This dissertation is a study of Leningrad during World War II and the period of postwar restoration (1941-1950). Leningrad was besieged by the Germans for nearly nine-hundred days. As hundreds of thousands of people died from bombings, shelling, cold, and starvation, local authorities surprisingly instituted measures to ensure that the city’s historic monuments be safeguarded from destruction. When Leningrad was liberated in January 1944, a concerted effort was put into place to breath life into these damaged and destroyed monuments and to heal the wounds inflicted on the city. Instead of using the damage to modernize the city, Leningrad and Soviet authorities opted to privilege the country’s tsarist heritage. In the postwar period, municipal authorities proclaimed that restored monuments commemorate the determination and heroism shown by the people of Leningrad during the war. The memory of the blockade, it was argued, was a “red thread” that must run through and be inscribed in all restoration works. Although this dissertation is a local study of war and postwar restoration, it speaks to broader trends within the Soviet Union before, during, and after World War II. I argue that the care shown for Leningrad’s imperial monuments was the result of an ideological shift that began in the mid-1930s away from iconoclasm toward rehabilitating and respecting certain events and characters from the past. With international tensions rising in the 1930s, this turn to the past acted as a unifying force that had a tremendous influence on the patriotism shown during the war with the Nazis. In the postwar period, as the Soviet state began to redefine its image based on the myth of war and the country’s tsarist heritage, this patriotism was further promoted, resulting in a flurry of work throughout the Soviet Union to restore the vessels of the country’s past. Like many other modernizing states, the Soviet Union looked to its past to create a united and patriotic citizenry.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada sought “desirable” immigrants to “settle” the Northwest. At the same time, nearly eight thousand members of the Dukhobori (commonly transliterated as “Doukhobors” and translated as “Spirit Wrestlers”) sought refuge from escalating religious persecution perpetrated by Russian church and state authorities. Initially, the Doukhobors’ immigration to Canada in 1899 seemed to satisfy the needs of host and newcomer alike. Both parties soon realized, however, that the Doukhobors’ transition would prove more difficult than anticipated. The Doukhobors’ collective memory of persecution negatively influenced their perception of state interventions in their private affairs. In addition, their expectation that they would be able to preserve their ethno-religious identity on their own terms clashed with Canadian expectations that they would soon integrate into the Canadian mainstream. This study focuses on the historical evolution of the “Doukhobor problem” in Russia and in Canada. It argues that the “problem,” commonly misunderstood by political and legal authorities as a law-and-order issue, was actually an extended identity struggle, both among Doukhobors of opposed factions, and between Doukhobors and state authorities in Russia and in Canada who insisted on conformity to social, economic, legal, and political “norms.” It uses the Doukhobors’ historical experience in Canada to showcase a wide spectrum of possible “newcomer” responses to the Canadian “host” society, drawing attention to subtleties which may be missed in the study of less extreme cases. Using orally articulated collective memory narratives and print journalism sources to access Doukhobor and Canadian identity perceptions, this study argues that newcomers’ impact on Canadian identity definitions predated the multicultural shift of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By pointing out the way in which immigrants such as the Doukhobors did, or did not, conform to (Anglo-) Canadian “norms” in public discourse, Canadians articulated their national identity perceptions in the early decades of the twentieth century. This study concludes that the “Doukhobor problem” could only be solved when the contested identity narratives and collective memories which were at the root of the Doukhobors’ discontent were publicly addressed in “truth and reconciliation” style symposia called in the 1970s and 1980s.

“The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953” examines the history of forced labour during the Stalin era in Western Siberia, or present-day Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kemerovo Provinces. The region was a key site of Stalin-era repression, as it was home to numerous Gulag camps including Siblag, one of the longest lasting and most economically diversified of the many prison-labour camps scattered throughout the former Soviet Union. Western Siberia was also one of the main areas of exile for peasants and, later, displaced ethnic groups. The dissertation traces the seeming contradictions in the development of the Gulag by juxtaposing the very modern, bureaucratic “Gulag” as it appeared on paper, with the “Gulag” on the ground that relied heavily on informal practices, data falsification, and personal connections. The Gulag is thus emblematic of the “neo-traditional” modernization of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The dissertation also examines points of illicit and condoned interaction between the Gulag and surrounding population centres, thus challenging Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s seminal and enduring depiction of the Gulag as an isolated archipelago of concentration camps. Illicit interaction included widespread black-market activity, the smuggling of correspondence, sexual affairs, and, surprisingly, even instances of locals sneaking into the camps to use camp facilities. Condoned interaction took place at the level of local economic planning (the transfer of prisoners for help with specific projects), a striking overlap in cultural and propaganda campaigns, the contracting out of prisoners to local enterprises, and the granting of unescorted status to large numbers of prisoners, who thus had the right to move outside of the camp zones without guard. Because many of Western Siberia’s camps were located in and around major urban centres, including Novosibirsk and Tomsk, the region is important for examining issues of interaction. The dissertation draws extensively on sources from four archives in Moscow and four archives in Siberia, as well as Gulag newspapers, published and unpublished memoirs, document collections, and archival collections available in the United States. Many of these sources are under-utilized, including Communist Party documents from the local camp administrations, personal files of prisoners, and NKVD operational orders.

This dissertation is a study of Leningrad during World War II and the period of postwar restoration (1941-1950). Leningrad was besieged by the Germans for nearly nine-hundred days. As hundreds of thousands of people died from bombings, shelling, cold, and starvation, local authorities surprisingly instituted measures to ensure that the city’s historic monuments be safeguarded from destruction. When Leningrad was liberated in January 1944, a concerted effort was put into place to breath life into these damaged and destroyed monuments and to heal the wounds inflicted on the city. Instead of using the damage to modernize the city, Leningrad and Soviet authorities opted to privilege the country’s tsarist heritage. In the postwar period, municipal authorities proclaimed that restored monuments commemorate the determination and heroism shown by the people of Leningrad during the war. The memory of the blockade, it was argued, was a “red thread” that must run through and be inscribed in all restoration works. Although this dissertation is a local study of war and postwar restoration, it speaks to broader trends within the Soviet Union before, during, and after World War II. I argue that the care shown for Leningrad’s imperial monuments was the result of an ideological shift that began in the mid-1930s away from iconoclasm toward rehabilitating and respecting certain events and characters from the past. With international tensions rising in the 1930s, this turn to the past acted as a unifying force that had a tremendous influence on the patriotism shown during the war with the Nazis. In the postwar period, as the Soviet state began to redefine its image based on the myth of war and the country’s tsarist heritage, this patriotism was further promoted, resulting in a flurry of work throughout the Soviet Union to restore the vessels of the country’s past. Like many other modernizing states, the Soviet Union looked to its past to create a united and patriotic citizenry.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada sought “desirable” immigrants to “settle” the Northwest. At the same time, nearly eight thousand members of the Dukhobori (commonly transliterated as “Doukhobors” and translated as “Spirit Wrestlers”) sought refuge from escalating religious persecution perpetrated by Russian church and state authorities. Initially, the Doukhobors’ immigration to Canada in 1899 seemed to satisfy the needs of host and newcomer alike. Both parties soon realized, however, that the Doukhobors’ transition would prove more difficult than anticipated. The Doukhobors’ collective memory of persecution negatively influenced their perception of state interventions in their private affairs. In addition, their expectation that they would be able to preserve their ethno-religious identity on their own terms clashed with Canadian expectations that they would soon integrate into the Canadian mainstream. This study focuses on the historical evolution of the “Doukhobor problem” in Russia and in Canada. It argues that the “problem,” commonly misunderstood by political and legal authorities as a law-and-order issue, was actually an extended identity struggle, both among Doukhobors of opposed factions, and between Doukhobors and state authorities in Russia and in Canada who insisted on conformity to social, economic, legal, and political “norms.” It uses the Doukhobors’ historical experience in Canada to showcase a wide spectrum of possible “newcomer” responses to the Canadian “host” society, drawing attention to subtleties which may be missed in the study of less extreme cases. Using orally articulated collective memory narratives and print journalism sources to access Doukhobor and Canadian identity perceptions, this study argues that newcomers’ impact on Canadian identity definitions predated the multicultural shift of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By pointing out the way in which immigrants such as the Doukhobors did, or did not, conform to (Anglo-) Canadian “norms” in public discourse, Canadians articulated their national identity perceptions in the early decades of the twentieth century. This study concludes that the “Doukhobor problem” could only be solved when the contested identity narratives and collective memories which were at the root of the Doukhobors’ discontent were publicly addressed in “truth and reconciliation” style symposia called in the 1970s and 1980s.

“The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953” examines the history of forced labour during the Stalin era in Western Siberia, or present-day Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kemerovo Provinces. The region was a key site of Stalin-era repression, as it was home to numerous Gulag camps including Siblag, one of the longest lasting and most economically diversified of the many prison-labour camps scattered throughout the former Soviet Union. Western Siberia was also one of the main areas of exile for peasants and, later, displaced ethnic groups. The dissertation traces the seeming contradictions in the development of the Gulag by juxtaposing the very modern, bureaucratic “Gulag” as it appeared on paper, with the “Gulag” on the ground that relied heavily on informal practices, data falsification, and personal connections. The Gulag is thus emblematic of the “neo-traditional” modernization of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The dissertation also examines points of illicit and condoned interaction between the Gulag and surrounding population centres, thus challenging Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s seminal and enduring depiction of the Gulag as an isolated archipelago of concentration camps. Illicit interaction included widespread black-market activity, the smuggling of correspondence, sexual affairs, and, surprisingly, even instances of locals sneaking into the camps to use camp facilities. Condoned interaction took place at the level of local economic planning (the transfer of prisoners for help with specific projects), a striking overlap in cultural and propaganda campaigns, the contracting out of prisoners to local enterprises, and the granting of unescorted status to large numbers of prisoners, who thus had the right to move outside of the camp zones without guard. Because many of Western Siberia’s camps were located in and around major urban centres, including Novosibirsk and Tomsk, the region is important for examining issues of interaction. The dissertation draws extensively on sources from four archives in Moscow and four archives in Siberia, as well as Gulag newspapers, published and unpublished memoirs, document collections, and archival collections available in the United States. Many of these sources are under-utilized, including Communist Party documents from the local camp administrations, personal files of prisoners, and NKVD operational orders.

Bibliography: leaves 103-116. / vi, 116 leaves, [6] leaves of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Addresses the practical aspects of using nuclear transfer for the production of identical animals. Results from experiments provide improved understanding of the technical constraints of nuclear transfer. Also the flexibility of the methodology was increased with the use of in vitro culture and/or in vitro matured oocytes. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 1992

The present dissertation seeks to present and analyze the hitherto poorly understood first encounter between the Ottoman Empire and the Tsardom of Muscovy in the North Caucasus from the Muscovites’ annexation of the nearby Khanate of Astrakhan in 1556 and subsequent penetration into this region, to their expulsion from it by the Ottomans in 1605. The study relies on both Ottoman and Muscovite sources, both documentary and narrative, as well as archival and published. The main archival documentary sources are the Ottoman mühimme defters (registers of orders issued by the Imperial Council [Divan-i Hümayun]) and the Muscovite posol’skie knigi (registers of diplomatic documentation, including ambassadorial reports, diplomatic correspondence, and other documents administered by the Ambassadorial Office [Posol’skii Prikaz]). The main narrative sources are sixteenth-century Ottoman and Muscovite chronicles. On the basis of the Ottoman and Muscovite documentary sources it is possible to determine what Ottoman and Muscovite policies in the North Caucasus were, to what degree they were well-formulated, and how they evolved during the aforementioned time period. It becomes clear that Ottoman and Muscovite policies in the Pontic-Caspian steppes and specifically in the North Caucasus had some superficial similarities, but were in essence fundamentally different. Taking into account that it was only after Muscovy’s expansion into the North Caucasus that the Ottomans decided to take an active stand in the north, the dissertation also shows the ways in which Muscovite steppe policy not only affected the political structures on the frontiers but also influenced Ottoman northern policy, and specifically in the North Caucasus. However, this dissertation is not solely a study of an imperial rivalry in a contested frontier zone. The Ottoman and Muscovite involvement brought about changes to the internal dynamics of the polities within the North Caucasus. Lastly, during the first round of this imperial clash, Ottoman and Muscovite presence and sway in the North Caucasus underwent several extreme and unexpected shifts. These shifts and resulting new strategies that the Ottomans and Muscovites had to develop in the North Caucasus played an important role in their future encounters in the northern Black Sea region.

Bibliography: leaves 469-480 / xviii, 480 leaves : ill ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dept. of Economics, University of Adelaide, 1984

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal. / À partir du 16ième siècle, les Cosaques furent de plus en plus soumis à l'autorité des tsars de Russie tout en restant enracinés dans quelques régions qui étaient les leurs, notamment le Don. Leur savoir-faire militaire et leur utilisation en tant que cavalerie dans les activités défensives et offensives définissaient leur rôle au sein de l'Empire. En retour, ils recevaient de nombreux avantages honorifiques et matériels. Des révoltes épisodiques ne remirent pas en question les liens unissant les Cosaques au tsar. Mais au tournant du 20ième siècle, la situation dans le pays est fragile. Les Cosaques ne sont pas épargnés par les difficultés qui touchent l'ensemble de la population et ils ont les mêmes revendications. Les troubles se succèdent jusqu1à la révolution d'octobre 1917, à la suite de laquelle la Russie plonge dans la Guerre civile qui touche particulièrement le sud du pays et qui perdure jusqu'en 1920. Compte tenu des rapports privilégiés que les Cosaques entretenaient avec le tsar, mais aussi du mythe qui en fait les grands défenseurs de ce dernier, il faut se demander quelle fut leur véritable attitude politique pendant et envers l'épisode révolutionnaire. Telle est la question à laquelle ce mémoire tente de répondre. Pour y parvenir, nous étudions l'historiographie occidentale, francophone et anglophone, depuis les auteurs contemporains des événements jusqu'aux courants les plus récents. L'interprétation des événements d'Octobre dans leur ensemble a fait naître des écoles historiographiques et des visions fort différentes, certaines les réduisant à un coup d'État pendant que d'autres y voient une véritable révolution. En revanche, les historiens s'accordent sur beaucoup de points dans leur analyse globale du comportement politique des Cosaques. Ainsi, il ressort de notre recherche que ces derniers ont eu tendance à opter pour la neutralité et ont fait preuve d'ambivalence envers les deux principaux belligérants de la Guerre civile. Ils ont donné leur appui et se sont engagés avec le camp le plus apte à défendre leurs intérêts à tel ou tel moment. De plus, leurs visées étaient avant tout autonomistes. / From the sixteenth century, the Cossacks became more and more submissive to the authority of the tsar, but remained in some regions of their own, especially the Don. Their military ability and their utilization as cavalry in defense and offensive activities defined their role within the Empire. ln return, they received many honorary and material benefits. Sorne occasional revolts did not weaken the link between the Cossacks and the tsar. But at the turn of the twentieth century, the situation in the country was fragile. The Cossacks were not spared by the difficulties of the population and they had the same demands. The troubles continued until the revolution of october 1917, followed by a civil war that particularly hit the south of the country and lasted until 1920. Taking into account the privileged relations the Cossacks had with the regime, and the myth that described them as great defenders of the tsar, we have to ask ourselves what their real political attitude was towards and during the revolutionary episode. That is the question this thesis tries to answer. ln doing so, we will study the western historiography, francophone and anglophone, since the time of the contemporary authors until the most recent trends. The interpretation of the events of October arose historiographical schools and diff erent visions : some reduced them to a coup d'Etat and others saw a real revolution. On the other hand, the historians agree on lots of questions in their global analysis of the political behaviour of Cossacks. Thus, according to our analysis, the Cossacks had a tendency to opt for neutrality and showed ambivalence towards the two belligerent of the Civil war. They gave their support and took a stand with the side that was more qualified to defend their interests at this or that moment and their aims were foremost separatist.