The period 1917-1921 provides an insight not only into the policies of the new Soviet state but the mindset of its leaders. These four years were a time of intense political struggle and socio-economic disruption, which exposed the tension between ideology and practice in Bolshevik discourse and policy making. Workers, specifically metalworkers, were a focal point of Bolshevik ideology and policies in this period. This thesis will explore how the Soviet state conceptualised metalworkers, through ideology, and how this informed their engagement with workers, through policy. This will be done through an examination of state statistical data and how prominent state polices, cultural policy and treatment of dissent, and discourse changed over this period. It will also focus on a case study of Sormovo Metalworks, a suburb of Nizhnii Novgrorod, and use local sources to investigate how the tension between ideology and practice played out on a local level. It will explore how local Bolsheviks conceptualised and engaged with Sormovo workers and how this was shaped by three things: Bolshevik ideology, the context of the Civil War and the specific local conditions of Sormovo and its workforce. The Civil War period witnessed a change in the discourse and policies of the Soviet state, which became more coercive, interventionist and repressive as the war progressed. Sormovo Metalworks was a large metalworking complex in a largely rural province; it had a skilled workforce with a tradition of labour activism through striking and was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The move towards an increasingly centralised state was utilised by local Bolsheviks in Sormovo in an attempt to end the labour activism of its workforce and crush political opposition. However, despite the increasingly assertive discourse about the identity of metalworkers and the state’s drive for economic, political and cultural centralisation, Sormovo workers had the ability to challenge, subvert and negotiate state labels and even policies. This case study reveals that although Sormovo workers suffered repeated challenges to their identity by the state, local government and the economic crises of the Civil War, they continued to utilise self-identification based on their skill and shared socio-economic experience. This in turn shaped their vertical and horizontal social, economic and political relationships with those around them. Although the central state became politically and economically centralised and authoritarian, the identity of the grassroots in Sormovo remained diverse and fluid.

No description available.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2009. / "Fall 2009." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-82).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 283-316).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Julie L. Hotchkiss, committee chair; Dawn M. Baunach, Erdal Tekin, Jorge L. Martinez-Vazquez, Bruce E. Kaufman, committee members. Electronic text (177 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 19, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-176).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 279-298).

This dissertation will analyse the history of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, which operated between 1895 and 1914. Established under the administrative structure of the Russian Embassy in Constantinople, the institute occupied a place at the intersection of science and politics. Focusing nearly exclusively on Byzantine and Slavic antiquities in the Ottoman Empire, the activities of the institute reflected the imperial identity of Russia at the turn of the century. As was explicitly expressed by Russian diplomats, bureaucrats, and scholars, the establishment of an archaeological institution in the Ottoman capital was regarded as a foreign policy tool to extend Russia’s influence in the Near East, a tool of “soft power” in modern parlance. On the Ottoman side, foreign archaeological activities were regarded with suspicion especially in the later part of the 19th century. In an attempt to preserve its vulnerable sovereignty, Ottoman Empire closely monitored foreign archaeological activities on its territories. For the Ottoman Empire, archaeology was also a way of projecting its image as a modern, Westernised empire. For both Russian and Ottoman archaeologists, European scholarship was regarded as an example that should be followed, and a rival at the same time. Russian archaeologists had to close down their office with the outbreak of World War I. The complications that arose with the disintegration of the institute were solved only in the late 1920s between the Soviet Union and Republican Turkey, under completely different political circumstances.

This thesis is not primarily concerned with Andre Gide's interest in and subsequent disillusionment with communism and the Soviet Union for this has been sufficiently dealt with elsewhere but is concerned with the five companions he invited to accompany him on his journey to the Soviet Union in 1936: Jacques Schiffrin, Eugene Dabit, Louis Guilloux, Jef Last and Pierre Herbart. Chapter I examines French interest in the Soviet Union during the Interwar period. Four main areas of interest are defined in respect of Gide and his travelling companions: the growth of French interest in Russian culture; the impact of the Revolution and the Soviet Union in France in terms of both literature and literature-based organisations, as well as in terms of political ideology; the rise of fascism in Europe, and the attraction of the Soviet Union as the land of sexual freedom. Chapters 11 to VI examine each of the five figures, highlighting their literary and political development and outlining their interest in the Soviet Union. Chapter 11 outlines the activities of Jacques Schiffrin (1892-1949), an important figure in the Parisian publishing world, who founded the Editions de la Pleiade, translated Russian classics into French (sometimes in conjunction with Gide) and introduced what is now known as the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. Chapter III covers the career of Eugene Dabit (1898-1936) which spanned a period that saw intense literary and political debate and shows how he was caught up in the inevitable mix of politics and literature as he was involved successively in various groupings. Chapter IV concentrates on Louis Guilloux (1899-1980) and outlines the development in his literary work from works based on a depiction of le peuple to a more personal aesthetics taking in part as its inspiration the breadth of great nineteenth-century Russian authors. It also outlines how he came to terms with his role as a writer in society. Chapter V outlines the activities of Jef Last (1898-1972) who, as a Dutchman, had a wider knowledge of the European political world. He was a militant communist who had already visited the Soviet Union three times before he met Gide. His attraction to communism and the Soviet Union was based on several reasons: economic, political, religious, sexual and cultural. Pierre Herbart (1903-1978) is the subject of Chapter VI. He was an intimate member of Gide's circle and he influenced Gide politically. A member of the communist party, his literary output was, at certain times, influenced by his political commitment. Prior to Gide's journey to the Soviet Union he worked in Moscow as a redacteur on the La Litterature Internationale. The final chapter examines the journey itself, suggesting reasons for what went wrong, causing Guilloux and Schiffrin to return early and an account is given of Dabit's death in Sevastopol. The responses of the travelling companions both to the journey itself and to Gide's publications on his return provide a much more complicated and diverse picture than is normally available while the conclusion shows that the position of Western intellectuals to the situation in the Soviet Union in 1936 was often obscured by immediate tactical concerns such as the Spanish Civil War.

This study examines spatial dimensions of state violence against the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1930s, and the creation of a place of surveillance, the famous House of Writers (Budynok Slovo), an apartment building that was conceived by an association of writers “Slovo” in Kharkiv. This building fashioned an important identity for Ukrainian intellectuals, which was altered under state pressure and the fear of being exterminated. Their creative art was gradually transformed into the art of living and surviving under the terror, a feature of a regimented society. The study explores the writers’ behavior during arrests and interrogation, and examines the Soviet secret police’s tactics employed in interrogation rooms. The narrative considers the space of politics that brought the perpetrators of terror and their victims closer to each other, eventually forcing them to share the same place. Within this space and place they became interchangeable and interchanged, and ultimately were physically eliminated. Importantly, the research illuminates the multiethnic composition of the building’s residents: among them were cultural figures of Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish origins. Their individual histories and contributions to Ukrainian culture demonstrate the vector of Stalin’s terror which targeted not Ukrainian ethnicity as such but instead was directed against the development of Ukrainian national identity and Ukrainian statehood that were perceived as a challenge to the center’s control and as harbingers of separatism. The study also reveals that the state launched the course of counter-Ukrainization in 1926 and disintegrated the Ukrainian intellectual community through mass repressive operations which the secret police began to apply from 1929. The study also demonstrates that, together with people, the state purposefully exterminated national cultural artifacts—journals, books, art and sculpture, burying human ideas which have never been and will never be consummated. The purpose was to explain how the elimination of most prominent Ukrainian intellectuals was organized, rationalized and politicized. During the period of one decade, the terror tore a hole in the fabric of Ukrainian culture that may never be mended.

As a notable academic, Marxist writer and one-time political activist, an extensive critique of Rudolf Schlesinger’s writings is long overdue. Raised in the revolutionary atmosphere of early twentieth century Austria, Schlesinger soon became embroiled in central European communism, taking on full-time work for the German Communist Party in Berlin, Prague and Moscow. He left the Soviet Union during the purges, having been described as ‘alien to the party’, and made his way to the UK where he fostered a reputation as an informed and prolific scholar. This investigation is not intended to be a biography of Schlesinger, but rather an ‘intellectual biography’, an examination of his monographs, papers, drafts and memoir reflections. This allows for an appreciation of his academic contribution and an understanding of his unique personal motivation and perspective. Given his experiences, as well as the cultural, political and ideological paradigm from which he emerged, this analysis provides insights into Marxist theory, the labour movement, the Soviet Union and German communism. It also throws light upon the intellectual climate in the West during the cold war, providing a historiographical snapshot of academic Soviet studies, particularly in the UK. The thesis is divided into two sections, with each exploring a different aspect of Schlesinger’s writing. The first traces Schlesinger’s theoretical development and education, detailing and analysing the impact of Luxemburg, Lenin, Marx and Engels on his thought and writing. Schlesinger emerges as a Leninist, whose understanding of the dialectical nature of Marxism leads him to seek the next stage in its development, since Lenin’s revolutionary successes forever altered the socio-economic landscape and thus fated his theories to obsolescence. An examination of Schlesinger’s attitude towards Stalin as a Marxist theorist illuminates his pragmatic stance regarding the Soviet leader. Whilst Stalin’s rule had a considerable human cost and a deleterious impact upon Marxist theory, to Schlesinger, his leadership was necessary to further the existence of the Soviet state, the sole manifestation of the great social democratic experiment. The second section focuses on Schlesinger’s writings concerning Soviet historiography. It is possible to discern changes in tone, emphasis and argument in his work on this subject. A dichotomy emerges between Schlesinger’s positive portrayal of historiographical developments in the Soviet Union in papers written before Stalin’s death and his retrospective condemnation of these events after 1953. This latter attitude chimes with his personal memoir reflections of life as an intellectual in Stalin’s Russia, in which he described a highly controlled, academically stagnant society; yet it contrasts starkly with his earlier position. It is also possible to detect parallels between Schlesinger’s changing emphasis and the dynamics of official Soviet attitudes. An explanation is required if Schlesinger is not to be dismissed as inconsistent or polemical. It is argued that Schlesinger can be accurately described as a ‘scholar advocate’, both in terms of a defender of the Soviet experiment and a proponent of Marxism and social democracy. This characterisation allows for an understanding of Schlesinger’s changing stance and motivations and explains his apparent inconsistency. Schlesinger was loyal to Marxism in general, but not to the fluctuating dictates of the Russian party. He was not a polemicist or propagandist but instead sought to stay loyal to wider Marxist ideals and methodology. For Schlesinger, his pragmatism ensured that he did not judge events in Russia from the rose-tinted spectacles of utopianism; his attitude was not swayed by single events, however tragic, and he was aware both of the utility and the transient nature of Stalin’s rule. This helps to explain his positive attitude. In addition, Schlesinger was keen to defend Marxism and the Soviet Union against what he perceived as unfair criticism; he sought to counter myths and misunderstandings propagated by disillusioned supporters and opponents. Schlesinger consciously attempted to combat what he saw, and many academics have recognised, as the cold war bias of a section of Western comment and scholarship. This may, perhaps, have led Schlesinger to paint too optimistic a picture of the Soviet Union, but his work is a useful and necessary counterbalance to other literature. Schlesinger was no propagandist, and recognition of his unique and conscious motivation allows for a full appreciation of his rich and varied writings.