scholarly journals The Psychopharmacological Revolution in the USSR: Schizophrenia Treatment and the Thaw in Soviet Psychiatry, 1954–64

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-269
Author(s):  
Benjamin Zajicek

Twentieth-century psychiatry was transformed in the 1950s and 1960s by the introduction of powerful psychopharmaceuticals, particularly Chlorpromazine (Thorazine). This paper examines the reception of Chlorpromazine in the Soviet Union and its effect on the Soviet practice of psychiatry. The drug, known in the USSR by the name Aminazine, was first used in Moscow in 1954 and was officially approved in 1955. I argue that Soviet psychiatrists initially embraced it because Aminazine enabled them to successfully challenge the Stalin-era dogma in their field (Ivan Pavlov’s ‘theory of higher nervous activity’). Unlike in the West, however, the new psychopharmaceuticals did not lead to deinstitutionalisation. I argue that the new drugs did not disrupt the existing Soviet system because, unlike the system in the West, the Soviets were already dedicated, at least in theory, to a model which paired psychiatric hospitals with community-based ‘neuropsychiatric dispensaries.’ Chlorpromazine gave this system a new lease on life, encouraging Soviet psychiatrists to more rapidly move patients from in-patient treatment to ‘supporting’ treatment in the community.

Author(s):  
Johannes Reckel ◽  

Introduction. The Oirats are Western Mongols, today living between the Altai mountains, the river Volga, the Kukunor Area, the Ili River and Kyrgyzstan. In 1648, Zaya Pandita from the Hoshut (Hoshud) tribe of the Oirats created the ‘Clear Script’ (Oir. Todo Bičig), nowadays also known as Oirat Script. This script was originally meant to be used as a reformed script by all Mongols, but it caught on with the Western Mongols, the Dzungars (Oirats, Kalmyks), only. The 20th century witnessed the introduction of new writing standards for individual groups of Oirats/Kalmyks in the Soviet Union (Russia), China and Mongolia, which led to a weakening of the West Mongolian identity. Three of the most influential Kalmyk scholars, who worked on the reform of the written language and who were active as teachers and researchers in Tashkent, Sinkiang and Western Mongolia in the 1920s and 1930s, were Aksen Suseev, Iǰil Čürüm and Ceren Dorži Nominhanov. Goals. The study aims to investigate the connection between ethnic identity and (written) language against the background of global political upheavals. The work focuses on the change of the Oirat written language in Sinkiang (Xinjiang) in a multi-ethnic region compared to the Kalmyk written language in Russia, as well as the Oirat language in Mongolia over the past 100 years. Materials. The research project, given as an outline in the following article, analyzes schoolbooks, dictionaries, grammars and other printed materials of the 20th and 21st centuries in the West Mongolian Oirat script collected in Sinkiang Kalmykia since 1986. Results. Since the 1940s, the Oirats in Sinkiang have been taking up a development in their reformed written language that was originally initiated in Kalmykia by Kalmyk scholars during the period of 1915–1938, but was not carried on there due to the political conditions which resulted in the deportation of the Kalmyks to Siberia in 1943. After the return of the Kalmyks to Kalmykia since 1957/58 the old traditions were broken, and the development of the written language focused solely on the use of a modified Cyrillic alphabet. The community based on a common script of the Kalmyks and Oirats – in China, Russia (Kalmykia) and Western Mongolia – broke up, and the three or four groups went their separate ways. For example, the orthography and grammar of the Oirat written language in reformed Todo Bičig in Sinkiang is not standardized until today. The Oirats in Mongolia, like the Oirats in Kyrgyzstan, no longer have their own written language in which they can express themselves in writing. Another desideratum is a textbook of modern Kalmyk and modern Sinkiang Oirat for Western students and scholars. Although some institutions and scholars have some Oirat language archives, like the State and University Library Goettingen has good collection of Kalmyk-Oirat and Mongolian literature, there are a lot of aspects to deal with.


Author(s):  
Yuriy Makar

On December 22, 2017 the Ukrainian Diplomatic Service marked the 100thanniversary of its establishment and development. In dedication to such a momentous event, the Department of International Relations of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University has published a book of IR Dept’s ardent activity since its establishment. It includes information both in Ukrainian and English on the backbone of the collective and their versatile activities, achievements and prospects for the future. The author delves into retracing the course of the history of Ukrainian Diplomacy formation and development. The author highlights the roots of its formation, reconsidering a long way of its development that coincided with the formation of basic elements of Ukrainian statehood that came into existence as a result of the war of national liberation – the Ukrainian Central Rada (the Central Council of Ukraine). Later, the Ukrainian or so-called State the Hetmanate was under study. The Directorat (Directory) of Ukraine, being a provisional collegiate revolutionary state committee of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, was given a thorough study. Of particular interest for the research are diplomatic activities of the West Ukrainian People`s Republic. Noteworthy, the author emphasizes on the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic’s foreign policy, forced by the Bolshevist Russia. A further important implication is both the challenges of the Ukrainian statehood establishing and Ukraine’s functioning as a state, first and foremost, stemmed from the immaturity and conscience-unawareness of the Ukrainian society, that, ultimately, has led to the fact, that throughout the twentieth century Ukraine as a statehood, being incorporated into the Soviet Union, could hardly be recognized as a sovereign state. Our research suggests that since the beginning of the Ukrainian Diplomacy establishment and its further evolution, it used to be unprecedentedly fabricated and forged. On a wider level, the research is devoted to centennial fight of Ukraine against Russian violence and aggression since the WWI, when in 1917 the Russian Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, started real Russian war against Ukraine. Apropos, in the about-a-year-negotiation run, Ukraine, eventually, failed to become sovereign. Remarkably, Ukraine finally gained its independence just in late twentieth century. Nowadays, Russia still regards Ukraine as a part of its own strategic orbit,waging out a carrot-and-stick battle. Keywords: The Ukrainian People’s Republic, the State of Ukraine, the Hetmanate, the Direcorat (Directory) of Ukraine, the West Ukrainian People`s Republic, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, Ukraine, the Bolshevist Russia, the Russian Federation, Ukrainian diplomacy


Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.


Author(s):  
William C. Brumfield

This article examines the development of retrospective styles in Soviet architecture during the Stalin era, from the 1930s to the early 1950s. This highly visible manifestation of communist visual culture is usually interpreted as a reaction to the austere modernism of 1920s Soviet avant-garde architecture represented by the constructivist movement. The project locates the origins of Stalin-era proclamatory, retrospective style in prerevolutionary neoclassical revival architecture. Although functioning in a capitalist market, that neoclassical reaction was supported by prominent critics who were suspicious of Russia’s nascent bourgeoisie and felt that neoclassical or neo-Renaissance architecture could echo the glory of imperial Russia. These critics left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but prominent architects of the neoclassicist revival remained in the Soviet Union. Together with the Academy of Architecture (founded 1933), these architects played a critical role in reviving classicist monumentalism—designated “socialist realism”—as the proclamatory style for the centralized, neoimperial statist system of the Stalin era. Despite different ideological contexts (prerevolutionary and Stalinist), retrospective styles were promulgated as models for significant architectural projects. The article concludes with comments on the post-Stalinist—and post-Soviet—alternation of modernist and retrospective architectural styles.


1989 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-111
Author(s):  
Amos A. Jordan ◽  
Richard L. Grant

2021 ◽  
pp. 161189442110186
Author(s):  
Anna Kozlova

The article analyses the survival of the children’s centres, Artek and Orlyonok, during the post-socialist transformation. It is based on 50 interviews with employees who worked there starting in the late-Soviet era. Artek and Orlyonok were exemplary children’s camps, subordinated to the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Since the early 1960s, they have functioned as schools for distinguished teenagers who were considered ‘good examples’ for other children. In this article, I have made an ethnographic analysis of Artek and Orlyonok employees’ late-Soviet experiences. This analysis shows how the agency of Soviet counsellors and camp directors became a creative interpretation of the governmental order to raise the children as active Soviet citizens. Camp educators transformed it in line with the idea to base their agency on ‘common human values’, which was spread in the Soviet educational field in the post-Stalin era. As a result, the Soviet teaching experiences gained in these education centres were heterogeneous. When a child-centred paradigm was later introduced to the post-Soviet educational system, the camps adopted the most applicable practices from their Soviet experiences.


Experiment ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 297-316
Author(s):  
Lorin Johnson ◽  
Donald Bradburn

In the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles audiences saw Soviet defectors Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alexander Godunov, Natalia Makarova, and Rudolf Nureyev in the prime of their careers at the Hollywood Bowl, The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Greek Theater. Dance photographer Donald Dale Bradburn, a local Southern California dancer describes his behind-the-scenes access to these dancers in this interview. Perfectly positioned as Dance Magazine’s Southern California correspondent, Bradburn offers a candid appraisal of the Southern California appeal for such high-power Russian artists as well as their impact on the arts of Los Angeles. An intimate view of Russian dancers practicing their craft on Los Angeles stages, Bradburn’s interview is illustrated by fourteen of his photographs, published for the first time in this issue of Experiment.


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