Soviet Studies Research Articles

Национальные певческие голоса Советского Союза в 1920-х годах

The aim of the study is to determine the ways of describing the national voice in the 1920s. With all the multiple functions of the voice, it is most clearly manifested in singing, and, accordingly, in relation to singing, it undergoes the greatest theorization among music critics of that time. The body of the Soviet singer is marked through social class, topos and ethnicity and is endowed with multiple emotionally charged characteristics. Ultimately, many singers of that time, precisely due to their voice features, often were marked by contemporaries with the ethnographic clichés of ‘nature’ or ‘naturalness’ and formed a musical fashion for many decades. Others, though, despite possessing similar characteristics, were persecuted. The study will be devoted to the analysis of these characteristics. The novelty of the work is determined by the use of approaches to the voice characteristic of cultural studies and Western philosophy of sound, coming from the works of R. Barthes, J. Derrida and M. Dolar, in relation to the problems and tasks of the field of soviet studies. As a result, several clusters of national voices were identified: the first of them are Jewish, Gypsy and Ukrainian voices, marked mainly through class and political affiliation with previous era. The second cluster is represented by Caucasus and Central Asian voices, which possessed, on the contrary, purely colonial-ethnographic characteristics. Conclusions are made about the high level of theorization and politization of the human voice in the early Soviet period.

An unbreakable friendship: Soviet medical internationalism in Cuba in the 1960s

Locked in a struggle with the United States after its 1959 revolution, Cuba was a natural Soviet ally in the Cold War. The USSR offered Cuba lavish aid, including in the realm of medicine and health. The 1960s saw dozens of public health officials, medical instructors, and clinicians arrive on the island to help improve the health and wellbeing of Cuban workers and peasants. This article plumbs Russian archives and published Cuban and Soviet medical journals and newspapers to analyse the Cold War as a lived experience through a case study of Soviet cadres on the ground in Cuba. The USSR’s socialist solidarity project in Cuba exemplifies Cold War soft power policies designed to ‘win hearts and minds’. Moscow’s intent to build an ‘unbreakable friendship’ with Havana meant navigating a complex web of relationships. In illuminating the grassroots experience, we argue for the centrality of personal and interpersonal encounters as a window on the state and bloc politics that entangled the First, Second, and Third Worlds.

Paul Crego, a Life in the Study of East Europe: A Short Autobiographical Sketch

ABSTRACT The memoir narrates how Paul Crego came to study the Russian and Georgian languages. With a background in Soviet Studies, Crego went on to earn degrees in Divinity and Theology at Harvard and the Andover-Newton Theological School before becoming a librarian. Crego’s library career, which centered on Georgian and Armenian acquisitions and cataloging, spanned more than 25 years at Harvard and the Library of Congress.

Chinese Observations of Soviet Nationality Affairs in the Mao and post-Mao Eras

Abstract Over the years, China’s nationality policy tended to imitate the Soviet Union while also retaining its uniqueness. Existing scholarship has described three deviations the CCP made vis-à-vis the Soviet model: denying national self-determination, rejecting the supra-national union of nation-states, and undertaking constructivist classification of ethnicity. These features took shape around 1949. In this article, I survey China’s observations on Soviet nationality affairs from 1949 to 1991 and provide a perspective for understanding how these deviations from the Soviet nationality model both crystallized and varied. My findings show that after 1949, Soviet studies in China lacked a coherent agenda for studying the nationality question. The experts gathered rich materials but subordinated nationality questions to themes such as revolution, a centrally planned economy, border disputes, geopolitics, and ideological indoctrination. They also tended to reduce ethnopolitics to class struggle and economic modernization. Such systematic evasion of nationality questions persisted until the collapse of the Soviet Union. The USSR’s disintegration caused China to recognize the resilience of ethnicity and nationality, while before 1991, Soviet studies in China had lacked any systematic reflection on the Soviet nationality model.

Is Soviet History worth doing and why?

This text-reflection is about the appropriateness and importance of studying Soviet history, the impetus for writing which was the work on the conference volume “Soviet ‘I’ and Soviet ‘We’ between Ideology and Reality.”The author shares the reservations that arose in her, as well as in other Soviet researchers, with the beginning of the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war; she writes about the challenges they faced. A look back at the history of the emergence and development of Sovietology in the West and an analysis of the “lessons of the past” lead her to the conclusion that it is worth studying Soviet history. She moreover concludes that Ukrainian academia has currently a unique opportunity to overcome the Russian-centrism of Soviet studies and finally offer a “different” — Ukrainian — perspective of seeing Soviet history for its own as well as international audience.

Reading Campeanu through Lewin: A contribution to the political history of Stalinism

Owing to various reasons, Stalinism still represents, according to this essay, a fertile intellectual topic. Therefore, my aim here is to offer a reading of Pavel Campeanu’s works on Stalinism – a relatively unknown Romanian Marxist – through the social history of the Soviet Union in general and of Stalinism in particular advanced by Moshe Lewin. The argumentation advances by taking into account the overall historical frame of the debate (Eastern and Western Marxism during the Cold War) and by stressing some key issues like primitive accumulation, legitimacy, a certain overstretching of the concept of Stalinism and, finally, the issue of totalitarianism. The stake of the essay resides in claiming that Campeanu’s analyses of Stalinism, original and convincing as they are, may favor, in the above-mentioned issues, and regardless the author’s intentions, interpretations belonging to or deriving from the totalitarian school of Cold War and Soviet Studies.

Johann P. Arnason’s Analysis of Communism and the Debate on Soviet Modernity

Abstract Johann P. Arnason has offered a comprehensive sociological analysis of the origins, historical dynamics and decline of the alternative communist model of modernity. At the same time, in the field of Soviet studies two distinct approaches have been formed which stress the modern character of Soviet society or its neo-traditionalist aspects. Arnason’s work can contribute to bridging the gap between these approaches. His ideas are also relevant for explaining the collapse of the Soviet system and assessing the role of historical legacies in post-Soviet states. Combining Arnason’s theoretical perspective and recent approaches in history and comparative politics may result in a deeper understanding of the Soviet model as a specific type of modern society and the consequences of its disintegration.

The disarmament of anarchists in the provinces of the Central Chernozem region in the spring of 1918 (based on the materials of the Orel and Voronezh provinces).

The article examines the confrontation of the armed anarchist detachments of the "Black Guard" with the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1918. The causes and features of the emergence of anarchist detachments, the position of anarchists in the political arena of the country in 1917 - early 1918 are illustrated. The author gives an assessment of some early Soviet studies on "anarchist uprisings" in the provinces of the Central Chernozem region. After the February and October revolutions of 1917, anarchism in Russia embarked on a new path of development, which was characterized by attempts to unite and create a single combat force to protect the "revolutionary gains" from the interventionists and White Guard forces. The object of the study is the history of the anarchist movement in the Central Chernozem region during the establishment of Soviet power. The subject of the study is the armed actions of anarchists against the authorities in Orel and Voronezh in March-April 1918. The methodological basis is the consideration of historical phenomena and their interrelations in the context of the studied time (the principle of historicism). A comparative historical method was used to establish the similarities and distinctive features of the armed actions of anarchists in Orel and Voronezh. The article attempts to comprehensively study the history of the anarchist movement in the Central Black Earth region. The author analyzes only a small fragment of this topic. The spring of 1918 was a period of the defeat of anarchist detachments and organizations throughout Russia, these processes took place on the territory of the Central Chernozem region. Based on the works of his predecessors and memoir sources, the features of the defeat of the anarchist detachments in Orel and Voronezh are analyzed. During the analysis, it was possible to demonstrate that the anarchists were only part of the rebel forces, consisting of detachments arriving from the Ukrainian front, dissatisfied with the supply. Some Soviet authors often saw in these speeches a "Socialist-Revolutionary" conspiracy" or assigned the anarchists a leading role, making them the main instigators of uprisings. Which, according to the author, is an erroneous position.

Feketegazdaság a Szovjetunióban

The study is based on G. Mars and Y. Altman, "The cultural bases of soviet Georgia's se-cond economy" (Soviet Studies 1983. Vol. XXXV [4]: 546-560), and G. Mars and Y. Altman, "The cultural bases of Soviet Central Asia's second economy (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan)", 1986 (Central Asian Survey 5 [3-4]: 195-204). The second economy, as the socialist version of the informal economy proposed by Grossman1 , can be defined as the set of economic activities that are aimed at personal gain and are in opposition to the current legal regulations. In this sense, Altman also considers all economic transactions that are in opposition to the current legislation to be informal.2 In the Soviet Union, at least in the period up to Gorbachev's reform, the second economy was a significant area of the economy, forming a continuum where, for example, there was no private ownership of agricultural land, but where goods grown at home (in the backyard) could be sold in markets, and where the kolhoz and the sovhoz (the Hungarian equivalents of the tsz and the state farm) had very different farming conditions.

Проблема интеграции и формирования российско-кавказского социокультурного единства в конце XVIII – XX вв.: историографический аспект

The article contains a historiographical review of pre- revolutionary, Soviet and contemporary studies on various aspects of political, legal, economic and socio-cultural integration of the peoples of the North Caucasus into Russia at the end of the 18th – 20th centuries. The authors carry out a historiographical review of pre-revolutionary and Soviet studies, in which the problem of the formation of the Russian-Caucasian socio-cultural unity at the end of the 18th – 20th centuries is studied. The priority of problems in the pre-revolutionary period was determined by military- strategic tasks in the context of active policy of Russia in the Caucasus, the traditional social institutions, life and customs of the highlanders, their relationship with the imperial authorities were studied in order to integrate the region into the Russian socio-political, economic and cultural system and further modernization of North Caucasian societies. The Soviet period of the historiography of the problem is characterized by the dominance of the Marxist-Leninist methodology, the structuring of the main problems of the history of Russian-North Caucasian relations, the appearance of the first generalizing works on the history of the region, terminological searches in the study of the process of joining and development of the region by the Russian Empire. The authors carry out a historiographical review of modern research, in which the problem of the formation of the Russian-Caucasian sociocultural unity at the end of the 18th – 20th centuries is studied. The modern historiography of the integration and modernization processes in the North Caucasus is characterized by methodological pluralism, which opened up new opportunities for interpreting various social processes in the region in the last third of the 18th – early 20th centuries. The formation of new scientific schools of Caucasian studies was distinguished by different approaches to identifying key factors and processes in the history of the region, a number of authors proceeded from the idea of the independence of its development as part of the Russian state.

ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ ІСТОРИЧНИХ ПРАЦЬ І. ФРАНКА: СУЧАСНА УКРАЇНСЬКА ІСТОРІОГРАФІЯ

The article examines the coverage of I. Franko’s historical research in modern Ukrainian historiography. The authors emphasize that until recently, this problem was covered quite tendentially in Soviet historiography. It was a secondary and not so important topic in the assessment of the scientist’s legacy compared to his achievements as a writer, poet, essayist, translator, public and political figure. Soviet studies were built on the basis of Marxist-Leninist methodology. Emphasis was placed on the scientist’s political beliefs, which were presented through the prism of the fight against Ukrainian «bourgeois nationalists». The research of diaspora scientists differed significantly from the Soviet ideological analogues. But in these studies, the problem of scientific research of I. Franko’s historical views was not excreted into a separate topic. Only in the studies of modern Ukrainian scientists this problem rise to the conceptual level and receive comprehensive coverage. In the writings of modern Ukrainian scientists, we can trace both criticism of previous assessments of Ivan Franko’s historical scientific heritage, attempts to form a general vision of the scientist’s historical worldview and prospects for further research into his historical scientific heritage.

Rethinking Soviet Selfhood in the Era of the Anthropocene: From the Foucauldian Paradigm to the Naturecultural Theory of the Subject

Anthropogenic climate change necessitates rethinking the role of academic scholarship. This article addresses the question of Soviet subjecthoods from the perspective of one's affective connection to natural environments, while keeping in mind the multiscalarity of subjecthood. It traces a genealogy of environmentally-attuned selfhoods in the late Soviet-era sociocultural imagination and positions this model within the context of present-day understandings of subjecthood in Soviet studies. Soviet-era subjects did not make sense of their lives, aims and accomplishments solely in relation to the Soviet state, but also in relation to things closer at hand and in relation to ideas and conditions of a global and planetary scale. In Alberts Bels's and Jaan Kaplinski's writings, the environmentally conscious subject emerges as multiscalar: a subject who identifies both with its direct, affectively experienced environment, but who also realizes the boundedness of local, global, and planetary processes. The ethical attitude of reverence for life, promoted by Albert Schweitzer, together with the widely shared concern about both local-level environmental damage and the future of the planet provide the context for late Soviet multiscalar naturecultural subjecthood.

МАТЕРИАЛЫ АРХИВНЫХ ФОНДОВ О ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ВСЕРОССИЙСКОГО ОБЩЕСТВА ОХРАНЫ ПАМЯТНИКОВ ИСТОРИИ И КУЛЬТУРЫ. 1965–1980-Е ГОДЫ

The article presents a review of Russian archival funds related to the protection of historical and cultural heritage and the activities of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (hereinafter VOOPIK, or the Society). The study is based on materials from various state organizations, including the State Ar-chive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Perm State Archive of Socio-Political History (PermGASPI), the State Archive of the Perm Krai (GAPK), the Center for Documentation of Public Organizations of the Sverdlovsk Oblast (CDOOSO), the United State Archive of the Chelyabinsk Oblast (OGACHO), and the Perm Museum of Local Lore (PKM). The relevance of the study lies in the growing interest of the state, academia and society in both grassroots activism and mass voluntary organizations in the late Soviet Union. The Soviet experience is particularly valuable as many of its initiatives are being revisited in contemporary Russian reality. The main basis for Soviet studies are ar-chival sources, which are regularly introduced into academic circulation. The aim of the article is to study and classi-fy archival sources on the above topic. In addition to the review, the article provides a brief historiographical over-view of the problem's research status, as well as a historical note on the activities of the VOOPIK. The author identi-fies several types of sources in archival funds and provides a brief description of each. An important role in studying the activity of Soviet mass organizations is played by the determination of the levels of research – from the republi-can (RSFSR) to regional (oblast, krai, ASSR) and grassroots (district, city) levels. This division justifies the use of both central and regional archives, as the archival sources from Central Archive (GARF) provide an understanding of the specifics of the functioning of the central apparatus of the VOOPIK, while the sources of regional archives recre-ate a picture of activism on “grassroots level” where the main productive activities of the Society took place. When using archives of different levels, one can change the optics of research and study VOOPIK from different angles. The study pays particular attention to the “Letters to VOOPIK” written by Soviet citizens to authorities, media, and voluntary organizations regarding the protection of historical and cultural heritage. These letters, which were a com-mon practice in Soviet everyday life, can shed light on the motives and goals of the activists.

Soviet Studies of Neocolonialism

The article reviews Soviet and East German studies of neocolonialism that have been translated into Russian. A total of more than 60 monographs on Western neocolonialism have been systematically studied and finally compiled into an electronic archive in preparation for this publication. Based on the materials of Soviet studies, the article presents the main features of Western neocolonialism, related both to political manoeuvres and the economic arsenal of the former metropolitan powers. A detailed analysis of the narratives used by Western countries to emphasize their proximity to the “Third World” is given. Particular attention is paid to neocolonial theories, both “variants of well-known bourgeois and reformist concepts addressed to developing countries” and “concepts and theories specially created to support neocolonialism.” Neocolonial approaches were studied both in the context of individual Western countries and groups of states (Great Britain, France, Germany, the European Economic Community (EEC), USA) and by functional areas (technical assistance, food neocolonialism, international organizations). Regarding the UK, the differences in neocolonial policy between Labor Party and Conservatives are examined. The main instruments of France’s neocolonial policy are described and it is concluded that they have hardly changed in recent decades. The role of the FRG in the strategy of “European neocolonialism” is shown, and major characteristics of the neocolonial policy of the EEC are highlighted. With regard to the, authors speak of a new type of imperialist colonialism associated with American leadership in the institutions of the “collective West.” As for the United States, a new type of imperialist colonialism is being put forward, associated with America’s leadership in the institutions of the “collective West.” The origins and “running-in” of the US neocolonial tools are shown in detail, using the actual American colonial experience in the Philippines as an example. The main directions of critical analysis of the participation of Western countries in technical and food aid systems and in the activities of international organizations are presented. In conclusion, some remarks are formulated on the practical component of Soviet studies of neocolonialism. It is also stressed that in the mid-1980s, after the proclamation of the “New Political Thinking” the critical degree of Soviet studies of neocolonialism declined significantly.

Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands

Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands

Constructing a Utopia about Soviet Childhood in La Littérature internationale

This article expands existing studies of the institutional history of the La Littérature internationale magazine, the press organ of the International Organisation of Revolutionary Writers. The author analyses the second French issue from 1934 in comparison with similar English and German issue. The issue’s structure and themes are not typical of the literary-critical Marxist magazine, as it brings together literary and journalistic texts on children. Collections of this kind appeared in the magazine in all languages except Russian. This article aims to determine the place of the issue with the “children’s” selection in terms of the journal’s general concept. For the first time, La Littérature internationale is studied through the prism of a complex diachronic and synchronous comparative analysis of versions in different languages. The texts of the second French issue from 1934 is studied in detail because it contains the most material on children compared to other versions with “children” compilations. The analysis of the French texts shows some key themes, metaphors, and images used in the representation of Soviet childhood. The issue of La Littérature internationale is placed in the context of Soviet journalism of the 1930s in adult (Pravda) and children’s (Pionerskaya Pravda) periodicals. The research demonstrates that the set of agitational essays and interviews, positioned in the magazine as socio-cultural material about real Soviet childhood, is close to fiction written in the socialist utopia genre due to its genre and narrative features. By publishing this compilation in La Littérature internationale, the editors made the French version another showcase of Soviet propaganda for the Western French-speaking reader, where the main export product was the image of Soviet childhood. This research provides empirical support and development of some concepts worked out in the framework of Soviet studies on strategies for forming images of the USSR abroad and narratives about Soviet childhood.

Современные подходы к исследованию советской и постсоветской экранной культуры. На материале 53-го конгресса ASEEES, США

The article is devoted to the study of the works of researchers from the USA, based on the material of the 53rd Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) International Annual Congress, which belong to various branches of humanitarian knowledge, but directly related to the study of Soviet and modern screen culture in Russia or other countries (Eastern Europe, India, Cuba, etc.) that have experienced its direct or indirect influence. The interest in the research of American representatives of the humanities, whose share in the total number of participants in congresses is very significant, is due to the fact that for decades, full of dramatic trials, to which the cultural ties of the USSR/ Russia and the USA were subjected, the screen cultures of both countries mutually aroused close interest, although its background could be different. Numerous representatives of various branches of the humanities in the USA pay great attention to screen culture per se or as a source of valuable information about other segments of culture, society, politics, history, etc., especially to segments of feature and documentary films, animation, newsreels, television programs of various formats (TV series, information programs, journalistic programs, especially investigative journalism, etc.) and new media (social networks, especially YouTube, streaming). The article concludes with the conclusions obtained, including: the increased interest of the American scientific community in the study of the mechanisms of formation and reproduction of ideology, power in the history of the USSR/Russia; cardinal points of contrast between the social, political, and cultural agendas of modern Russia and the United States (and other foreign countries); search and analysis of crisis phenomena in society, culture, and politics of the USSR/Russia, reflected in the phenomena of screen culture.

From Isolationism to Interventionism. Book Review of ‘The U.S.-German Relations, 1938–1941: Politics, Diplomacy, Priorities’ by O.V. Petrosyants

The book under review is a monograph by O.V. Petrosyants ‘The U.S.-German relations, 1938–1941: Politics, diplomacy, priorities’ published in 2021. The reviewer emphasizes the relevance and novelty of the research as it revisits a set of well-established in both the Soviet and Russian historical studies views on and assessments of the U.S. foreign policy before and at the beginning of World War II. The monograph is based on a wide range of primary sources including previously unpublished documents from the Russian and American archives. It reveals a complex and contradictory nature of the U.S. foreign policy at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s and identifies its key internal and external determinants. The reviewer notes that the study pays special attention to tensions between isolationists and interventionists within the American elites and agrees with the author’s conclusion that the isolationists’ position turned out to be more and more regressive and short-sighted as the international situation worsened. However, as the author emphasizes, it was the need to take into account the isolationists’ influence that largely led to the inconsistency and indecisiveness of the U.S. foreign policy during that period. The reviewer stresses that such balanced assessments characterize all the chapters of the book which makes it a must-read for all specialists on the U.S. foreign policy. However, the reviewer notes that the German diplomacy is not examined in the book as consistently and thoroughly as that of Washington and often appears as a mere observer. The reviewer concludes that this research is especially relevant and worthy of attention in the current international context since it points to the need for an objective and unbiased study of the foreign policy of past and present Russia’s rivals as a key to a better understanding of their current goals.

Poetics and Practice of Modern Urbanism: “Garden City“ as a Technology of Social Integration in Obninsk in the 1960s

The article, based on newspaper materials and oral recollections about Obninsk, the city of atomic science in the 1960s, explores how the Soviet ideology in its postwar version functioned in a small community of a newly built city, where the task of creating both an urban space and urban social environment was of paramount importance. Following the ”third wave” of Soviet studies, the author “takes seriously” Soviet ideological clichés and such activities sanctioned from above as volunteer tending of urban green spaces and amateur gardening. Using the poststructuralist interpretation of discourse by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the author identifies two main discourses, each offering its own version of urban sociality and urban identity, and both being components of the Soviet urbanism of the 1960s. The “garden city” discourse is formed by gardening metaphors, institutions, and activities. In this discourse, a city resident is any person involved in the care for urban space and, above all, in growing trees and flowers in communal spaces. The articulations of this discourse are presented in abundance in the Soviet public space of the 1960s. The data shows that participation in such activities gave some Obninsk residents a significant experience of collective activity, in other words, it played a significant role in creating the sociality of the young city. The “city of science” discourse is specific to Obninsk, the city of scientific and technical intelligentsia. Within the framework of this discourse being a city resident means being an expert in the field of science and technology and offering one’s own ideas about how the growing city should look like. Both discourses referred to the utopia of communist urbanism, but emphasized its different aspects, namely, social and technological ones: unity in a common concern for one’s living space and scientific and technological progress that should provide the means to create a communist Garden of Eden. Article in Russian

Political Control, Administrative Simplicity, or Economies of Scale? Four Cases of the Reunification of Nationalized Theatres in Russia, Germany, Austria, and France (1918–45)

In 1917–18, the new republican governments of Russia, Germany, and Austria nationalized their former court property. A monarchic-turned-national heritage of prestigious opera and dramatic theatres weighed heavily on national and regional budgets, prompting first attempts to create centralized forms of theatre governance. In a second wave of theatre reorganization in the mid-1930s, the Soviet government created ‘union theatres’ under a Committee for Arts Affairs; the German and Austrian theatres underwent the Nazi Gleichschaltung (1933–35 and 1938); and France, a ‘democratic outlier’, opted for nationalizing the Opéra and Opéra-Comique under the Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux. These conglomerates have so far been little studied as historically specific forms of theatre management, particularly from a comparative, trans-regime perspective. What balance can be struck between economic, political, and ‘artistic’ costs and benefits? How does ‘Baumol’s law’ of decreasing theatre profitability apply to these very different politico-economic systems, as well as to war economies? Dictatorships reveal an economic seduction power, while this essay argues for confirming a long-term ‘great European convergence’ of state-centred theatre management, internal structure, and accountability, both in peace and war. Here, the stated goals and short-term contingencies yielded to trends originating from the logic of theatre production itself, and the compromises that the state, theatre professionals, and the public accepted in exchange for the capital of prestige. Alexander Golovlev (PhD, European University Institute in Florence, 2017) is a senior research fellow at the HSE Institute for Advanced Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at the University of Moscow. His recent publications include, for New Theatre Quarterly, ‘Theatre Policies of Soviet Stalinism and Italian Fascism Compared, 1920–1940s’ (2019), and ‘Balancing the Books and Staging Operas under Duress: Bolshoi Theatre Management, Wartime Economy, and State Sponsorship in 1941–1945’, Russian History XLVII, No. 4 (2020).