Suchergebnisse

The purpose of the article is to investigate one of the aspects of the professional activity of the Ukrainian singer Zoia Gaidai in the 1930s, namely her participation in music competitions during the establishment of the Soviet totalitarian regime. As part of the research, we aim to show the specifics of their organisation and holding, the scale of those creative events, and their significance for the professional development of the professional singer. The research methodology consists in the application of the source study method to analyse archival documents that contain information about Zoia Gaidai's participation of in music competitions, as well as to study other materials on the topic of the research. The specifically historical method helps to highlight the socio-political processes against which the music competitions took place. The bio-bibliographic method enables determining the place of this aspect of the singer's activity in her creative biography. General scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, generalisation) are applied in order to thoroughly study the issue and draw reasoned conclusions. The scientific novelty of the paper consists in the expansion of information about Z. Gaidai's creative activity in the 1930s, which was supplemented by her participation in music competitions, in the assessment of the level of these competitions, their specificity and opportunities for the achievement of professional aspirations. Conclusions. The performed analysis and evaluation of the results of Z. Gaidai's participation in the music competitions of 1933 and 1937 helped to reveal the level of her professional competence and professional aspirations. Despite the challenges of those difficult years, the singer managed to win the laureate title of the All-Ukrainian and All-Union competitions, which had a positive effect on the development of her career as a performer. However, the political situation in the USSR did not contribute to the fruition of the dreams to study in Italy, thereby depriving the Ukrainian artist of the opportunity to improve her professional skills and test her talent on the international stage.
Key words: Zoia Gaidai, music competitions in the USSR in the 1930s, the Great Famine of 1932–1933, ideological charge.

Unlike all other countries of the Barents Area, Russia found itself in a very specific situation. At the beginning of the war it entered into the alliance with the Axis, while from 1941 it continued the war in the Anti-Hitler coalition. But the main distinctive feature of the wartime Russia was the transformation of its policy. Not a single state in the world history had reached such a degree of centralization as the Soviet Union did during the Second World War. Along with an extremely high degree of centralization of the political system, the Soviet state completely subdued the economy in order to solve the main problem of the moment – to mobilize maximum resources in the shortest period of time in order to win the war. During the war it could be done only at the expense of the population's welfare.As a result, during only the first months of the war the Soviet Union managed to compensate its huge losses in manpower, weapons and technology. At the same time, providing the population with food and manufactured goods had been reduced to the absolute minimum. Sometimes – less than the minimum. In some cities, e.g. Arkhangelsk, famine broke out. Soon it was followed by outbreaks of epidemics and high mortality.In order to avoid epidemics which threatened to develop into a pandemic that could spread into the army, the authorities were forced to take drastic measures to improve the healthcare system by including almost the entire population of the country in sanitary training. Control of the epidemic situation became another domestic front for Russia.Largely thanks to the strict centralization, the government managed to mobilize the population for victory at this "home front". At least in the Northern areas they managed to extinguish outbreaks of epidemic diseases, while several diseases were minimized or even eliminated by the end of the war. It is this particular nature of the Soviet totalitarianism and its manifestation in the North that is the research topic in Suprun's article.

Nothing pricks one's curiosity more than the inner operations of a power system. And in the case of Russia the incentive to speculate on "what really goes on" in the councils of the Kremlin is enhanced by the supersecrecy in which the highest level of Soviet politics is enveloped, by the dramatic shifts of policy and sudden displacements of leading personalities, and by a natural apprehension about the operations of a totalitarian regime which may at any moment threaten or transform our daily lives.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Foreword -- Preface -- Contents -- FIRST KEY: THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER -- I. The Struggle for the Succession -- Disorder and Panic -- Dictatorship as the Rupture of Legitimacy -- Why Collective Leadership Is Transitory -- Candidates for the Succession -- Potential Power Levers -- The Party Machine: Malenkov and Khrushchev -- The Secret Police: Beria -- The Army as a Potential Power Lever -- Makeweights or Mass Organizations? -- II. A New Look at That Soviet "New Look -- A Dictatorship Requires a Dictator -- Ebb and Reflux of the Stalin Cult -- The "New" Men -- Peaceful Coexistence -- Continuing the Revolution from Above: The New Lands -- Stalinism" After Stalin -- SECOND KEY: THE COORDINATION OF CULTURE -- I. Marxism after One Hundred Years -- Oracle of Doom -- Still the Apocalypse -- Marx's Betrayers-Man and History -- A "Science" and a Faith -- Flotsam from the Shipwreck -- Deviations and Detours -- II. Operation Rewrite: The Agony of Soviet Historians -- Unpersons, Unpeoples, Unobjects -- Fall of the Pokrovsky School -- The Creator of Soviet Historical Science -- Crisis in the Ideological Foundations of the Regime -- Meaning of the Hate-America Campaign -- The New Imperial Historiography -- Marx to the "Memory -- The Aims of "Operation Rewrite -- Totalitarianism and History -- III. The New Gospel According to Khrushchev -- Mutability of the Authorized Text -- Stalin's Short Course -- Party without a History -- Khrushchev's Authorized Version -- History without Men or Deeds -- The Leader Cult-End and Beginning -- IV. Science Joins the Party -- Portrait of Trofim Lysenko -- Laws of Heredity Passed by the Politburo -- A Bomb in a Scientific Congress -- The Chain Reaction: Purge in the Other Sciences -- Giant of Brass with Feet of Clay -- Postscript: Seven Years Later.

Anknüpfend an Rigby setzt sich der Verfasser mit der Frage nach dem Charakter des Sowjetsystems auseinander. Im Mittelpunkt seiner Überlegungen steht die Rolle der Wissenschaft im Sowjetstaat. Der Verfasser arbeitet die einzigartige Position der Wissenschaft im Sowjetstaat heraus, die sich durch die Herausbildung einer unabhängigen Kultur, einen gewissen Grad an Selbständigkeit, eine informelle soziale Organisation und sogar eine eigene, unabhängige Organisation mit politischem Einfluss in Gestalt der Akademie der Wissenschaften auszeichnete. Diese Entwicklungen blieben jedoch auf den Wissenschaftsbereich beschränkt und konnten die Dominanz von Staat und Partei weder organisatorisch noch ideologisch beeinträchtigen. Insofern bleibt das Totalitarismuskonzept in modifizierter Form ein wichtiges Instrument für die Analyse des Sowjetsystems. (BIOst-Wpt)

This article deals with the historical development of the militia in the Soviet Union. The discussion concentrates on the post-Stalinist era, when terror as a method of rule was largely rejected and the regime shifted towards the use of propaganda and education as a mode of governance. On the basis of archival materials, the article describes how militia activities in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) were organized during the period 1969–1975. Particular attention is given to the attempts of the state authorities to make the militia more legitimate and acceptable to the general population, reduce the antagonism between the militia and society, decrease the amount of direct physical violence and find new, less violent and more consensual ways to police Soviet society.