The purpose of the present thesis is to analyze the personality picture of Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his government in Stalin's Russia with regard to the transformation that occurred in spirit of the party ideology. The interpretation of historical facts of Ivan's period in the present work is depicted not only in historiography but also in artistic production, and it aims to express the way professional works, novels, dramas, and films are used for political propaganda. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Zugl.: Giessen, Univ., Diss., 2006 u.d.T.: T. Walenski: Gegendiskurse vom Grossen Bruder

Thesis--Universität Bonn, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 556-589) and index.

Zugl.: Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2003

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D.-McGill, 1994) under the title: Communists and the Russians. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [395]-409) and index.

Neighborhood in Minsk built for the workers of the tractor plant became a site of creation of soviet man. Architecture of socialist realism itself played a positive role: it played in tune with postwar longing for peaceful life in privacy, with family with comfortable structure of enclosed blocks, and at the same time created a background and scenery of life that elevated man through classicist image. Village youth came to the site driven by the postwar hunger and need to reconstruct their lives together with the country. They became workers, appropriated shop floor practice and were life-long recipients of the soviet distribution system that included housing as the main resource. People learned to live and work for future, "when communism arrives", withdrawing to privacy from the slogans, not paying attention to the latter but in that very moment rejecting the sphere of public life its real power, denying possibility to change.

Gleich dem Individuum benötigen Gesellschaften Vergangenheit in erster Linie zur Selbstdefinition. Eine feste Struktur gesellschaftlich geteilter Vergangenheitsreferenzen erzeugt ein überindividuelles kollektives Gedächtnis, das soziale Rollen und Identitäten determiniert. Was aber geschieht, wenn eine Gemeinschaft ihre Vergangenheit oder wesentliche Teile dieser nicht erinnert? Am Beispiel Russlands wird dargestellt, warum tragische Ereignisse – in diesem Fall die stalinistischen Repressionen – nicht kommemoriert werden und in welcher Weise sich diese weitgehend verdrängten Erinnerungen und die defizitär ausgebildete Erinnerungskultur auf die heutige russländische Gesellschaft auswirken. / Just as the individual person societies need their past first and foremost to define themselves. A fixed structure of socially divided references of the past generates a supra-individual collective memory which determines social roles and identities. However one has to ask oneself what happens if a society does not remember its past or crucial parts of it? By looking at the example of Russia this book illustrates why tragic events – such as in this particular case the Stalinist repression – are not commemorated and how the suppressed memories and the deficiently developed memorial culture is affecting present-day Russian society.

My dissertation focuses on few selected First Republic travelogues and its authors who in their works reflected their own subjective relationship towards the Soviet Union in the first half of the 20th century. By the gradual assessment of the research questions that I define by my complex approach at the end of my dissertation I reach the conclusion that I outline in the introduction. The goal of my methodological research is to evaluate the ability of recognition and reflexion of selected intellectuals and their perception of reality of the Soviet regime in the span of two decades by analytical and comparative methods divided into six chapters. The thesis focuses on such topics as a theory of non-democratic regimes, ideas, contemporary history and literary history. The travelogue reports of choice are going to provide a picture of contemporary Soviet society that was idealized by some intellectuals who, unlike others, could not have seen through the illusion that the Soviet Union had created. Key words: Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, authoritarian, totalitarian, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Communism, Bolshevism, reality, illusion, travelogues, reports

Diploma thesis is aspiring to cover and interpret processes, which in the period of culminating Stalinism determined course and results of intraparty terror in the local - mainly regional and departmental - organizations of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. It is thoroughly addressing the state of affairs on the lower levels of the party organism. It is monitoring not only techniques of functioning or on the contrary dysfunction of hierarchic machinery, but also various interests of given individuals or even whole groups emerging in the party. Under the label of intraparty terror it then comprises dictatorial practice of leading officials which established itself on the local level as well as fight against it headed be lower functionaries and active party members. Both actualities are not interpreted from the outside by some general causes, but as autonomous phenomenons with their own preconditions and dynamics, more or less different in every region. Resulting scenarios consequently demonstrated considerable variety. Finally great scope is dedicated to the Stalinist ideology, which is not percepted as a constricted doctrine creating loyal subjects, but as a complex discourse providing party members with language in which they can act and pursue their goals. It endowed necessary instruments...

The thesis focuses on the construction and symbolic encoding of Prague from 1945 to the late 1950s, with emphasis on the Stalinist era. Based on an analysis of historical texts and architectural projects, the thesis studies the motivations and tactics, which the post-war political and professional elites sought to manifest their own values and ideological principles in the area of the capital city. Through the analysis of historical concepts of "old" and "new" Prague examines the thesis the changing relationship between tradition and modernity in the image of the city. The sociocultural phenomenon of Stalinism is thematized as a specific part of the long process of modernization, which passes through Prague during the first half of the 20th century. The thesis deals also with the attributes that should characterize the "new" socialist Prague and with the ways of using the Soviet patterns and local historical traditions. Keywords: Prague, city, image of the city, architecture, urbanism, memory, heritage, socialist realism, stalinism, 1950s