57 articles tagged with soviet were found.
The process of decolonization in Ukrainian cities is significant because of the remaining socialist heritage. This includes architecture, urban planning structures, toponyms, and symbolic spaces. While this heritage is deeply implemented in the contemporary cityscape, it has also become the subject of criticism, particularly after the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014. Socialist cities such as Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kryvyi Rig played a prominent role in shaping the urban landscape and were conceptualized by Soviet urbanists in the 1920s and 1930s. These cities were designed to gain complete control over the social and professional aspects of residents’ lives, reflecting the ideological ambitions of the communist party. This article explores the importance of socialist cities in the context of colonial heritage, examining the origins of the idea and its ideological significance.
Essay by
Anastasiia Bozhenko and Olesya Chagovets
December 10, 2024
The article discusses the portrayal of hippies in The Pink Elephant (Rozā zilonis, 1976), a story by the Latvian SSR writer and physician, Miervaldis Birze (1921–2000). The author’s attitude towards this counterculture is mostly critical, even patronizing; however, it is through the portrayal of the hippies, Broņislavs and Baiba, that the author indulges in a conversation about young adulthood, revives the story, and even trifles with the questionable or inadmissible aspects of life. The Pink Elephant, when read through the lens of renewed interest about Soviet hippies, reveals their living conditions, attitude towards power, their parents, and themselves. As opposed to their Western counterparts, the impoverished Soviet hippies (who had experienced the system of blats and the shadow economy) did not condemn consumerism; in fact, they sought out material goods, especially those originating from the other side of the ocean.
Essay by
Anna Auzāne Paula Auzāne
December 9, 2024
The author analyses the operation by Swedish diplomats in the Soviet Union during the peak of the Stalinist Terror. Although Swedish communists living in the USSR have been in the spotlight of some journalists and historians, the extent of the different Swedish groups and the complicated diplomatic actions to help them are nearly unknown. Who could be saved? Who disappeared in the Gulag? The context is the Soviet actions against all foreigners in the Great Terror from 1937, forcing them to either become Soviet citizens or immediately leave the country. Comparisons are made with Finnish people in the Soviet Union, a group much harder hit by the terror than the small groups of Swedes.
By
Torbjörn Nilsson
April 23, 2024
This text gives a glimpse of a hitherto unknown design discourse during the Cold War – from both sides of the Iron Curtain – by exploring the 1975 Congress of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), held in Moscow. Sweden sent a big delegation to Russia. More than forty of the small country’s top designers and influencers participated, which was more than twice as many as usual to these international design congresses. Thanks to reactions published about the events in journals on design in Sweden and in the Soviet Union, archival material, and the author’s own interviews with the delegates from Sweden who participated in Moscow, as well as one-off exclusive backstage witnesses from the local staff of the host organization during the ongoing congress, Moscow 1975 is experienced through the eyes of contemporary witnesses. The essay gives new insights into the world congress in design and illustrates the international atmosphere during the Cold War.
By
Margareta Tillberg
June 22, 2022
I would like to offer this remnant of a futuristic halo of the Soviet space program as a possible way to comprehend why April 12 never managed to become a full-fledged fantasy world of what Boym terms “restorative nostalgia” like May 9th, and to see which alternative ways to understand nostalgia it may open up.
Essay by
Roman Privalov
June 22, 2022
This article describes the New Age version of the dolphinist myth and the practices of human-dolphin communication that developed in the late Soviet Union in the grassroots movement for “home waterbirth and active raising of infants.” The Aquaculture method, authored by the psychic healer and charismatic teacher Igor Charkovsky (1936–2021), included intensive training of pregnant women, giving birth in water, infant swimming, and diving from the first day of life, as well as metaphysical connections with dolphins.
By
Anna Ozhiganova
January 24, 2022
Wine constitutes a corner-stone in the past and present of Armenian and Georgian societies. During the Soviet era, the production, distribution and consumtion of agro-food products, including wine, became elements in the geopolitical organization of food and agri-cultural relations of the USSR and of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Reconstruction (after 1965). The Armenian wine industry was restructured and its main focus became the production of sherry, while the Georgian wine industry focused on wine production, most of which was exported to Russia. The wine sector became re-structured, vineyards were collectivized and their management was centralized and a far reaching division of labour was implemented at industry level. This article offers a glimpse of the economic history of wine in Armenia and Georgia between the 1920’s and 1991.
By
Paulina Rytkönen
October 25, 2021
The Division of Prints and Drawings of the Swedish National Museum contains a collection with just over 200 hand painted images of the peoples of the Russian Empire which, up to the present time, has been largely unknown to scholars. The images, dating from the first half of the 18th century, are associated with the name of Friedrich Wilhelm Bergholtz (1699–1772) a courtier and collector who served as a tutor to the Grand Duke Petr Fedorovich (the future Peter III). In this article, the authors describe the contents of the collection, consider its' possible origin, and assess its significance, particularly with regard to its depictions of Siberian peoples and Ukrainians.
Essay by
Edward Kasinec and Nathaniel Knight
April 22, 2021
In this article the author, a multidisciplinary artist, reflects on the process of making the video project Red, 2015,
(21:45 min.) and a sound installation The White Wall, 2015 (9:30 min.) about post-Soviet times and transgenerational silence about experiences with the Soviet Union.
By
Kati Roover
February 15, 2021
Seasoned Socialism: Gender and Food in Late Soviet Everyday Life , Ed. by Anastasia Lakhtikova, Angela Brintlinger, and Irina Glushchenko. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2019, 396 pages
By
Julia Malitska
December 30, 2019