Speaking Out: Languages of Affirmation and Dissent in Stalinist Russia

Hellbeck, Jochen

doi:10.1353/kri.2008.0143

Cited by 65 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…3 3 The debate among historians pits Fitzpatrick (1999), arguing against the earlier totalitarian explanation of the USSR and therefore emphasizing heterogeneity and resistance, against the more recent work of Hellbeck (2000) and Hellbeck and Halfin (2002). Hellbeck and Halfin insist that individual subjectivity must be seen as the product of history, and that citizens in the 1930s had no choice but to think in Soviet categories for no others were available to them. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology in Infrastructure: Architecture and Soviet Imagination

Humphrey

2005

J Royal Anthropological Inst

204

119

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Ideology does not just exist in linguistic form; it also appears in material structures. The Soviet party-state believed architecture to have a transformative effect and promoted communal dwellings in order to mould a new socialist way of life. What was the outcome?Using the examples of the communal hostel and the courtyard, the article suggests that we should take account of the eventual everyday sociality but also go beyond it to investigate how the imagination worked in such places. The material structure did not generate the socialist values quite as intended. Imaginative literature and satire are used to show that architecture acted, rather, like a prism. Ideas were deflected from it, yet not in a random way.The relation between early Soviet ideology and infrastructure appears straightforward -yet it has a breathtaking audacity if one thinks about it. According to Marxist materialism, the base determines the superstructure, and the task of Soviet construction was to build material foundations that would mould nothing less than a new society. This reminds us that ideology is found not only in texts and speeches; it is a political practice that is also manifest in constructing material objects. After the Revolution, architecture became one of they key arenas of ideology. In the 1920s, it was actually believed that carefully designed living quarters, for example, could eliminate the conditions for individualistic and meshchanskie (petty-minded bourgeois) ways of life, and on this basis a new human type would become the norm: Socialist Man and Socialist Woman. 1 A new kind of building, the House Commune (dom kommuna), would provide the infrastructure. Previous ('obsolete') social groupings, such as the patriarchal family, the private firm, or the peasant household, would give way to the new ideal, the labour collective. 2 For anthropology, the Soviet case is significant because it makes clear not only that political ideology can take material form, but also that artefacts are not material objects divorced from social relations. The latter point has long since been made with regard to 'the house', which, as Carsten and Hugh-Jones (1995) have argued, both embodies and generates sociality. But the house built by people for themselves is different from the case of state construction projects in which housing is allocated and the inhabitants are mere passive recipients (Semenova 2004). What the Soviet example requires us to think about is the particular situation where there is a definite pronounced intention of the state to make use of the materiality of dwelling

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confidence: 99%

Ideology in Infrastructure: Architecture and Soviet Imagination

Humphrey

2005

J Royal Anthropological Inst

204

119

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“…Johdonmukainen julkista keskustelua hallitseva ja sitä myötä kollektiivista identiteettiä ohjaava ideologinen sävy ei voikaan olla vaikuttamatta lukija-ja kirjoittajakuntaan (ks. Hellbeck 2000;Bunn 2015, 38-41). 1930luvun loppua kohden sensuuri ja itsesensuuri äityivät yhä vahvemmiksi poliittisten puhdistusten kiihtyessä (Choldin et al 1989).…”

Section: Median Luonteesta Neuvostoliitossaunclassified

”Kalevala – kansan luomistyön ihana perintö”

Ahola

2020

elore

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Artikkeli erittelee erilaisia diskursseja, joissa Kalevalaa ja kansanperinnettä käsiteltiin neuvostokarjalaisessa suomenkielisessä lehdistössä vuosina 1928–1958. Aineisto koostuu etupäässä kirjallisuus- ja sanomalehdistöstä. Aineistossa tunnistettavassa Kalevala perinnetekstinä -diskurssissa Kalevalaa käsitellään perinnettä edustavana objektina, johon on vaadittavissa jonkinlainen oikeus. Tästä omistusoikeudesta puhutaan omistajuusdiskursseissa. Niissä omistajuutta oikeutetaan mm. sen pohjana olevan runouden alkuperäisten esittäjien kansallisuuden perusteella, joka määriteltiin eri aikoina eri tavoin. Menneisyysdiskurssissa puolestaan käsitellään mm. Kalevalassa tavattavaa kansanperinnettä teksteinä menneisyydestä, mikä puolestaan mahdollistaa Kalevalan edustaman kansanrunouden retorisen käytön yhtäältä analogiana, toisaalta kontrastina neuvosto-olojen myönteisessä arvottamisessa nykyaikaa korostavassa moderniteettipuheessa. Artikkelissa nostetaan myös esiin, kuinka diskurssit limittyvät keskenään. Diskurssien todetaan olevan reaktioita Suomessa ja muualla porvarillisessa lännessä vallitsevaan keskusteluun ja toisekseen kumpuavan suurelta osin Neuvostoliiton ja Neuvosto-Karjalan historiallisista ja poliittisista vaiheista ja kehityskuluista.

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Section: Impact Of Expanded Access On Western Scholarship On Social Hmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This process became a matter of scholarly controversy when Jochen Hellbeck criticized those whose work relied heavily on secret police svodki, which he noted had an inbuilt bias toward anti-Soviet activity. 66 The criticism has some validity, but needs to be understood also in terms of the lines of scholarly debate in the field at that time. Challenging the older generation of social historians for their neglect of subjectivity, Stephen Kotkin and others sought to shift the focus from an assumption of popular rejection of Soviet values toward recognition that not only was acceptance of Soviet values the norm in Soviet society (as it is in most societies) but also that the creation of these values was a process involving the population, rather than being simply imposed from above.…”

Section: Impact Of Expanded Access On Western Scholarship On Social Hmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the Opening of Soviet Archives on Western Scholarship on Soviet Social History

Fitzpatrick

2015

The Russian Review

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The opening of formerly closed and classified archives following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a remarkable experience for historians working in this field. Our data base abruptly expanded in a quantum leap, changing our situation from one roughly comparable to that of researchers on early modern Europe (working with the limited range of sources generated by a relatively unambitious state with a small literate population) to that of researchers on any other developed twentieth‐century state (working with the huge array of records generated by a modern bureaucratic state and literate society). From the standpoint of researchers, this brought many changes. Field‐specific research skills painfully acquired in the period of archival dearth suddenly become more or less redundant. Different skills and strategies were often required to deal with the new situation of abundance. This essay examines the extent and peculiarities of Western scholars' access to Soviet archives in the decades before 1991, and the nature and variety of archival sources becoming available to Western scholars for the first time, and the impact these had on research and interpretation of Soviet social history.

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Speaking Out: Languages of Affirmation and Dissent in Stalinist Russia

Cited by 65 publications

References 25 publications

Ideology in Infrastructure: Architecture and Soviet Imagination

Ideology in Infrastructure: Architecture and Soviet Imagination

”Kalevala – kansan luomistyön ihana perintö”

Impact of the Opening of Soviet Archives on Western Scholarship on Soviet Social History

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