When the Irish continued to rebel against English rule, the colonizers began employing methods of extreme violence to subdue the Gaelic people. At the same time, they began to practice more extreme forms of cultural colonization by attacking those aspects of Gaelic culture which most resisted conformity to English standards of civility. The Gaelic legal system, called Brehon law, redistributive inheritance, cattle herding and traditional forms of Irish dress were denigrated to assert English authority over the Irish people. English fear of the negative effects of Gaelic culture were exemplified by the Anglo-Irish lords, who were originally of English descent, but had "degenerated" into Irish barbarians through the use of Gaelic culture. This retrograde process could also occurred when an English person practiced marriage, childbirth, wet-nursing or fosterage with Irish persons. These interactions, and the consequences which came from them, were often described in terms of infection and disease. Thus culture, operating on multiple levels, and how that culture was represented, became a powerful site for colonial power to operate.
As one of the first and most populous epicenters of the Gulag archipelago located in the Far North, from 1929-1958 Komi saw hundreds of thousands of prisoners, in addition to hundreds of thousands more who were exiled to the region from all over the Soviet Union. While some left the region after they were released, many were not able to leave or chose not to when given the choice. Regardless of where they lived when the Soviet Union collapsed, many former prisoners sent their autobiographies to branches of the Memorial Society and local history museums in Komi. For many, this was the very first time they had shared their stories with anyone. While Komi is unique in many ways, it is emblematic of processes that unfolded throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the Twentieth Century. This project expands our understanding of how civil societies form under conditions of authoritarian rule and illuminates the ways in which survivors and societies come to terms with difficult pasts.
The narrative examined here shows the importance and value placed on the war effort, and explores how aspects of the Stalinist period were retained during the Thaw. By focusing on previously unexplored archival material, which documents debates and editorial decisions, an examination of how officials sought to control the state’s explanation of events, motivations and consequences of the war can be examined in-depth. To date, the periodization, terminology and areas of concentration that define the course of the Great Patriotic War are fixated on topics that Stalin’s war narrative favored, assigning significance to events according to Stalinist preferences rather than objective analysis. My study of the war’s historiography shows how contentious its memory became at every level, making it difficult to clearly discern who represented and opposed the party line throughout Soviet society.
The author argues that the collective memory of the war, as propagated by the state, became so all-encompassing that it was often the preferred version, infiltrating individual memories and displacing or blending with personal recollections and factual documentation. Because the war touched the entire population of the Soviet Union, its story became the foundational myth of the USSR, replacing the October Revolution, and was used as a legitimizing tool by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Most recently, it has experienced a revival in the post-Soviet period by Vladimir Putin as a way to unify Russia and build popular support for his administration. Viewing how the public interacted with representatives of the state over the creation of the official history of the war suggests that like no other event, war compels any state, even a totalitarian state, to reexamine its foundations, historical memory, foreign and domestic policies and views on censorship.
This thesis examines the influence of the Communist International (Comintern) on communist parties in Germany and Spain in the early years after the Russian Revolution. Specific attention is focused on the process of bolshevization, through which communists in other countries were forced to use the theory and tactics of the Bolsheviks in Russia, and the impact of this process on the March Action (1921) and German October (1923). This study questions the current historiographical dichotomy of bolshevization, which focuses on control and freedom in the relationship between the Comintern and national communist parties. Instead, the study suggests that exploring the theory and practice of bolshevization may elucidate complex realities and shed light on the influence of the Comintern on revolutionary movements.
This dissertation is based on significant archival research and utilizes various state and Communist Party documents, as well as memoirs, letters, and other personal sources in both Russian and Tatar. It challenges traditional periodization by bridging the Stalin and post-Stalin eras and emphasizes on-the-ground developments rather than official state policy. Finally, it offers insight into the relationship between communism and ethnic difference and presents a nuanced vision of Soviet power that helps to explain the continuing role of nationalism in the contemporary Russian Federation and other post-communist states.
I argue that popular music artists Olga Kormukhina and Polina Gagarina, composer Rodion Shchedrin, and the Mariinsky Theater have transformed the works of past artists, including Viktor Tsoi and Nikolai Leskov, updating them according to a popular demand for patriotic works that the Russian state has cultivated through its media outlets and official pronouncements on cultural policy. Other rock musicians (Konstantin Kinchev and the band Bi-2) have also transformed their political identities to match the present-day demands and expectations of either Russian officialdom or their particular Russian audiences. With the exception of Bi-2 (an ambiguous counterexample), all of these transformations have led to greater associations with nationalistic sentiments or fervent support for state agendas in the contemporary geopolitical arena.
Exploring the wide variety of styles and genres in this dissertation required a methodological versatility involving archival research, reception history, the analysis of musical scores and sound recordings, an examination of prose and poetic texts, and close study of visual imagery in music videos and onstage. The approach to reception history is the most groundbreaking, for it considers a wide range of digital sources, including blogs and social media comment threads, and makes use of language partner apps to augment the pool of informants, allowing conversation with Russians living outside the limited geographical range (St. Petersburg and Moscow) considered by previous studies. This holistic approach to contemporary reception history helps us to better understand how Russian audiences from diverse regions perceive these ongoing transformations.