ASIF A. SIDDIQI Professor, History Department Fordham University, 624 Dealy Hall, 441 E
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
European History Quarterly 47(3)
Book Reviews 547 hearing to address the Council, providing one last sample of his oratorical skills (214). The last two chapters deal with the memory of Jerome, placing him on par with Wyclif and Hus and Martin Luther, occasionally finding his likeness with his famous beard in images from the early modern period. The book shows Jerome was an independent thinker who caused much disquiet and alarm in different European university settings. Jerome made waves across Europe and in all probability heightened university masters’ awareness of the connection between Wyclifism, already declared heresy, and the arising Hussitism. Slava Gerovitch, Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories, and the Making of a Cultural Identity, University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh, PA, 2015; 256 pp., 7 b/w illus.; 9780822963639, $27.95 (pbk) Reviewed by: Andrei Rogatchevski, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway The myth about the Soviet space programme can be summarized as ‘a perfect hero conquering outer space with flawless technology’ (131). It could hardly have been otherwise in a censorship-ridden country that used space exploration, in particular, to prove the superiority of socialism over capitalism. A great deal of information about the programme was for decades routinely concealed not only from the gen- eral public but also from the Communist rulers, whose versions of space flight communication transcripts were doctored for fear of funding withdrawal. Even the cosmonauts and their ground control sometimes did not want to enlighten each other (until afterwards) about the full scale of in-flight problems. Thus, Gagarin, while in orbit, was misinformed about its height, because his engines turned themselves off too late and propelled his spacecraft to an apogee of 188 miles, instead of the expected 143 miles. -
1. INTRODUCTION from Bounded to Juxtapositional—New Histories of the Gulag
1. INTRODUCTION From Bounded to Juxtapositional—New Histories of the Gulag Michael David-Fox The Gulag has long been approached as a bounded system, a network of camps isolated in the remote corners of the Soviet space. The main metaphor behind Solzhenitsyn’s epochal 1973 Arkhipelag GULAG (Gulag Archipelago) of a vast chain of islands was, in part, intended to bridge the veil of silence that surrounded the camps much like water surrounds enclaves of land. Solzhenitsyn popularized the previously little-known acronym (Glavnoe up- ravlenie ispravitel´no-trudovykh lagerei i kolonii, or the Main Administra- tion of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies of the GPU/NKVD and later MVD), turning it into a metonym for not just the NKVD network of labor camps but, by extension, all Soviet camps—and later, in its most expansive usages, Stalinist repression writ large. This symbolic meaning attached to the term no doubt helped reify the Gulag as a discrete entity separated from the Soviet mainland. Early scholarly contributions to the history of the Gulag were not only heavily influenced by Solzhenitsyn’s metaphor but often took a systemic ap- proach by treating the network of camps and colonies as a whole. The most significant examples of this came before the “archival revolution” of the 1990s, which was marked by a statistical war over the total number of victims.1 In addition, the history of the Gulag was very much bounded chronologically, largely by the years of Stalinism, since the camps as a mass system of forced labor arose under secret police supervision in 1930, shortly after Stalin con- solidated sole power, and were radically reduced several years after his death during Khrushchev’s Thaw.2 Finally, there was little if any comparison to the history of camps or forced labor in other times and places. -
IBCE~L1ul!Jc1l!JI] JAN-MAR 1985
);>.L. 8 6-3 6 TOP SECRET iJOl]JllJlilCb ~l!CSlJJCilOV\J lil~CSlllCB\J r-----------J u (!1[5(!J ~(!1[5 l!I~ 0015UJfill5 f 00 UJ~~l1~lllfil IBCE~l1Ul!JC1l!JI] JAN-MAR 1985 VIDEO TELECONFERENCING (U) ••••••••••••• ; • • • • • • • \ ••••••••••• 1 LETTER TO THE EDITOR (U) •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• '·. ~ . ;., ••••••••••• 4 A MESSAGE TO CRYPTANALYSTS EVERYWHERE (U} ••••••• 'THE MAD HATTE!t' .\ ••.••••••• 5 I WOULDN'T HAVE MISSED IT FOR THE WORLD! (U) .... Mary Ann Hsrris'on.\ .......... 6 SHELL GAME (U) •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• W.E.S ••••••• ~ •• 1, •• ;, ••••••••• 8 BOOK REVIEW: \ EASE MY SORROWS (U.) ••••••••••••••••••••••••• l • \ ! ........ 9 BULLETIN BOARD ( U) •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• '· ••• \••••••••••• 13 A NOTE ON IMPROVING CRYPTOLOGIC RESEARCH (U) .... Nathaniel C . ) Gerkon ........ 14 FOOD FOR THOUGHT (U) •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• )•••• l ••••••••• • 15 ATRAVELER'STALE(UL ......................... I • !.... , ..... 16 TYME SHELL (U) ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• I !............... 17 ON EXCELLENCE ( U) •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ·•••••••••••••• 18 FROM THE PAST (U) •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 19 NSA-CROSTIC NO. 60 (U) •••••••••••••••••••••••••• D.H.W •••••••••••••••••••••• 20 THIS B6Cl:l'MEN'f CON~AINS 60913\VOIUl MAT~Rll:L 81'*8BIPil!B BY ff!Hif85Sll lt5 ! BS9m':SSIF¥ 9H1 9rigiRa,iR@ 1 TOP SECRET lsa•2;s e PatowiG 0 tion Req·dred Declassified and Approved for Release by NSA on 10-16-2012 pursuant to E 0. 13526, MOR Case # -
Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn— Two Soviet Writers in the Shadows of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
The exclusive license for this PDF is limited to personal website use only. No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted commercially in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services. Chapter 13 AN INTERVIEW WITH DIANA SHEETS: BULGAKOV AND SOLZHENITSYN— TWO SOVIET WRITERS IN THE SHADOWS OF TOLSTOY AND DOSTOYEVSKY Keywords: Bulgakov, doubling, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn, The Days of the Turbins, The First Circle, The Gulag Archipelago, The Master & Margarita, The White Guard MFS: While it would take a book of about 1,000 pages to compare and contrast Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, we are going to examine briefly two extraordinary 20th century Russian writers—Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)—both of whom wrote pioneering literature and resisted Soviet tyranny. But before discussing their work in detail, let’s begin with the literary concept of doubling. How does it apply to these two writers? DS: Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, two Russian literary giants, are celebrated for having published some of the world’s greatest fiction. Nevertheless, we would be amiss not to extol the tremendous accomplishments of Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn who managed to create pioneering literature, despite the nearly overwhelming oppression of Soviet totalitarianism. -
What the Dogs Did: Animal Agency in the Soviet Manned Space Flight
BJHS: Themes 2:79–99, 2017. © British Society for the History of Science 2017. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/bjt.2017.9 What the dogs did: animal agency in the Soviet manned space flight programme AMY NELSON* Abstract. This paper examines the agency of the dogs used to develop the Soviet manned space flight programme by considering what the dogs did as experimental subjects, as dog technolo- gies, and as individual dogs in the context of the historically conditioned practices of Soviet science. Looking at how Soviet space researchers refined Pavlovian behaviourism and inte- grated it into a complex engineering project helps clarify the conditions under which the dogs worked and the assumptions that guided the human researchers. The paper uses theoret- ical perspectives that contextualize animal agency in terms of relationships and then looks at those relationships from an ethological perspective. This provides a sense of what the dogs did that distinguishes between how humans understand dogs and what we know about dogs’ cognitive and social capacities. The paper proposes a model of animal agency that looks seriously at the dogs’ relationships with human researchers and suggests that the dogs’ significance as historical subjects depends as much on what they did as dogs as it does on how their contributions to the space race were perceived. Among the legions of animals used in scientific research few have garnered the fame of the Soviet space dogs. -
M..Gruntm An, Blazing the Trail. the Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry , AIAA, Reston, Va., 2004 P
Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry Fig. 13.6. Tomb of a Soviet rocket pio- neer Fridrikh A. Tsander in Kislovodsk, Russia. An artistic model of the GIRD-X rocket is at the top right corner of the stone. , Tsander was fascinated with interplanetary flight since his childhood years in his na- tive Riga (present Latvia). He graduated as engineer and went to work to Moscow and eventually became the head of the Moscow GIRD group. Tsander remained devoted to spaceflight through all his life. Even the names of his children were in- fluenced by his passion: daughter Astra and son Merkuri. When on vacations at a resort at the North Caucasus, Tsander con- tracted typhus and died in 1933. The in- scription on his tomb reads: “Pioneer of the Soviet Rocketry; Enthusiast of Inter- planetary Flight; Fridrikh Arturovich Tsan- der; 1887-1933.” Photo courtesy of Vik- tor Soloviev, Moscow, Russia. (Katyusha, the nickname of the Soviet solid-propellant missile M-13, literally stood for an affectionate diminutive of the Russian girl's given name equivalent to Katherine.) The M-13 projectiles, or Katyusha's, were 5.1 in. (132 mm) in diameter and 6 ft (1.8 m) long. The projectile mass was 92.5 lb (42 kg), including a 48.2-lb Katyusha (21.9-kg) explosive warhead. The rocket range reached 3 miles (4.8 3 km). Katyusha missiles proved to be 27 highly reliable and were used for many years after the war had ended. The missile also became a favorite heavy weapon of assorted Soviet- sponsored guerillas during the Cold War. -
By Boris Chertok • Extensive Memoirs: Four Books About the Soviet Space Program Called
The Moon race from the other side of the Iron Curtain Astronomy and Space Science Max Voronkov | Senior Research Scien.st Co-learnium, Marsfield – 16 May 2019 “Rockets and People” by Boris Chertok • Extensive memoirs: Four books about the Soviet space program called “Rockets and People” • The 4th book is about the Moon Race • English translaon done by the NASA’s Борис Черток History Division Boris Chertok (1912-2011) PDF is available for free at the NASA website: hps://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol4_detail.html Let’s start with some names first Василий Мишин Валентин Глушко Сергей Королёв Vasiliy Mishin Valentin Glushko Sergei Korolev (1917 – 2001) (1908 – 1989) (1907(6) – 1966) Other spellings of the name exist: e.g. Korolyov Image credit: Горизонты техники / wikipedia, Boris Chertok Rockets & People Some problems of powerful rocket enGines • Gas dynamics, oscillaons & resonances • Igni.on sequence • Throling • Single start vs. ability to reuse Fuel & oxidizer pair maers! kerosene + liquid oxygen (LOX) is not the easiest pair Problems rapidly increase with engine power NK-15 engines in the Aviation and Space museum in Moscow Image credit: https://historicspacecraft.com Some Soviet Rockets @LEO: ~5-7 tons ~25 tons ~95 tons ~100 tons R-7, modern Soyuz UR-500K (In Russian: Р-7) (in Russian: УР-500К) N1 Energia Sputnik, Gagarin, Luna-9, etc modern Proton e.g., Zond/L1, E-8 I won’t talk about Ye-8 (Е-8 in Russian), etc N1-L3 (Н1-Л3 in Russian) Launcher + lunar spacecraU • Paper project in late 1950s • Just N1, no specific payload • Mass at launch 2200 tons • Spherical tanks • 75 tons at low Earth orbit (LEO) • Intermediate step - N11 rocket • Kuznetsov NK-15 engines (blocks A and B), NK-9 (block V) • Differen.al thrust control in 2 axes • 13th May 1961 poli.cal decision to build N1 by 1965 • Not a very self-consistent plan • Defence (kind of CDR) of the N1 project 16th May 1962. -
Human-Machine Issues in the Soviet Space Program1
CHAPTER 4 HUMAN-MACHINE ISSUES IN THE SOVIET SPACE PROGRAM1 Slava Gerovitch n December 1968, Lieutenant General Nikolai Kamanin, the Deputy Chief Iof the Air Force’s General Staff in charge of cosmonaut selection and training, wrote an article for the Red Star, the Soviet Armed Forces newspaper, about the forthcoming launch of Apollo 8. He entitled his article “Unjustified Risk” and said all the right things that Soviet propaganda norms prescribed in this case. But he also kept a private diary. In that diary, he confessed what he could not say in an open publication.“Why do the Americans attempt a circumlunar flight before we do?” he asked. Part of his private answer was that Soviet spacecraft designers “over-automated” their spacecraft and relegated the cosmonaut to the role of a monitor, if not a mere passenger. The attempts to create a fully automatic control system for the Soyuz spacecraft, he believed, critically delayed its development. “We have fallen behind the United States for two or three years,” he wrote in the diary.“We could have been first on the Moon.”2 Kamanin’scriticism wassharedbymanyinthe cosmonautcorps who describedthe Soviet approach to thedivisionoffunctionbetween humanand machineas“thedominationofautomata.”3 Yet among the spacecraft designers, 1. I wish to thank David Mindell, whose work on human-machine issues in the U.S. space program provided an important reference point for my own study of a parallel Soviet story. Many ideas for this paper emerged out of discussions with David in the course of our collaboration on a project on the history of the Apollo Guidance Computer between 2001 and 2003, and later during our work on a joint paper for the 2004 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology in Amsterdam. -
Nikolay Vladimirovich Timofeeff-Ressovsky (1900-1981
Copyright 2001 by the Genetics Society of America Perspectives Anecdotal, Historical and Critical Commentaries on Genetics Edited by James F. Crow and William F. Dove Nikolay Vladimirovich Timofeeff-Ressovsky (1900±1981): Twin of the Century of Genetics Vadim A. Ratner Institute of Cytology & Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia Don't treat science with savage seriousness. N. V. Timofeeff-Ressovsky ikolay Vladimirovich Timofeeff-Ressovsky born Moscow University, participated in various intellectual N September 7, 1900, would now be 100 years old. circles, sang as a ®rst bass in the Moscow military chorus, He was of the same age as the ªCentury of Genetics.º was a load-carrying worker, and ®nished Moscow Univer- This is especially notable now, at the border between sity in 1922. Later he talked about this grim period two millennia, ªa time to cast away stones, and a time (Timofeeff-Ressovsky 2000, p. 106): ªI think, never- to gather stones together.º It is remarkable that the theless, that all in all the life was merry±very few hungry, personality and fate of Nikolay V. Timofeeff-Ressovsky, very few frozen. Rather, people were young, healthy, N.V., re¯ect the most crucial, tragic, and dramatic events and vigorous.º of the century. In 1922 N.V. began his work as a scientist at the Insti- N. V.'s roots were in the nineteenth century, in Rus- tute of Experimental Biology with Professor N. K. Kolt- sian history and classics. His genealogy is living Russian sov. Nikolay Konstantinovich Koltsov was an outstanding history: It contains the Cossaks of the legendary Cossak ®gure in Russian biological science. -
Rockets and People: Vol. 3, Hot Days of the Cold War Boris Chertok
Naval War College Review Volume 70 Article 11 Number 2 Spring 2017 Rockets and People: Vol. 3, Hot Days of the Cold War Boris Chertok Andrew Erickson Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation Chertok, Boris and Erickson, Andrew (2017) "Rockets and People: Vol. 3, Hot Days of the Cold War," Naval War College Review: Vol. 70 : No. 2 , Article 11. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol70/iss2/11 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Chertok and Erickson: Rockets and People: Vol. 3, Hot Days of the Cold War BOOK REVIEWS 151 open to abuse to be a defective theory; if where he lacks information, makes for anything, because of that potential it is an accessible, historically useful account� a realistic one� I highly recommend this From his perch in the Soviet missile work as a useful resource for practical bureaucracy, Chertok observed the Cold moral formation in just war theory� War as a scientific-technological- ALI GHAFFARI military competition� Manned space- flight was regarded as an indicator of national prestige—and socialist superiority: “There was an ongoing battle at the front line of the Cold War’s Rockets and People, by Boris Chertok, ed� Asif scientific-technical front� Rather than Siddiqi� Vol� 3, Hot Days of the Cold War. -
Making the Russian Bomb from Stalin to Yeltsin
MAKING THE RUSSIAN BOMB FROM STALIN TO YELTSIN by Thomas B. Cochran Robert S. Norris and Oleg A. Bukharin A book by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Westview Press Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford Copyright Natural Resources Defense Council © 1995 Table of Contents List of Figures .................................................. List of Tables ................................................... Preface and Acknowledgements ..................................... CHAPTER ONE A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SOVIET BOMB Russian and Soviet Nuclear Physics ............................... Towards the Atomic Bomb .......................................... Diverted by War ............................................. Full Speed Ahead ............................................ Establishment of the Test Site and the First Test ................ The Role of Espionage ............................................ Thermonuclear Weapons Developments ............................... Was Joe-4 a Hydrogen Bomb? .................................. Testing the Third Idea ...................................... Stalin's Death and the Reorganization of the Bomb Program ........ CHAPTER TWO AN OVERVIEW OF THE STOCKPILE AND COMPLEX The Nuclear Weapons Stockpile .................................... Ministry of Atomic Energy ........................................ The Nuclear Weapons Complex ...................................... Nuclear Weapon Design Laboratories ............................... Arzamas-16 .................................................. Chelyabinsk-70 -
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 / Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 / solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) Principal personages: First published: Arkhipelag GULag, 1918-1956: Opyt Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a prisoner khudozhestvennogo issledovaniya, parts 1-2, 1973; Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator parts 3-4, 1974; parts 5-7, 1975 (English translation, G. I. Grigoryev, a soil scientist 1974-1978) V. M. Yakovenko, a freed prisoner Type of work: Memoir Type of plot: Historical Time of plot: Twentieth century The Story: A string of prisons and labor camps scattered throughout might sow unrest among their countrymen by describing the the Soviet Union is called the gulag archipelago because its relatively high standard of living they had seen in Europe and administrative title, the Chief Administration of Corrective the greater degree of personal freedom enjoyed by the Ger- Labor Camps, forms the acronym “gulag” in Russian and be- mans, even under the wartime rule of the dictator Adolf Hit- cause its far-flung prisons and camps, with their own laws ler. Reasoning that anyone who could survive a German pris- and their oppressed population of zeks (prisoners), resembles oner of war camp must have collaborated with his captors, a separate country made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands, Stalin has many of the returning prisoners charged with “aid- of islands. Vladimir Ilich Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik ing and abetting the enemy” and given “tenners” (ten-year Revolution of 1917 and the first head of the Soviet state, es- sentences). tablished this extensive prison system in 1918, ostensibly to In 1945, Solzhenitsyn is sent to a hard labor camp, from detain and “rehabilitate” Soviet citizens suspected of anti- which he is miraculously saved in 1946 when he lies on a Soviet or counterrevolutionary activity.