Tag "history"

Medieval horror, vampires, sorcerers, mysterious monks and the rising dead, alongside real historical figures and stories about the Russian Civil War wrapped in the aura of mysticism – this is perhaps the shortest formula for Daurian Gothic. Alexei Mikhalev, Doctor of Political Science, discusses this phenomenon and its evolution.

The cold war not only influenced the ideology and military sector of the Soviet Union, but served as an engine that jumpstarted its consumer economy — in particular, the food industry. In an article published in the journal Russian History, HSE historian Elena Kochetkova traces the development of the Soviet dairy industry and the production of dairy packaging in the post-war period. Her article recounts how milk became a staple of state propaganda and how Tetra Pak packaging came to be used in the USSR.

The International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences at HSE University held a Graduate Student Seminar in Soviet History together with Sciences Po (France) on June 17 – 18, 2019. HSE News Service spoke with participants and instructors of the seminar, which examinedthe impact of WWII on the Soviet Union and surrounding regions, as well as aspects of the Soviet system from Stalin up to the 1980s.

On June 24-25, HSE University held the international academic conference, ‘The 1990s: A Social History of Russia’ organized by International Center for the History and Sociology of World World War II and its Consequences, the Boris Yeltsin Center, the Egor Gaider Foundation, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. HSE News Service spoke with Roberto Rabbia, one of the international participants, about how he became interested in Soviet history, why he reads Soviet newspapers, and what he has learned from his research.

When Professor Susanne Schattenberg set out to write a new biography of Leonid Brezhnev,her aim was to show the characteristics of Brezhnev as a ‘human being’ while at the same time analyse him in the context of Soviet politics and the culture in which he grew up.

At the turn of the 20th century in Russia, public attitudes towards the creator of Sherlock Holmes went through changes even more dramatic than readers’ perceptions of the famous fictional detective. While initially op-ed writers and literary critics portrayed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a British militarist, colonialist and 'tabloid novelist', later, reviewers lauded his 'versatile and powerful talent' and welcomed his interest in Russia, according to Maria Krivosheina , lecturer at the HSE School of Philology.

On April 2, Zbigniew Wojnowski discussed how late Soviet economic reforms affected East European cultural networks in a talk on pop music from stagnation to perestroika. His talk showed how the history of popular music provides a rich prism for understanding the last decades of state socialism and the advent of capitalism.

Today, we have moved from the political concept of panem et circenses (bread and circuses) to keep the masses happy to the dangers of culture driven by spectacle and politics driven by algorithms. Post-war theoreticians of the crowd had personal experience of fascism, and today contemporary artists are attempting to address similar problems. During the XX April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development, scheduled this year for April 9-12 at the Higher School of Economics, Sarah Wilson, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, will explore some of these issues in her presentation 'Culture and Emigration, Crowds and Power.'

Legally, the 1917 revolution solved the gender issue in the Russian academic community. The doors to the profession opened for women, but a ‘glass ceiling’ remained. Ekaterina Streltsova and Evgenia Dolgova studied who it affected and why. This study is the first to present a socio-demographic analysis of the female academic community in Moscow and Leningrad during the early Soviet era.

Dr Anna Whittington is currently a Research Fellow at The International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences through the end of August 2019. She recently spoke with the HSE News Service about her work on changes in Soviet-era language policy, her thoughts on life in Moscow and how the city has changed, and much more.