Socialist Realism and the Holocaust: Jewish Life and Death in Anatoly Rybakov's Heavy Sand

PMLA ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Rosenshield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

Anatoly Rybakov's Heavy Sand (; 1978), the first widely read work of Russian fiction since the 1930s to deal extensively with Jewish life during the Soviet period, is a bold—and problematic—attempt to overcome the negative stereotype of the Jew in Russian culture and to create a memorial to the Soviet Jews murdered by the Nazis. However, governmental and self-imposed censorship, socialist realism, and the narrator's conflicted Russian-Jewish identity vitiate this rehabilitative project. Rybakov's use of socialist realism to heroize the Jews and to present their destruction as part of a larger plot to exterminate the Slavs distorts and de-Judaizes the Soviet Jewish catastrophe of the Second World War. Heavy Sand is replete with tensions and contradictions. On the one hand, the author celebrates Jewish family life and writes of a memorial to murdered Jews that includes a potentially subversive Hebrew inscription; on the other, he denies the significance of Jewish identity and provides a Russian translation of the Hebrew inscription that accords with Soviet policy and ideology. In the end, Heavy Sand conceals more than it reveals about Jewish life and death in the Soviet Union; it represents an aesthetics of—and a testimony to—not remembering but forgetting.

scholarly journals “As quiet as a mouse”: Media use in Azerbaijan

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (s1) ◽  
pp. 893-911
Author(s):  
Ilgar Seyidov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Media System ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Supportive Role ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One

AbstractDuring the Soviet period, the media served as one of the main propagandist tools of the authoritarian regime, using a standardized and monotype media system across the Soviet Republics. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 15 countries became independent. The transition from Soviet communism to capitalism has led to the reconstruction of economic, socio-cultural, and political systems. One of the most affected institutions in post-Soviet countries was the media. Media have played a supportive role during rough times, when there was, on the one hand, the struggle for liberation and sovereignty, and, on the other hand, the need for nation building. It has been almost 30 years since the Soviet Republics achieved independence, yet the media have not been freed from political control and continue to serve as ideological apparatuses of authoritarian regimes in post-Soviet countries. Freedom of speech and independent media are still under threat. The current study focuses on media use in Azerbaijan, one of the under-researched post-Soviet countries. The interviews for this study were conducted with 40 participants living in Nakhichevan and Baku. In-depth, semi-structured interview techniques were used as research method. Findings are discussed under six main themes in the conclusion.

Jews in Poland and Russia: A Short History

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Yiddish Literature ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Modern Hebrew ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

For many centuries Poland and Russia formed the heartland of the Jewish world: right up to the Second World War, the area was home to over 40 per cent of the world's Jews. Yet the history of their Jewish communities is not well known. This book recreates this lost world, beginning with Jewish economic, cultural and religious life, including the emergence of hasidism. By the late eighteenth century, other factors had come into play: with the onset of modernization there were government attempts to integrate and transform the Jews, and the stirrings of Enlightenment led to the growth of the Haskalah movement. The book looks at developments in each area in turn: the problems of emancipation, acculturation, and assimilation in Prussian and Austrian Poland; the politics of integration in the Kingdom of Poland; and the failure of forced integration in the tsarist empire. It shows how the deterioration in the position of the Jews between 1881 and 1914 encouraged a range of new movements as well as the emergence of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. It also examines Jewish urbanization and the rise of Jewish mass culture. The final part, starting from the First World War and the establishment of the Soviet Union, looks in turn at Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union up to the Second World War. It reviews Polish–Jewish relations during the war and examines the Soviet record in relation to the Holocaust. The final chapters deal with the Jews in the Soviet Union and in Poland since 1945, concluding with an epilogue on the Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia since the collapse of communism.

FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR: THE WARTIME ALLIANCE AND POST-WAR TRANSITIONS, 1941–1947

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID REYNOLDS
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This review examines some of the recent British, American, and Russian scholarship on a series of important international transitions that occurred in the years around 1945. One is the shift of global leadership from Great Britain to the United States, in which, it is argued, the decisive moment was the fall of France in 1940. Another transition is the emergence of a wartime alliance between Britain and America, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on the other, followed by its disintegration into the Cold War. Here the opening of Soviet sources during the 1990s has provided new evidence, though not clear answers. To understand both of these transitions, however, it is necessary to move beyond diplomacy and strategy to look at the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the Second World War. In particular, recent studies of American and Soviet soldiers during and after the conflict re-open the debate about Cold War ideology from the bottom up.

The Eastern Traditions Today

2020 ◽  
pp. 589-605
Author(s):  
Scott M. Kenworthy
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
Communist Past ◽  
Eastern Traditions ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Revolution

The revolution of 1917 ended a dynamic period of monastic growth in Russia and brought to power a government that was militantly anti-religious. It eliminated all monasteries in the first decade after the revolution, and it persecuted monastics in the 1930s. A limited number of monasteries were tolerated after the Second World War until the end of the Soviet period. Since the collapse of communism, however, Russian monasticism has experienced a significant revival. In Romania, monasticism has always been central to Orthodoxy. Because Romania became communist after the Second World War, the persecution of monasticism was less severe there than in the Soviet Union, and there was greater continuity with the pre-communist past. Monasticism continues to enjoy a significant presence in contemporary Romania. Historians have only just begun to study the fate of monasticism under communism, and sociologists and ethnographers are engaging in promising studies of contemporary monastic life in Russia and Romania.

About the beginning of World War II: historical and legal research. Part two

2021 ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Konstantin S. Rodionov
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

This article is a continuation of the one that was published in the journal “State and Law” in 2020 (No. 8). It examines the circumstances of Hitler's decision to attack Poland on September 1, 1939, which began the Second World War. The author decides what influenced his acceptance more - the policy of appeasement, which Britain and France adhered to in relation to Hitler, or the signing by the Soviet Union of an additional secret protocol to the Non-Aggression Pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) signed by its parties on August 23, 1939?

Political Culture and National Symbols: Their Impact on the Belarusian Nation-Building Process

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 649-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Sahm
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
National State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Building Process ◽  
New States ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The One

The new states emerging from the break-up of the Soviet Union not only had to manage the task of political and economic reforms but were also forced to develop a suitable national state ideology in order to ensure their achieved independence. The existence of a national consensus is essential for the stability of every state and society, and during periods of transition the question how national identity is defined becomes especially important. Thus, on the one hand, the dominance of a concrete national state concept may facilitate the transformation process because people are ready to bear the social costs of economic reforms in the name of state sovereignty, as was the case in Lithuania. On the other hand, a continuing Soviet cultural hegemony can also block necessary modernization in the post-Soviet period.

scholarly journals Poles and Jews in the Second World War: the Revisions of Jan T. Gross

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Connelly
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Local Police ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Lincoln University ◽  
Second World

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 261 pp., ISBN 0-691-08667-2.Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy 1918–1955: Współistnienie – zagłada – komunizm (Warsaw: Biblioteka Frondy, 2000), 731 pp., ISBN 8-391-25418-6.Leo Cooper, In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle: The Poles, the Holocaust, and Beyond (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave, 2000), 255 pp., ISBN 0-333-75265-1.Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), ISBN 0-312-22056-1.Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union, 8th edn (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999), 508 pp., ISBN 0-803-21050-7.

scholarly journals Slovenian Music in the First Decade after the Second World War – In Search of Socialist Realism

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Gregor Pompe
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social System ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Second World War ◽  
New Music ◽  
World War ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Ideological Perspective ◽  
Second World

After the Second World War, Slovenia became a part of socialist Yugoslavia, which, following the example of the Soviet Union, scrutinised art from an ideological perspective. Previous studies of the influence of the new social system on Slovenian music have not discovered any distinct and direct political interventions in musical life, so it is reasonable to enquire whether such influences can be identified in the works of Slovenian composers from the first decade after the end of the Second World War. It turns out that demands and solutions were rather ambivalent and arbitrary; some composers, particularly those who continued traditional musical expression, did not adapt their aesthetic principles, while a change in style is observed especially in those composers who had endorsed the new music before the war.

Structuring time, allocating labour: income-earning strategies of urban households in Russia and the Soviet Union: Introduction

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIJS KESSLER
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Urban Households ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

The following articles by myself and by Andrei Markevich are the first in a series of four analysing income-earning strategies of urban households in twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union. The articles deal with a similar set of issues for four subsequent periods. In this issue of Continuity and Change my article covers the early Soviet period from the revolution of 1917 to the start of the Second World War and Andrei Markevich focuses on the war, the post-war Stalin period and the Khruschev years, taking his analysis into the latter half of the 1960s. In the next issue, Victoria Tyazhelnikova will examine the Brezhnev period and Sergei Afontsev the years of reform under Gorbachev and in post-Soviet Russia.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document