Author: Wladimir Velminski
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262035693
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129
Book Description
How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hyptonism over television to control the minds of citizens. In October 1989, as the Cold War was ending and the Berlin Wall about to crumble, television viewers in the Soviet Union tuned in to the first of a series of unusual broadcasts. “Relax, let your thoughts wander free...” intoned the host, the physician and clinical psychotherapist Anatoly Mikhailovich Kashpirovsky. Moscow's Channel One was attempting mass hypnosis over television, a therapeutic session aimed at reassuring citizens panicked over the ongoing political upheaval—and aimed at taking control of their responses to it. Incredibly enough, this last-ditch effort to rally the citizenry was the culmination of decades of official telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and coded messages undertaken to reinforce ideological conformity. In Homo Sovieticus, the art and media scholar Wladimir Velminski explores these scientific and pseudoscientific efforts at mind control. In a fascinating series of anecdotes, Velminski describes such phenomena as the conflation of mental energy and electromagnetism; the investigation of aura fields through the “Aurathron”; a laboratory that practiced mind control methods on dogs; and attempts to calibrate the thought processes of laborers. “Scientific” diagrams from the period accompany the text. In all of the experimental methods for implanting thoughts into a brain, Velminski finds political and metaphorical contaminations. These apparently technological experiments in telepathy and telekinesis were deployed for purely political purposes.
Homo Sovieticus
Author: Wladimir Velminski
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262035693
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129
Book Description
How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hyptonism over television to control the minds of citizens. In October 1989, as the Cold War was ending and the Berlin Wall about to crumble, television viewers in the Soviet Union tuned in to the first of a series of unusual broadcasts. “Relax, let your thoughts wander free...” intoned the host, the physician and clinical psychotherapist Anatoly Mikhailovich Kashpirovsky. Moscow's Channel One was attempting mass hypnosis over television, a therapeutic session aimed at reassuring citizens panicked over the ongoing political upheaval—and aimed at taking control of their responses to it. Incredibly enough, this last-ditch effort to rally the citizenry was the culmination of decades of official telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and coded messages undertaken to reinforce ideological conformity. In Homo Sovieticus, the art and media scholar Wladimir Velminski explores these scientific and pseudoscientific efforts at mind control. In a fascinating series of anecdotes, Velminski describes such phenomena as the conflation of mental energy and electromagnetism; the investigation of aura fields through the “Aurathron”; a laboratory that practiced mind control methods on dogs; and attempts to calibrate the thought processes of laborers. “Scientific” diagrams from the period accompany the text. In all of the experimental methods for implanting thoughts into a brain, Velminski finds political and metaphorical contaminations. These apparently technological experiments in telepathy and telekinesis were deployed for purely political purposes.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262035693
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129
Book Description
How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hyptonism over television to control the minds of citizens. In October 1989, as the Cold War was ending and the Berlin Wall about to crumble, television viewers in the Soviet Union tuned in to the first of a series of unusual broadcasts. “Relax, let your thoughts wander free...” intoned the host, the physician and clinical psychotherapist Anatoly Mikhailovich Kashpirovsky. Moscow's Channel One was attempting mass hypnosis over television, a therapeutic session aimed at reassuring citizens panicked over the ongoing political upheaval—and aimed at taking control of their responses to it. Incredibly enough, this last-ditch effort to rally the citizenry was the culmination of decades of official telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and coded messages undertaken to reinforce ideological conformity. In Homo Sovieticus, the art and media scholar Wladimir Velminski explores these scientific and pseudoscientific efforts at mind control. In a fascinating series of anecdotes, Velminski describes such phenomena as the conflation of mental energy and electromagnetism; the investigation of aura fields through the “Aurathron”; a laboratory that practiced mind control methods on dogs; and attempts to calibrate the thought processes of laborers. “Scientific” diagrams from the period accompany the text. In all of the experimental methods for implanting thoughts into a brain, Velminski finds political and metaphorical contaminations. These apparently technological experiments in telepathy and telekinesis were deployed for purely political purposes.
Homo Sovieticus
Author: Aleksandr Zinoviev
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 9780871130808
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 206
Book Description
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 9780871130808
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 206
Book Description
The Future Is History
Author: Masha Gessen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159463453X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530
Book Description
WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159463453X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530
Book Description
WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
Everyday Stalinism
Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195050002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, this college professor illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, landing a job, and other acts.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195050002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, this college professor illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, landing a job, and other acts.
Sovieticus
Author: Stephen F. Cohen
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN:
Category : Public opinion
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
Gorbachev, dissidents, and Cold War perils are some of the topics discussed in this book that provides the historical context and informed analysis so often lacking in American commentary on Soviet affairs today.
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN:
Category : Public opinion
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
Gorbachev, dissidents, and Cold War perils are some of the topics discussed in this book that provides the historical context and informed analysis so often lacking in American commentary on Soviet affairs today.
Rethinking the Soviet Experience
Author: Stephen F. Cohen
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195040163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
Written in 1985, this book cuts through the Cold War stereotypes of the Soviet Union to arrive at fresh interpretations of that country's traumatic history and later political realities. The author probes Soviet history, society, and politics to explain how the U.S.S.R. remained stable from revolution through the mid-1980s.
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195040163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
Written in 1985, this book cuts through the Cold War stereotypes of the Soviet Union to arrive at fresh interpretations of that country's traumatic history and later political realities. The author probes Soviet history, society, and politics to explain how the U.S.S.R. remained stable from revolution through the mid-1980s.
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking
Author: Anya von Bremzen
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307886832
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations “Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR. Wildly inventive and slyly witty, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307886832
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations “Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR. Wildly inventive and slyly witty, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly
Encyclopedia of Soviet Life
Author: Ilya Zemtsov
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412822564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390
Book Description
A by-product of the amazing changes now taking place within the Soviet Union is a change in rhetoric no less than reality. Under Gorbachev, the Russian language has been changing parallel with "novoe politichaskoe myshenie - "new political thinking - with the effect that such new expressions as have flooded the Russian language clash with the less yielding realities of Soviet economy and society. The purpose of this volume is to clarify this dynamic in Soviet life, in which stagnation and decay confront hopes and expectations for liberalization. Zemtsov argues that the Soviet political language is self-contradictory, fractured into polarities of good and evil and thus depriving the Russian language of its basic subtlety, coherence, and inner logic. This work brings to life the Orwellian world of double-speak in a post-totalitarian environment. The Soviet language has two basic components: fictions which Communist ideology proclaims as reality, and realities that are portrayed in the guise of fictions. In this sense, Zemtsov undertakes to do for the Soviet language what the great H. L. Mencken achieved for the American language -show the reality of Soviet life by making plain the fictive qualities of Soviet ideology. This is a basic library reference work, a volume of indispensable utility for political scientists, area experts, and policy analysts. It offers a taxonomy enriched by a deep, personal knowledge of the Russian language by its author. "Encyclopedia of Soviet Life "is at one and the same time a basic primer of Soviet contemporary politics, a deep portrait of the psychology of totalitarian manipulation, and a sensitive appreciation of the nobler aspirations of the Russian people that is part and parcel of their great language.
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412822564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390
Book Description
A by-product of the amazing changes now taking place within the Soviet Union is a change in rhetoric no less than reality. Under Gorbachev, the Russian language has been changing parallel with "novoe politichaskoe myshenie - "new political thinking - with the effect that such new expressions as have flooded the Russian language clash with the less yielding realities of Soviet economy and society. The purpose of this volume is to clarify this dynamic in Soviet life, in which stagnation and decay confront hopes and expectations for liberalization. Zemtsov argues that the Soviet political language is self-contradictory, fractured into polarities of good and evil and thus depriving the Russian language of its basic subtlety, coherence, and inner logic. This work brings to life the Orwellian world of double-speak in a post-totalitarian environment. The Soviet language has two basic components: fictions which Communist ideology proclaims as reality, and realities that are portrayed in the guise of fictions. In this sense, Zemtsov undertakes to do for the Soviet language what the great H. L. Mencken achieved for the American language -show the reality of Soviet life by making plain the fictive qualities of Soviet ideology. This is a basic library reference work, a volume of indispensable utility for political scientists, area experts, and policy analysts. It offers a taxonomy enriched by a deep, personal knowledge of the Russian language by its author. "Encyclopedia of Soviet Life "is at one and the same time a basic primer of Soviet contemporary politics, a deep portrait of the psychology of totalitarian manipulation, and a sensitive appreciation of the nobler aspirations of the Russian people that is part and parcel of their great language.
Russian Conservatism
Author: Glenn Diesen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538149990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
Russian conservatism is making a forceful return after a century of experimenting with socialism and liberalism. Conservatism is about managing change by ensuring that modernization evolves organically by building on the past. Conservatism has a natural attraction for Russia as its thousand-year long history is largely characterized by revolutionary change - the destructive process of uprooting the past to give way to modernity. Navigating towards gradual and organic modernization has been a key struggle ever since the Mongols invaded in the early 13th century and decoupled Russia from Europe and the arteries of international trade. Russian history has consisted of avoiding revolutions that are either caused by falling behind on modernization or making great leaps forward that disrupts socio-economic and political traditions. Russian conservatives are now tasked with harmonizing the conservative ideas of the 19th century with the revolutionary changes that shaped Russia in the 20th century. The rise of Asia now provides new opportunities as it enables Russia to overcome its fixation on the West and develop a unique Russian path towards modernization that harmonizes its Eurasian geography and history.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538149990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
Russian conservatism is making a forceful return after a century of experimenting with socialism and liberalism. Conservatism is about managing change by ensuring that modernization evolves organically by building on the past. Conservatism has a natural attraction for Russia as its thousand-year long history is largely characterized by revolutionary change - the destructive process of uprooting the past to give way to modernity. Navigating towards gradual and organic modernization has been a key struggle ever since the Mongols invaded in the early 13th century and decoupled Russia from Europe and the arteries of international trade. Russian history has consisted of avoiding revolutions that are either caused by falling behind on modernization or making great leaps forward that disrupts socio-economic and political traditions. Russian conservatives are now tasked with harmonizing the conservative ideas of the 19th century with the revolutionary changes that shaped Russia in the 20th century. The rise of Asia now provides new opportunities as it enables Russia to overcome its fixation on the West and develop a unique Russian path towards modernization that harmonizes its Eurasian geography and history.
Producing Power
Author: Sonja D. Schmid
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262538806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395
Book Description
An examination of how the technical choices, social hierarchies, economic structures, and political dynamics shaped the Soviet nuclear industry leading up to Chernobyl. The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and industry mismanagement. Six former Chernobyl employees were convicted of criminal negligence; they defended themselves by pointing to reactor design issues. Other observers blamed the Soviet style of ideologically driven economic and industrial management. In Producing Power, Sonja Schmid draws on interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear industry and extensive research in Russian archives as she examines these alternate accounts. Rather than pursue one “definitive” explanation, she investigates how each of these narratives makes sense in its own way and demonstrates that each implies adherence to a particular set of ideas—about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, organizational methods for ensuring safety and productivity, and even about the legitimacy of the Soviet state. She also shows how these attitudes shaped, and were shaped by, the Soviet nuclear industry from its very beginnings. Schmid explains that Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress. She examines the Soviet nuclear industry's dual origins in weapons and electrification programs, and she traces the emergence of nuclear power experts as a professional community. Schmid also fundamentally reassesses the design choices for nuclear power reactors in the shadow of the Cold War's arms race. Schmid's account helps us understand how and why a complex sociotechnical system broke down. Chernobyl, while unique and specific to the Soviet experience, can also provide valuable lessons for contemporary nuclear projects.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262538806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395
Book Description
An examination of how the technical choices, social hierarchies, economic structures, and political dynamics shaped the Soviet nuclear industry leading up to Chernobyl. The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and industry mismanagement. Six former Chernobyl employees were convicted of criminal negligence; they defended themselves by pointing to reactor design issues. Other observers blamed the Soviet style of ideologically driven economic and industrial management. In Producing Power, Sonja Schmid draws on interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear industry and extensive research in Russian archives as she examines these alternate accounts. Rather than pursue one “definitive” explanation, she investigates how each of these narratives makes sense in its own way and demonstrates that each implies adherence to a particular set of ideas—about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, organizational methods for ensuring safety and productivity, and even about the legitimacy of the Soviet state. She also shows how these attitudes shaped, and were shaped by, the Soviet nuclear industry from its very beginnings. Schmid explains that Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress. She examines the Soviet nuclear industry's dual origins in weapons and electrification programs, and she traces the emergence of nuclear power experts as a professional community. Schmid also fundamentally reassesses the design choices for nuclear power reactors in the shadow of the Cold War's arms race. Schmid's account helps us understand how and why a complex sociotechnical system broke down. Chernobyl, while unique and specific to the Soviet experience, can also provide valuable lessons for contemporary nuclear projects.