The article explores the role and impact of propagandistic media in Ukraine, especially East Ukraine, during National Socialist occupation from 1941 to 1943. It is based on official National Socialist documents, archival sources from Ukrainian, German and Russian archives, and relies heavily on interviews by the author with contemporary witnesses in Ukraine who survived the war. The media under consideration here are newspapers and journals, leaflets, posters and touring exhibitions, radio transmissions, and film including documentary and feature films, and newsreel. All were vehicles both for propaganda as well as for local news so desperately needed during the war by people living under harsh National Socialist occupation near the front line. Those significant and meaningful sources have been analysed for the first time to create an impression of everyday life, its atmosphere, its sorrows and its coping strategies for people living in extremely difficult conditions during what were undoubtedly the worst years of the war. The article throws light too on the correlation and rivalry between German, Soviet and Ukrainian nationalistic propaganda about Ukraine and on its changing effects at various stages of the war.
{"title":"NS-Propaganda im Militärverwaltungsgebiet der Ukraine: Ziele, Mittel und Wirkungen. Aims, Means, and Effects","authors":"Dmytro Tytarenko","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0019","url":null,"abstract":"The article explores the role and impact of propagandistic media in Ukraine, especially East Ukraine, during National Socialist occupation from 1941 to 1943. It is based on official National Socialist documents, archival sources from Ukrainian, German and Russian archives, and relies heavily on interviews by the author with contemporary witnesses in Ukraine who survived the war. The media under consideration here are newspapers and journals, leaflets, posters and touring exhibitions, radio transmissions, and film including documentary and feature films, and newsreel. All were vehicles both for propaganda as well as for local news so desperately needed during the war by people living under harsh National Socialist occupation near the front line. Those significant and meaningful sources have been analysed for the first time to create an impression of everyday life, its atmosphere, its sorrows and its coping strategies for people living in extremely difficult conditions during what were undoubtedly the worst years of the war. The article throws light too on the correlation and rivalry between German, Soviet and Ukrainian nationalistic propaganda about Ukraine and on its changing effects at various stages of the war.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"125 1","pages":"620-650"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75723827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Western historiography, the Soviet natsionalizatsiia and korenizatsiia programmes of the 1920s have usually been interpreted in one of two ways: either as a deliberate deception and exploitation of non-Russian national sentiments aimed at their ultimate overcoming or as an experiment which eventually failed due to its own success. In the case of Soviet Belorussia, neither of these two explanations applies. On the contrary, this article argues that Belarusisation was abandoned for its lack of success. Designed to win over the local population and thus ensure Soviet rule in the Western borderland, Belarusisation ultimately failed to mobilise people through preconceived national categories. In daily use, many Belarusians and Jews preferred the Russian language, which offered assimilation and upward mobility, to the languages they had been assigned by the Communist Party. Modernisation and Belarusisation proved to be mutually exclusive: The large-scale influx of Belarusian peasants to the towns did not lead to the emergence of a distinct Belarusian urban culture but rather to their rapid Russification. Besides, most national minorities were anxious not to become second-class citizens, and therefore, despite party assurances to the contrary, suspicious of Belarusisation. Ultimately, the nation-building campaign run counter to the Sovietisation of the society. When the first Five-Year Plan led to a paradigm shift in Soviet policy in the late 1920s, Belarusisation gradually came to a halt and its intellectual proponents were removed from power.
{"title":"Nation wider Willen: Weißrussland in der Sowjetunion, 1921–1931. Belorussia in the Soviet Union, 1921–1931","authors":"J. Raspe","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0009","url":null,"abstract":"In Western historiography, the Soviet natsionalizatsiia and korenizatsiia programmes of the 1920s have usually been interpreted in one of two ways: either as a deliberate deception and exploitation of non-Russian national sentiments aimed at their ultimate overcoming or as an experiment which eventually failed due to its own success. In the case of Soviet Belorussia, neither of these two explanations applies. On the contrary, this article argues that Belarusisation was abandoned for its lack of success. Designed to win over the local population and thus ensure Soviet rule in the Western borderland, Belarusisation ultimately failed to mobilise people through preconceived national categories. In daily use, many Belarusians and Jews preferred the Russian language, which offered assimilation and upward mobility, to the languages they had been assigned by the Communist Party. Modernisation and Belarusisation proved to be mutually exclusive: The large-scale influx of Belarusian peasants to the towns did not lead to the emergence of a distinct Belarusian urban culture but rather to their rapid Russification. Besides, most national minorities were anxious not to become second-class citizens, and therefore, despite party assurances to the contrary, suspicious of Belarusisation. Ultimately, the nation-building campaign run counter to the Sovietisation of the society. When the first Five-Year Plan led to a paradigm shift in Soviet policy in the late 1920s, Belarusisation gradually came to a halt and its intellectual proponents were removed from power.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"4 1","pages":"218-244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75316297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The 1955 UN-sponsored Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy quickly became a symbol for the re-establishment of international scientific cooperation and knowledge-exchange. It was the first large-scale meeting attended by Soviet atomic energy specialists – so called atomshchiki – after years of isolation. Starting from this vast gathering, this article examines the limited internationalization of Soviet nuclear science, stressing the importance of personal encounters of and direct contacts between scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain. Focusing on the role of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as one of the most influential institutions within the creation and negotiation of border-crossing relationships regarding nonmilitary uses of atomic energy, it provides insights into the growing international entanglements of Soviet nuclear research. The establishment of an International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957 marked yet another milestone in this process. One of the Agency’s main purposes was to provide a diplomatic platform for the discussion of problems posed by the nuclear age. By analyzing professional contacts of Soviet scientists and science administrators with their Western counterparts, this article shows how they sought acknowledgment both from an international scientific community and from the Party and state authorities. Referring to an atmosphere of mutual understanding experienced during a total of four major atomic energy conferences in Geneva between 1955 and 1971, Soviet atomshchiki did much to foster knowledge exchange across the Iron Curtain and to establish channels of communication to the West which remained open even in times of growing political tensions.
{"title":"The Nuclear Spirit of Geneva: Boundary-Crossing Relationships of Soviet Atomic Scientists after 1955","authors":"F. Lüscher","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0002","url":null,"abstract":"The 1955 UN-sponsored Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy quickly became a symbol for the re-establishment of international scientific cooperation and knowledge-exchange. It was the first large-scale meeting attended by Soviet atomic energy specialists – so called atomshchiki – after years of isolation. Starting from this vast gathering, this article examines the limited internationalization of Soviet nuclear science, stressing the importance of personal encounters of and direct contacts between scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain. Focusing on the role of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as one of the most influential institutions within the creation and negotiation of border-crossing relationships regarding nonmilitary uses of atomic energy, it provides insights into the growing international entanglements of Soviet nuclear research. The establishment of an International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957 marked yet another milestone in this process. One of the Agency’s main purposes was to provide a diplomatic platform for the discussion of problems posed by the nuclear age. By analyzing professional contacts of Soviet scientists and science administrators with their Western counterparts, this article shows how they sought acknowledgment both from an international scientific community and from the Party and state authorities. Referring to an atmosphere of mutual understanding experienced during a total of four major atomic energy conferences in Geneva between 1955 and 1971, Soviet atomshchiki did much to foster knowledge exchange across the Iron Curtain and to establish channels of communication to the West which remained open even in times of growing political tensions.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"10 1","pages":"20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81882593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Focussing on Shevchenko/Aqtau, an urban laboratory of Soviet nuclear modernity on the Caspian Sea in Western Kazakhstan, this study provides a close reading of Soviet technopolitics in a long-term perspective. Encompassing a time span from the late 1950s to the present, the article traces how Shevchenko evolved from a secret uranium mining camp for the Soviet A-bomb project in the Western Kazakh desert into a testing ground for fast breeder and nuclear desalination technologies and a showcase of “atomic-powered Communism” ( Josephson), but is now struggling with its transition into the post-Soviet era. Adopting a multi-dimensional perspective to show the interconnectedness of political, techno-scientific, ecological and social developments, the article highlights how the showcase city lent substance to the imaginary of the Scientific-Technological Revolution both domestically and abroad but also tracks the underlying decision-making processes in the Soviet nuclear establishment to reveal substantial disputes over questions of military versus civilian use and safety versus technological prowess. It analyses traits of the city’s social microcosm to reveal the strictly segregated, but closely interconnected spheres of a privileged urban society and a sprawling, post-GULag forced labour camp, and adopts an enviro-technical perspective to study how the Promethean project of nature improvement eventually entailed grave environmental degradation. Finally, it sheds light on transsystemic cooperation across the block divide and highlights how Soviet visions of the future continue to shape visions of the future in Russia and Kazakhstan.
{"title":"Oasis of the Future: The Nuclear City of Shevchenko/Aqtau, 1959–2019","authors":"Stefan Guth","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Focussing on Shevchenko/Aqtau, an urban laboratory of Soviet nuclear modernity on the Caspian Sea in Western Kazakhstan, this study provides a close reading of Soviet technopolitics in a long-term perspective. Encompassing a time span from the late 1950s to the present, the article traces how Shevchenko evolved from a secret uranium mining camp for the Soviet A-bomb project in the Western Kazakh desert into a testing ground for fast breeder and nuclear desalination technologies and a showcase of “atomic-powered Communism” ( Josephson), but is now struggling with its transition into the post-Soviet era. Adopting a multi-dimensional perspective to show the interconnectedness of political, techno-scientific, ecological and social developments, the article highlights how the showcase city lent substance to the imaginary of the Scientific-Technological Revolution both domestically and abroad but also tracks the underlying decision-making processes in the Soviet nuclear establishment to reveal substantial disputes over questions of military versus civilian use and safety versus technological prowess. It analyses traits of the city’s social microcosm to reveal the strictly segregated, but closely interconnected spheres of a privileged urban society and a sprawling, post-GULag forced labour camp, and adopts an enviro-technical perspective to study how the Promethean project of nature improvement eventually entailed grave environmental degradation. Finally, it sheds light on transsystemic cooperation across the block divide and highlights how Soviet visions of the future continue to shape visions of the future in Russia and Kazakhstan.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"48 1","pages":"93-123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85560765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Protagonists of the atomic project often figure prominently in narratives about nonconformist movements in Soviet history. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamic entanglement of nuclear history and the history of dissident networks in a place where they became particularly visible. Via the example of the atomic city of Obninsk, it shows how the independent social activism of the shestidesiatniki originated in the institutional and social infrastructure of Cold War nuclear science, and how their activity became an important substrate for political dissidence during and after the conservative turn of the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, dissident scientists such as Valentin Turchin and Zhores Medvedev could still rely on their local and international scientific networks to provide a certain level of protection against state persecution when disseminating their critical views. Despite their defeat at the hands of Party authorities in the 1960-70s, representatives of the local dissentient milieus again became an active group within the democratic movement during Perestroika. Drawing on a broad range of original sources, including biographical interviews, private archives and records stored in some of the most important archives of the Soviet dissident movement, this study provides a differentiated view on Obninsk’s “atomic intelligentsia”. Conceptualised as a social micro-analysis of networks established in a formerly closed nuclear city, it discusses the scientists’ activities in a world between technocratic pragmatism, faith in socialism and participation in the troublesome development of nonconformist circles.
{"title":"Dissidence behind the Nuclear Shield?: The Obninsk Atomic Research Centre and the Infrastructure of Dissent in the Late Soviet Union","authors":"Roman Khandozhko","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Protagonists of the atomic project often figure prominently in narratives about nonconformist movements in Soviet history. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamic entanglement of nuclear history and the history of dissident networks in a place where they became particularly visible. Via the example of the atomic city of Obninsk, it shows how the independent social activism of the shestidesiatniki originated in the institutional and social infrastructure of Cold War nuclear science, and how their activity became an important substrate for political dissidence during and after the conservative turn of the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, dissident scientists such as Valentin Turchin and Zhores Medvedev could still rely on their local and international scientific networks to provide a certain level of protection against state persecution when disseminating their critical views. Despite their defeat at the hands of Party authorities in the 1960-70s, representatives of the local dissentient milieus again became an active group within the democratic movement during Perestroika. Drawing on a broad range of original sources, including biographical interviews, private archives and records stored in some of the most important archives of the Soviet dissident movement, this study provides a differentiated view on Obninsk’s “atomic intelligentsia”. Conceptualised as a social micro-analysis of networks established in a formerly closed nuclear city, it discusses the scientists’ activities in a world between technocratic pragmatism, faith in socialism and participation in the troublesome development of nonconformist circles.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"16 1","pages":"65-92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74512169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The purpose of this article is to look at a specific denomination of the Russian sect of khlysty that emerged in the 1830s and spread its communities all over Russia until 1905. The perspective of longue duree allows to touch on the following three questions: How did the khlysty express religious protest? How far can khlysty as a sect be understood as a community? What elements of their history can shed light on Russian inakomyslie in general? Methodically, the research does not follow the common deprivation approach. The deprivation approach emphasizes the connection of social inequality and religion, stating that religion has a compensating function. Instead, we put emphasis on religious experience as a strategy to cope with social inequality. This research builds on William James’s concept of religious experience, on research on the history of sects and religious dissidents / religious deviance in Europe and on Ferdinand Tonnies’ concept of Gemeinschaft. Religious experience and feelings are regarded as main contributors to build and maintain sectarian communities. Collective cohesion of religious deviant community life is shown to be driven by the deep and religiously motivated feeling of unease and appears as a form of liberation from it.
{"title":"Religiöse Sekten als abweichende Gemeinschaften – die Chlysty in Russland bis 1905","authors":"Agnieszka Zagańczyk-Neufeld","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0013","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this article is to look at a specific denomination of the Russian sect of khlysty that emerged in the 1830s and spread its communities all over Russia until 1905. The perspective of longue duree allows to touch on the following three questions: How did the khlysty express religious protest? How far can khlysty as a sect be understood as a community? What elements of their history can shed light on Russian inakomyslie in general? Methodically, the research does not follow the common deprivation approach. The deprivation approach emphasizes the connection of social inequality and religion, stating that religion has a compensating function. Instead, we put emphasis on religious experience as a strategy to cope with social inequality. This research builds on William James’s concept of religious experience, on research on the history of sects and religious dissidents / religious deviance in Europe and on Ferdinand Tonnies’ concept of Gemeinschaft. Religious experience and feelings are regarded as main contributors to build and maintain sectarian communities. Collective cohesion of religious deviant community life is shown to be driven by the deep and religiously motivated feeling of unease and appears as a form of liberation from it.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"135 1","pages":"391-417"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86371397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to his death in 1953, often invoked the specter of war. For some reason, however, we have never taken those invocations seriously. We have always understood them as a manipulative device, either to gain political advantage over his opponents, to mobilize the population, to deflect blame for ill-advised and extreme policies, or in some other way to consolidate the dictator’s power. This article argues that the dictator’s expectations of war were not just discursive or rhetorical, as most histories argue. In fact, Stalin’s perceptions of external threat were inextricably intertwined with internal policies of mass repression, as well as campaigns of industrial mobilization. This article examines the patterns of radicalized internal violence that so characterized the Stalinist regime, and connects them to the dictator’s perceptions of war and foreign threat. Discussion focuses on the crisis years 1927-1932, 1936-1939, the Great Patriotic War, and the last war crisis period, 1946-1952. Violent repressions under Stalin were cyclical, peaking and ebbing but, in each case, they were linked to Stalin’s expectation of war and invasion, and they followed a pattern established during the dictator’s experience as a military commander in the Russian revolutionary and civil wars, from 1918 to 1920. This article examines those links, and it compares the cyclical character of Stalinist repression to the pattern of cumulative radicalization of violence under the German National Socialist regime.
{"title":"Stalin at War, 1918–1953: Patterns of Violence and Foreign Threat","authors":"D. Shearer","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to his death in 1953, often invoked the specter of war. For some reason, however, we have never taken those invocations seriously. We have always understood them as a manipulative device, either to gain political advantage over his opponents, to mobilize the population, to deflect blame for ill-advised and extreme policies, or in some other way to consolidate the dictator’s power. This article argues that the dictator’s expectations of war were not just discursive or rhetorical, as most histories argue. In fact, Stalin’s perceptions of external threat were inextricably intertwined with internal policies of mass repression, as well as campaigns of industrial mobilization. This article examines the patterns of radicalized internal violence that so characterized the Stalinist regime, and connects them to the dictator’s perceptions of war and foreign threat. Discussion focuses on the crisis years 1927-1932, 1936-1939, the Great Patriotic War, and the last war crisis period, 1946-1952. Violent repressions under Stalin were cyclical, peaking and ebbing but, in each case, they were linked to Stalin’s expectation of war and invasion, and they followed a pattern established during the dictator’s experience as a military commander in the Russian revolutionary and civil wars, from 1918 to 1920. This article examines those links, and it compares the cyclical character of Stalinist repression to the pattern of cumulative radicalization of violence under the German National Socialist regime.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"144 1","pages":"188-217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85604716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Inakomyslie faces an ambivalent setting in today’s Russia. While the Russian constitution embraces inakomyslie as one of its characteristic features (pluralism), the state creates a legal reality that villainizes minority discourses. This article examines legal aspects of such tension and focuses on constitutional minority rights. The article shows that current legal discourse and legislation are following legal concepts that do not conform to constitutional needs. Especially concerning the so called foreign agent law, two opponent concepts of communality - Fraternite and Sobornost - in freedom of association, vividly appear. While the Russian constitution determines the concept of Fraternite, parliamentary laws and much of the legal discourse seem to favour a concept of Sobornost’. To justify this turn, Russian legal discourse moves outside its subject area and argues historically and culturally. The author questions the idea of legally granted freedom in Russia. He closes with an assessment on the current relation between state, constitution and society, which shows that freedom in today’s Russia does not mark the beginning of political association but is understood as resulting from the state.
{"title":"Staatsräson oder Verfassung: Andersdenken und Gemeinschaftlichkeit in Verfassung und rechtspolitischem Diskurs des post-sowjetischen Russlands. Inakomyslie and Communality in the Constitution and the Discourse on Legal Policy in Post-Soviet Russia","authors":"Benjamin Reeve","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Inakomyslie faces an ambivalent setting in today’s Russia. While the Russian constitution embraces inakomyslie as one of its characteristic features (pluralism), the state creates a legal reality that villainizes minority discourses. This article examines legal aspects of such tension and focuses on constitutional minority rights. The article shows that current legal discourse and legislation are following legal concepts that do not conform to constitutional needs. Especially concerning the so called foreign agent law, two opponent concepts of communality - Fraternite and Sobornost - in freedom of association, vividly appear. While the Russian constitution determines the concept of Fraternite, parliamentary laws and much of the legal discourse seem to favour a concept of Sobornost’. To justify this turn, Russian legal discourse moves outside its subject area and argues historically and culturally. The author questions the idea of legally granted freedom in Russia. He closes with an assessment on the current relation between state, constitution and society, which shows that freedom in today’s Russia does not mark the beginning of political association but is understood as resulting from the state.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"88 1","pages":"443-464"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76824900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article attempts to analyze and evaluate the achievements of research on cultural diplomacy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the last years. The present review does not claim to a complete coverage of recent literature but concentrates on characterizing the basic tendencies and conceptual innovations in the chosen field of study. Our analysis allows to identify several current tendencies. Thus, historians are expanding their understanding of cultural diplomacy and integrating new objects of research. One of the most important trends is the study of agency within cultural diplomacy, e. g. of private-state networks or individual and collective actors of cultural diplomacy with their dynamically changing motivations and complicated interdependence with party-state structures and their own cultural practices. These were communicated by the transnational networks and at the same time kept very stable. The analysis of the phenomenon of cultural diplomacy was extended to intercultural communication in the realm of consumer and mass culture and the media landscape. This landscape was transforming in the post-war period and offered new possibilities to communicate cultural messages and to create new channels for cultural transfer. One of the achievements of recent scholarly research on the subject can certainly be seen in the acknowledgment of the paradigm of plural modernity which expands the conventional frames of the “bipolar system” allegedly shaped by the insurmountable discrepancies between capitalism and socialism and allows to approach the world order of the Cold War in a more balanced and diverse way emphasizing not only antagonisms but also similarities. Socialist cultures in a national ‘cover’ contradicting ideology and speaking the language of Enlightenment find a place in this paradigm, as do fragmented identities. Therefore the study of Soviet cultural diplomacy in Eastern Europe contributes to the recent interdisciplinary discussion on pluralistic modernity, to the cultural diversity of the Cold War, to the dynamics of global trends within consumer culture, and to media and transnational communication in general. In the future, it would be desirable to see more studies that define the criteria of the efficiency of cultural diplomacy more precisely and formulate descriptive models and scenarios of cultural diplomacy for individual regions and countries. New topics will complement this so far only fragmentarily analyzed research landscape.
{"title":"Sowjetische Kulturdiplomatie in Osteuropa in der Nachkriegszeit: Ein Überblick über die neuesten Veröffentlichungen. Overview of the Most Recent Publications","authors":"Oksana Sergeevna Nagornaia, O. Nikonova","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0011","url":null,"abstract":"This article attempts to analyze and evaluate the achievements of research on cultural diplomacy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the last years. The present review does not claim to a complete coverage of recent literature but concentrates on characterizing the basic tendencies and conceptual innovations in the chosen field of study. Our analysis allows to identify several current tendencies. Thus, historians are expanding their understanding of cultural diplomacy and integrating new objects of research. One of the most important trends is the study of agency within cultural diplomacy, e. g. of private-state networks or individual and collective actors of cultural diplomacy with their dynamically changing motivations and complicated interdependence with party-state structures and their own cultural practices. These were communicated by the transnational networks and at the same time kept very stable. The analysis of the phenomenon of cultural diplomacy was extended to intercultural communication in the realm of consumer and mass culture and the media landscape. This landscape was transforming in the post-war period and offered new possibilities to communicate cultural messages and to create new channels for cultural transfer. One of the achievements of recent scholarly research on the subject can certainly be seen in the acknowledgment of the paradigm of plural modernity which expands the conventional frames of the “bipolar system” allegedly shaped by the insurmountable discrepancies between capitalism and socialism and allows to approach the world order of the Cold War in a more balanced and diverse way emphasizing not only antagonisms but also similarities. Socialist cultures in a national ‘cover’ contradicting ideology and speaking the language of Enlightenment find a place in this paradigm, as do fragmented identities. Therefore the study of Soviet cultural diplomacy in Eastern Europe contributes to the recent interdisciplinary discussion on pluralistic modernity, to the cultural diversity of the Cold War, to the dynamics of global trends within consumer culture, and to media and transnational communication in general. In the future, it would be desirable to see more studies that define the criteria of the efficiency of cultural diplomacy more precisely and formulate descriptive models and scenarios of cultural diplomacy for individual regions and countries. New topics will complement this so far only fragmentarily analyzed research landscape.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"38 5","pages":"274-298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.25162/JGO-2018-0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72410219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article contrasts efforts by Soviet scientists and engineers in the 1950s and 1960s, who successfully persuaded planners to support expensive, still unproven nuclear technologies, and to establish a nuclear industry from scratch, with contemporary efforts by nuclear energy advocates to maintain at least a sliver of relevance for nuclear power in the carbon-friendly energy mix of the 21st century - efforts that have proven very challenging. Nuclear power not only promised to facilitate modernization, it also offered a solution to the imbalance in resource and demand distribution. Despite its cost, creating a nuclear industry made sense to many nations in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, the picture is more fragmented, and different criteria are being used to evaluate the benefits of nuclear energy, including the possibility of severe accidents, and the still unresolved waste management issue. Some countries with nuclear industries have decided to phase out nuclear, while others are engaging in aggressive new build, with most others ambivalent. Relying on archival resources and contemporary policy documents, this essay takes a big-picture view of Soviet energy policy. It examines the shifting criteria for evaluating the potential of nuclear energy in the Soviet and post-Soviet context, with a particular focus on the role of scientific authority, and of institutional inertia, for dealing with the fundamental challenges posed by the Chernobyl accident and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The essay concludes that the notion of viability (technical or economical) is negotiable, and will always remain tied up with dreams of and hopes for a better future.
{"title":"Of Plans and Plants: How Nuclear Power Gained a Foothold in Soviet Energy Policy","authors":"Sonja D. Schmid","doi":"10.25162/JGO-2018-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25162/JGO-2018-0006","url":null,"abstract":"The article contrasts efforts by Soviet scientists and engineers in the 1950s and 1960s, who successfully persuaded planners to support expensive, still unproven nuclear technologies, and to establish a nuclear industry from scratch, with contemporary efforts by nuclear energy advocates to maintain at least a sliver of relevance for nuclear power in the carbon-friendly energy mix of the 21st century - efforts that have proven very challenging. Nuclear power not only promised to facilitate modernization, it also offered a solution to the imbalance in resource and demand distribution. Despite its cost, creating a nuclear industry made sense to many nations in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, the picture is more fragmented, and different criteria are being used to evaluate the benefits of nuclear energy, including the possibility of severe accidents, and the still unresolved waste management issue. Some countries with nuclear industries have decided to phase out nuclear, while others are engaging in aggressive new build, with most others ambivalent. Relying on archival resources and contemporary policy documents, this essay takes a big-picture view of Soviet energy policy. It examines the shifting criteria for evaluating the potential of nuclear energy in the Soviet and post-Soviet context, with a particular focus on the role of scientific authority, and of institutional inertia, for dealing with the fundamental challenges posed by the Chernobyl accident and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The essay concludes that the notion of viability (technical or economical) is negotiable, and will always remain tied up with dreams of and hopes for a better future.","PeriodicalId":54097,"journal":{"name":"JAHRBUCHER FUR GESCHICHTE OSTEUROPAS","volume":"5 1","pages":"124-141"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75245783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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