#Soviet history

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Can we just have a moment to appreciate this guy? All of Philomena Cunk’s experts are great but Ashley Jackson, professor of imperial and military history at London’s King’s College stands out.

When repeatedly asked about the “Soviet Onion,” he initially tries to correct her. She accuses him of mansplaining, so he eventually just plays along completely straight-faced.

“Well, if you want to talk about sort of Russian Soviet vegetables, we can. I mean, it was a deeply agrarian country, and so there were lots of onions, lots of potatoes, lots of other things.”

“Did they have turnips?”

“Think so. Cheap, easy to grow, hardy. Great in a stew.”

Just… “Great in a stew.” Man went from trying to correct her to just… listing the virtues of turnips. Class act.

[copperbadge]

Got a cool semi-vintage watch from Mum and Dad as a birthday gift -- the band is obviously not original, but the watch itself is a Soviet-made mechanical from the early 90s (we think). The real gift is that we don't have much info on the watch so I get to research it. :D

Apparently my grandfather owned a Luch watch he got from a colleague he worked with in the 60s or 70s (he worked in aerospace for the US and knew a few expats, so Mum was told) and valued it very highly. She doesn't know what happened to his so she got me one similar, if of a later make.

[ID: my wrist with a watch on it with a modern nylon band; the watch face is cream with wide black numbers. It has slim black hour and minute but no seconds hand. Text below the 12 reads Luch and text under the 6 reads "Made in Belarus". There is a winding fob on the right.]

[read-marx-and-lenin]

During 1935 and 1936 a new form of shock-work has developed in the form of “Stakhanovism.” In essence it is a very simple story. A certain coal-miner, by the name of Stakhanov, working in a pit in the Donets Basin in the Ukraine, reorganized the work of the group of which he was leader, so that output was greatly increased. His pit newspaper gave the matter publicity, it was taken up as a “scoop” by other newspapers — for the U.S.S.R. needs coal — and the rationalization proposals of Stakhanov became known throughout the world. Many managers and engineers did not approve of Stakhanovism, for two main reasons. First, they felt that the wholesale reorganization of methods of work was their job, not that of the rank-and-file miners. The Soviet Government Press, however, immediately attacked such a view, pointing out that the welfare of the U.S.S.R. depends on the maximum expression of personal initiative by all workers. Secondly, in certain cases the managers and technicians objected to workers reorganizing their methods of work, because their wages then rose considerably above those of the technical and managerial staff! This attitude was also attacked in the Press, and the Stakhanov movement has spread throughout the country. The Stakhanov movement, and the publicity and encouragement given to Stakhanov and his followers, stimulates every worker, however unskilled, to become a rationalizer, an organizer of his or her own labor. In this way every worker feels encouraged to utilize brain as well as hand. Large numbers of workers become more skilled and earn higher wages. There is a general rise in both material and cultural standards as a result. Further, the leading Stakhanov workers themselves are asked to become teachers of their methods. Stakhanov has been invited back to his native village, to use his organizing power to raise production in the collective farm. He also spends much time visiting different coal-mines, teaching the workers there how to reorganize their work for greater efficiency. A rank-and-file miner has become a technical expert and an engineer. And this is happening all the time in the Soviet Union today, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.

Pat Sloan, Soviet Democracy, 1937

[snatching-ishidates-wig]

Valentin Serov | Lenin proclaims the victory of the revolution at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Dmitri Shostakovich at Sergei Prokofiev's funeral, 1953.

For context, Prokofiev and Stalin died on the same day- March 5, 1953. Because Stalin's funeral was such a major event in the Soviet Union, Prokofiev's was largely overlooked, despite the fact he was one of the leading Soviet composers of his day. Relatively few people attended his funeral, Shostakovich among them.

Shostakovich and Prokofiev were not particularly close, and had a thorny professional relationship- much of the correspondence between them that I've been able to find appears to be formal criticism of each other's works. As Prokofiev was from an older generation- he was born in 1891, while Shostakovich was born in 1906- they did not always see eye-to-eye musically; Shostakovich experimented with the avant-garde when possible, perhaps in part due to his musical maturation during the socially-liberal NEP era, while Prokofiev's style tended to be more conservative and neoclassical- picking up more influence from Imperial-age composers and fellow emigres to the west (he lived in France and the United States before returning to the Soviet Union in 1936). Their generational difference also partially accounted for how they responded to harsh government criticism- Shostakovich was impacted by the consequences of his 1936 denunciation all his life and, while he suffered greatly during his second denunciation in 1948, was able to develop public and private personas, in both the musical and ideological spheres, to preserve himself and his artistry. However devastating as it was for Shostakovich, the 1948 denunciations took a greater toll on many other composers, Prokofiev included. As Prokofiev did not believe he would be harshly denounced as Shostakovich had been in 1936, he was far less prepared for the censorship and attacks he faced in 1948. As a result of the denunciations, combined with his declining health, his artistic productivity decreased, and he largely regulated himself to writing basic ideological works towards the end of his life.

This is a letter Shostakovich wrote to Prokofiev on the subject of his Seventh (and last) Symphony:

There's speculation as to whether or not Shostakovich was actually impressed by Prokofiev's Seventh Symphony. As Prokofiev was in decline at the time of writing it, the symphony has been criticized for being banal and not being particularly innovative; Rostropovich even claimed that Prokofiev added in its final flourish not for artistic purposes, but to have the piece nominated for a Stalin Prize, which would have meant money and a boost to his reputation after it suffered in 1948. (The Stalin Prize has its own complicated history in its role in Soviet music, and although it was the highest award a Soviet composer could earn, it could sometimes be awarded as a sort of backhanded punishment- an encouragement for composers to write the "right" sort of music, especially after they had been criticized for "formalism." Nonetheless, winning it after suffering a denunciation could mean financial and political security.) Did Shostakovich- who had often traded criticisms with Prokofiev over music- actually like this piece, or was this an effort to encourage a fellow artist to keep composing after suffering mental and physical ailments? This was a private letter and not a public statement, and Shostakovich was typically very straightforward about critiques, so if the entirely positive sentiment for the piece wasn't genuine (the only critique here is that Shostakovich says he wishes the entire symphony was encored!), the letter may have come from a place of concern.

Perhaps the most striking thing about this letter is the line, "I wish you another hundred years to live and create. Listening to such works as your Seventh Symphony makes it much easier and more joyful to live." Maybe by telling Prokofiev that he wished him another hundred years to live and create, Shostakovich was not simply praising the symphony, but encouraging Prokofiev- a composer whom he was often on icy terms with- that he needed to keep living and creating, during a time when it was becoming more and more difficult for him to do so.

[arsacra]

Czech matchbox labels warning of the dangers of alcohol dependence and drunk driving, printed at the Solo Lipnik match factory, 1962

"Luck does not add anyone's health"

"lowers morale, increases absence"

"He didn't count the beers, that's why he rests"

"If you submit, it enslaves you!"

"Drivers beware, dangerous area" (dangerous intersection?)

"Alcohol drowns wishes and desires"

"He stopped drinking, he's furninshing an apartment"

"If high blood proof, you will lose your ID"

"Alcohol reduces attention at work"

"Don't race them, they will ruin you!"

"Red [means] Injury" and "Intercountry action against traffic accidents"

"He who can't control himself does not belong behind the steering wheel"

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The idea of mothering and procreation morphed into Gorky’s fascination with prisoner transformation and perekovka. The labor camp would be the mother of a new working class. Both god-building and the maternal impulse dovetailed with the author’s largest philosophical and intellectual preoccupation: human fashioning. Whether it was the literal, biological creation of the human by the maternal womb or the transformation afforded by a personal journey or individual greatness, Gorky remained intrigued by the individual’s ability for creation, journey, and self-discovery. Maintaining that humans were inherently malleable and eternally improvable, he believed in the potential for endless refinement through diligent effort.

Gorky’s special relationship to the Belomor project allows for an understanding of his career as a symbolic representation of the ideals promoted at the camp. Gorky was a staunch enthusiast of prisoner labor and even predicted the possibility of a waterway similar to Belomor in his early works; in the April 1917 issue of his journal New Life (Novaia zhizn’) he writes

Imagine, for example, that in the interest of the development of industry, we build the Riga-Kherson canal to connect the Baltic Sea with the Black Sea […] and so instead of sending a million people to their deaths, we send a part of them to work on what is necessary for the country and its people.

Gorky’s condoning of Gulag camps such as Solovki and Belomor seems paradoxical to many scholars in light of his humanitarian endeavors, and some speculate either that Gorky was ignorant of the full extent of Stalin’s butchery or that he was aware, but was in a position that necessitated acquiescence to safeguard his well-being. When viewed in the context of his philosophical outlook on literature and labor, however, his support of prison camps seems not like an aberration but rather a natural extension of his belief in violent re-birth, a belief related to Marxist-Leninist ideology and the concept of god-building. Gorky sees people and language alike in the framework of craftsmanship. Perhaps his mistake was not so much his general support of Gulag projects, but his belief that human flesh can be formed like words on a page or cement in a factory. Gorky, after all, cared more about the craft than people themselves; in his 1928 essay “On How I Learned to Write” (O tom, kak ia uchilsia pisat’), he claimed that “the history of human labor and creation is far more interesting and meaningful than the history of mankind.” Gorky was key to the canal project because his philosophical interests exemplify the very core of Belomor: the violent transformation of people through creative acts.

Technology’s magic demonstrated humans’ usurpation of God in a tangible way, with the ever-widening capacity to harness and transform the natural environment showcasing the potential of man-made machines. Soviet pilots were imagined as literal incarnations of the New Man, and the massive expansion of the Soviet aviation industry in the mid 1920s provided some of the most concrete evidence of human superiority over the divine. Short voyages known as “air baptisms” (vozdushnye kreshcheniia) supposedly eradicated peasants’ belief in God while highlighting the majesty of Red aviation. In such “agit-flights,” pilots would take Orthodox believers into the skies and show them that they held no celestial beings. Those who participated in the flights would narrate their experiences to neighboring villagers, describing “what lies beyond the darkened clouds.” This phrase served as the title of a 1925 essay by Viktor Shklovskii in which a village elder embarks upon a conversional agit-flight that he later recounts to his fellow peasants. Six years later, Shklovskii participated in the writers’ collective that coauthored the now infamous monograph History of the Construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, in which a different, often deadly, type of technological program offered the promise of conversion. In both instances, darkness will be overcome by the enlightening potential of socialist rationalism: aviation will liberate the peasants from their ignorant beliefs, just as labor will supposedly bring the Belomor prisoners to the light of Soviet ideology. Such endeavors occurred before the backdrop of a larger civilizing project, since both the rural reaches of peasant villages and the wild expanses of untouched Karelia necessitated modernization.

Yet could such projects ever be completed? Did the New Man really exist, and could his creation ever be achieved? The messianic vision of Soviet socialism necessitated that paradise lie always just out of reach.

Similarly, Nietzsche posits the development into the Übermensch as a perennially elusive goal; like the Faustian concept of striving, the individual is forever trying to perfect oneself without necessarily ever achieving perfection. This constant yearning renders the present as the future, as the purpose of today is necessarily the reward of tomorrow. In the Soviet Union, the regime assured people that the difficulties they endured were required in order to reach the svetloe budushchee (radiant future), a utopia found at the end of an interminable road. In the absence of an end result or final destination, the voyage itself becomes the site of cultural exploration."

- Julie Draskoczy, Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014. p 30-32

[ohsalome]

Not long ago I finished reading @TimothyDSnyder's book "Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin".

I wanted to share some quotes from the chapter on the Holodomor that struck me personally the most. It is difficult to imagine what was happening then. A small but heavy thread:

The peasants who were slowly dying of starvation were believed to be saboteurs who were actually playing into the hands of the capitalist powers who wanted to discredit the Soviet Union. Hunger is resistance, and resistance is a sign of the imminent victory of socialism.

Forced to pass off their swollen bellies as a manifestation of political opposition, they came to the conclusion that the saboteurs hated socialism so much that they deliberately brought their families to starvation.

On 22 January 1933, Balytsky warned Moscow that peasants were fleeing the republic, and Stalin and Molotov ordered law enforcement agencies to stop the flow of people. The next day, the sale of long-distance railway tickets to peasants was banned.

The Ukrainian musician Yosyp Panasenko was sent with a group of bandura players to the countryside to bring culture to the starving peasants. Having taken away the last piece of bread from the peasants, the authorities had a grotesque intention to raise the mood and spirit of the deathly hungry people. The musicians found completely empty villages.

Children born in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s found themselves in a world of death, surrounded by helpless parents and a hostile government. The average life expectancy for a boy born in 1933 was seven years.

One father in the Vinnytsia region came to the cemetery to bury two of his children, and when he returned, he saw that another child had died. Some parents locked their children in the house to save them from cannibals.

Parents gave their children to distant relatives or strangers, left them at railway stations. Desperate peasants who held their babies through the windows of the wagons did not necessarily beg for bread: very often they wanted to give their children away, to strangers who lived in cities and did not suffer from hunger.

Countless parents killed and ate their own children and then died of hunger anyway. One mother boiled her son for food for herself and her daughter. A six-year-old girl rescued by relatives last saw her father sharpening a knife to stab her.

The children's stomachs were swollen, their whole bodies were covered in wounds, scabs, and abscesses. We took them, laid them on the sheets, and they were moaning. One day, the children suddenly stopped talking, and we looked at them and saw that they were eating the youngest one, Petrus. They were pulling off his scabs and eating them. And Petrus was doing the same thing - pulling off his scabs and eating them, eating as much as he could. Other children were sucking blood from their own wounds. We pulled the children away from this activity and cried.

There came a time when there was virtually no grain left in Ukraine, and human meat was the only type of meat.

One Komsomol member in the Kharkiv region reported to his superiors that he could only meet the meat supply plan at the expense of human beings.

More than one Ukrainian child has told a brother or sister: "Mum said we should eat her if she dies". This tragic solution was found by love and care

[whereserpentswalk]

You guys are really going to Jesus when you want 'sacrificed for humanity' imagery when Laika is right there?

[newhistorybooks]

"At a time when President Putin’s regime is viciously repressing Russia’s LGBTQ community and criminalizing anyone who speaks up about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans lives, the appearance of this book is an important act of resistance. Red Closet brings to life stories of gay oppression in the Soviet Union and traces some of the roots of contemporary Russia’s homophobia."

[g0ldengaze]

Happy shostakovich swag winter 🙏🙏

[deadpresidents]

I'm only about halfway through John Strausbaugh's book The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO), but it's already one of the best books I've read this year. It's a fascinating history of the Soviet Union's space program and Strausbaugh obviously researched the book intensely, but it's also very funny at times. It also has the perfect title for a book on this subject. I highly recommend it! It's available now from PublicAffairs and the Hachette Book Group.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

If citizens are to participate effectively in running the country in which they dwell, they must have an appropriate education. Therefore, even in the elementary school in the Soviet Union the visitor is struck by the extent to which the student is treated as a citizen. Corporal punishment is forbidden by law in the Soviet schools, and other punishment in any form is practically non-existent. The children are taught to look upon the teachers, not as vested with an almost supernatural authority, but as human beings like themselves, who have more experience. The headmaster or headmistress of a Soviet school is a senior comrade, who holds a position of such authority only by virtue of ability and good leadership. Everything possible is done in the Soviet schools to bring the children into contact with the everyday life of the country. Their lessons include knowledge of current political questions and of industry and agriculture. In their spare time, facilities are provided in the schools and other institutions for hobbies such as natural history or engineering, literature or sport. The important fact in this connection is that the Soviet child is encouraged to take his hobbies seriously, and is given the possibility of doing useful work which may have positive value. Thus, groups of “Young Inventors” attached to Soviet schools, turn out some hundreds of inventions annually. And in the Moscow Zoo a group of child helpers participates in the research work that is being carried on there. And once, on May and, a public holiday, the direction of traffic in the city of Kiev was in the hands of the children of the city. And the children in all the larger towns have their own theaters and cinemas, run by the Commissariat of Education in conjunction with the local school authorities. At the children’s theaters the children are expected not only to be spectators but to criticize the performances and to make suggestions for their improvement. The Moscow children’s theaters arrange meetings between children and writers, at which writers read their latest children’s stories, and discuss their merits with the children prior to publication. The children learn to play a part in determining the kind of books that are going to be published for them. These examples, taken at random from the life of Soviet children today, serve to emphasize the fact that the Soviet child is a citizen from his earliest days, receiving the respect of other citizens, and with the opportunity to utilize his or her spare time in some useful hobby which may be of actual scientific or artistic value.

Pat Sloan, Soviet Democracy, 1937

[worldsfairgirl99]

When McDonald's opened in the Soviet Union

[sixty-silver-wishes]

okay not enough of you classical music people know about the dsch journal and that is a CRIME

so, the dsch journal is a volunteer-run journal dedicated entirely to the life and works of dmitri shostakovich. it’s been running since the 90s and publishes two journals per year, which are filled with historical interviews and letters, musical reviews and analyses, opinion pieces from fans and listeners, and updates from the world of shostakovich research on new projects and discoveries to help us better understand one of the most enigmatic- and yet, one of the most famous- composers of the 20th century. their website contains some sample articles from over the years, which often have exclusive information that can be hard to find in biographies and other publications, like interviews from shostakovich’s close friends and family. anyone from anywhere in the world can apply to submit their work to the journal, which is how I got my start with them. they also have an instagram and facebook, where they post lots of neat shostakovich photos, so you should check those out!

I’m now a volunteer writer, editor, and researcher with the dsch journal, and the opportunity has just been amazing. in the upcoming issue, I have three articles- two obituaries and a news piece on a ten-volume (!!) chronicle being released over the course of this decade documenting shostakovich’s life in intense detail, which I was SO excited to read about. I’ve also had a chance to proofread some interviews from his visit to america in 1973, which contain some fascinating information on his artistic process.

also I just gotta point out the covers of the print journals, because they are GORGEOUS. here are some of my favorites-

just !! look at them!!

[spot-the-antisemitism]

I know you know this and we probably all know this, but I stumbled across this article

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/03/comment.israelandthepalestinians

2001, months before 9/11. most of the kids out stanning Hamas weren’t even born yet. no wonder this is what they think, it’s been overrunning academia and journalism longer than they’ve been alive.

but did YOU know that anti-zionism was started by soviet russia out of spite for Israel choosing America in the cold war

they started this in THE 50s

so modern antizionism is just protocols of the elders of zion 2: electric boogaloo