reasons. The examples given by the author show that oil-industry workers’ presence did not result in conflicts for the Khanty of the Tomsk region. The reason is that mentioning oil industry in the local discourses means, first of all, a possibility to survive, and secondly, because the forced migration the Khanty’s “lost generations” met with the oil miners as early as Stalin era. Oil industry did not cause any fundamental changes for the Khanty, it just became another manifestation of the dominant society majority. Thus the relationship between the majority and the minority in the Tomsk region is not a conflict one in spite of oil industry dominance in the region’s life.

(Re)cycling the Collective Memory of the Great Patriotic War

ABSTRACT The cult of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ regularly cycled through all Soviet administrations after it was initially crafted under Stalin and became further entrenched in everyday life under Leonid Brezhnev. The popularity and appeal of the cult rested on the fact that it was created by a combination of efforts that included the state’s propaganda apparatus, as well as the editors and correspondents of leading newspapers, the latter of which consisted of some of the most talented authors in the Soviet Union. Stalin’s censorship ensured that the reading public was regularly exposed to only sanitized versions of the war that rarely dealt in nuance, but offered much in the form of heroic self-sacrifice by Red Army men and women with Stalin acting as the cornerstone of the Soviet war effort. Nikita Khrushchev’s Thaw saw a flood of literature on the war, but most continued to retain Stalin’s narrative, which Brezhnev’s regime reinforced with public commemorations and memorials. While Boris Yeltsin was able to move away from the cult after the fall of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin has repurposed it and put it to work for his administration, appealing to the public with Stalin era rhetoric recycled for present day needs.

ПОРІВНЯЛЬНИЙ АНАЛІЗ ОБРАЗУ ВЧИТЕЛЯ НА РАДЯНСЬКОМУ ПЛАКАТІ 1940-Х – 1980-Х РОКІВ

The article examines the peculiarities of the artistic representation of the image of the teacher in the Soviet mass art on the basis of comparative and semiotic analysis of Soviet posters of the 1940s – 1980s. The peculiarities of the image of educators in the dynamics from the late Stalin era to the “perestroika” are revealed. The artistic images presented on the posters are considered in two discourses: ideological and everyday. It is shown that the artistic representations of the teacher's image reflected the evolution of Soviet society, its structure, the place of educators in the Soviet system, the age and gender specifics of their work. The change of value orientations from socialist to mass consumption society is clarified, the dissonance between mass-ideological and individual-household, which formed the activity of educators as subjects of culture of the Soviet era, is shown. Analysis of visual sources and their comparison helped to track changes in the values of Soviet society and to create a projection of society’s changed values. The interpretation of the teacher’s place in society, as well as the adaptation of the artistic language of mass art to the tasks of socialist realism are determined. The influence of agitation and propaganda of the Soviet everyday life on the reflection of the image of the teacher in the semiotic text of the poster is found out. By 1970s - 1980s, the Society had received a large number of sources from which they could draw information. The teacher finally loses the position of the sacred bearer of knowledge, his work is perceived as a creative process, but social protection from the state has not returned. In the poster, this can be seen in the inclusion of signs and symbols that should codify the function of teaching, a new color and spatial solution, or in general, a return to the principles of the genre. The work was carried out within the framework of the research theme of the Department of Culturology of the Poltava National Pedagogical University named after V.G.Korolenko “Polylogue of the global and regional in the formation of the socio-cultural identity of the individual” (state registration number 0120U103840)

Nikolay Zelinsky (1861–1953): Mendeleev's Protege, a Brilliant Scientist, and the Top Soviet Chemist of the Stalin Era

AbstractThis Essay outlines the life path and scientific achievements of Nikolai Zelinsky to testify to his contributions to organic chemistry, catalysis, and petrochemistry. His legacy includes four name reactions (the Hell–Volhard–Zelinsky reaction, 1887; the Zelinsky–Stadnikov reaction, 1906; Zelinsky irreversible catalysis, 1911; the Zelinsky–Kazansky acetylene trimerization, 1924), pioneering contributions to the main oil‐refining processes (thermal cracking, catalytic cracking, hydrodesulfurization, reforming, and oxidative regeneration of coked catalysts), the coal gas mask, Pd/C and other supported catalysts, and a very large scientific school.

Nikolay Zelinsky (1861-1953): Mendeleev's Protege, a Brilliant Scientist, and the Top Soviet Chemist of the Stalin Era.

This Essay outlines the life path and scientific achievements of Nikolai Zelinsky to testify to his contributions to organic chemistry, catalysis, and petrochemistry. His legacy includes four name reactions (the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky reaction, 1887; the Zelinsky-Stadnikov reaction, 1906; Zelinsky irreversible catalysis, 1911; the Zelinsky-Kazansky acetylene trimerization, 1924), pioneering contributions to the main oil-refining processes (thermal cracking, catalytic cracking, hydrodesulfurization, reforming, and oxidative regeneration of coked catalysts), the coal gas mask, Pd/C and other supported catalysts, and a very large scientific school.

Ruined myth: dead spaces in Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov’s Pavel Korchagin (1957)

ABSTRACT The historical-revolutionary film Pavel Korchagin (1956) by Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov is traditionally read in the context of a key trend of the period: the return to the screen of the romanticised ideals of the October Revolution, which (according to the rhetoric of the Thaw) had been distorted in the Stalin era. Thus, the character study of Pavel Korchagin and the process of Soviet myth-making stood in the centre of attention, while other elements, such as the film’s spaces, remained in the margins. This article explores the empty spaces – the abandoned railway and the barrack in the village of Boyarka, whence the hero returns at the film’s end, and are shown as contradictory to the ideology of the early Thaw. In post-war Western cinema, unlike Soviet cinema, the emptiness of dead, ruined spaces is a phenomenon that defines the era. Situating Pavel Korchagin not merely in the Soviet, but also in the Western context, the author examines the film as a unique example for the transitional period between the so-called ‘film famine’ of the late Stalin years and the Thaw in terms of the spatial representation of the myth of the ruin in Soviet cinema.

The Failure of the Stalinist Propagandist: the Trial of Yakov Alperovich, Editor of the Sovetskaya Sibir (1937–1938)

The research featured the biography of Yakov Alperovich, a prominent figure of the Siberian Soviet establishment in the 1920s–1930s. Starting at the social bottom, his career path was a typical example of the dramatic fate that befell most Stalinist officials. The article describes the main steps of his career ladder on the way to political power during the purges of 1937–1938, as well as the changes in the Stalinist politics in the 1930s, which were the ruin of the internal party relations. The author assessed the socio-political atmosphere in the administrative establishment. The study focused on the role of denunciations as a tool against the so-called hostile elements. The dramatic end of Yakov Alperovich, a district committee secretary and an editor, reflects the general tragedy of the Soviet Communists that fell victims to the Stalin's repressions. The article introduces new historical facts and expands the knowledge about Siberia in the Stalin era.

The Stay and teaching activity of Władysław Kędra in Vienna (1957-1964) in the light of documents Kept at the academy of music and Performing arts, Vienna

The stay of Władysław Kędra, a charismatic virtuoso pianist representing the Columbus Gene- ration, in Vienna has so far seemed a very good and successful period in the life of this musician originating from Łódź. However, the studies conducted in the archives of the Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, cast a new light on these eight years. The information included in previous publications about the reasons why the Polish virtuoso left for Vienna and why he returned from the capital of Austria were not confirmed when confronted with the preserved documents. Thanks to a thorough analysis of source materials, the author of the article managed not only to recreate the course of events but also to uncover extremely important facts from the professor’s life, e.g. that he had Austrian citizenship. Now there is no doubt that Władysław Kędra intended to stay there and settle in Vienna for good. The analysis of the Viennese docu- ments allows for recreating to a significant extent the way how he fought for the life he had dreamt of during the occupation of the Stalin era. From the first preserved letter to Dr Hans Sittner, President of Vienna’s Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst, of 23 May 1957, we can follow the efforts of the Polish pianist to be given a contract, i.e., contract of employment for a fixed period, which was extended for him year by year, then to have an opportunity to see his family, have independent accommodation and bring his closest relatives to Vienna, and finally, find out how he applied for citizenship and was given a permanent contract of employment, which entailed awarding him with the lifelong title of Professor by Austrian authorities. Władysław Kędra achieved his goal – he became the citizen of his new home country, gained prestige and recognition, became music professor in the city of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert... And yet, at that very moment when he had everything and fulfilled his dreams, he suddenly left Austria in unclear circumstances. What dramatic events occurred on 2 June 1964 when Prof. Kędra suddenly wrote two applications for discharge from employment – in one of them he did not justify his decision, only referring very precisely to relevant regulations, which were undoubtedly dictated to him by some official, while in the second one he gave an untrue and completely unlikely in his situation reason for his quitting? There is no trace in the documents of the events which were the cause of that sudden decision. It needs to be stressed that the present article was written exclusively based on the docu- ments (including letters) kept at the Viennese Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Władysław Kędra’s personal file. The author did not refer to his family’s recollections or to texts published previously about the pianist so as to present facts in a reliable way, and not inter- pretations of these facts.

Zuzanna Bogumił. Gulag Memories: The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia’s Repressive Past. Translated by Philip Palmer.

When describing the era of return from the Gulag, Anna Akhmatova famously stated: “Two Russias stand eyeball to eyeball, those who were imprisoned, and those who put them there.” Today many Russias still stand eyeball to eyeball, and there are multiple memories of Russia’s past. There is the “heroic” conquering of the North, the rapid industrialization, the victory in the “Great Patriotic War,” and other achievements of the Stalin era, and there are the millions of Gulag prisoners whose victimization can be traced back, in part, to those very same events. Zuzanna Bogumił’s important book Gulag Memories: The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia’s Repressive Past analyzes not so much these battles of memory—they are a backdrop—but rather their expression in the social and political struggle for memorialization and, to paraphrase James Young, the texture of Gulag memory. Zuzanna Bogumił conducted site visits and interviews, primarily from 2006 to 2008, at...

Postwar Heuristic Strategies of Exclusion and Inclusion in Moscow Architecture

Moscow is a city of a thousand faces, constantly changing over the centuries and its high-rise buildings has been forming the shape of the city for centuries. From the «Third Rome», without stratified urbanization, unlike the Rome it would have liked to emulate at the end of the XIV century, Moscow went through a long period in history in which the innovations and changes made to its urban landscape overlapped the existing structure, erasing the architectural features and, thus, the historical memory. This article focuses on the transformation of Moscow from a Soviet capital to a capitalist mega-city, corroborating the thesis that the «immortalization of memory», through the monumental architecture of the Stalinist era, gave a sense of stability and was meant to be remembered by posterity. After the archetypal Soviet city, which embodied the Soviet Union’s radiant future in the Thirties and Forties of the Twentieth Century, the city was characterized by a new urban appearance, made up of monumental buildings, privilege of apparatchiki (аппара́тчики), who lived in stalinki (сталинки), examples of socialist classicism, characterized by an original layout. Influenced by this Soviet legacy and its nostalgic impulses, Moscow’s contemporary urban governance framework for planning reveals a strong nostalgia for the splendours of the past. The post-Soviet Muscovite experience resembles however more like a hybrid city than a palimpsestic one.

УЧАСТИЕ ПРОКУРАТУРЫ ПСКОВСКОЙ ОБЛАСТИ В ПЕРЕСМОТРЕ ДЕЛ О ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫХ ПРЕСТУПЛЕНИЯХ В 1954–1956 гг. (Participation of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Pskov Region in the Revision of Cases of State Crimes in 1954–1956)

Russian Abstract В статье исследуется деятельность комиссии Псковской области по пересмотру дел о государственных преступлениях сталинской эпохи, в работе которой непосредственное участие принимали сотрудники региональной прокуратуры. Данная работа написана на основе ранее неопубликованных материалов и документов Государственного архива Псковской области. При решении исследовательских задач в настоящей статье автор использовал системный, сравнительно-исторический и историко-генетический методы. В заключение исследования делается вывод о том, что результаты работы комиссии Псковской области по пересмотру дел о государственных преступлениях можно признать удовлетворительными, так как благодаря её деятельности значительное количество людей смогли добиться, пусть и не полной реабилитации, но значительного сокращения избранной в отношении них меры наказания. English Abstract:The article explores the activities of the Pskov Region Commission to review cases of state crimes of the Stalin era, in which the staff of the regional Prosecutor’s Office took a direct part. This work was written on the basis of previously unpublished materials and documents of the State Archives of the Pskov Region. When solving research problems in this article, the author used systemic, comparative-historical and historical-genetic methods. In conclusion, the study concludes that the results of the work of the Commission of the Pskov Region on reviewing cases of state crimes can be considered satisfactory, since due to its activities a significant number of people were able to achieve, even if not fully rehabilitation, but a significant reduction in the punishment chosen against them.

THE FORMATION OF THE IMAGE OF BOGDAN Khmelnitsky IN THE HISTORICAL LITERATURE OF THE STALIN AGE

The peculiarities of forming a historical portrait of Ukrainian hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the 1930s – early 1950s are investigated. The historical aftermath of Hetman-centered events has been so groundbreaking that discussions about his personality have not subsided for centuries. Such ideological manipulations did not remain aloof and Soviet historians also resorted to the use of hetman’s name. A comparative analysis of several historical essays of Stalin era is made. The first who took up the creation of the image of Bohdan Khmelnytsky was M. Pokrovsky, whose conclusions were taken by other authors. These are mainly negative traits attributed to him personally and his activities, which were cleverly used by the fighters with «Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism». In the course of the Soviet Union’s preparation for war and its deployment, the process of ideological support for military campaigns began. To this end, they immediately returned good name to the Ukrainian hetman, presenting it to a reader as a ruthless and successful leader of the armed struggle against the lords of Poland. For this purpose, other essays and articles were published, which fulfilled various ideological and propaganda functions: unity of all Ukrainian lands, «brotherly reunification of peoples», etc., where Bogdan Khmelnytsky’s heroically elevated image was always in the focus of a reader.