Totalitarian Society Research Articles

Campus Life in Contemporary Polish, Slovak, and Ukrainian Fiction

The article focuses on the image of campus life as presented in a selection of novels written in Polish, Slovak, and Ukrainian after 1989. The author presents generic peculiarities of Slavic campus fiction and analyses the theme of (academic) coming-of-age in Slavic campus fiction. The maturation of student characters in Maryna Hrymych’s Yura and Pavol Parkov’s The Legend About the Language occurred in Soviet Ukraine and Czechoslovakia, respectively, around 1968. In contrast, the protagonists of Jagoda Grudzień’s Erasmopeja and Tania Kalytenko’s Antero undergo academic identity formation in contemporary Scandinavian countries as participants in academic exchange programs. While Hrymych and Rankov portray characters navigating totalitarian societies of the past, Grudzień and Kalytenko situate their students within the anxieties of the globalised world, where remembering the past remains crucial. The author concludes that contemporary campus fiction written in Slavic languages addresses the issues significant for the cultural memory of the particular nation. Collectively, these novels contribute to a sense of continuity in academic culture within East-Central Europe.

“Gilead is within you”: A Theocratic Narrative Setting of Cultural memory in Atwood’s The Testaments

This article attempts to explore the synthetic relationship between group identities and their effects on cultural memory in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. It will investigate how Atwood’s dystopian fiction conspicuously weaves threads of cultural identity in the totalitarian society. While examining the work, the researchers found three forms of Memory Figures channelizing society: Architecture and time, Identical groupings, and Language. With significant attention to the prequel, The Handmaid’s Tale, this article will consider The Testaments for the dissection of hard-wired cultural memory formation. This article focuses on how a politically unsettled society of Gilead, through its Memory Figures, inscribes a cultural narrative while instructing individual memories. Atwood’s usage of these Memory Figures to achieve a theocratic regime has been scrutinized in this article. The Architecture of Gilead was given an intrusive wall of glass, where the symbol of eyes prevails, to externalize the surveillance of God on each one of its citizens, thereby forming a cultural memory of subjectivity. To make the citizens identify with groups, this theocratic regime specifies roles to citizens according to their rank for men and according to reproductive efficiency for women. Keeping in view the relevance of language in forming cultural memory, Atwood prescribed a set of greetings such as ‘under his eyes,’ and ‘praise be’ to make profound imprints on the individual memory of citizens, which has been discussed in the study. These three Memory Figures simultaneously form collective memory imprints on the citizens of Gilead, which in time became inherent cultural memories. This article explores how, by politicizing the issue of cultural memory in The Testaments, Atwood taps into the agency of people and establishes language control (communicative) to form the cultural memory narrative.

Dual Narrative Progression and Metaphors for Noise in Julian Barnes’s <i>The Noise of Time</i>

In <i>The Noise of Time</i>, Julian Barnes once again turns to the writing of biography after <i>Arthur & George </i>(2005), and this time he experiments by tactfully setting dual narrative progression which is the combination of the overt plot and the covert progression. Also, the word “noise” in the title <i>The Noise of Time </i>has double metaphorical meanings, which correspond to the theme and characterization in the dual narrative progression. So, the present article aims to probe into the relationship between the dual narrative progression and the respective metaphorical connotation of the word “noise” in the title. In the overt plot centering on Shostakovich’s three Conversations with Power, for the sake of his friends and associates, in the struggle between life and death, the protagonist Shostakovich is depicted as a coward disciplined by the multiple mechanisms of “incarceration”, such as arrest, being taken to the concentration camps, forbidding his music, and banning his opera performed, in the service of the former Soviet government; and the word "noise" is a metaphor for the totalitarian society of the former Soviet Union which influences Shostakovich's musical composition. However, in the covert progression, by mainly adopting indirect satire (irony), verbal defence, perfunctory behaviors and physical absence, the author characterizes the composer Shostakovich as a hero who follows the inner voice of his ego, and expresses his ridicule, resistance and intransigence in different ways, thus becoming an outsider or a stranger rebelling against the absurdity of the totalitarian society, and the metaphor for “noise” refers to the composer Shostakovich himself who strives to compose an artistic noise that is not compatible with the totalitarian society. Therefore, the overt plot and the covert progression form a striking contrast, and by so doing, Barnes creates an artistic paradoxical image of both a coward and a hero.

Was Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto a Hidden Homage?

Shostakovich’s direct quotation from the Odessan street song “Bagels, Buy My Bagels!” (Bubliki, kupite bubliki!) in his Second Cello Concerto Op. 126 (1966) featured an unusual style, even in relation to some of his other compositions referencing popular and Jewish music. The song is widely known as one of the icons of the Odessa underworld. Shostakovich’s use of this melody as one of the main leit-themes of the Concerto can be compared to the use by the non-Jewish Andrei Sinyavsky of the Jewish pseudonym Abram Tertz, a bandit from the Odessa underworld—the only locus of freedom to tell the truth in a totalitarian society. The time of Shostakovich’s address to this song remarkably coincided with the famous Soviet trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel in the fall of 1965 and their final sentencing (February 1966) to years in a Gulag camp. The dramaturgy of Shostakovich’s Concerto, written in the same spring of 1966, demonstrates the transformation of the theme of “Bagels” into a tragic image. The totality of circumstantial evidence suggests that this opus could be the composer’s hidden tribute to the feats of Russian heroic writers.

TRUST AS THE BASIS OF A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

The article is devoted to the study of the problem of trust in today's unstable social life. The relevance of the research is determined by the crisis processes taking place in the modern world, the development of the world democratic community, Ukraine's orientation towards integration into the European Union and NATO. A thorough analysis of the scientific literature was carried out, on the basis of which the essence and nature of the phenomenon of trust were determined, the conditions for the formation of a culture of trust, the factors that destroy it were revealed. The role of trust in the life of society and the individual is outlined, the specifics of the formation of trust in democratic and totalitarian societies are shown. In the course of the research, methods of analysis, synthesis, and comparison were used, and a survey of student youth was conducted. Young people's perceptions of trust/distrust were analyzed, factors were identified that, according to students, influence the formation of trust and lead to its loss.

The Grotesque Aesthetics of Relationality: Sibylle Berg’s GRM Brainfuck (2019)

This article proposes that Sibylle Berg’s novel GRM Brainfuck (2019) expresses an ethics of relationality by showing the possibility, no matter how fleeting and precarious, of connections and collaborations, both physical and digital, between individuals and groups in the epoch of neoliberal fundamentalism, rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence and ecological breakdown. Narrative indeterminacy lays the aesthetic foundations for Berg’s portrayal of precarious relationality on the margins of totalitarian society, and it also articulates difference. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the novel as a hybrid form and his concept of the carnivalesque, the article argues that Berg’s narrative discourse and grotesque depictions of the body articulate the young protagonists’ resistance against the white elite techno-patriarchy. Berg’s thematization of the underground music genre, grime, also plays into her carnivalesque tirade against the status quo. Ultimately, her portrayal of relationality explores possibilities of human-machine kinship, even as the novel catastrophizes technological singularity. GRM Brainfuck is thus a form of cyborg writing, in Donna Haraway’s sense, that manifests in the carnivalesque narrative form.

The post-truth situation in a totalitarian society – from social grotesque to the state’s monopoly on “truth”

The post-truth situation in a totalitarian society – from social grotesque to the state’s monopoly on “truth”

“Ukraine and Jesus Christ suffered the most severe torments in their life” Addressed lyrics by Oleksa Hai-Holovko

The poetic legacy of Oleksa Hai-Holovko, a Ukrainian writer and diaspora activist, is presented in three volumes of selected works. His lyricism has been predominantly studied in the context of themes and motifs of Ukrainian-language poets in Canada (I. Nakashidze): love for Ukraine, nostalgia, the image of the steppe, and so forth. The addressed lyrics of the poet have not been thoroughly studied, so this article aims to analyze the features, motifs, and define the uniqueness of the portrayal of the subject and addressee in the writer’s dedicatory verses. The research is conducted using comparative-historical, semiotic methods, contextual analysis of the text, principles of receptive aesthetics with reference to the works by Ukrainian scholars regarding genealogical trends, and genre specificity of addressed lyricism (L. Bondar, Yu. Klymiuk, Yu. Kovaliv, V. Nazarets, L. Skoryna, M. Tkachuk). The novelty of the research lies in the examination of dedicatory poems by O. Hai-Holovko, in which through the prism of a specific addressee, the destiny of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in “commune-moscow slavery” is predominantly represented. The “Lyrical Portraits” by O. Hai-Holovko vary in genre modification: dedicatory poems to “Friends”, “Full-blooded Sheep”, “Taras Shevchenko”; letter-dedications “Letter to Mother”, “Letter to Yurii Smolych”; address-invocations “My People”, “To Valerian Revutsky”, “To Yurii Holovko”; dedication-epitaphs “To Fedor Odrachiv”, “To Vasyl Stefanyk” and so on. Dedicatory verses do not always reflect the genre in the title, in such poems, after the title, the addressees are indicated with a concise reference or indication of the event: “Ballad to the Warriors” for Yuriy Stefanyk, “Song” for V. Rusalskyi, “Do Not Grieve, My Great Friend” for Y. Pozichanyuk. The peculiarity of addressed lyrics by O. Hai-Holovko is autobiographism, with Ukraine being the overarching image, enslaved by the “commune”, the native people “bound by chains”, and “suppressed by non-glory”. By reinterpreting biblical-Christian motifs and images (“To Metropolitan Ilarion”, “To Bishop Boris on the Day of Departure to Edmonton”, “Burned”) the tragedy of his fate and the fate of the Ukrainian people in a totalitarian society is reproduced. The dedicatory poems by O. Hai-Holovko have significant importance in preserving and retransmitting individual, historical, and cultural memory. They serve as artistic documents of the crimes of the totalitarian regime (“To the Chekists”, “To Stalin”, “To moscow occupiers and their little russian janissaries”) and as important interpretative codes that allow the recipient to discern the importance and scale of the issues raised, hidden meanings, and mysteries of the human soul.

ЕВРИСТИЧНИМЙ ПОТЕНЦІАЛ ГРОМАДЯНСЬКОГО СУСПІЛЬСТВА В РЕАЛІЗАЦІЇ СТРАТЕГІЇ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОЇ ІНТЕГРАЦІЇ УКРАЇНИ: КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНІ ВИМІРИ

The radical transformations that modern Ukrainian society is experiencing in the conditions of full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and its acquisition of the status of a candidate for the EU require a proper, in-depth and comprehensive analysis of Ukraine’s humanitarian development strategies, the implementation of the European integration vector of its development. The humanitarian strategies of Ukraine’s development in the context of full membership in the European Union are studied. It is shown that they should be determined by the national interests of the entire society, ensuring the rights and freedoms of citizens, and updating the system of fundamental values of the Ukrainian people. Paradigmatic European values include Ukrainian civilizational identity (spirituality), state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, high level of human development, democratic society, full standards of living, gender equality, etc. The focus of the research is: artifacts of totalitarian society and their overcoming; European experience and the Ukrainian way in forming a system of values; civil society and state institutions; synergy of interaction in the European integration context; formation of collective memory and rethinking of Ukraine’s past in a European perspective. Special attention is paid to the dynamics of the processes of democratization and decommunization, cultural and linguistic policy, interethnic and interreligious relations, etc.

Oppression of Ukrainian Cinematography during the Years of Stalinism

The purpose of the research is to highlight the forms of pressure on Soviet cinematographers during the years of Stalinist repressions. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, and a comprehensive approach. The work uses the historical-genetic method, which indicates the cause-and-effect relationships of repressive actions in relation to the specified artists. The historical-comparative method makes it possible to analyse the peculiarities of cultural policy in 1940, 1943 and 1946, to find out how the Second World War affected art and state policy in the field of cinematography. The systematic method makes it possible to understand that cinematography was a component of ideological influence on the population. The novelty of the study. For the first time, the history and creative work of Soviet cinematographers, who were natives of Ukraine and whose criticism symbolised certain stages in the ideological policy of the Communist Party, were compared. Conclusions. It was established that the process of criticism and condemnation was clearly developed in the Soviet totalitarian society. Despite the difference in professions and the subject of the work, the artists were accused of similar sins. Thus, O. Avdieienko, O. Dovzhenko, and L. Lukov were accused of distorting Soviet reality and failing to adhere to communist ideals.
 Keywords: Stalinism, USSR, communist ideology, cinematography, Committee on cinematography under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, the Department for Agitation and Propaganda of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Pedagogical Discourse on the Reform of General Secondary Education in Soviet Ukraine through the Prism of Child Protection in the 1920s: the Struggle against Unification

The article reveals the leading ideas of Ukrainian teachers and civil leaders (V. Arnautov, Ya. Chepiha, T. Harbuz, H. Ivanytsia, Ya. Riappo, M. Skrypnyk, O. Zaluzhnyi, etc.) on reforming school education for the sake of development and protection of a child in the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (USSR) in the 1920s. It has been proven that after the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution (1917–1921) and the capture of the territory of Ukraine by the Bolsheviks, the pedagogical discourse focused on the idea of creating a new labour school. It should be based on the following principles: labour, active, social education to protect the child, communist, the principle of Ukrainization and at the same time the imposition of Russification, etc. Ukrainian educators, looking for active methods of teaching children in a labour school, turned mainly to European and world pedagogical science (A. Binet, J. Dewey, F. Freeman, G. Kerschensteiner, E. Meumann, P. Natorp, F. Seidel, Ch. Spearman, W. Stern, L. Terman, E. Thorndike etc.). Pedagogical discourse was aimed at opposing the unification of school education according to the Russian model. The policy of Ukrainization was effective, so the all-Union authorities intensified ideological pressure, seeking to curtail this process. The struggle for the Ukrainian school ended tragically for Ukrainian teachers. This eloquently testifies to how the Soviet ideology during the reform used the ideas of social protection of the child, Ukrainization of the educational process to establish its own ideological and socio-political goals of the totalitarian society.

Трансформация социально-властных отношений в мире «постправды»: деконструкция подлинности

The article analyzes the trends in the development of social and power relations in the modern world. This topic is currently of concern to many thinkers: both within the framework of philosophical discourse, and within the framework of socio-political analysis, which has applied significance for public relations in the political sphere of society. Studying modern social and power relations, the authors use mainly theoretical methods, such as analysis, generalization, modeling, systematization and typologization. The sources for the analysis are texts of politicians’ speeches, online publications, political programs of parties, and videos in various media. Character-izing the world of “post-truth”, the authors come to discouraging forecasts: such changes are anti-humanistic and can lead to a new totalitarianism, the contours of which can already be traced in the activities of the media, which can create any world, any kind of reality. However, a person is either detached from reality, immersing himself in the virtual world, or is preoccupied with consumer culture, positioning himself as a fashionable and advanced user. In fact, he may not realize that he is already living in a totalitarian society.

“Newspeak” in Contemporary German Political Discourse

This article examines the concept of “newspeak,” created by J. Orwell in his novel “1984,” which functions as one of the means of manipulating the political consciousness of people. The article focuses on the linguistic manifestation of newspeak in the speech behavior of modern German politicians. It reveals two main functions of newspeak in the speech of modern German politicians: confusion and reinterpretation of established concepts. The article explores the corpus of lexical means of German political newspeak, which are realized in the form of framing, empty phrases, paradoxical word constructions, borrowings, neologisms, clericalisms, lexemes with ambiguous meaning, and words with multiple meanings. Among the grammatical means peculiar to newspeak in German political discourse, the article describes the inclusive pronoun “wir,” passive voice, and the conjunctive irrealis in combination with the adverbial modifier of manner. The pragmatic means of realizing newspeak in German political discourse include the imposition of presuppositions, weak efforts to fulfill the intentions, and hyperbolization. The conclusion is drawn that, unlike in totalitarian societies, politicians in democratic countries use newspeak to compensate for the failures of their party, which turns out to be unable to fully implement its declared intentions, mainly through linguistic manipulations.

Yugoslav Totalitarian Society, Discrimination Against Albanian and Bulgarian Minorities in Macedonia

The Balkans as a region of Southeast Europe is one of the most sensitive regions of Europe; this is where the sparks of war arose from the time of the Ottoman Empire until 2001 when a political solution was finally given to each problem of nationalities and inequalities in this region. The former Yugoslavia as an artificial creation of a state, lacking nationality, is one of the sources of conflicts which erupted with bloody wars caused by Serbia. The Yugoslav federation which gained political power after World War II consisted of 6 republics and 2 provinces. According to the Federal Constitution of Yugoslavia, all peoples must be integrated into Yugoslavia. Unfortunately within Yugoslavia there were privileged peoples, and others who were treated as secondary-class people. Albanians in Yugoslavia, most of whom belonged to the Autonomous Province of Kosovo, did not experience the status of equal population in Yugoslavia; Bulgarians were treated the same, most of whom lived in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. The Republican government in Macedonia influenced by the Federal one has directly influenced Macedonia in the manner of discrimination against national minorities such as Albanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Roma, Ashkali, Turks, etc., while the: Serbian, Montenegrin, Macedonian people have been the most privileged ones within the Republic, as well as in the Yugoslav Federation.The communist regime in Yugoslavia denied any minority efforts for equality and prosperity. The most vocal in the quest for rights were Albanians and Bulgarians, who faced torture, draconian punishments, internment, and even murder in Yugoslav concentration camps. Yugoslavia, namely the Socialist Republic of Macedonia from 1945 until 2001, was the most dictatorial regime in the history of Southeast Europe for Albanians and Bulgarians; unfortunately the Bulgarian community in Macedonia, even with the new constitution, has not resolved its political, cultural, educational status etc…

SCAN YOUR LIFE IN THE DIGITAL ERA

"Distance doesn't separate people, silence does!" Artificial intelligence is a reality and it evolves every day, it simplifies life where it is used in the human’s interest, being already applied in many fields. Is there any risk of moving away from the noble goal of being at the service of the collective good and of being used against people to limit fundamental rights and freedoms? Is there any risk that the totalitarian society will re-establish itself, this time on a global level? The current study presents, in summary, a first analysis of the latest developments in this field, starting from the Chinese experience, as far as it is known and popularized regarding facial recognition made by artificial intelligence for monitoring citizens for the social credit system.

Identity Fractures and Recoveries in the Novel “Woldemar” by Oleg Serebrian

This article analyzes the itinerary of the recognition of personal identity in the context of an existential, ontological collapse of the protagonist Woldemar. His memories and grandmother Martaʹs letters, placed face to face like mirrors, narrate and constellate the events of his life, elucidating the cause of the crisis and identity uncertainty of the adult Woldemar. By discerning the guiding depths of consciousness, several doors of the dark past and several layers of trauma are opened: of parents, grandparents and the entire Bucovina annexed to the USSR. In this way, the hermeneutic investigation captures the cause of the identity fractures of the protagonist, the artistic ways of recovering the values and human essence, the contradictions between the maternal imagos and the figure of the father (grandfather), the ideological conjuncture of blurring the personality, the condition of the individual in a totalitarian society. At the same time, is investigated the importance of saying memories and recollections through writing, as a way of resisting the individual to the totalitarian system. Through logos takes place the ontological refoundation of the protagonist, the recovery of self-awareness, his individuality and his being value.

Schwierige Texte in Kritik und Vermittlung

Schwierige Texte in Kritik und Vermittlung

A democratic trend in the development of the public administrative sphere in Ukraine in the post-war period

Problem setting. Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine sows death and destruction; threatens all spheres of socio-economic development of society. It also aims to destroy civilizational achievements in education, science, and culture, as well as to ruin the democratic foundations of Ukrainian society. Threats of curtailment of democratic reforms and restrictions on social transparency may also be due to internal reasons, such as the introduction of norms of the legal regime of martial law and its formal interpretation. Taking into account the above-mentioned present peculiarities, an attempt to systematically analyze the democratic trend in the development of the public administrative sphere in Ukraine and substantiate the means of its uncontested implementation in the post-war period becomes a requirement of time. Paper main body This paper determines the main achievements of the democratic development of Ukrainian society as a change in the essential features of the public administrative sphere, as well as its individual most obvious manifestations. The paper considers the content of threats posed by the aggressive war of the Russian Federation and the need to develop the public administrative sphere in Ukraine on a democratic basis in the post-war period. Democratic development is defined as a trend – a vector of changes, the achievement of which is not uncontested and which opposes the totalitarian regime. The main differences between democratic and totalitarian societies, which are classified according to four spheres and sixteen criteria correspondingly, are revealed. The characteristics provided not only demonstrate the opposite of totalitarianism and democracy but also define a system of tasks to be implemented to ensure further progressive development. It is substantiated that the efficient factor in transforming the democratic trend of development into a specific reality lies in the joint activity of social actors, the synergistic effect of which depends on the adherence to the single paradigm of modernization of the public administrative sphere. The paradigmatic unity of the activity is revealed as the realization of a conceptually conscious model of development, from a defined strategy to the specific tactical steps and technical means of their practical implementation. Conclusions and suggestions. The scientific substantiation proves that the democratic development of Ukrainian society in present conditions should be viewed as a trend not realized with absolute necessity. Its practical application in the public administrative sphere can be guaranteed by mutually coordinated activities of main social actors who consciously implement requirements of the democratic paradigm. Accordingly, proposals for the compliance of these requirements in specific directions are outlined.

The Discourse of Historicity in George Orwell’s 1984

The issues of historicity, the Party's control over memory and history, and the effect of Newspeak on historical consciousness are all covered in this in-depth analysis of George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984. This study explores the ways in which the Party manipulates historical records, the importance of comprehending historicity, and the ways in which language and memory are shaped and controlled within the novel's totalitarian society by drawing on the theories of New Historicism, including authors like Michel Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt, Catherine Gallagher, Hayden White, and Louis Montrose. By carefully examining these ideas, this analysis illuminates the complex relationship between language, memory, power, and historical interpretation, underscoring the perils of authoritarianism and the necessity of keeping a range of viewpoints and critical thinking.

Краіна мі-мінор. Ранняя лірыка Алега Бембеля (Зніча)

The article analyzes the early philosophical and intimate lyrics of Oleg Bembel, which until now have not been the subject of research by literary critics. Oleg Bembel is known as a dissident philosopher, and author of the book Native Language and Moral and Aesthetic Progress (Родная мова і маральна-эстэтычны прагрэс, London, 1985), and also as a poet-monk, author of religious-patriotic and religious-prayer poems under the pseudonym Znich. The early secular lyrics of Oleg Bembel, published in the collective poetry collection Wing (Крыло, Minsk, 1984), are considered in the article: 1) as an important element in reproducing the creative evolution of the famous poet; 2) as an example of the intellectual and philosophical trend in the Belarusian poetry of the 80s. 20th century; 3) as valuable material for studying the relationship between censorship and artistic creation in Soviet Belarus and totalitarian society as a whole. It is difficult to compare the early philosophical and intimate lyrics of Oleg Bembel (Znich) with his dissident and religious poems in “samizdat” and emigration publications, but it can also be considered a manifestation of nonconformism.