Soviet Work Research Articles

A Soviet Credo: Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony (review)

A Soviet Credo: Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. By Pauline Fairclough. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. [xxx, 261 p. ISBN 0-754-65016-2. $99.95.] Music examples, bibliography, index. Few twentieth-century compositions raise as many interpretative and analytical challenges as Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. Started before and completed after the official denunciation of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and therefore preceding his of contrition, the Fifth Symphony, many the Fourth Symphony has traditionally marked the course that Shostakovich's creative development might have taken, a missed path cruelly aborted by malevolent government intervention. Pauline Fairclough's study tackles head-on the work's analytical and hermeneutic challenges and offers a stimulating, albeit inconclusive, guide to the Fourth Symphony's complexities. Fairclough provides a promising step in approaching after the blistering battles of the late 1990s that surrounded the composer and interpretations of his music. In fact, many of the frustrations of the book, chief among them its overly tentative, almost apologetic tone, are testament more to the deep scars left by the Shostakovich wars than to any faults of the author. The avoidance of conclusions fundamental to Fairclough's central argument, which, in her words, is to present an analysis which avoids drawing direct (and potentially unreliable) associations between historical events and music, but which nevertheless shaped and informed by awareness of historical context (p. xxv). In other words, in the detailed thematic and harmonic examination of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony that comprises the bulk of her book, Fairclough tries to avoid the literal linking of music and biography that has so frequently plagued studies. Borrowing from Theodor Adorno's characterization of Mahler's work, she maintains the Fourth Symphony to be a that relates nothing, and that she has tried to put that nothing in words. Instead, she writes, I have suggested ways of describing the process of its narrative in a way that does not tie the symphony to specific events or ideas; readers are free to do so if they wish (p. x). Fairclough underscores the fact that like all analyses, [mine] an interpretation, not a prescription listening. And yet, despite this caveat, she declares at the outset of the book that for me, at least, the Fourth Symphony to encapsulate the hope, idealism, fear and sheer insanity of [its time] more compellingly than does any other contemporary Soviet work (p. x). Fairclough obviously holds deeply felt opinions about the Fourth Symphony's construction, reception, and meaning. Her eschewal of reading through Shostakovich's biography (or vice versa) paradoxically ensures that biography nonetheless colors all of her evaluations. It a shame that this defensive posture has caused her to couch her interpretations-biographical, historical, or otherwise-behind hesitation and vacillation, hiding her often strong, provocative readings behind it seems and possibly. The strengths of Fairclough's study are twofold: the focus on Soviet debates over musical Socialist Realism that preceded the Fourth Symphony's composition (chap. 1), and the detailed, often bar by bar explication of the symphony (chaps. 3 through 5). The first chapter a distillation of two previous and notable articles that Fairclough has published on the 1935 Discussion about Soviet Symphonism and on Ivan Sollertinsky's Mahler writings, respectively. This chapter loosely organized and the central thread of the argument sometimes lost. Some of its topics could have been expanded upon, especially its brief coda surveying Soviet symphonic form and hence nascent musical Socialist Realism in representative symphonies by Nikolai Myaskovsky, Vissarion Shebalin, Gavriil Popov, and others (supplying dates all of these works also would have been helpful). …

The Late Romance of the Soviet Worker in Western Historiography

This essay is animated by a single, seemingly simple, question: “What has happened to Soviet labor and working-class history?” The obvious answer is that it went the way of the Soviet working class. But to attribute changing scholarly interests or emphases to recent or contemporary Russian politics is too simplistic. It ignores too many other factors that impinge on why and how we study what we do. While the near disappearance of class from post-Soviet discourse certainly has had an impact on Western historians, I would suggest that both broader and narrower trends have been at work shaping our scholarly agendas. In 1990, just as the Soviet Union was in its last throes, Leo van Rossum published in this very journal an outstanding omni-review of “Western Studies of Soviet Labour during the Thirties”. A few years further on, “in the cold light of the post-Soviet dawn”, Ron Suny and I searched Soviet history for its working class. It is time once again to revisit this terrain.

The Moscow workers' movement in 1921 and the role of non-partyism

THE THEME OF THIS ARTICLE is the upsurge of the workers' movement in Russia in 1921 following the end of the civil war, with specific reference to Moscow. There were two main aspects to this movement: first, the wave of protests triggered in February 1921 by supply shortages, and second, the resurgence of working-class political activity in March-April 1921, during the Moscow soviet elections that immediately followed the tenth Communist Party congress and the adoption of measures that formed the basis of the new economic policy (NEP). The article will argue, first, that the protests over supply were less political, and less united against the Bolshevik government, than has been presumed, and that, in terms of the resurgence of working-class politics, the soviet election campaign was more significant. Second, it will argue that the principal form this political resurgence took was not support for the Mensheviks and SRs but the development of a non-partyist tendency among workers that has received less attention than it deserves. This non-partyist tendency included elements close to SR and Menshevik ideas, but also egalitarian and workerist strands that in October 1917 had sided with the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks' refusal to co-operate with this tendency was an important blow against post-civil war hopes of reviving participatory democracy and reversing progress towards a one-party state.

P.A. Stolypin: the search for stability in late Imperial Russia

This is the first comprehensive biography in any language of Russia's leading statesman in the period following the Revolution of 1905. Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs from 1906 to 1911 (when he was assassinated), P. A. Stolypin aroused deep passions among his contemporaries as well as subsequent historians.In the twilight of Nicholas II's reign he was virtually the only man who seemed to have a clear notion of how to reform the socioeconomic and political system of the empire. His efforts in that direction-in agriculture, local administration, religious freedom, social legislation, the legal system-were radically new departures for the Russian state. His detractors disdained him as a power-hungry, coldhearted politician who was unscrupulous in pursuing his own career and would use any means to restore the tsarist autocracy following the frightening turbulence of 1905. Stolypin's admirers, however, argued that he was a man of vision who pursued policies that would have transformed the country into a modern state with social and political institutions comparable to those of the West.Lenin's celebrated denunciation of Stolypin as hangman-in-chief set the tone for official Soviet work on his career. In the West, some historians and emigre writers, most notably Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, erred in the opposite direction. By contrast, this book-on the basis of extensive Russian archival documentation only recently available to historians-seeks to provide a balanced portrait of Stolypin that encompasses the complex, even divergent, impulses that motivated him.Although Stolypin did not shrink from the use of force to stamp out unrest, he lamented the shedding of blood and much preferred nonviolent means to curb the opposition. In foreign affairs, he was uncompromising in his insistence that Russia should avoid entanglements that could lead to military conflict. To be sure, he was deeply committed to monarchical rule, but he did not consider it advisable to abolish the elected legislature or to deprive it of its authority. Stolypin's program, a blend of reformism, authoritarianism, and nationalism, was more likely than any other to lead Russia toward social and political stability. But Tsar Nicholas II, his entourage, and ultra-conservatives could not bring themselves to yield a portion of their privileges and prerogatives in return for a reduced, though still significant, role in a changed Russia. They succeeded in undermining the Prime Minister's attempts at fundamental reform and thus scuttled Imperial Russia's last such attempt before its demise.

Strasse der Wölfe. Zwei junge Frauen erleben Russland in den dreissiger Jahren by Gabriele Krone-Schmalz (review)

REVIEWS 547 they held out for only a week less than the British and French managed the followingyear. The Polish Second Republic can stillprovoke controversymore than sixty years after its demise. It was born in the bloodshed of successive wars and uprisings. Its short life was characterized by political instability and interethnic conflict, and it met its fate in the Blitzkriegof 1939. Yet, despite the passage of time, the thirst for literature on the subject is unabated, and has even increasedin the decade since i989. This volume is a worthyaddition. Pitstone, Bedfordshire ROGER MoORHOUSE Krone-Schmalz, Gabriele. Strasse derWdofe. Zweijunge Frauen erleben Russland in den dreissiger Jahren.Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 1999. 287 pp. Bibliography.DM 39.90. DURING the 1930S,the vast lands of the Soviet Union's eastern Ural-Siberian frontier underwent the fundamental experiment of building a socialist civilization. Like many other newly-created cities in the East, Komsomolskna -Amure, Novo-Kuznetsk and Karaganda, Magnitogorskbecame a symbol of Stalinist industrialization and urbanization, providing a melting pot in which the Soviet working class intermingled with many people of different nationalities. For the workers Soviet and foreign alike Magnitogorsk representeda dreamfora betterlifeandofferedan alternativeto the depressed capitalistsocieties of the West. Following on from Stephen Kotkin'sMagnetic Mountain (Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1995), Krone-Schmalz, a well-known German televisionjournalistbased in Russia,tellsthe exciting life storyof two young foreign women in the steppe. Whilst Kotkin used archivaldocuments in his exploration of the institutionalframeworkwhich constructedMagnitogorsk , Krone-Schmalz offers an alternativeperspective based on interviews conducted with her two protagonists. In the years preceding the outbreak of the Second World XVar, Russians, Americans, Germans and other Europeans were working together on the Soviet Union's greatest building site. Anna (seventeen) and Meike (twentytwo ) were among a group of German and Dutch Bauhausarchitects and engineers who arrived in Magnitogorsk in I932. The young women were enthusiasticand keento be alliedwith the Sovietpioneers.Whilsttheirparents saw the Soviet Union, with its revolutionaryexperiments, as a pariah, for the young it meant adventureand a chance to escapethe boredom and constraints of Western social conventions. For Anna and Meike, working in the Soviet Union promised, at the veryleast, female emancipation. These young, qualified migrants also brought their ideas of modernity to the USSR. The Bauhaus school of architecture,founded by WalterGropiusin the 1920S, sought to achieve a unity of technical functionalism and art by creatingliving-workingspaces.Apartmentswere built beside factoriesso that factory and worker could become one organism. The aim of Stalinist architecturewas to builda socialistsocietyand create a 'new'mankind.Soviet propagandaproclaimedthat 'thecenterof the socialistcitywill be not a castle, or a market,but a factory'.In this sense, socialismmeant the culture ofindustgy. 548 SEER, 79, 3, 200I Magnitogorsk did not meet the expectations of the young Western architects,however. It was a city of barracksand tents surroundedby the dust of the steppe, and young mothers, in particular, felt uncomfortable in this nomad camp. Overcrowded barracks did not guarantee privacy. Having waited months for theirown lodgings, theywere disappointedto discoverthat they were without even primitivesanitation.Inadequate food suppliesand an absence of leisurefacilitiesmade the women feel cut offfromlife. In theirtime there, Anna and Meike's only form of relaxation came in a visit to the Bashkirs,and althoughthey enjoyed theirhospitality,thiswas not sufficientto alleviate the hardship. They found it frustratingthat the ideas of the young architects came to nothing because of the callousness of Soviet bureaucrats. Hasty Five-YearPlans killedindividualand collective creativity.The NKVD kept a close watch on factorylife, and foreign specialistsbegan to be accused of conspiracyand espionage. Xenophobia was not only a trait of the NKVD officials,but also characterizedthe relationshipbetween Russianworkersand foreign spetsy. As one worker put it: John, you're doing excellent work, but you're a foreigner!' (p. 275). By 1934, most of the foreigners -including Anna and Meike had left Magnitogorsk.The few adventurerswho stayed and adopted Soviet citizenship in the naive hope of becoming assimilated, eventually vanished to Siberian labour camps. Nevertheless, despite the atmosphere of mutual distrustthey experienced under daily Stalinism,Anna and Meike still have good memories of their 'nice, but grave years' in Magnitogorsk. InstituteofRussianHistoy EVA-MARIA STOLBERG University ofBonn Makinen, Anne. Suomen valkoinen sotilasarkkitehtuuri I926-I939. Bibliotheca Historica, 53. SuomalaisenKirjallisuudenSeura, Helsinki, 2000. 257 PP. Notes. Illustrations...

"The League of Time" (Liga Vremia): Problems of Making a Soviet Working Class in the 1920s1

"The League of Time" (Liga Vremia): Problems of Making a Soviet Working Class in the 1920s1

Soviet Work Attitudes and Politics, 1953–91: A Preliminary Historical Sociology

The main question investigated here is the extent to which Russian workers’ changing attitudes toward their labour contributed to the systemic political crisis of the Soviet regime during the latter part of the 1980s. The related issue of the workers’ understanding of what has been called the “social contract” between themselves and government is also explored. The goal is to assess the relationship between their political allegiance and historical Soviet practices that guaranteed rudimentary welfare and job security, irrespective of work performance.

The Enisei River of central Siberia in the Late Pleistocene

Recent Paleolithic work along the middle Enisei River of central Siberia has revealed a long history of occupation that almost certainly begins in the Middle Pleistocene. Although the evidence for the Lower Paleolithic is somewhat tentative, there is good reason to believe that hunter-gatherers had periodically occupied the middle Enisei before the last interglacial. The steppe environment of the region during the Upper Pleistocene was relatively bountiful; more than 200 Upper Paleolithic sites, both before and after the Last Glacial Maximum, have been located. The region appears to have been abandoned during the Last Glacial Maximum. Most of Soviet and Russian archaeological work has been guided by a cultural–historical orientation, but recently there has been increased interest in developing adaptationist and ecological research strategies. The middle Enisei and the wider central Siberian region are key to understanding early adaptations to the north and the dimensions of Paleolithic population movements.

Russian Workers Under Yeltsin's Regime: Notes on a Class in Defeat

When in 1917 the Russian proletariat made the first socialist revolution in human history and then defeated the exploiting classes in the civil war it set out to build a workers' state, or the dictatorship of the proletariat as a vehicle for socialist transition toward a classless society. Today, seventy nine years later, Russian workers remain a distinct social class and may seem to be farther away than ever before from the world that the workers of 1917 dreamed of. They have suffered a defeat of world-historical significance. The bureaucracy-led counterrevolution has triumphed. Its consequences for the Soviet working class have been disastrous.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The level of research in advanced composite materials in the countries of the former Soviet Union

The advanced materials studied were those composites based on ceramic, boron, carbon and aramid fibres. Research level was quantified by a bibliometric analysis of publications including a study of citations, an analysis of patents, a professional assessment of Soviet work by reviewing the open literature and by discussing with scientists and engineers in the former Soviet Union. The conclusion drawn was that the level of research in the former USSR did not match that in the West. There were, however, several niche areas were the level of research was comparable or in advance of the West, notably aramid fibres.

The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union

Stalin ordered his execution, but here Peter Palchinsky has the last word. His ghost leads readers through the miasma of Soviet technology and industry, pointing out the mistakes he condemned in his time, the corruption and collapse he predicted, the ultimate price paid for silencing those who were not afraid to speak out. The story of this visionary engineer's life and work, as Graham tells it, is also the story of the Soviet Union's industrial promise and failure. Palchinsky is shown in pre-Revolutionary Russia, immersed in protests against the miserable lot of labourers in the tsarist state; protests which were destined to echo ironically during the Soviet worker's paradise. Exiled from the country, pardoned and welcomed back at the outbreak of World War I, the engineer joined the ranks of the Revolutionary government, only to find it no more open to criticism than the previous regime. Palchinsky's turbulent career offers us a window on debates over industrialization. Graham highlights the harsh irrationalities built into the Soviet system, such as: the world's most inefficient steel mill in Magnitogorsk; the gigantic and ill-conceived hydro-electric plant on the Dnieper; the infamously mislocated construction of the White Sea Canal. Time and again, we see the effects of policies that ignore not only workers' and consumers' needs, but also sound management and engineering precepts. And we see Palchinsky's criticism and advice, persistently given, consistently ignored, continue to haunt the Soviet Union right up to its dissolution in 1991.

Perestroika and the Soviet working class

Perestroika and the Soviet working class

Economic Consciousness and Reform of the Employment Sphere

The transition to a market economy is closely connected with profound changes in the economic consciousness and economic culture of the entire population. The discussion in Russia today concerns not only the formation of an entrepreneurial class with the ethic characteristic of this social group, but also involves the formation of a full-fledged wage-earning class. The myth of the worker-manager of that existed during the years of developed socialism was transformed during perestroika into the idea that the Soviet worker was merely a wage laborer. This idea is also divorced from reality. The definition of this worker as state-dependent,1 with an essentially traditionalist work ethic, seems more accurate. In his definition of this concept (state-dependent worker), Victor Zaslavsky wrote that it the one hand… relates to a complex of specific work habits and to a production ethic based more on the avoidance of work than on discipline and productivity, on a general scorn for work...

Elizabeth Teague. Solidarity and the Soviet Worker: The Impact of the Polish Events of 1980 on Soviet Internal Politics. London: Croom Helm, 1988. vi, 378 pp. $67.50. Distributed by Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Elizabeth Teague. Solidarity and the Soviet Worker: The Impact of the Polish Events of 1980 on Soviet Internal Politics. London: Croom Helm, 1988. vi, 378 pp. $67.50. Distributed by Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Economic reform and product quality improvement efforts in the Soviet Union

FOUR YEARS after Gorbachev's rise to power, and after countless articles and debates which have made perestroika a household word, the USSR introduced a draft of a proposed law 'On the Quality of Products and the Protection of Consumer Rights'.1 Placed in the context of some of the more radical reforms that have been discussed, the draft is most striking in its adherence to past attempts to address the problem of poor product quality. At the same time, the proposal does contain some new ideas and variations on old approaches which could turn out to be of considerable practical value in the struggle to move away from the traditional Soviet centrally planned economy. To understand the law and the role it may play during the transition period, as well as other programmes currently in effect such as Gospriemka and KSUKP (the Russian abbreviation for 'Complex System of Management of Output Quality'), it is first necessary to review briefly previous Soviet quality programmes. At the outset a distinction should be made between two different aspects of quality improvement. In designing products engineers set standards and design requirements for all sorts of characteristics such as weights, sizes, material structure, durability and reliability. If a product does not meet the level specified it is said to be defective, and should be either reworked or scrapped. In this context, if the number of defective items is reduced, there has been an improvement in quality. Although it would probably be more appropriate to refer to this as quality of production or stabilisation of product quality, the above usage of quality improvement is quite common. Improvements in product quality also refer to either increases in the level of standards or closer conformance with standards. To quote Golosovsky & Grinchel, 'the improvement in the quality of equipment is viewed as the excess of its parameters over those of conventional aggregate equipment in social production in a given year'.2 Most of the programmes discussed in this article, as well as a large part of Soviet work in this area, deal with the first aspect of quality improvement. One of the first systematic undertakings to improve quality was a programme introduced in 1955 in an aviation plant located in the Saratov region referred to as the method of defect-free product fabrication. Within a short period of time this experiment became known as the 'Saratov system' and Soviet officials claimed that it brought about a significant improvement in product quality. The system consisted of a complex of economic, organisational, educational and engineering measures designed to bring about the production of defect-free output. The

Heat and mass transfer bibliography—Soviet works

Heat and mass transfer bibliography—Soviet works

Soviet Multi-Objective Mathematical Programming Methods: An Overview

Over the past 20–30 years multi-objective mathematical programming (MOMP) has emerged as an increasingly active area of research in the fields of management science, operations research, applied mathematics, and engineering. Despite the intensity of interest, however, earlier surveys of MOMP methods have all but ignored Soviet work in this area. Published in unfamiliar journals and often available only in Russian, the Soviet research has remained virtually unknown outside of the USSR and Eastern Europe. This has been particularly unfortunate given the extent, importance, and originality of much of the Soviet research. The current article attempts to correct this situation by providing a comprehensive, yet nontechnical, overview of Soviet MOMP methods. Using a taxonomy similar to ones that have been applied to Western MOMP techniques, the article categorizes the Soviet methods based on when they involve a decision maker in the solution process—a priori, progressively, a posteriori, or never—and what kind of information the decision maker provides. In all, 17 methods are analyzed with particular attention given to their distinctive features and to the issues of computational feasibility and burden on the decision maker. The article concludes with observations on the overall character of Soviet MOMP research, comparing the general directions in Soviet and Western research.

Toward a Thematic Approach to the Collectivization Campaign in the Soviet West (1948-56)

The collectivization campaign of 1929-36 has been researched extensively by historians in the West (e.g., Naum Jasny, Moshe Lewin, R.W. Davies, Merle Fainsod, Robert Conquest and Lynne Viola1) and in the former Soviet Union, where recently journals have devoted considerable space to this question. There is a consensus that this collectivization campaign was marked by Stalinism at its most sinister: purges, executions, and banishment of so-called kulaks or better off peasants; extensive grain requisitions based on absurdly high quotas; and the imposition of a regime of terror over the hapless Soviet village by Party or urban workers dispatched from the cities to the countryside. By contrast, the postwar collectivization campaign in the western borderlands i.e., the three Baltic republics, Right-Bank Moldavia, and the western provinces of Belorussia and Ukraine (which formed Eastern Poland) annexed by the USSR after the NaziSoviet Pact of August 1939 remains one of the least researched topics in Soviet history. For some time, this was a very sensitive topic, since these regions were ipso facto areas of key military interest. Moreover, because several of these republics were centres of nationalist opposition, they were off limits to both domestic and foreign researchers. The few collections of documents published before the Khrushchev period gave a very stilted picture of events. After 1956 some new and important Soviet works appeared; they still remain among the most revealing.2 By the 1970s, Soviet scholars had provided several studies of each annexed area and one comparative study that appeared in a volume

Between Excessive Employment and Unemployment Soviet Workers on the Situation in the Sphere of Labor

The state and prospects of employment are becoming the object of heightened social anxiety despite the fact that as recently as the mid-1980s the majority of the Soviet working people were not alarmed about the possibility of losing their jobs and having to find new ones.1

Review: Before the Wall Came down: Soviet and East European Filmmakers Working in the West by Graham Petrie, Ruth Dwyer

Review: Before the Wall Came down: Soviet and East European Filmmakers Working in the West by Graham Petrie, Ruth Dwyer