DOCSLIB.ORG

The-Soviet-Roots-Of-Anit-Fascism-And-Antisemitism.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The-Soviet-Roots-Of-Anit-Fascism-And-Antisemitism.Pdf The Soviet roots of anti-fascism and antisemitism TARAS KUZIO Russian leaders and Donbas separatists use the term “fascist” to describe any Ukrainian who supported the EuroMaidan or to those who do not see Ukraine in the Russkiy Mir (Russian World). Te roots of these designations, however, and their use by those in the West today can be traced much earlier than the recent crisis in Ukraine. In the Soviet Union, designations such as “bourgeois nationalist” and “Nazi” were applied to Ukrainians of every ideological persuasion, from national communist through liberal to nationalist and to both Ukrainian and Russian speakers. Similarly, the “anti-Zionism” the USSR promoted and Donbas separatists continue to promote is a camoufaged form of antisemitism. Nationalism, racism, antisemitism and xenophobia are not the preserve of the extreme right. It is sufcient to cite the Doctors’ Plot in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 50s and the antisemitic campaign in communist Poland in 1968. Stalin had planned to deport all Soviet Jews to the Gulag; thankfully his death in 1953 prevented this policy from being implemented. Nationalism has operated through communist regimes in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Cuba, while separatist and nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales, Quebec and republicans in Ireland are left-wing. Terrorist groups in Latin America have been traditionally Marxist and left-wing, anti-American nationalists. In addition, the extreme left and extreme right have long been allies. After all, the Stalinist regime was not just Marxist but National Bolshevik, combining an 94 Opinion & Analysis The Soviet roots of anti-fascism and antisemitism, Taras Kuzio eclectic mix of Russian nationalism, Great Power imperialism and Soviet com- munism. Tis turn to the right in the 1930s helped attract many younger Russian émigrés to return to the USSR and support the new “Russian” state. Te émigrés formulated the doctrine of Eurasianism, a kind of National Bolshevism without Marxism, which today plays a key part in Vladimir Putin’s ruling ideology. Unusual alliance International volunteers who have travelled to fght alongside Donbas separa- tists come from Europe’s extreme left and right. Anti-Zionism and anti-American- ism has long had traction with an eclectic coalition of the far left of European and Latin American politics, who are opposed to globalisation and big business, free trade, US hegemony in world afairs, NATO and, more recently, the European Union. Anti-Americanism has forged an unusual alliance of the British and Euro- pean far left with Putin’s authoritarian Russia and Anti-Americanism pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region. has forged an Te anti-Americanism of Europe’s extreme left places unusual alliance it in bed with Putin’s Russia whose regime is increas- ingly defned as “fascist” by western scholars, like of the British and Alexander J. Motyl. It is also defned by some as a European far left with “Mafa state” or, as Mark Galeotti believes, “a state with Putin’s authoritarian a nationalised mafa”. Te current alliance of the ex- treme left and extreme right, however, follows an ex- Russia and pro- tensive path of strange bedfellows. Russian separatists Te extreme left and right have long been opposed in Ukraine’s to the EU. In the United Kingdom, the media has Donbas region. mostly focused on political parties like UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), with less mention of the fact that the UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had voted against Britain joining the EU in the 1970s. His passive approach to the June 2016 referendum on whether the UK should remain as an EU member was largely criticised by more mainstream Labour members. What’s more, in the April 2016 referendum in the Netherlands, the extreme left Socialist Party and far right anti-Immigrant Freedom Party campaigned together against the ratifcation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Nationalism, racism, antisemitism and xenophobia exist on both extremes in European and North American democracies, as well as in post-communist coun- tries. Although it is commonplace to view “nationalism” as a European disease The Soviet roots of anti-fascism and antisemitism, Taras Kuzio Opinion & Analysis 95 that does not exist in immigrant settler countries such as in North America, this is not true as nativist nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment has always existed in the United States. For instance, the 2016 Republican Party presidential candi- date Donald Trump’s campaign has continued to illustrate this claim to be fallacy. Trump’s anti-immigrant nationalist populism is supported by over 40 per cent of Americans, making it as popular as extreme-right anti-immigrant nationalism in France or Austria. Invoking the bogeyman Scholarly and journalistic analysis of nationalism, antisemitism and xenopho- bia which focused on contemporary Ukraine has concentrated heavily on the ex- treme right. Tere are countless studies of the Svoboda (Freedom) party, which is surprising in light of its electoral weakness, having only won seats one time in the Ukrainian parliament in 2012 (when it received ten per cent). Svoboda failed to win any seats in the October 2014 elections and despite Ukraine being in the midst of a war with Russia, its popularity currently stands at around fve per cent. In con- trast, the Ukraine left in the 1990s and the Party of Regions and Communist Party of Ukraine, from 2002 through to the EuroMaidan, received four times as many votes as Svoboda. To a great degree the bogeyman of “Ukrainian nationalism” has infuenced scholarly and journalistic bias. Tis in turn was refected in studies of the crisis by pro-Russian scholars in the West, such as Richard Sakwa, who repeat- edly used infammatory language against “Ukrainian nationalism” while completely ignoring Russian nationalists and their infuence on Putin and his regime. In Ukraine, left-wing Soviet and oligarchic populist nationalism is anti-European and pro-Russian, with strong bases of support in Crimea and Donbas. Opinion polls have long suggested, for example, that Crimea is the most xenophobic re- gion in Ukraine (not “nationalist” western Ukraine). Tis reality is evident in the racism, political repressions and murder of Crimean Tatars living under Russian occupation since 2014. Russian and Soviet nationalists and communists agree with Stalin’s ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars in 1944 on bogus charges of “collabo- ration” with Nazi Germany; a deportation that led to the death of half of them en route to Central Asia. One aspect of left-wing nationalism in Ukraine that has been completely ignored is that of antisemitism. One reason is because antisemitism is usually ascribed to the extreme right, not the left; and when it was discussed within the Ukrainian context, it has usually been examined within studies of the Svoboda party, as men- tioned earlier. Tis focus seems to imply a bias, since antisemitism in contemporary 96 Opinion & Analysis The Soviet roots of anti-fascism and antisemitism, Taras Kuzio Ukraine is most prevalent in the separatist DNR and LNR (Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics) which are kept afoat fnancially, economically and militarily by Russia. As in the former USSR, Donbas antisemitism is of course not described as such but as “anti-Zionism”, a loaded term that is used by the left to often disguise its own antisemitism. On the other side of Europe, a crisis in the UK Labour Party is evidenced by the extreme left’s denial that antisemitism, racism and xenophobia also exist within its own ranks. Eighteen Labour Party members were suspended pending investigations into allegations of antisemitism. Te roots of left-wing antisemitism in British and European political parties can, in part, be traced back to Soviet and internationalist anti-Zionism. Te National Conference on Soviet Jewry were correct in pointing out that Soviet anti-Zionism was really traditional antisemitism camoufaged as opposition to Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Te far left in Britain had always been in thrall to the Soviet “workers’ state” and many of them, such as play- wright George Bernard Shaw, had been outright apologists for a Stalinist system that had murdered millions of people and repressed workers and non-Russians. New York Times reporter Walter Duranty became infamous for his cover up of the Ukrainian Holodomor which murdered an estimated 4 – 5 million people in 1933. Perpetuating propaganda Te Soviet Union churned out anti-Zionist propaganda for the majority of its existence, when millions of copies of anti-Zionist literature were published and this continues to infuence contemporary Homo Sovieticus in the DNR, LNR and Russia. Anti-Zionism was widely broadcast on Soviet television and radio. It compared Zionism to Nazism and alleged that Zionists were in cahoots with the freemasons. Paradoxically, the Zionists were depicted in the same ideological niche as the “fascists”, who together sought world domination with the capitalist West and the US military-industrial complex. Propaganda authors like Yurii Kolesnikov, Lev Korneev and Evgeniy Evseev focused on the alleged collaboration of Zionists and Nazis, through a conspiracy between Jews, the Nazi SS and the Gestapo. Zion- ism and Apartheid were alleged to be political collaborators since modern racism emerged from the Judeo-Christian tradition, where Jews are God’s chosen people and freemasons are basically secular Jews. Soviet anti-Zionists followed the same paths as those western
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Exorcising Stalin's Ghost
    TURNING BACK TOTALITARIANISM: Exorcising Stalin’s Ghost Matthew R. Newton The Evergreen State College N e w t o n | 1 "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." --George Orwell The death of Joseph Stalin left the Soviet Union in a state of dynastic confusion, and the most repressive elements of the society he established remained. After Nikita Khrushchev secured power in the mid-1950s, he embarked on a campaign to vanquish these elements. While boldly denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality and individual authority in his ‘Secret Speech’ of 1956, he failed to address the problems of a system that allowed Stalin to take power and empowered legions of Stalin-enablers. Khrushchev’s problem was complex in that he wanted to appease the entire Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 and yet legitimize his position of power. The level of embeddedness of Stalinism in the Soviet Union was the biggest obstacle for Khrushchev. Characterized with the “permanent” infrastructure of the Soviet Union, Stalin’s autocratic rule was intertwined with virtually all aspects of Soviet life. These aspects can be broken down into four elements: Stalin’s status as an absolute champion of Communism, and his cult of personality; the enormous amount of propaganda in all forms that underlined Stalin as the “protector” of the Soviet Union during threat and impact of foreign war, and the censorship of any content that was not aligned with this mindset; the necessity and place of the Gulag prison camp in the Soviet economy, and how it sustained itself; and the transformation of Soviet society into something horrifically uniform and populated with citizens whom were universally fearful of arrest and arbitrary repression.
    [Show full text]
  • Boris Pasternak - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series Boris Pasternak - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Boris Pasternak(10 February 1890 - 30 May 1960) Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Furthermore, Pasternak's theatrical translations of Goethe, Schiller, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and William Shakespeare remain deeply popular with Russian audiences. Outside Russia, Pasternak is best known for authoring Doctor Zhivago, a novel which spans the last years of Czarist Russia and the earliest days of the Soviet Union. Banned in the USSR, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the midst of a massive campaign against him by both the KGB and the Union of Soviet Writers, Pasternak reluctantly agreed to decline the Prize. In his resignation letter to the Nobel Committee, Pasternak stated the reaction of the Soviet State was the only reason for his decision. By the time of his death from lung cancer in 1960, the campaign against Pasternak had severely damaged the international credibility of the U.S.S.R. He remains a major figure in Russian literature to this day. Furthermore, tactics pioneered by Pasternak were later continued, expanded, and refined by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet dissidents. <b>Early Life</b> Pasternak was born in Moscow on 10 February, (Gregorian), 1890 (Julian 29 January) into a wealthy Russian Jewish family which had been received into the Russian Orthodox Church.
    [Show full text]
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
    SPECIAL REPORT AMERICA, WE EG YOU TO INTERFER by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn ARTHUR R/\OTKE PRESIDENT lhe Cincinnati Air Conditioning Co. • CHURCH LEAGUE OF AMERICA 422 NORTH PROSPECT STREET WHEATON, ILLINOIS 60187 AUGUST 1975 . First Printing August 1975 Second Printing October 1975 INTRODUCTION The Church League of America believes it is imperative that the two major addresses which Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made re­ cently in Washington, D.C., and in New York City under the spon­ sorship of AFL-CIO be distributed as widely as possible across the nation and be digested by every American who has one grain of common sense left in his brain, and one spark of patriotism left in his soul, that each one communicate these two messages to every­ one who lives within the same block in his community, and get others to do the same, so that Solzhenitsyn:'s warnings may be spread to millions across America. This warning must shake our nation out of its lethargy until its teeth rattle and bring about a change in our present disastrous national policy of detente; and give hope to the millions of enslaved behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains as America rises and says: "We oppose Communism in all of its forms and devices and will not give one cent or one speck of technological know-how to any Communist nation from this momenton. We will re-assume the anti-Communist leadership of the Free World re­ gardless of the hypocritical critics, the cowards and the mentally sick intelligensia!" 'America, We Beg You to Interfere' by Aleksandr I.
    [Show full text]
  • SOVIET YOUTH FILMS UNDER BREZHNEV: WATCHING BETWEEN the LINES by Olga Klimova Specialist Degree, Belarusian State University
    SOVIET YOUTH FILMS UNDER BREZHNEV: WATCHING BETWEEN THE LINES by Olga Klimova Specialist degree, Belarusian State University, 2001 Master of Arts, Brock University, 2005 Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Olga Klimova It was defended on May 06, 2013 and approved by David J. Birnbaum, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh Lucy Fischer, Distinguished Professor, Department of English, University of Pittsburgh Vladimir Padunov, Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh Aleksandr Prokhorov, Associate Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, College of William and Mary, Virginia Dissertation Advisor: Nancy Condee, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh ii Copyright © by Olga Klimova 2013 iii SOVIET YOUTH FILMS UNDER BREZHNEV: WATCHING BETWEEN THE LINES Olga Klimova, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2013 The central argument of my dissertation emerges from the idea that genre cinema, exemplified by youth films, became a safe outlet for Soviet filmmakers’ creative energy during the period of so-called “developed socialism.” A growing interest in youth culture and cinema at the time was ignited by a need to express dissatisfaction with the political and social order in the country under the condition of intensified censorship. I analyze different visual and narrative strategies developed by the directors of youth cinema during the Brezhnev period as mechanisms for circumventing ideological control over cultural production.
    [Show full text]
  • ABSTRACT BITCHES and THIEVES: GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, and PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS in the BITCHES' WAR by Adam Richard
    ABSTRACT BITCHES AND THIEVES: GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, AND PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN THE BITCHES’ WAR by Adam Richard Rodger Amongst the professional criminals imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag, a split developed between those who kept to the Thieves’ Law and those who broke the Law and collaborated with the State. This violent schism, the Bitches’ War, raged across the entire Gulag system, becoming most heated between 1948 and 1953, and implicated the camps’ guards and administrators as much as the prisoners themselves. This research examines primary and secondary sources, heavily incorporating Gulag survivor memoirs, to investigate the culture of the Thieves-in-Law, these professional criminals, and also to uncover the involvement, intentions, and guilt of the camp administration. This study argues that the Bitches’ War sheds light on the real purpose and function of the Gulag; that it was not primarily about ideological re-education, nor was it primarily about economics and production, but that the Gulag served as a model for social control through use of power, persuasion, and violence. BITCHES AND THIEVES: GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, AND PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN THE BITCHES’ WAR Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of Master’s Degree by Adam Richard Rodger Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2017 Advisor: Dr. Stephen Norris Reader: Dr. Dan Prior Reader: Dr. Scott Kenworthy ©2017 Adam Richard Rodger This thesis titled BITCHES AND THIEVES GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, AND PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN THE BITCHES’ WAR by Adam Richard Rodger has been approved for publication by The College of Arts and Sciences and The Department of History ____________________________________________________ Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Emmigration of the Soviet Jews to Israel
    Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR® Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Honors College at WKU Projects 12-1-1991 The mmiE gration of the Soviet Jews to Israel Mark Edward Crosslin Western Kentucky University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Crosslin, Mark Edward, "The mmiE gration of the Soviet Jews to Israel" (1991). Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects. Paper 58. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses/58 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors College Capstone Experience/ Thesis Projects by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. • I I I THI!: 8l'lIGRATIOM OF THE SOVln JEWS TO ISRAEL I I p~ ••ent"'d to the Oepart.ent of Hlstory I '0' the Unlveralty Honors Proqra. I Western Kentucky Unlversity I ~ In Partial FUlfillment of the Requirements for Graduation r with Honors In IILstory and Graduation as • a University Scholar • by I Kark £d...rd Crosslin O.,ceJlber l'J'U I ( "pproved by r r r • I Table of Contents I Paqe I List of Tables and Fiqutell .........•.... ····· ..... Ut Part Introduction , 1 • I Development and Determination of , the Je~i5h National ConscIOuSneSs 2 The TaaclI •... _..••...•.....••.•.....•. 2 • Lenin.••••••••....••••.•.•.....••.••••6 Stalin , 8 • 1953-1968 ..•......................... 10 II £_I<;r"tlon Fro•• Soviet Standpoint: • policy, Causes and Effects · .12 • The First loIa"" ·····,········12 The Second liI"v'" ..............•• ····· .15 • The Thltd 1i14Y"' .•••..••.•..•••••.••..• 18 I II The SOViet-Jewish blqrllnt........•. ········ 23 • The Early E.iqrants ······· .23 • soviet Jews Discover ~erica 24 Amerlca's Closed Door · .
    [Show full text]
  • Ukrainians Lose Their Farms
    Ukrainians Lose Their Farms 0. Ukrainians Lose Their Farms - Story Preface 1. Holodomor - Roots of a Man-Made Disaster 2. Resurgence of Ukrainian Nationalism 3. Stalin Cracks Down on Ukraine 4. Ukrainians Lose Their Farms 5. Ukrainians Lose Their Crops 6. Ukrainians Starve 7. Ukrainians Die from Hunger 8. Soviets Cover-up Ukrainian Starvation 9. Russia Acknowledges the Holodomor When the Soviets denied there was a famine in Ukraine, man-made or natural, a Cardinal from Austria, Theodor Innitzer—who was also the Archbishop of Vienna—began an awareness-raising campaign in the West. This image, by an unnamed photographer, is from the Innitzer Collection. It depicts a Ukrainian woman and child “being kicked out of their home.” To pay for Western technology, as he transforms the Soviet Union into an industrial powerhouse, Stalin will appropriate Ukraine’s farm crops. How will he get the grain from Europe’s breadbasket? By devising and implementing his control in new autocratic ways. Thus begins the collectivization of Soviet farms, including Ukrainian farms. By merely speaking the words—“The State owns your land, your homes, your animals, your fields, your barns, your equipment”—Stalin takes over. On the order of the Soviet leader, supported by his Politburo comrades, Ukrainian farmers will become laborers who work for the State, not for themselves. Farmers will be just like laborers who work in factories. The State will own the land, the equipment, the seeds and everything which formerly belonged to individual farmers and their families. Gone are the days of family ownership. Gone are the days of working for oneself.
    [Show full text]
  • Foreign Visitors and the Post-Stalin Soviet State
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Porous Empire: Foreign Visitors And The Post-Stalin Soviet State Alex Hazanov Hazanov University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Hazanov, Alex Hazanov, "Porous Empire: Foreign Visitors And The Post-Stalin Soviet State" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2330. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2330 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2330 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Porous Empire: Foreign Visitors And The Post-Stalin Soviet State Abstract “Porous Empire” is a study of the relationship between Soviet institutions, Soviet society and the millions of foreigners who visited the USSR between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s. “Porous Empire” traces how Soviet economic, propaganda, and state security institutions, all shaped during the isolationist Stalin period, struggled to accommodate their practices to millions of visitors with material expectations and assumed legal rights radically unlike those of Soviet citizens. While much recent Soviet historiography focuses on the ways in which the post-Stalin opening to the outside world led to the erosion of official Soviet ideology, I argue that ideological attitudes inherited from the Stalin era structured institutional responses to a growing foreign presence in Soviet life. Therefore, while Soviet institutions had to accommodate their economic practices to the growing numbers of tourists and other visitors inside the Soviet borders and were forced to concede the existence of contact zones between foreigners and Soviet citizens that loosened some of the absolute sovereignty claims of the Soviet party-statem, they remained loyal to visions of Soviet economic independence, committed to fighting the cultural Cold War, and profoundly suspicious of the outside world.
    [Show full text]
  • Eastern Europe
    Eastern Europe Soviet Union AHERE WERE no changes in the Soviet leadership, although Leonid I. Brezhnev's periodic absences from Moscow evoked repeated conjectures regarding his political standing and the state of his health. While there may have been serious differences within the Politburo on foreign policy and internal administration, and a generational conflict between the older leaders and the relatively younger mem- bers, at the end of 1974 the old leadership was in control of Party and state affairs. There were also reports about the downgrading of some of the younger leaders, particulatly former KGB boss Aleksandr Shelepin, who recently was in charge of the trade unions and whose fortunes were said to be declining. As for the "collective leadership," three men were clearly on top: Secretary General of the Party Brezh- nev, Chairman of the Council of Ministers Aleksei N. Kosygin, and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Nikolai Podgorny. While Brezhnev's role was that of primus inter pares, it is significant that Kommunist, the Party organ, pointed out in Novem- ber 1974 that the collective leadership should insure the Party against possible "subjective efforts" in solving political and economic problems, an apparent allusion to the handling of state affairs by the late Nikita Khrushchev. There were no Jews in the 16-member Politburo, nor among the seven nonvoting candidate members. While no changes occurred in the highest echelon of the top policy body, there were some replacements in the secondary leadership group. Yekaterina Furtseva, minister of culture and former member of the Party Presidium, whose anti-Jewish bias was well-known, was reprimanded for a question- able financial transaction involving the building of her dacha (summer home) outside of Moscow.
    [Show full text]
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Aleksandr Isayevich[a] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Solzhenitsyn (/ˌsoʊlʒәˈniːtsɪn, ˌsɔːl­/;[2] Russian: Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́ цын, pronounced [ɐlʲɪ ˈksandr ɪˈsaɪvʲɪtɕ sәlʐɨˈnʲitsɨn]; 11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008)[3] (often Romanized to Alexandr or Alexander)[4][5] was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. Solzhenitsyn in 1974 He was allowed to publish only Born Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn one work in the Soviet Union, One 11 December 1918 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Kislovodsk, Russian SFSR (1962), in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he had to publish in the Died 3 August 2008 (aged 89) West, most notably Cancer Ward Moscow, Russia (1968), August 1914 (1971), and Occupation Novelist · essayist The Gulag Archipelago (1973). Ethnicity Russian­Ukrainian Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Citizenship Soviet Russia (1918–1922) 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for Soviet Union (1922–1974) the ethical force with which he has [1] pursued the indispensable Stateless (1974–1990) Soviet Union (1990–1991) traditions of Russian literature".[6] Russia (1991–2008) Solzhenitsyn was afraid to go to Stockholm to receive his award for Alma mater Rostov State University fear that he would not be allowed Notable One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to reenter. He was eventually works The First Circle expelled from the Soviet Union
    [Show full text]
  • Alexander Solzhenitsyn As a Mirror of the Russian Counter-Revolution
    Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a Mirror of the Russian CounterCounter---RevolutionRevolution Eduard Ponarin October 2000 PONARS Policy Memo 150 European University at St. Petersburg Seemingly worried about recent trends in Russian government policies that call into question freedom of speech and private property, Anatoly Chubais--a pioneer of Russian economic reforms--suddenly declared this September that the government was unduly influenced by the ideas of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A few weeks later, Chubais' pronouncement received unexpected confirmation by a televised meeting between President Vladimir Putin and the dissident writer. Apparently, President Putin is in search of a political identity and ideological legitimation. In the absence of realistic alternatives, Solzhenitsyn's ideology may indeed become a principal element of the emerging Russian identity--not only at the governmental level, but also for society. ! Solzhenitsyn and Contemporary Russia During Stalin's era, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent several years in Soviet concentration camps. He became famous during and in the wake of Nikita Khrushchev's relatively short-lived thaw as an author of fiction and documentary prose that revealed the horrors of the Stalinist repression. When the thaw was over, he was stripped of Soviet citizenship and exiled to the West. Once there (secluded in Vermont), Solzhenitsyn surprised many Westerners with his outspoken criticisms of Western society. He returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn came back to the fore of political activism while the Soviet Union was collapsing, when he published an essay arguing for a unification of Russia with Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. In his last book, published in 1998 soon after his triumphant return to Russia, he delivered a scathing criticism of Russian reforms, accused Western countries (in particular the US) of capitalizing on Russian misery, and warned that the survival of the Russian people itself was jeopardized.
    [Show full text]
  • Glasnost| the Pandora's Box of Gorbachev's Reforms
    University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1999 Glasnost| The Pandora's box of Gorbachev's reforms Judy Marie Sylvest The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Sylvest, Judy Marie, "Glasnost| The Pandora's box of Gorbachev's reforms" (1999). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 2458. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/2458 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY Tlie University of IVTONXANA Permission is granted by the autlior to reproduce this material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. ** Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature ** Yes, I grant permission No, I do not grant permission Author's Signature ri a nh^ YYla LjJl£rt' Date .esmlyPYJ ?> ^ / ? ? Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's explicit consent. GLASNOST: THE PANDORA'S BOX OF GORBACHEV'S REFORMS by Judy Marie Sylvest B.A. The University of Montana, 1996 Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The University of Montana 1999 Approved by: //' Chairperson Dean, Graduate School Date UMI Number: EP34448 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
    [Show full text]