Among the least-chronicled aspects of post–World War II European intellectual and cultural history is the story of the Russian intelligentsia after Stalin. Young Soviet veterans had returned from the ...heroic struggle to defeat Hitler only to confront the repression of Stalinist society. The world of the intelligentsia exerted an attraction for them, as it did for many recent university graduates. In its moral fervor and its rejection of authoritarianism, this new generation of intellectuals resembled the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia that had been crushed by revolutionary terror and Stalinist purges. The last representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, heartened by Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in 1956, took their inspiration from the visionary aims of their nineteenth- century predecessors and from the revolutionary aspirations of 1917. In pursuing the dream of a civil, democratic socialist society, such idealists contributed to the political disintegration of the communist regime.Vladislav Zubok turns a compelling subject into a portrait as intimate as it is provocative. The highly educated elite—those who became artists, poets, writers, historians, scientists, and teachers—played a unique role in galvanizing their country to strive toward a greater freedom. Like their contemporaries in the United States, France, and Germany, members of the Russian intelligentsia had a profound effect during the 1960s, in sounding a call for reform, equality, and human rights that echoed beyond their time and place.Zhivago's children, the spiritual heirs of Boris Pasternak's noble doctor, were the last of their kind—an intellectual and artistic community committed to a civic, cultural, and moral mission.
Drawing on recently declassified Soviet archival sources, this book sheds new light on how the division of Europe came about in the aftermath of World War II. The book contravenes the notion that a ...neutral zone of states, including Germany, could have been set up between East and West. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was determined to preserve control over its own sphere of German territory. By tracing Stalin's attitude toward neutrality in international politics, the book provides important insights into the origins of the Cold War.
Generation Stalintraces Joseph Stalin's rise as a dominant figure in French political culture from the 1930s through the 1950s. Andrew Sobanet brings to light the crucial role French writers played ...in building Stalin's cult of personality and in disseminating Stalinist propaganda in the international Communist sphere, including within the USSR. Based on a wide array of sources-literary, cinematic, historical, and archival-Generation Stalinsituates in a broad cultural context the work of the most prominent intellectuals affiliated with the French Communist Party, including Goncourt winner Henri Barbusse, Nobel laureate Romain Rolland, renowned poet Paul Eluard, and canonical literary figure Louis Aragon.Generation Stalinarrives at a pivotal moment, with the Stalin cult and elements of Stalinist ideology resurgent in twenty-first-century Russia and authoritarianism on the rise around the world.
1. This book shows how writers affiliated with the French Communist Party helped shape Stalinist propaganda worldwide and it also sheds light on authoritarianism and cults of personality worldwide.
2. The topic is important to our understanding not only of the ways in which Communism functioned in France - the country which gave the world democracy - but also for a better understanding of the interaction between public intellectuals/cultural elites and political propaganda.
3. It provides context for current events, including the resurgence of Stalinism in Russia and Putin's use of elements of the Stalin cult in Russia. It also explains the history of Leninist revolutionary terms that have been in recent use in the United States, especially "enemies of the people."
4. Author Andrew Sobanet is associate editor of the Journal of Contemporary French Civilization, is an editorial board member of the Contemporary French and Francophone Studies journal, and was until recently chair of the Department of French and Francophone Studies at Georgetown University.
Abstract
Stalin and Mao both left pasts of terror and trauma their heirs had to address to embark on reforms that altered the quality of governance. In 1956 and 1978, Nikita Khrushchev and Deng ...Xiaoping confronted their Communist Parties with painful pasts and reevaluated the leaders’ respective legacies. Although facing similar challenges in dealing with the devastating ramifications of arbitrary rule and cults of personality, Soviet and Chinese strategies to approaching party history strongly differed. Diachronically comparing post-Stalinist and post-Maoist politics of memory reveals how communist regimes came to terms with the past. Analyzing synchronic and diachronic transfers between Moscow and Beijing demonstrates the lessons Deng Xiaoping drew from Soviet de-Stalinization and China’s perception of it in the late 1970s. Thus, Sino-Soviet reevaluations of the past were entangled, and not only because Deng Xiaoping—who had attended the Soviet Party Congress in 1956—shaped China’s interpretation of it and took the lead in revising Mao’s legacy in the 1970s.
A remarkable book. A delayed bombshell that includes very pertinent new research and discoveries Suvorov has made since 1990. He makes savvy readers of contemporary and World War II history, of a ...mind to reexamine the Soviet past in terms of what historians call present interest.' None of the new Russian' historians can match his masterful sweep of research and analysis." ALBERT WEEKS, Professor Emeritus of International Relations, New York University, author of Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939-1941 In The Chief Culprit, bestselling author Victor Suvorov probes newly released Soviet documents and reevaluates existing historical material to analyze Stalin's strategic design to conquer Europe and the reasons behind his controversial support for Nazi Germany. A former Soviet army intelligence officer, the author explains that Stalin's strategy leading up to World War II grew from Lenin's belief that if World War I did not ignite the worldwide Communist revolution, then a second world war would be necessary. Suvorov debunks the theory that Stalin was duped by Hitler and that the Soviet Union was a victim of Nazi aggression. Instead, he makes the case that Stalin neither feared Hitler nor mistakenly trusted him. He maintains that after Germany occupied Poland, defeated France, and started to prepare for an invasion of Great Britain, Hitler's intelligence services detected the Soviet Union's preparations for a major war against Germany. This detection, Suvorov argues, led to Germany's preemptive war plan and the launch of an invasion of the USSR. Stalin emerges from the pages of this book as a diabolical genius consumed by visions of a worldwide Communist revolution at any costa leader who wooed Hitler and Germany in his own effort to conquer the world. In contradicting traditional theories about Soviet planning before the German
invasion and in arguing for revised view of Stalin's real intentions, The Chief Culprit has provoked debate among historians throughout the world.
Stalin's Gulag at war Bell, Wilson T
Stalin's Gulag at war,
2018., 2018, 2018-12-21
eBook
"Stalin's Gulag at War places the Gulag within the story of the regional wartime mobilization of Western Siberia during the Second World War. Far from Moscow, Western Siberia was a key area for ...evacuated factories and for production in support of the war effort. Wilson T. Bell explores a diverse array of issues, including mass death, informal practices such as black markets, and the responses of prisoners and personnel to the war. The region's camps were never prioritized, and faced a constant struggle to mobilize for the war. Prisoners in these camps, however, engaged in such activities as sewing Red Army uniforms, manufacturing artillery shells, and constructing and working in major defense factories. The myriad responses of prisoners and personnel to the war reveal the Gulag as a complex system, but one that was closely tied to the local, regional, and national war effort, to the point where prisoners and non-prisoners frequently interacted. At non-priority camps, moreover, the area's many forced labour camps and colonies saw catastrophic death rates, often far exceeding official Gulag averages. Ultimately, prisoners played a tangible role in Soviet victory, but the cost was incredibly high, both in terms of the health and lives of the prisoners themselves, and in terms of Stalin's commitment to total, often violent, mobilization to achieve the goals of the Soviet state."--
Die Rolle der Zeit in Kriegen ist in der historischen Gewaltforschung bislang nur ansatzweise thematisiert worden. Als eine der Grundkategorien, die die Gewalt modellieren, kann die Zeit einen neuen ...Blick auf die Gewaltunternehmungen bieten, insbesondere auf ihre Planung, Wahrnehmung und Reflexion. Der Beitrag untersucht die Zeitregime und die Zeitwahrnehmung des sowjetischen Oberkommandos und der Zivilbevölkerung in der ersten Phase der Belagerung von Leningrad Herbst 1941–Winter 1941/42. Analysiert werden sowjetische Militärberichte und Niederschriften der Telefonate zwischen dem Hauptquartier des Kommandos des Obersten Befehlshabers in Moskau, dem Leningrader Kriegsrat und der Führung der Leningrader und der Volchov-Front sowie Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen der Leningrader Stadtbevölkerung. Ziel ist, die Bedeutung von Zeit in der Kriegführung des 20. Jahrhunderts an einem konkreten Beispiel zu verdeutlichen.
"It is thus important to a) fundamentally purge the Finance and Gosbank bureaucracy, despite the wails of dubious Communists like Briukhanov-Piatakov; b) definitely shoot two or three dozen wreckers ...from these apparaty, including several dozen common cashiers."-- J. Stalin, no earlier than 6 August 1930"Today I read the section on international affairs. It came out well. The confident, contemptuous tone with respect to the great powers, the belief in our own strength, the delicate but plain spitting in the pot of the swaggering great powers--very good. Let them eat it."--J. Stalin, January 1933 Between 1925 and 1936, a dramatic period of transformation within the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin wrote frequently to his trusted friend and political colleague Viacheslav Molotov, Politburo member, chairman of the USSR Council of Commissars, and minister of foreign affairs. In these letters, Stalin mused on political events, argued with fellow Politburo members, and issued orders. The more than 85 letters collected in this volume constitute a unique historical record of Stalin`s thinking--both personal and political--and throw valuable light on the way he controlled the government, plotted the overthrow of his enemies, and imagined the future. This formerly top secret correspondence, once housed in Soviet archives, is now published for the first time.The letters reveal Stalin in many different and dramatic situations: fighting against party rivals like Trotsky and Bukharin, trying to maneuver in the rapids of the Chinese revolution, negotiating with the West, insisting on the completion of all-out collectivization, and ordering the execution of scapegoats for economic failures. And they provide important and fascinating information about the Soviet Union`s party-state leadership, about party politics, and about Stalin himself--as an administrator, as a Bolshevik, and as an individual. The book includes much supplementary material that places the letters in context. Russian editor Oleg V. Naumov and his associates have annotated the letters, introduced each chronological section, and added other archival documents that help explain the correspondence. American editor Lars T. Lih has provided a lengthy introduction identifying what is new in the letters and using them to draw a portrait of Stalin as leader. Lih points out how the letters help us grasp Stalin`s unique blend of cynicism and belief, manipulation and sincerity--a combination of qualities with catastrophic consequences for Soviet Russia and the world."The letters cast much light on how Stalin went about running the Soviet state during those years...The Stalin of the letters... was an astute and effective leader who . . . was totally devoid of the most elementary human feeling for those who fell victim to one or another of his political designs."--Robert C. Tucker, from the Foreword "The first seventy letters in the book--written between 1925 and 1930--bring out more vividly than ever before Stalin`s unrelenting concentration on power and the maneuvers with which he outwitted his rivals. At the same time, the frankness with which he writes to Molotov and the reliance he places on him make Stalin more credible as a human being. The remaining letters--from 1930 to 1936--show him becoming the suspicious despot of the purges. Taken together, these previously unpublished secret letters are arguably the most revealing documents from the Soviet archives yet available in the West."--Alan Bullock, author of Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives.Lars T. Lih is the author of Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921. He is working on a study of bolshevism. Oleg V. Naumov is assistant director of the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History in Moscow.Annals of Communism series
The Yalta Conference of 1945 brought together three of the most influential leaders of the 20
century: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. Surprisingly, all three leaders ...would go on to suffer strokes after the conference. This manuscript examines the health status of these leaders during and after the Yalta Conference, the factors that contributed to their strokes (including the role of hypertension), and other modifiable risk factors present in each one of them, and the impact of their declining health on their countries and the world. Roosevelt's demise, prior to the conclusion of the war, triggered a leadership transition during a critical moment in history, while Churchill and Stalin's passing shaped the early Cold War era. A veil of secrecy shrouded the health conditions of these pivotal leaders. "The Big Three" made considerable efforts to hide their health conditions from both the press and the public at large.
In this dazzling exploration of one of the most contradictory periods of literary and artistic achievement in modern history, journalist Andy McSmith evokes the lives of more than a dozen of the most ...brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Taking us deep into Stalin's Russia, Fear and the Muse Kept Watch asks the question: can great art be produced in a police state? For although Josif Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history, under him Russia also produced an outpouring of artistic works of immense and lasting power--from the poems of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam to the opera Peter and the Wolf, the film Alexander Nevsky, and the novels The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago. For those artists visible enough for Stalin to take an interest in them, it was Stalin himself who decided whether they lived in luxury or were sent to the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the secret police, to be tortured and sometimes even executed. McSmith brings together the stories of these artists--including Isaac Babel, Boris Pasternak, Dmitri Shostakovich, and many others--revealing how they pursued their art under Stalin's regime and often at great personal risk. It was a world in which the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose bright yellow tunic was considered a threat to public order under the tsars, struggled to make the communist authorities see the value of avant garde art; Babel publicly thanked the regime for allowing him the privilege of not writing; and Shostakovich's career veered wildly between public disgrace and wealth and acclaim. In the tradition of Eileen Simpson's Poets in Their Youth and Phyllis Rose's Parallel Lives, Fear and the Muse Kept Watch is an extraordinary work of historical recovery. It is also a bold exploration of the triumph of art during terrible times and a book that will stay with its
readers for a long, long while.
