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In submitted contribution there are analysed the ways of organizing and functioning of district and regional pedagogical groups in the period between years 1947-1950. The intention of that groups was the centralisation of pedagogical research; performed not only by experts, but mainly by teachers from various schools, too. These organisations had been functioned as part of the newborn State Pedagogical Institute in Bratislava. Teachers from praxis, by their daily connection with teaching practice, were able to search and study existing pedagogical problems. Professionals from State Pedagogical Institute received materials – results from local researches – and evaluated and prepared them to final form for publishing. Duty of the groups was to inform the center in Bratislava about all implemented activities. Their activities also included professional lectures on pedagogy – by this way was the partial development of pedagogical theory garanted. On the other side, all the activities of district and regional pedagogical groups were strongly deformed by ideological pressure.
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An active and comprehensive study of all aspects of the political and ideological impact of the power structures on the population of the country has received a new impetus only in the last few decades. One of the means of this influence was political departments established in some of the most important economic sectors, including rail transport. At the same time, in contrast to the study of the activities of political departments in rural areas that received due development in the historical literature, railway political departments received little attention. Thus, the purpose of the article is to use archival documents and materials to analyze activities of political departments in the railway transport of the far Eastern region of the Soviet Union in the prewar period. The creation of political departments was a continuation of the party line on the formation and implementation of certain political and ideological levers of influence and control in the socio-economic sphere, including transport. As one of the most important components of the program of ideological reorganization of the Soviet society in the course of socialist reforms, they had to introduce certain ideological and political principles into the public consciousness and thereby stimulate the development of labor qualities in the population of the country. With their help, according to the authorities, in the shortest time could be eliminated many shortcomings in the organization of transport at all levels and achieved high productivity.
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The article provides a periodization of humanitarian cooperation between Japan and the USSR. The first stage was activity of the Press Office of the Soviet Union Council for Japan and the Soviet Information Office in the Land of the Rising Sun in 1946–1957. The second stage was the period of active policy of the USSR Embassy, together with the State Committee for Cultural Relations under the USSR Council of Ministers in 1957–1967. The third stage was defined by the activity of Soviet Embassy and Regional Authorities of Japan and the USSR in establishing cultural relations in 1967–1985. The fourth stage was humanitarian cooperation of both countries carried out under terms of the Soviet-Japan cultural agreement signed in 1986. The fourth stage covers the period from 1986 to 1991. The article identifies the main forms of humanitarian cooperation between two countries. The author believes that connections in the sphere of art were dominant. The Japanese public was an active subject of bilateral relations. The author considers the membership of the Soviet-Japan Friendship Movement and its participants (public organizations, Piece Movement, choral and musical collectives, private companies of Japan) and reveals the reasons for the Japanese public’s interest in Soviet culture based on archival documents and materials of the Japanese and Soviet periodicals. The author points out that the regional cooperation between two countries developed significantly and emphasizes the special role of the USSR Far East as a contact region with Japan.
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Using archival materials from the National Archive of the Republic of Belarus, the State Archive of Vitebsk region, the Polotsk Zonal State Archive, and the Daugavpils Zonal State Archive of the National Archive of Latvia, as well as published documents of Russian archives and works of historians, this article examines the process of preserving the memory of the fallen soldiers of the Red (Soviet) Army on the territory of the Belarusian-Latvian-Russian border in the post-war Soviet period. The main conclusion is the correctness (incorrectness) of decision making by Soviet authorities at the level of districts and cities in relation to immortalization of the memory of fallen soldiers of the Red (Soviet) Army and partisans. One example of the primary analysis of a common grave in the village of Shevelevo in the Palkinskiy district of the Pskov region. The comparative analysis of the policy of preserving the memory of those who died during the Great Patriotic War, by taking into account military burials and their further memorialization at the Belarusian-Latvian-Russian border in the post-war period, gives us the opportunity to ascertain the specifics of the Soviet republics in this direction. The actions of the Soviet leadership depended on the time of liberation of the territory from the Nazis, as well as the quality of work of the “funeral teams” that were to perform the function of burial of the bodies of the Red (Soviet) Army soldiers after the end of the battle.
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This essay praises Joan Neuberger’s book This Thing of Darkness (Cornell University Press, 2019) as a great accomplishment in cinematic interpretation and a detailed and subtle historical account. It contests Neuberger’s argument that Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible films present an unequivocal critique of Stalin and Stalinism by means of a historical analogy with Ivan. Platt argues that the films are intentionally, stubbornly ambivalent in their representation of Ivan, and by extension Stalin. He contends that although this was indeed a subversive movie in the Stalinist USSR, Eisenstein’s films did not offer any finalized conception of the historical role of these figures, and instead should be viewed as works that thematize the impossibility of achieving certainty in historical interpretation. In reading Neuberger’s This Thing of Darkness, one feels the urgency of the author’s efforts to prove that Eisenstein offered an unequivocal, “radical” and “subversive” denunciation of Stalin and the social violence of his era — one that accords with our own rejection of the Stalinist legacy. Author sympathizes with this effort, but it is misguided. Considered in his own social context, one cannot but appreciate Eisenstein’s bravery in articulating a different, but no less subversive position: as seen through the lens of Ivan the Terrible, Stalinist Russia was revealed to be incomplete, charged with contradictions that made it impossible to come to conclusions concerning the meaning of events.
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The note is about the place of Joan Neuberger’s monograph among books on Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, and, more broadly, among writings on period films, be they by film historians or by historians proper. The book is a triple portrayal — of Eisenstein, his Ivan, and, indirectly, of Stalin, whose favorite pastime was to use historical novels, plays, and films on Russia’s historic tyrants as one might a vanity mirror. The virtue of Neuberger’s approach is that, rather than judge or define, she successfully captures the ambiguity of each of her three protagonists. It is as much an analysis of the movie as an ambivalent mirror as it is of the person that holds it and of the one who expects to see in it a flattering reflection of himself — to no avail. Instead of assuming a bird’s eye point of view on the Soviet film-land, Neuberger nose-dove into it like a kid-loving pelican, picked one film and brought it to us in a big beak of a book. That is not to portray Joan Neuberger as a shape-shifter, a historian-turned-film-scholar. Yes, film scholars do write book-length studies on a single movie while political historians rarely do, but the choice of this specific format does not turn Neuberger into a film scholar. There is a lot of superb film scholarship to be found here, but the stunt that makes Neuberger’s scholarship unique is that, for all its film-scholarship lenses, it remains a historical study par excellence.
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State elites and officials “see” their polities and societies through ideological and symbolic lenses that shape what they seek and perceive as they devise policies. But what happens to that sight and vision during moments of challenge and duress, and with what effect on policies? This article uses the example of the Blockade of Leningrad to begin an exploration of this subject. The pre-war Soviet state and Communist Party had a “double vision”, seeing Soviet society as an object for utopian plans and projects (a “high modernist” vision), and as an amorphous source of constant potential risk (e. g. counter-revolution). Extreme duress and challenges to survival from the Blockade challenged both facets of this double vision. What began to emerge was a more pragmatic vision centered on maintaining state authority and political order. We use state perception of and policies towards death and, as an extension, defending (civilian) life. Brief explorations of how state elites and officials perceived death, disposal labor (coping with corpses), and life (mothers) reveals a more realistic pragmatism, less deferent to ideology, beginning to emerge. We conclude that this points to a possible “Blockade Bolshevism” as a shifting formula of rule and possibilities of a “NEP reboot” lost to high Stalinism after the war.
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The article examines the petition campaign for the return of the Cathedral Mosque, organized by the Muslims of Leningrad in the second half of the 1940s and the first half of the 1950s. The campaign represents an example of a human rights activity (albeit in a limited sphere, for securing freedom of conscience), and should be taken into account when studying the history of the human and civil rights movement in the USSR. The language and argumentation used by authors of the petitions are analyzed. The article examines the religious life of Leningrad Muslims outside of the mosque (in particular, the holding of festive services at the Tatar cemetery in the village of Volkova). The article touches upon the problem of historical memory. The memories of the struggle for permission to build a mosque in St. Petersburg in tsarist times, preserved among Leningrad Muslims, were taken into account by officials when deciding whether to return this religious building to believers in the 1950s. The problem of returning the mosque is considered in the context of changes in the confessional policy of the country’s leadership. The article demonstrates the role of such a body as the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR touches upon this role in resolving issues of returning religious buildings to believers in the post-war period. Particular attention is paid to the relations within the Leningrad Muslim community. On the example of the conflict between imam-khatib Abdulbari N. Isaev and Chairman of the twenty (dvadtsatka) Usman Bogdanov, the author examines the system of power relations within religious communities in the USSR in the postwar period. In particular, the article mentions the narrative that Bogdanov proposed to subordinate dvadtsatka directly to the Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs in the Leningrad Region.
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The article reviews actions of Omsk Region Office of Ministry of State Security (MSS) towards politically active Ukrainian nationalists among deportees from the Dragobychsky region of Western Ukraine and assesses their vindication in the Russian Federation. This study is based on archival documents from legal prosecutions of Ukrainian deportees stored in the Records Office of Omsk Region of Federal Security Service and recently opened for scholarly review, as well as exhibits from the History section of the Omsk Office of the FSB. Legal prosecutions documents were analysed using a prosopographic method to reconstruct a typical picture of young Ukrainian deportees who continued to believe in the values of Ukrainian nationalism and kept connections with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)/Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). All prosecuted Ukrainians were driven to nationalism by conditions of their upbringing. The young men were deportees from Western Ukraine and of peasant origin. The OUN/UPA were widely supported by the rural population in this region. They were deported to Siberia as family members of UPA militias fighting against the Soviet army. Having nationalist views, all prosecuted young men sincerely supported the creation of an independent Ukrainian state and did not accept Soviet authority that did not allow this creation, and so they were deported from their homeland. Omsk MSS agents, together with their Ukrainian colleagues, identified young radical nationalists. Some of those were active members of underground militant groups and during World War II carried out intelligence requests for OUN/UPA and provided information for its members. The author concludes that the nationalistic activities of these Ukrainian youth were are a real threat to security of the Soviet state and as such the fact of their vindication in the Russian Federation is not well-grounded from historical point of view.
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The article, largely based on new documents from Russian and French archives, examines an important aspect of Franco-Soviet relations on the eve of the Second World War: the interaction between the militaries of the two countries. The question of cooperation between the two armies was raised immediately after the signing of the Franco-Soviet non-aggression pact in 1932. The following year, the first French military attaché, E. Mendras, arrived in Moscow. A proponent of the revival of the Franco-Russian alliance, he explored Soviet reality to determine the real potential of the USSR as a possible ally. Despite a number of shortcomings of the Soviet socio-political system, Mendras came to the conclusion that the political regime in the country was quite stable, and its armed forces had the necessary resources to conduct a European war. At the same time, he questioned Moscow’s foreign policy goals and was critical of Soviet ideology as a factor in political decision-making. At first, the military attaché recommended that the French leadership enhance the alliance with the USSR. However, his attitude gradually changed against the background of a lack of complete mutual understanding with the Soviets and contradictions on the issue of rapprochement with Moscow, which cleaved the military-political leadership in Paris. In 1934, Mendras was skeptical about the prospects for cooperation with the USSR. This turn, in many ways, reflects a general change in the vector in Soviet-French relations in the mid-1930s, which led to their deterioration on the eve of the Second World War.
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Tekst jest artykułem recenzyjnym monografii Jana Kuklíka i René Petráša, Minorities and law in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1992, Karolinum Press, Prague 2017, poświęconej sytuacji prawnej mniejszości narodowych w Czechosłowacji w latach 1918–1922. Mimo pewnej tendencji do wykazania demokratycznego podejścia władz państwa do mniejszości w okresie międzywojennym monografia stanowi użyteczny przewodnik po przepisach prawnych dotyczących mniejszości narodowych w Czechosłowacji. The reviewed monograph by Jan Kuklík and René Petráš entitled Minorities and law in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1992, Karolinum Press, Prague 2017, is dedicated to the legal situation of national minorities in Czechoslovakia in the years 1918–1992. Although it constitutes a useful guide to appropriate legislation, the authors show some tendency to emphasise the democratic features of state policy towards minorities in the interwar period and lessen the significance of some of its flaws.
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Przełom 1989 r. miał fundamentalne znaczenie także dla polskiej historiografii — to stwierdzenie jest na tyle oczywiste, że aż banalne. Zniknięcie ideologicznych okowów i cenzury umożliwiło pisanie o tematach dotąd zakazanych lub przynajmniej wcześniej niemożliwych do podjęcia. Pomysł Redakcji „Kwartalnika Historycznego”, by zająć się sukcesami polskich historyków odniesionymi w tym okresie jest więc ciekawy, niemniej niezamierzenie ma też pewien gorzki posmak, ale o tym za chwilę.
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W odpowiedzi na ankietę „Kwartalnika Historycznego” skupię się na historii najnowszej, którą znam lepiej niż inne okresy historyczne.
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The nationalisation of industry after 1945 is a topic of great importance for the history of Poland after the Second World War, which, however, has been insufficiently explored, especially with regard to in-depth research of particular cases. The takeover of industrial plants by the state authorities was complicated, especially in the Recovered Territories, where both everyday life and the administrative structures of the Polish state were in turmoil. The preserved archival materials made it possible to trace the process of nationalising several important food industry plants, namely the breweries in Szczecin, Słupsk and Szczecinek. The article analyses the intricate history of the takeover of these plants by the state authorities. In the course of research it was determined that although the Main Office of the Temporary State Administration, and later the District Liquidation Offices, had the best legal basis to have the full right to these plants, there were many more institutions interested in taking them over. On the local government level these were the City Board, the Provincial Office and the District Office, and on the state level the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Recovered Territories and the Central Planning Office. Additionally, producer cooperatives, initially supported by state authorities after the end of the war, also became involved. It was not until the late 1940s that these breweries came under the control of central state authorities, which took place at the expense of the producer cooperatives and local governments and, moreover, in a manner that raised legal questions.
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I. Nie ulega dla mnie wątpliwości, że jedną z najważniejszych funkcji najbardziej prestiżowego pisma polskich historyków — „Kwartalnika Historycznego” — winno być inspirowanie i stymulowanie ogólnopolskiej debaty dotyczącej przeszłości i przyszłości polskiej nauki historycznej. W minionych latach nie zawsze tak bywało. Spoglądając na ponad stuletnie dzieje periodyku, można zaryzykować tezę, że Redakcja pisma stosunkowo rzadko włączała się do dyskusji o sprawach nurtujących polskich dziejopisów, dokonywała bilansu blasków i cieni rodzimej historiografii. W tym kontekście na myśl przychodzą dwie, nieco zapomniane już dzisiaj
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At the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth, lead dancers from different countries became famous and toured internationally. These dancers—and the companies they created—transformed various dance forms into performances fit for the larger world of art music, ballet, and opera circuits. They adapted ballet to the variety-show formats and its audiences. Drawing on shared philosophical ideas—such as those manifest in the works of the Transcendentalists or in the writings of Nietzsche and Wagner—and from movement techniques, such as ballet codes, the Delsarte method, and, later on, Eurythmics (in fashion at the time), these lead dancers created new dance formats, choreographies, and styles, from which many of today’s classical, folk, and ballet schools emerged. In this essay, I look at how Rabindranath Tagore, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Uday Shankar, Leila Roy Sokhey and Rumini Devi Arundale contributed to this translocal dance scene. Indian dance and spirituality, as well as famous Indian dancers, were an integral part of what at the time was known as the international modern dance scene. This transnational scene eventually coalesced into several separate schools, including what today is known as classical and modern Indian dance styles.
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In this paper, I explore the Pageant of the Pacific, a sequence of mural maps painted by the Mexican artist and illustrator, Miguel Covarrubias, for the San Francisco International Exposition of 1939–1940. By placing these mural-maps within the larger context of cultural geography and Covarrubias’s own theories of comparative anthropology, they offer an artistic and poetic explanation of the relationships found among the cultures of the Pacific Rim, drawing connections across historical epoch and geographical region. Within Covarrubias’s own historical context, these maps provide an important visual link that crosses disciplinary boundaries, providing insight into the intellectual conversation of his era and, perhaps, providing a model for interdisciplinarity in the present age as well.
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Demokratyczne zmiany w 1989 r. niewątpliwie stanowiły punkt zwrotny w historiografii polskiej dotyczącej okresu komunistycznego w dziejach Polski, umownie nazywanego historią najnowszą. Ich kulminacją było zniesienie cenzury w kwietniu następnego roku, a tym samym zlikwidowanie gorsetu politycznych i ideologicznych ograniczeń, narzuconych przez komunistów, który towarzyszył badaniom historycznym w Polsce po wojnie. Utrudnienia te dotyczyły zresztą nie tylko historii najnowszej, ale także wcześniejszych epok, np. I Rzeczypospolitej i okresu zaborów oraz II Rzeczypospolitej, zwłaszcza na polu stosunków polsko-rosyjskich i polsko-sowieckich.
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The Slovak Republic is a state that was formed as a result of the disintegration of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic in 1993. Slovaks do not have rich traditions of their own statehood. For nearly a thousand years, the Slovak lands were within the sphere of influence of Hungary and they formed a common state with the Czechs, although the latter had a dominant position. The only period of owning one’s own statehood was during 1939-1945, i.e. the functioning of the Slovak State / Slovak Republic. However, it was a country under the influence of the Third Reich. The article concerns selected aspects of the historical policy towards the Second World War appearing in the political discourse in the Slovak Republic. Issues that evoke extreme emotions have been analyzed: the Slovak National Uprising and the Slovak State / Slovak Republic. The activities of the People’s Party – Our Slovakia, which was the only one that refers to the tradition of the Slovak state in 1939-1945 and attacks the Slovak National Uprising were also analyzed. Transcripts were analyzed from meetings of the Slovak National Council, press articles and programs of individual political parties as well as statements of politicians with particular emphasis on the People’s Party – Our Slovakia. The article uses a comparative method and a case study.
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