Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40 PDF Author: Ludmila Stern
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134238673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Despite the appalling record of the Soviet Union on human rights questions, many western intellectuals with otherwise impeccable liberal credentials were strong supporters the Soviet Union in the interwar period. This book explores how this seemingly impossible situation came about. Focusing in particular on the work of various official and semi-official bodies, including Comintern, the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers' Union, this book shows how cultural propaganda was always a high priority for the Soviet Union, and how successful this cultural propaganda was in seducing so many Western thinkers.

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40 PDF Author: Ludmila Stern
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134238673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Despite the appalling record of the Soviet Union on human rights questions, many western intellectuals with otherwise impeccable liberal credentials were strong supporters the Soviet Union in the interwar period. This book explores how this seemingly impossible situation came about. Focusing in particular on the work of various official and semi-official bodies, including Comintern, the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers' Union, this book shows how cultural propaganda was always a high priority for the Soviet Union, and how successful this cultural propaganda was in seducing so many Western thinkers.

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40 PDF Author: Ludmila Stern
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134238665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Despite the appalling record of the Soviet Union on human rights questions, many western intellectuals with otherwise impeccable liberal credentials were strong supporters the Soviet Union in the interwar period. This book explores how this seemingly impossible situation came about. Focusing in particular on the work of various official and semi-official bodies, including Comintern, the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers' Union, this book shows how cultural propaganda was always a high priority for the Soviet Union, and how successful this cultural propaganda was in seducing so many Western thinkers.

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-4

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-4 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781282777323
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Despite the appalling record of Soviet Union human rights, many western intellectuals with otherwise impeccable liberal credentials strongly supported the Soviet Union in the interwar period. This book explores how this seemingly impossible situation came.

Showcasing the Great Experiment

Showcasing the Great Experiment PDF Author: Michael David-Fox
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 019979457X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Showcasing the Great Experiment provides the most far-reaching account of Soviet methods of cultural diplomacy innovated to influence Western intellectuals and foreign visitors. Probing the declassified records of agencies charged with crafting the international image of communism, it reinterprets one of the great cross-cultural and trans-ideological encounters of the twentieth century.

Soviet Union

Soviet Union PDF Author: Raymond E. Zickel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Russia
Languages : en
Pages : 1182

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Book Description


The Dream that Failed

The Dream that Failed PDF Author: Walter Laqueur
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195102827
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The Dream that Failed offers an authoritative assessment of the Soviet era - from the triumph of Lenin to the fall of Gorbachev. In recent years, decades of conventional wisdom about the U.S.S.R. have been swept away, while a flood of evidence from Russian archives demands new thinking about old assumptions. This inquiry is conducted on the grand scale: the author explains how the Bolsheviks won the struggle for power in 1917; how they captured the commitment of a young generation of Russians; why the idealism faded as Soviet power grew; how the system ultimately collapsed; and why Western experts have been wrong about the Communist system. Thoughtful and incisive, Laqueur reflects on the early enthusiasm of foreign observers and Bolshevik revolutionaries for the new Soviet order, then takes a piercing look at the totalitarian nature of the regime. He demonstrates how Communist society stagnated during the 1960s and '70s, while the economy wobbled to the brink; how Western observers, from academic experts to CIA analysts, made wildly optimistic estimates of Moscow's economic and political strength. Just weeks before the U.S.S.R. disappeared from the earth, some scholars were confidently predicting the survival of the Soviet Union. But in underscoring the rot and repression, he also notes that the Communist state did not necessarily have to fall when it did, and he examines the many factors behind the collapse (such as ethnic nationalism and the rigors of an accelerated arms race during the 1980s). Many of these same problems continued to shape the future of Russia and other successor states, and a second coming of national Communism, albeit in a different guise, cannot be ruled out. Only now, in the rubble of this lost empire, is it possible to gain a deeper understanding of the Soviet regime, its early achievements, its crimes and its ultimate disaster. In The Dream that Failed, the result of years of research and reflection, Walter Laqueur sheds fresh light on a central episode in our turbulent century.

American Girls in Red Russia

American Girls in Red Russia PDF Author: Julia L. Mickenberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022625612X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or 1930s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia L. Mickenberg uncovers in American Girls in Red Russia, there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous, like Isadora Duncan or Lillian Hellman; some were committed radicals, though more were just intrigued by the “Soviet experiment.” But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, some by the mundane realities, others by horrifying truths. Mickenberg reveals the complex motives that drew American women to Russia as they sought models for a revolutionary new era in which women would be not merely independent of men, but also equal builders of a new society. Soviet women, after all, earned the right to vote in 1917, and they also had abortion rights, property rights, the right to divorce, maternity benefits, and state-supported childcare. Even women from Soviet national minorities—many recently unveiled—became public figures, as African American and Jewish women noted. Yet as Mickenberg’s collective biography shows, Russia turned out to be as much a grim commune as a utopia of freedom, replete with economic, social, and sexual inequities. American Girls in Red Russia recounts the experiences of women who saved starving children from the Russian famine, worked on rural communes in Siberia, wrote for Moscow or New York newspapers, or performed on Soviet stages. Mickenberg finally tells these forgotten stories, full of hope and grave disappointments.

The Germans of the Soviet Union

The Germans of the Soviet Union PDF Author: Irina Mukhina
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134134010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
The Germans were a very substantial minority in Russia, and many leading figures, including the Empress Catherine the Great, were German. Using rarely seen archival information, this book provides an account of the experiences of the Germans living in the Soviet Union from the early post-revolution period to the post-Soviet era following the collapse of communism. Setting out the history of this minority group and explaining how they were affected by the Soviet regime’s nationality policies, the book: describes the character of the ethnic Germanic groups, demonstrating their diversity before the execution of the policy of systematic deportations by the Stalinist authorities from 1937 to 1947 argues that there was not one but several episodes of deportation within this period considers the different dimensions of this policy, including the legal and economic structures of, and everyday life in, the Soviet special settlements investigates the ‘women’s dimension’ of deportation, especially the role of women in the preservation of ethnic identity among the afflicted groups explores the long term consequences of Soviet deportations and exile on the identity of the Soviet Germans.

Energy Dependency, Politics and Corruption in the Former Soviet Union

Energy Dependency, Politics and Corruption in the Former Soviet Union PDF Author: Margarita M. Balmaceda
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134072708
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Written by an acknowledged expert in the area, this book investigates how Russia has manipulated the energy dependency of its neighbours on Russian energy supplies to achieve its foreign policy goals, focusing in particular on relations with the Ukraine.

Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989

Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989 PDF Author: Sanja Bahun
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317818725
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive re-examination of the cinemas of the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe during the communist era. It argues that, since the end of communism in these countries, film scholars are able to view these cinemas in a different way, no longer bound by an outlook relying on binary Cold War terms. With the opening of archives in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, much more is known about these states and societies; at the same time, the field has been reinvigorated by its opening up to more contemporary concepts, themes and approaches in film studies and adjacent disciplines. Taking stock of these developments, this book presents a rich, varied tapestry, relating specific films to specific national and transnational circumstances, rather than viewing them as a single, monolithic "Cold War Communist" cinema.