Spanning over three decades, the prose of Vladimir Makanin bears witness to the extraordinary changes SovietlRussian society and literature have undergone, and to which he, as a writer, has been continually exposed. The focus of the thesis is Makanin's abiding concern with the condition of man; man as individual and man as a collective term. The position of man in time (contemporaneity), out of time (the eternal memory of man), and through time (the past, present and future). Despite this apparent central concern, the author's prose is constantly changing, and what seemed previously to be absolutes are subverted. In this unstable environment the author continually expresses the reality in which he perceives man to be, until the concepts of 'reality' and the nature of 'man' are themselves destabilised. Chapter 1 provides an introductory overview of Makanin' s literary career and critical reception. The five core chapters examine different presentations of man's condition. Chapter 2 discusses the tension of the individual amongst the collective, with particular emphasis on the spatial representation of this dilemma. The third chapter is an examination of the incorporation of parables, myths and legends, revealing attempts to depict a 'higher reality' and also the author's means of overcoming socialist realism's censorship constraints. In Chapter 4, the author's concept of 'genetic memory' is considered as a temporal and spatial construct for examining man's individuality and condition in contemporary society. This chapter additionally highlights the author's move from his early social realist depictions revealed in the first two chapters, to his later interest in Russian postmodern theories found in the following two chapters. In Chapters 5 and 6 Makanin's ideas on narrative, history, and man's postmodern condition are analysed. The final text to be discussed, Kavkazskii plennyi, is examined as an innovation in Makanin's philosophy and postmodem prose.

Die Zeitschrift "Sowjetische Musik" bildet die wichtigste Quelle für die Erforschung der Geschichte der sowjetischen Musik, mehr noch: Sie selbst ist ein Teil der sowjetischen Musikgeschichte.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned addresses the question of the proper role of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union in the Soviet state. The political leadership has two alternatives in seeking a remedy to this civil-military question. They may either control the military establishment by granting strict professional autonomy or by integrating the armed forces into the civil structure.

This study focuses on a description of demographic trends in the Soviet Union since 1917: changes in the labor force, economic problems, social conditions, rapid urbanization, changes in education and the eudcational level of Soviet citizens. Data available are from secondary sources. This research concludes that the Soviet Union has changed from a rural agricultural to a major industrial power. The population of the Soviet Union has increased since 1917. The rapid change created shortages in housing that still have not been solved. The shortages in consumer goods and clothing are a result of insufficient planning by Soviet leaders. The political implications of all the changes in Sovet lifestyles have been fairly limited. Unless the government solves the problems of availability of housing, food, clothing, and consumer goods, political unrest is the likely outcome.

Thesis advisor: John Michalczyk / The Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag are frequently remembered for the vastness of their human cost. Rightly so, for the Holocaust claimed 6 million Jewish victims and 5 million non-Jewish victims. Estimates for the number of victims that deaths and ordered executions in the Gulag claimed range widely—from 3.5 million up to 20 million, with most estimates putting the mark in the range of 10-12 million. These numbers are absolutely staggering. It seems almost impossible to put such statistics into any concrete terms; how, separated by generations and geography, can we begin to understand the tangible meaning of a loss of life on the order of ten or twenty million people? How can we understand the far-reaching effects of that sort of terror perpetrated by humans, and of that sort of terror inflicted on humans? Moreover, what sort, exactly is the terror that we are referring to when we talk about the events of the Holocaust and the Gulag? To a certain extent, the answers to these questions are out of our grasp; only those who experienced these events firsthand can begin to comprehend them. Even survivors attest to the incomprehensible nature of their experiences. In order to at least try to shed light on some of these questions, however, this work attempts to look at the Holocaust and the Gulag through the eyes of individuals who lived through the ordeal, in the hopes that this will start to make these events more comprehensible. I have chosen to focus specifically on women, partly because the massive size of the body of Holocaust and Gulag literature necessitates some sort of narrowing of the field, and partly because women confronted a different face of terror than did men; their gender intrinsically shaped their experiences. It is an attempt to find out how some women—for the number examined is too small to make any claims to universality—lived through such extenuating circumstances. The bulk of it is based on selective findings in personal memoirs and narratives. While personal accounts may not be the most accurate source for historical data, they are an ideal location for gaining a greater understanding of the personal human cost. Numbers can attest to the staggering magnitude of the terror; personal accounts can attest to the depth and the effect of the terror on the victim. The historical events of the Holocaust and the Gulag were the reasons for the socio-psychological aspects of resistance and survival that is the main focus of this study. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2003. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This thesis examines the interaction of Georgian painting and national politics in the first two decades of Soviet power in Georgia, 1921-1939, focussing in particular on the period following the consolidation of Stalin's power at the helm of the Communist Party in 1926-7. In the Stalin era, Georgians enjoyed special status among Soviet nations thanks to Georgia's prestige as the place of Stalin's birth. However, Georgians' advanced sense of their national sovereignty and initial hostility towards Bolshevik control following Georgia's Sovietisation in 1921 also resulted in Georgia's uniquely fraught relationship with Soviet power in Moscow in the decades that followed. In light of these circumstances, this thesis explores how and why the experience and activities of Georgian painters between 1926 and 1939 differed from those of other Soviet artists. One of its central arguments is that the experiences of Georgian artists and critics in this period not only differed significantly from those of artists and critics of other republics, but that the uniqueness of their experience was precipitated by a complex network of factors resulting from the interaction of various political imperatives and practical circumstances, including those relating to Soviet national politics. Chapter one of this thesis introduces the key institutions and individuals involved in producing, evaluating and setting the direction of Georgian painting in the 1920s and early 1930s. Chapters two and three show that artists and critics in Georgia as well as commentators in Moscow in the 1920s and 30s were actively engaged in efforts to interpret the Party's demand for 'national form' in Soviet culture and to suggest what that form might entail as regards Georgian painting. However, contradictions inherent in Soviet nationalities policy, which both demanded the active cultivation of cultural difference between Soviet nationalities and eagerly anticipated a time when national distinctions in all spheres would naturally disappear, made it impossible for an appropriate interpretation of 'national form' to be identified. Chapter three, moreover, demonstrates how frequent shifts in Soviet cultural and nationalities policies presented Moscow institutions with a range of practical challenges which ultimately prevented them from reflecting in their exhibitions and publications the contemporary artistic activity taking place in the republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. A key finding of chapters four and five concerns the uniquely significant role that Lavrenty Beria, Stalin's ruthless deputy and the head of the Georgian and Transcaucasian Party organisations, played in differentiating Georgian painters' experiences from those of Soviet artists of other nationalities. Beginning in 1934, Beria employed Georgian painters to produce an exhibition of monumental paintings, opening at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 1937, depicting episodes from his own falsified history of Stalin's role in the revolutionary movement in Transcaucasia. As this thesis shows, the production of the exhibition introduced an unprecedented degree of direct Party supervision over Georgian painting as Beria personally critiqued works by Georgian painters produced on prescribed narrative subjects in a centralised collective studio. As well as representing a major contribution to Stalin's personality cult, the exhibition, which conferred on Georgian painters special responsibility for representing Stalin and his activities, was also a public statement of the special status that the Georgians were now to enjoy, second only to that of the Russians. However, this special status involved both special privileges and special responsibilities. Georgians would enjoy special access to opportunities in Moscow and a special degree of autonomy in local governance, but in return they were required to lead the way in declaring allegiance to the Stalin regime. Chapter six returns to the debate about 'national form' in Georgian painting by examining how the pre-Revolutionary self-taught Georgian painter, Niko Pirosmani, was discussed by cultural commentators in Georgia and Moscow in the 1920s and 30s as a source informing a Soviet or Soviet Georgian canon of painting. It shows that, in addition to presenting views on the suitability of Pirosmani's painting either in terms of its formal or class content, commentators perpetuated and developed a cult of Pirosmani steeped in stereotypes of a Georgian 'national character.' Further, the establishment of this cult during the late 1920s and early 1930s seems to have been a primary reason for the painter's subsequent canonisation in the second half of the 1930s as a 'Great Tradition' of Soviet Georgian culture. It helped to articulate a version of Georgian national identity that was at once familiar and gratifying for Georgians and useful for the Soviet regime. The combined impression of cultural sovereignty embodied in this and other 'Great Traditions' of Soviet Georgian culture and the special status articulated through the 1937 exhibition allowed Georgian nationalism to be aligned, for a time, with support for Stalin and the Soviet regime.

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The 1917 Soviet Revolution in Russia was an attempt to fundamentally reorganise economic, social and legal life along anti-capitalist, participatory and egalitarian lines. This thesis suggests seven criteria for assessing the early Soviet legal debates: 1/. Broad ranging legal debates 2/ The social and historical context 3/. The legal record of Soviet Russia 4/. The socialist opposition 5/. Classical Marxist legal theory 6/. The axis of the early debates 7/. The contrast with Stalinism. An introduction explains the parameters of the thesis. Chapter 1 examines the classical Marxist theory of law and the state. Chapters 2 and 3 review the revolution’s context: the pre-1917 legal record and the political physiognomy and dynamics of the 1917 revolution. Chapters 4 and 5 probe the legal record of early Soviet Russia, and Lenin’s views on law. Chapter 6 reviews the legal debates, while chapters 7 and 8 focus on the particular contributions of Stuchka and Pashukanis. Chapter 9 examines the impact of the Socialist opposition, most notably the Left Opposition formed by Leon Trotsky at the end of 1923. Chapter 10 draws some tentative conclusions. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

PhD / This thesis explores the lives of key female members of the Bolshevik elite from the revolutionary movement’s beginnings to the time of Stalin’s death. Through analysing the attitudes and contributions of Bolshevik elite women – most particularly the wives of Lenin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Bukharin – it not only provides for a descriptive account of these individual lives, their changing attitudes and activities, but also a more broad-ranging, social handle on the evolution of elite society in the Soviet Union and the changing nature of the Bolshevik elite both physically and ideationally. Chapters one and two focus on the physical and ideological foundations of the Bolshevik marriage. Chapter one traces the ideological approach of the Bolsheviks towards marriage and the family, examining pre-revolutionary socialist positions in relation to women and the family and establishing a benchmark for how the Bolsheviks wished to approach the ‘woman question’. Chapter two examines the nature of the Bolshevik elite marriage from its inception to the coming of the revolution, dwelling particularly on the different pre-revolutionary experiences of Yekaterina Voroshilova and Nadezhda Krupskaya. Chapters three and four then analyse two key areas of wives’ everyday lives during the interwar years. Chapter three looks at the work that Bolshevik wives undertook and how the nature of their employment changed from the 1920s to the 1930s. Chapter four, through examining the writings of wives such as Voroshilova, Larina and Ordzhonikidze, focuses upon how wives viewed themselves, their responsibilities as members of the Bolshevik elite and the position of women in Soviet society. The final two chapters of this thesis explore the changing nature of elite society in this period and its relationship to Soviet society at large. Chapter five investigates the changing composition of the elite and the specific and general effects of the purges upon its nature. Directly, the chapter examines the lives of Zhemchuzhina, Larina and Pyatnitskaya as wives that were repressed during this period, while more broadly it considers the occupation of the House on the Embankment in the 1930s and the changing structure of Bolshevik elite society. Chapter six focuses on the evolution of Soviet society in the interwar period and how the experiences of Bolshevik elite wives differed from those of ‘mainstream’ Russian women. While previous studies of the Bolshevik elite have focussed upon men’s political lives and investigations of Soviet women’s policy and its shifts under Stalin have mainly concentrated upon describing changes in realist terms, this thesis demonstrates that not only is an evaluation of wives’ lives crucial to a fuller understanding of the Bolshevik elite, but that by comprehending the personal attitudes and values of members of the Bolshevik elite society, particularly with regards to women and the family, a more informed perspective on the reasons for changes in Soviet women’s policy during the interwar period may be arrived at.