Article
From New Socialist Cities to Thaw Experimentation in Arctic Townscapes: Leningrad Architects Attempt to Modernise the Soviet North
The article examines a crucial shift in models of domestication of the Soviet Far North during the Thaw period. The closure of the Gulag system and the social transformations of the 1950s caused changes in the social space of the Soviet North and in the role of expert knowledge in the USSR. By focusing on modernist urban projects for the Soviet Arctic, I analyse how urban specialists during the Thaw attempted to formulate a new conception of the North as a place for ‘ordinary life’ and therefore transform a peripheral region into an ‘average’ Soviet space.
Studies of post-war Soviet historiography are heavily concentrated around the issues of party control in and resistance of intellectuals. Giving an account of the historical periodicals author seeks to correct this approach in the perspective of the history of science, sociology of culture and cultural policy studies . The article addresses 1) the problem of definition and characteristics of the transformation of the corpus of historical periodicals in the 1950s - 1960s, and 2) interrelation of the new political, economical and media conditions and changes in the management practices and communication strategies of the academic periodicals .
In 1937 Fedor Modorov `painted a portrait of he Spanish teacher Abilia Peraita Gómez. The paper offers a documental basd biography of the portait's main character who came to the Soviet Union as a member of the Spanish delegation for the 1st May celebrations in 1937. A tragic fate was reserved for her after homecoming: Republicans' defeat in the Spanish Civil War; exile; separation from her family; concentration camp in France; Second World War and the French Resistance.
This is a review of two recent books on Leon Trotsky, one of the most prominent Russian revolutionary leaders and an ardent critic of Stalin. The review analyses the main arguments of both books as well as their contribution to the study of Trotsky's personality and political legacy.
The paper explores a symbolic appropriation of Saimaa Canal by Soviet media after it became part of the USSR in the 1940s.