This history of the Tver (Kalinin) province of Russia, with particular emphasis on the years: 1945-1953, uses primary sources from archives of the Party and Soviet State, oral interviews, and readings of Russian, French, English, and German publications. The first chapters discuss the socio-economic and political effects of the events prior to 1945. Subsequently, the post-war role of Communist Party, Soviet government, security organs, and Komsomol and the results of Communist policies in agriculture and industry are analysed. The province's demographic losses between 1929 and 1945 and their consequences in Stalin's final years are assessed. The life of male and female kolkhozniks, workers, and intelligentsia, and their relationship with the authorities are depicted. Post-1953 changes are appreciated in the last chapter. Four maps, forty-seven tables, and four appendices are included.

No description available.

No description available.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1952 J64 / Master of Science

No description available.

No description available.

Italian commedia dell'arte in 18th century Russia is a phenomenon which demands careful attention from students of the Russian theatre, particularly since comedy was the most important dramatic development of this century. It is significant that Russian dramaturgy vaulted from infancy to maturity in the short space of a century. This remarkable literary feat was contingent upon the influence of commedia dell'arte on Russian comedy. One hundred years, before the Italian Comics first graced the Russian stage, commedia dell'arte-inspired interludes which came from Poland with the Church School Theatre entertained the Slavic indigenes. Later, German players offered the Russian public their adaptations of Italian improvised comedy, and finally, the Comic Masks accepted an invitation to animate the court. The Masks quickly won a large appreciative, audience and, as a result, distinguished Italian comic artists were attracted to Russia. In their wake followed a host of minor comic performers who flooded the country with productions of commedia dell'arte, opera buffa and intermezzi. This cultural 'invasion' which lasted well into the next century, left a permanent impression on the Russian comic repertory. Works of 18th century Russia's most typical comic dramatists, Ya. B. Knyazhnin and I. A. Krylov, have been selected for analysis since they harbour the key principles of Italian commedia dell'arte and therefore facilitate a fruitful comparison. The inclusion of a short section dealing specifically with commedia dell'arte is intended to outline briefly its artistry in order to make more evident the relationship between the Russian comedy and the Italian Comedy of Masks. The comprehensive bibliography presents a spectrum of works concerning this topic but not necessarily referred to in the thesis. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

Not available / text

This dissertation "'Structure of Feeling" and Radical Identity among Working-Class Jewish Youth during the 1905 Revolution" examines the emotional aspects of revolutionary experience during a critical turning point in both Russian and Jewish history. Most studies of radicalization construe the process as an intellectual or analytical one. I argue that radicalization involved an emotional transformation, which enabled many young revolutionaries to develop a new "structure of feeling', defined by Raymond Williams as an intangible awareness that allows us to recognize someone belonging to our cultural group, as opposed to a well-versed stranger. The key elements of this new structure of feeling were an activist attitude towards reality and a prioritization of feelings demanding action over others. Uncovering the links between feeling, idea, and activism holds a special significance in the context of modern Jewish history. When pogroms swept through Jewish communities during 1905-6, young Jews who had fled years earlier, often after bitter conflicts with their families and a difficult rejection of traditions, returned to protect their communities. Never expecting to return or be accepted back, they arrived with new identities forged in radical study circles and revolutionary experience as activist, self-assertive Jews. The self-assertion that led them away earlier proved them more effective leaders than traditional Jewish communal authorities. Their intellectual and emotional experiences in self-education, secularization, and political activism meant creating a new social status within the Jewish community legitimating a new Jewish identity as working-class Jewish revolutionary. / text

Shabashniks, as dissenting protagonists of free enterprise within the Soviet economic system did as much or more to undermine the political and economic security and control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) than many of the more well known political dissidents of the Soviet era. While it was never the conscious or primary motivation of those Soviet citizens working as shabashniks to challenge the political primacy of the CPSU in their self proclaimed position as the vanguard of the development of communism in the Soviet Union, the scope and the scale of the private economic activities engaged in by shabashniks represented a significant source of the impetus for the eventual decline in the Party's monopoly on political and economic power. / This study investigates the place of shabashniks within the Soviet system, their contributions to that system and their part in its eventual decline. The narrative created as a result of this study relied primarily on Soviet newspaper, journal and magazine articles to describe the lifestyles of shabashniks. There were no Russian language monographs available on the subject at the time of this study. This study then combined the existing Soviet discussions concerning the private economic activities of shabashniks and the effects of those activities on the Soviet system, as reflected in the Soviet press, with the information gleaned from conversations the author had while working with and interviewing former shabashniks and Soviet citizens in Russia during the fall of 1994 and the winter 1997.