Уроки истории

23 January 2012 г.

A monument to Lenin in Nakhodka. Source: lnta.ru

Lenin, monuments

Sergei Bondarenko, Report at the Intellectual Book Fair Non/Fiction (Moscow, December 2011): "The goal of this brief paper is rather simple: I will use a few incidents surrounding Lenin memorials across Russia to illustrate the work of monitoring the politics of history and to offer in connection with this a few potentially meaningful generalizations".

16/01/12

Historical Policy in June 2011: Analytical Review

The third analytical report basing on the materials of the “Monitoring of the historical policy” covers the events of June 2011 (the total number of news items constitutes 78). Along with the thematic sections “Topic of the month”, “Memorable dates”, “Event”, “Special cases” and “Thematic index” this report was written involving a lot of topical materials on the main theme, which is formulated as “Nostalgia for the Soviet”.

13/01/12

Belorussian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War

Belorussian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War is an environment of memory about the war; this environment is typical (for the national collections) and unique at the same time.

10/01/12

Poklonnaya gora (Salute Hill)

Memorial ensemble dedicated to the war of 1941–1945 was constructed in 1995 by the architect group under the guidance of the president of Russian Fine Arts Academy Zurab Tsereteli, but its designing was started earlier, in 1958. Discussion of construction plans aroused now more, now less interest in different years, but was most active at the end of the 50-s, in the 70-s and during the first half of the 90s. Recommencement and realization of this ambitious project in mid-90s became one of the signs of the retargeting of the country to an imperial direction.

CULTURE OF MEMORY

13 January 2012 г.

1917, 1920s, Eisenstein, Film, history in school, Propaganda, Soviet Art

Eisenstein’s "October": Between Artistic Invention and the Myth of the Revolution

October is the final installment in Sergei Eisenstein’s historical-revolutionary film epic, which began with the films Strike (Stachka, 1924) and Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potemkin, 1925). The trilogy uses a new film language to portray the events of the revolution as a painful and unavoidable “tectonic shift” in history, and it does so without the support of traditional plotting, psychological insights, or individual characters. Today Eisenstein’s films can be understood as an ingenious and politically oriented mythologization of historical events, and also as a work of artistic discovery, a parable about the nature of power and social violence.

10/01/12

27 September – A Day of the World

On 27 September a large-scale Soviet project on the history of every day life was launched. Maxim Gorky came up with an idea for Soviet writers and sympathizing foreigners to choose a random day in the life of the world and describe it. Newspaper publications, news stories, photos and letters were compiled in a book published in 1937. The experience was repeated 25 years later, but this time it was no “surprise” for the world.

30/12/11

“What is Joseph Stalin’s Positive Significance?” / History Teachers’ Questions after the XX Congress

In the Soviet Union, after the XX Party Congress, the doctrine governing historical memory and narratives of the past underwent substantial modification. Anna Pankratova, historian and author of a 1939 school textbook, conducted “outreach” in connection with these changes. In 1956, Pankratova appeared at public lectures for teachers and other “ideological front” workers, commenting on Khrushchev’s denunciation of the personality cult and talking about changes to (and the “tasks” of) historical study and research.

22/12/11

ru_lenin: Sculptural Leniniana

The LiveJournal community “Monuments to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” features what is probably the most complete thematic catalog of photographs of monuments to Lenin currently available. The community’s creators intend “to collect ALL of the monuments to V. I. Lenin erected on the territory of the republics of the former USSR, and those located in countries in other countries around the world.”