Telegraph Agency Research Articles

Diplomacy in the Diaspora: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Berlin (1922–1933)

On the occasion of the 1,000th issue of its Daily News, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) published a brochure describing itself as “a universal clearing house for Jewish News, a medium for international understanding”.1 As an anniversary publication, the brochure provided little information about the agency's internal history and structures, but stressed its goals and praised its efforts and successes. Well-known public figures, mainly Jewish authorities such as Louis Marshall, Lord Balfour and Albert Einstein, were quoted on the news service's importance. In contrast to these contemporary appraisals, the history of news agencies is silent on the JTA.2 Only some studies of the Jewish press more generally,3 memoirs,4 and documents in various archives discuss the Jewish news service.5 The most convincing source is the JTA Bulletin, the embodiment of the agency's work. The JTA archives were lost when the New York flat of agency founder and director Jacob Landau was destroyed by fire.6

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity 1812-1945 by Stephen M. Norris (review)

134 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g theRusso-Japanese War in 1904-05, which caused Kuropatkin to formulate the doctrine of the 'Yellow Peril' as the greatest strategic threat to Russia (pp. 95-96), this increasing paranoia clouded the judgement of theGeneral Staff. In his conclusion Marshall shows (pp. 183-88) how in theperiod leading up to the FirstWorld War 'The Myopic Guard' was distracted from the more serious threat in Europe by their concerns over pan-Islamism and the modernization of the Japanese and Chinese armed forces, not to mention growing tensions with the British over Afghanistan which (asJennifer Siegel has shown in her Endgame, London and New York, 2002) were not resolved by theAnglo-Russian agreement of 1907.He concludes with some observa tions on the continuities of attitudes and personnel amongst military oriental ists into the early Soviet period, embodied most clearly in thefigure ofAndrei Evgenievich Snesarev, the tsaristGeneral Staffs leading expert on Afghani stan and British India, who would become the rector of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow from 1921until his arrest in 1930 (p. 190). There are the usual problems with Routledge books: the copy-editing is somewhat slipshod, and in many cases entirely new errors seem to have been added. The volume is also horrendously overpriced at ?75.00. However, the book will be of interestnot only toRussianists but also to historians working on other European colonial empires. It should be essential reading not just for military historians, but for anyone who wants to further their understanding of that elusive concept, the 'official mind' in tsaristRussia. School of History Alexander Morrison UniversityofLiverpool Norris, Stephen M. A War ofImages:Russian Popular Prints,Wartime Culture,and National Identityi8i2-ig4j. Northern IllinoisUniversity Press, DeKalb, IL, 2006. xiii + 277 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $40.00. Stephen Norris seeks to demonstrate 'the visual nature of Russian nation hood before and after 1917', a subject, he suggests, that has hitherto 'been litde studied' (p. 3). 'Nationhood' is his preferred term for themore widely accepted 'national identity' and 'national consciousness' and he limits the visual side of his investigation solely to the lubok,although not to the lubokin general (which he calls a genre), but to thewar lubok (which he also confus ingly calls a genre [p. 5], when it is, ifanything, a sub-genre or theme). This initial confusion is compounded by the book's title,which mentions neither nationhood nor lubki as such, but does denote the self-recommending symmetry of the book's historical parameters, from the Patriotic War to the Great Patriotic War. Following the introductory chapter, six of the next seven chapters are devoted to the wars that were the stimulus for the mass production of lubki, beginning with 1812and proceeding via theCrimean War, theRusso-Turkish War of 1877-78, and theRusso-Japanese War, to theGreat War. The excep tion is chapter three,which traces the attitude of the government and its censors towards the lubok,principally during the last decades ofNicholas Fs REVIEWS 135 reign. Chapter eight pursues the story into the first years of the Soviet regime, when the attemptwas made initially to obliterate the lubok, beforeMaiakovskii andMoor demonstrated itspropaganda value through poster works produced as so-called ROSTA (Russian Telegraph Agency) Windows, which during World War Two were reprised as TASS Windows. An understanding of thenature and limitsof the lubokisobviously of crucial importance. The term itself was firstintroduced by Ivan Snegirev in an essay he published in 1822, entitled 'Russkaia narodnaia gallereia iii lubochnye kartinki', but proved unacceptable tomembers of the Society of theLovers of Russian Literature inwhose Trudyhe published a furtheressay in 1824 entitled 'O prostonarodnykh izobrazheniiakh vMoskovskom mire'. When he eventu ally published his book-length study in 1861, he did not hesitate to call it Lubochnye kartinki russkogonaroda v moskovskom mire. Dmitrii Rovinskii, who, togetherwith Snegirev, is the authority forNorris and for all researchers into the history of the lubok,opted for 'popular pictures' (narodnye kartinki)in his monumental four-volume study of 1881. 'Popular' prints or pictures is the most widely accepted term, certainly beyond the boundaries of Russia, but, as Anthony Griffiths noted in his Preface to Sheila O'Connell's The Popular Print inEngland 1550...

Troubled Neighbours: The EU and Israel

Troubled Neighbours: The EU and Israel

Austrian Issue in the Mirror of Russian Media (1945-1955)

It should be pointed out that the attitude of Russians to Germany and to Austria at that time, as well as earlier, was always different. Nazi’s Germany was considered an evil aggressor, who annexed peaceful Austria in 1938, by force involving it into the World War II and so on. The confirmation of empirical observations can be easily found in the official Soviet press. For instance, still before the invasion of Vienna in April 1945, the main state newspaper of the Soviet Union “Pravda” wrote that:“Austria fell the first victim of the German aggression. (...) terrorist occupation by Germany, its predatory policy evoked in Austrian people feeling of hatred of Germans as those who’re guilty of all the hardships for the last seven years”. Certainly, the Soviet government did not put the sign of equality between Austria and, for example, Poland. Should an opportunity arise, the Kremlin press would use it to underline that “Austria is responsible for the participation in the war on a Hitler’s side...there are certain circles in Austria that though proclaimed “neutral position” relating to German-fascists’ occupation, in fact supported the regime of the German terror”. And the permanent mouthpiece of the Red Moscow- TASS (Telegraph Agency of Soviet Union) was indignant that during the November elections in 1945 in some regions of Austria “where the influence of Hitler’s men was stronger”, only 40-45% of people took part in elections.

Carl Dreyer: A Master of His Craft

HERBERT G. LUFT has been active in Hollywood since 1943, both as a writer and in the production of motion pictures. His articles frequently appear in the Quarterly, and he is a contributor to Films in Review. Most recently, he participated in a series of cinema evaluations prepared by the United States Information Agency for overseas distribution. Mr. Luft also writes a syndicated column on Hollywood, which reaches some ioo weekly papers through the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.