Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1962. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [55-57]).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Hervé Vanel, Kermit S. Champa. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 264-275). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2707. Adviser: Mark D. Steinberg. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-193) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

<p> The Volga Germans assert a particular ethnic identity to articulate their complex history as a multinational community even in the absence of traditional practices in language, religious piety, and communal lifestyle. Across multiple migrations and settlements from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the Volga Germans&rsquo; self-constructed group identity served historically as a tool with which to navigate uncertain politics of belonging. As subjects of imperial Russia&rsquo;s eighteenth-century colonization project the Volga Germans held a privileged legal status in accordance with their settlement in the Volga River region, but their subsequent loss of privileges under the reorganization and Russification of the modern Russian state in the nineteenth century compelled members of the group to immigrate to the Midwest in the United States where their distinct identity took its full form. The Volga Germans&rsquo; arrival on the Great Plains coincided with an era of mass global migration from 1846 to 1940, yet the conventional categories of immigrant identity that subsumed Volga Germans in archival records did not impede their drive for community preservation under a new unifying German-Russian identity. A contingent of Midwest Volga Germans migrated in 1881 to Albina, a railroad town across the Willamette River from Portland, Oregon where the pressures of assimilation ultimately disintegrated traditional ways of life&mdash;yet the community impulse to articulate its identity remained. Thus, while Germans are the single largest ethnic group in the U.S. today numbering forty-two million individuals, Portland&rsquo;s Volga German community nevertheless continues to distinguish itself ethnically through its nostalgia for a unique past.</p><p>

'Images of the Petrine Era in Russian History Painting' examines the changing iconography of Petr I (1672-1725) in nineteenth-century Russian painting, and its relationship with Petr's symbolic role in the cultural debate between the Westernisers and the Slavophiles over the interpretation of the Russian past and the direction of Russia's future. Artistic developments are discussed against a background of history, historiography and literature. Paintings by Academic artists that were produced as contributions to the official cult of Petr, fostered by Nikolai I, are explored as expressions of aspects of the archetypal Hero. The evolution of historical genre painting, and particularly the developments introduced by Shvarts in the 1860s, are examined as a crucial component of the context for the emergence of the Peredvizhniki. The main focus of this study comprises the Realist history paintings of the Peredvizhniki. The pursuit of historical truth, after Aleksandr Il's relaxation of censorship in the late 1850s, became a significant factor in the application of Realism to history painting. The treatment of Petrine themes by the Peredvizhniki in their First Exhibition in 1871 is discussed in relation to the celebrations for Petr's bicentenary in 1872. Ge's ‘Petr I interrogates Tsarevich Aleksei Petrovich at Peterhof' is analysed in detail for its importance as the first treatment in a Realist style of a controversial historical incident which was unfavourable to Petr. Evidence, exemplified by Myasoedov's ‘The Grandfather of the Russian Fleet', is brought forward which suggests continuities between the Academy and the Peredvizhniki. The Peredvizhniki's varied approaches to Petrine themes are examined, emphasising the group's lack of ideological uniformity. History paintings are explored in their social and cultural context, for instance, nineteenth-century depictions of Tsarevna Sof'ya Alekseevna and the rise of Russian feminism, and the effect of Surikov's personal experience of cultural conflict on his works.

<p> This dissertation focuses on the relatively little-known and highly remote 18^th and 19^th century Russian colonies established in North America, attempts to gain a clearer vision of mostly undefined daily lifeways in the settlements via a search for traditional Russian behaviors, and weighs the impact of cultural isolation on those behaviors. In so doing, lessons-learned are considered as they apply to the enhancement of social justice in the isolated communities of the future, whether they be on this planet or beyond the gravitational pull of Earth.</p><p> Drawing upon a previously researched inventory of 18^th and 19^th century traditional Russian behaviors (which serves as a primary database for the study), two selected settlements are examined for possible traditional behavioral characteristics for Russian America as a whole. One of these is Novo-Arkhangel'sk (present-day Sitka, Alaska)&mdash;the colonial capital and Russian America's primary seaport&mdash;and the other is Kolmakovsky Redoubt, a small trading post located in the interior of Southwestern Alaska. The cultural isolation of each colony is made clear, as is the fact that Kolmakovsky Redoubt has been viewed as perhaps the most isolated community in all of Russia's North American possessions.</p><p> The research for this study has led to exciting results. A high percentage of traditional Russian behaviors found at each of the two sites was revealed to be in unmodified form, despite the settlements' cultural isolation from the motherland and resulting potential for acculturative activity. Specifically, out of 45 traditional behaviors identified for Novo-Arkhangel'sk, 41, or 91%, were seen to be unmodified; of the 25 traditional behaviors uncovered at Kolmakovsky Redoubt, 23, or 92%, were also determined to be unmodified. These high percentages are perhaps all the more surprising when one considers the potential of acculturative pressures surrounding the two Russian enclaves and emanating from indigenous Native societies.</p><p> The bottom line is that this study has opened a view of a part of Russian America not previously available, and endorses the use of the data retrieved for planning future isolated communities characterized by social justice-friendly environments.</p><p>

The Voronezh poetry of Osip Mandelstam (1935-1937) is viewed by many critics as one of the most heroic of Russian literature's many confrontations between the poet and the tyrant. Recently, however, Mandelstam's image has seemed to be compromised by the existence of poems revealing a more loyalist Mandelstam, in particular an Ode written in January 1937 in praise of Stalin. Critics are divided as to whether this poem is an expression of genuine praise and loyalty, whether it was written out of pragmatic considerations, or whether it is in fact an attack, in Aesopian language, on Stalin. This thesis argues that the lack of critical concensus on this and other matters is caused in large part by certain dangers inherent in the main method (intertextual analysis) used to study Mandelstam. The thesis therefore has a dual focus: it investigates theories of intertextuality and influence as issues of central importance to current literary debates, and attempts to establish an eclectic theory which fuses elements of various approaches to intertextuality and influence; but it does so in order that the poetry of Mandelstam and other Russian poets may be better understood. The thesis provides a detailed examination of Harold Bloom's theory of influence and applies it to Mandelstam's poetry, and argues that it is possible that it may be applied fruitfully to other Russian poets. Yet Russian poetry also provides a corrective to Bloom's tendency to see poetic influence as almost exclusively a relationship between literary texts. The thesis argues that Mandelstam's poetic precursor is Pushkin, and that his sense of being Pushkin' & heir seems to place him under some sort of obligation to imitate Pushkin's life and death as well as his art an extreme case of zhlznetvorchestvo ("life-creation"). Mandelstam's most significant description of his own death as an imitation of Pushkin's is found in his "Stikhi o neizvestnom soldate" ("Verses on the Unknown Soldier"). Bloom's theory helps one realise that the "Ode to Stalin" is only a part of Mandelstam's rewriting of Pushkin's own uncertainties in his relationship with Nicholas I; one may view the "Ode to Stalin" and "Stikhi o neizvestom soldate" as a single text equivalent to Pushkin's examination in Mednyl vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman) of the conflicting claims of state and individual. Mandelstam's willingness to give the devil some of his best words is thus not incompatible with the anti-Stalin conclusions reached by his work taken as a whole.

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.