Stalin

15 articles tagged with stalin were found.

Rescued from Stalin’s terror The unknown Swedish operation in the 1930s

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

Revolution. Russian Art 1917–1932

In the much visited and favorably reviewed exhibition “Revolution. Russian Art 1917—1932” held at the Royal Academy of Arts in February through April 2017, a large number of works was displayed, borrowed from art museums all over Russia and other countries, as well as from private collections.

By Helene Carlbäck November 7, 2017

In Memoriam Robert Conquest

Robert Conquest died on Monday 3 August in Stanford, California. He was 98. Lennart Samuelson here writes on a historian who in his fundamental book of 1969 more than any other coined the term ‘the Great Terror’ for Stalin’s purges and show trials in the 1930s. Baltic Worlds also here highlight Samuelson’s previously published review on the Festschrift Political Violence: Belief, Behavior, and Legitimation, presented to Robert Conquest on his 90th birthday.

By Lennart Samuelson August 21, 2015

Inflationary use of a political concept. Reinterpreting “genocide”

Norman M Naimark, Stalins Genocides, Princeton & Oxford 2010, Princeton University Press, 163 pages, index.

By Lennart Samuelson January 8, 2013

The human hunt that nearly paralyzed the party. A microstudy of Soviet mass terror

Wendy Z. Goldman, Inventing the Enemy, Denunciation and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, Cambridge et al.Cambridge University Press 2011, 320 pages

By Anders Björnsson April 12, 2012

SILENCE AND SURVEILLANCE a history of culture and communication

The history and sociology of the telephone in Russian society have only slowly become the object of serious study. The scope of this essay is limited to the following two topics: first, the forms of use, in pre-revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union, of the telephone as a means of communication, potentially universally available and “horizontal” but actually restricted by “vertical” forces; and second, the symbolism that accumulated around this means of communication in Russian and Soviet culture.

By Lars Kleberg April 10, 2012

Ragnvald Blix. the cartoonist who challenged Hitler

Ragnvald Blix was both a cartoonist and author. Blix declared his manifesto: “To be a good cartoonist, you have to be cold as ice in the face of all ideas and all persons. Sympathies and antipathies do not exist. First and foremost, you must have no respect for authority, tradition, or anything else in Heaven or on Earth, or even for anything in Hell.” Blix continued ridiculing fascism, Nazism, and communism in his satirical cartoons.

By Rikke Petersson May 2, 2011

Fashion Design at GUM, the State Department Store at Moscow

The development of a system for producing Russian fashion clothing, along with the discussion surrounding this venture into fashion, is described here. The GUM department store established a studio and hired designers. The quality and wealth of ideas was often poor, but demand grew steadily.

Essay by Sergey Zhuravlev & Jukka Gronow July 1, 2010

The Reality of Post-Communism

A close reading of Zinoviev and his view of the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a tragedy. Zinoviev helps us to understand how it feels to have your world dismantled and how that experience forms many of the attitudes that lie behind Putin’s policies.

Essay by Philip Hanson July 1, 2010

the tristesse and the lie

Factors such as widespread ennui and resignation should also be seen as part of the explanation for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The increasing tristesse, combined with a diminishing fear of reprisals, contributed to the collapse of the system, it is here claimed.

Essay by Gudrun Persson July 1, 2010