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Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novel The Master and Margarita offers a humorous and caustic depiction of 1930s Moscow. Woven around the premise of a visit by the devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union, it is directed against the repressive bureaucratic social order of the time. In chapter 12 of the book, the devil appears onstage at the Variety Theater and turns Moscow on its head. By appealing to their greed and desire for status, he turns the spectators into the spectacle. A close reading of the text confirms that the Theater is much more than a fictional setting for the chapter. Instead, it serves as a backdrop for a disturbing portrait of human frailty, a scathing criticism of Soviet bureaucracy and hypocrisy, and unmistakable references to real-life Moscow institutions and to the author’s personal experiences during the tumultuous 1930s. / text

The thesis examines the social memory of Soviet period in Ukraine on the national and regional levels drawing on the conceptual framework of social memory as shared, normative and formative knowledge of the past, subject to contentious interpretations of various groups and reflecting the power structure of the society. The analysis of the law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repressions in Ukraine, the law on the Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainian nation, and the decommunization laws shows that on the official level Ukraine moved from an ambivalent attitude towards the Soviet legacy, in which Stalinism was repudiated, to the condemnation of Soviet power as a whole. On the regional level, the study reveals the divisive memory of the Soviet past. The analysis of the activities of the Memorial Society, of monuments to the prisoners executed in Lviv by retreating Soviets in June of 1941, of the Museum-Prison on Lontsky street and other museums and monuments shows that in Lviv, as in the Baltic States, the Soviet power is viewed as an alien regime, imposed on freedom-loving Ukrainians by Soviet Russia tyranny. On the opposite side of Lviv is Donetsk. The analysis of the memorial landscape of the city shows that the Donbas memory of the 1930s, as in Soviet times and in Russia, is based on an official forgetting of the repressions. The general assessment of the Soviet past is positive is incorporated into the collective identity of Donetsk as its integral part. After the Euromaidan events of late 2013-early 2014 the opposite memories of the Soviet past became even more apparent. Soviet past in Ukraine is a complex historical period. Examples of post-second world war Western Europe shows that a society, which wants to rebuild itself after a traumatic, divisive past, has to work through this past critically and honestly through an extremely difficult, but necessary open public debate. Only free exchange of opinions, where diversity of perspectives and interpretations of the Soviet experience would be heard, will allow Ukrainian society to grasp the complexity of the Soviet past and to build an inclusive, pluralist democracy.

This work consists of a broad introduction followed by two parts that match the chronology of events – Part I looks at the closing stages of the Second World War and the first two years that followed (1944–1946), while Part II deals with musical life and creative work at the height of the Stalinist totalitarian regime (1947–1953).

Yes / This article discusses the international consequences of the trial of British businessman and spy Edgar Sanders in Budapest at a critical juncture of the early Cold War. Convicted of espionage on the basis of a ‘confession’ in court, the defendant was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. The failed attempts to free the English prisoner led to a breakdown in bilateral relations and a British trade embargo. The related trial of American executive Robert Vogeler has received extensive coverage in Hungarian- and English-language sources. By comparison, the Sanders case has attracted little scholarly attention. This article is the first comprehensive treatment of the case.

The thesis deals with interpretations of the memories of Ruthenians and Jews who fled to the Soviet Union after the occupation of Carpathian Ruthenia by the Hungarian army in 1939 to find freedom and justice, but instead encountered imprisonment and repression and they ended up in the gulag for several years. On a daily basis, they were exposed to hard physical labor, hunger, thirst, Arctic frost, disease, cruel treatment and a permanent struggle for life. While Czechoslovak citizenship guaranteed Ruthenian citizens a pardon of the remainder of their sentences, early release from Stalinist concentration camps and participation in a training center in Buzuluk, Jews did not get such an opportunity due to alleged Hungarian nationality and had to live in the gulag on and on, even for more time than was determined by the court during the trumped-up political trials. Therefore, the Ruthenians had a significant presence in the formed Czechoslovak military unit and participated in the final defeat of the Hitlerˈs army. For the most part, they did not return to Carpathian Ruthenia because they did not agree with its post-war accession to the USSR, which hurt them so much. Despite this, they did not lose their left-wing orientation, many even joined the Communist Party, believing that Czechoslovak socialism...

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...

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.

Объектом данного исследования является сталинская культура. Целью работы было выявление специфики влияния макросоциального процесса модернизации на становление сталинской культуры Основная гипотеза заключается в том, что, по нашему мнению, советская культура 30-50-х и все, что с ней связано, является результатом сталинской модернизации и не могла существовать вне этого макросоциального процесса. Благодаря тому, что этот процесс был неполноценным относительно европейской модернизации (и ее продуктов), весомую роль в ней играло искусство (соцреализм), которое одновременно являлось таким же средством модернизации, как и индустриализация. Искусство оказалось средством формирования системы представления о мире, являлось способом трансляции ценностей, что говорит о нем как способе воспроизводства сталинской культуры. В ходе работы удалось выяснить, что сталинская модернизация как макросоциальный процесс обладает признаками западной модернизации, но ее инструментарий наследует много из того, что было в отечественной истории. Советская модернизация обладала своим собственным преобразовательным пафосом в отношении переустройства человеческой жизни. Проект модернизации был направлен на достижение определенной социальной утопии, где большую роль играл бы труд как воспитательный механизм. Само существование человека в этой системе несло онтологический характер, труд – воспитательный. Соответственно реальность, в т.ч. трудовая, подменялась синтетическим образом желаемой действительности, которая примирялась с окружающим миром за счет дерализации. Искусство в такой ситуации становится реальным рычагом модернизации и способом построения определенной картины мира, который дополняет прочие рычаги: политический и экономический. / The object of this study is the Stalinist culture. The aim of the work was to determine the specificity of the effect of macro-modernization process on the development of Stalinist culture The main hypothesis is that, in our opinion, the Soviet culture 30-50th and everything connected with it, is the result of Stalin's modernization and could not exist outside of this macro-process. Due to the fact that the process was defective with respect to the modernization of the European (and its products), a significant role in it played an art (the Socialist Realism) that is both the same means of modernization, as well as industrialization. Art was a means of forming a system of beliefs about the world, it is a method of translation of values, which speaks of it as a method of reproduction of the Stalinist culture. During the work we found out that Stalin's modernization as the macro-process has signs of Western modernization, but it inherits many of the tools that have been in the country's history. Soviet modernization has its own transformative fervor against reorganization of human life. The modernization project was aimed at achieving a particular social utopia, where he played a major role to work as an educational mechanism. The very existence of man in this system carried ontological character, work - educational. Accordingly reality, including labor, supplanted by synthetic way the desired effect, which is at peace with the world around them by deralization. The art in this situation becoming a real lever of modernization and a certain way to build a picture of the world that complements the other levers: political and economic.

This dissertation presents a study of the scientific practices of the circle of Vygotsky’s closest collaborators and students during the decade of the 1930s-and including the early 1940s (until Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941). The notion of Vygotsky Circle is introduced in this work and is explicitly distinguished from a traditional—yet frequently criticised—notion of “the school of Vygotsky-Leontiev-Luria”. The scientific practices of the Vygotsky Circle are discussed here as the unity of a) social and interpersonal relations, b) the practices of empirical scientific research, and c) discursive practices of the Soviet science—more specifically, the “Stalinist Science” of the 1930s. Thus, this study analyzes the social and interpersonal relations between the members of the Vygotsky Circle and the evolution of this circle in the social context of Soviet science during the decade of 1930s; various practices of empirical scientific research conducted by the members of the Vygotsky Circle were also overviewed. Finally, discursive practices of the Soviet scientific “doublespeak” were discussed and illustrated with several examples borrowed from publications of the time.