History Commons^™

Samovars In The Snow: The Rise Of A Distinctively Russian Tea Culture, Abigail Coker

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

In the 18th Century, tea culture emerged in the Russia of Catherine the Great. Following the lead of the westernizing empress, Russians of the aristocracy adopted the refinement, which the spread across the empire. By the mid-19th Century, Russians from all social classes enjoyed tea not just as a drink but as a means of socializing and extending hospitality. Tea culture also manifested itself in new types of foods as well as cups and plates, as well other elements of broader Russian culture.

Drowned Maidens And Mother Earth: The Roots Of Sexism In Russian Folklore Studies, Juniper Guthrie

The Corinthian

During the mid-nineteenth century, the Russian intelligentsia began to lean towards Slavophilic studies in their pursuit of Russian nationalism. The driving thesis of the Slavophilic movement sought to embrace Slavic (and for Russian nationalists, specifically Russian) culture and roots, pushing back against the Petrine and Catherine movements towards Westernization. A crucial element of this mythic Slavic culture that often went unquestioned was the strict code of its gender norms. Significant folklore collectors brought their class and gender biases along with them. They held very specific beliefs regarding “real” folklore and “proper” performances of tales, imposing their intellectual structure onto a …

The Romani People In The European Cultural Imagination: Alexander Pushkin, Prosper Mérimée And Virginia Woolf, Nadya Siyam

Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly literature on Roma is scarce compared to other racial groups as a lack of academic interest, financial limitations, and other social and political factors has constrained it. This resulted in a cross-cultural circulation of misinformation about Romani people and the reproduction of Romani myths and stereotypes in fiction. This project aims to analyze selected literary works on Gypsies from three Eastern and Western European countries and two periods to unpack the cultural and political roots of Romani literary misrepresentation. This research employs a range of theoretical frameworks chosen to put the Gypsy protagonists under maximum spotlight without unnecessary repetition, …

Rider Of The Black Horse, Theodore Schenck

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This article explores the actions and ideology of the Russian revolutionary and terrorist Boris Savinkov through his final novel, The Black Horse. I argue that the book represents its author's attempt to come to terms with a world in which he feels politically homeless with the victory of his enemy, the Bolsheviks. Savinkov reckons with his fate through the liberal use of Biblical allusions and apocalyptic imagery.

“Comrade Woman” In 21st-Century Serbia: (Dis)Continuities Of Yugoslav Feminism In Post-Yugoslav, Post-War Serbian Feminism, Heyu Yuan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Forty-five years have passed since 1978, when the first feminist conference in the Eastern Bloc – Drug-ca žena – žensko pitanje: novi pristup? (Comrade Woman – The Woman’s Question: A New Approach?) – took place in Belgrade in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). After the violent breakup of the SFRY, what, if anything, is left of the legacies of Yugoslav feminism in today’s Serbia? To answer this question, this research examines the Serbian feminist scenes across time through literature and five semi-structured interviews. It concludes that although the Serbian feminist movement has become significantly different from the Yugoslav …

Три Шага К Свободе (In Russian), Slav Gratchev

Books Published by MU Libraries in MDS

Грачев, Слав. Три шага к свободе. Библиотекa университета Маршалла, Хантингтон, 2023.

Три шага к свободе — это первый роман исторической трилогии, которая перенесет вас в страшный мир разрушений и отчаянной борьбы за жизнь в Советском Союзе во время сталинских репрессий, Второй мировой войны, и жизни при коммунистическом режиме в 1980-х годах. События, описанные в романе, а также жесткая критика коммунизма, его бесчеловечного лица и его далекой от всякого гуманизма философии, привели бы автора к немедленному тюремному заключению, находись он в путинской России сегодня. К счастью, он не там, а значит, он сможет закончить свою работу и опубликовать все книги этой …

Blood Cries Out From The Ground: The Einsatzgruppen And The Holocaust In Ukraine, Lauren R. Letizia

Student Publications

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht occupied much of the western Soviet regions. The Third Reich deployed special killing squads known as the Einsatzgruppen to protect its military and ideological interests. These units were responsible for murdering over two million Jews from 1941 to 1944, primarily through mass shootings. Ukraine was one of the most afflicted countries by this “Holocaust by Bullets.” Because of the efficient genocidal techniques of Einsatzgruppen units operating in the region, one in four Jews who perished in the Holocaust was Ukrainian. The scale on which these killings …

Raising The Iron Curtain: Healing Collective Oppression Through Literature, Alisa Chirkova-Holland

Student Works

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by former gulag prisoner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is a short novel that entails an ordinary day for a prisoner, Shukhov, in a Siberian gulag. Although the work is a typical skaz, a traditional Russian narrative form, the novel was well-received by Russians at the time of publishing in 1962. This paper will explore the reason for such acclamation, understanding how Solzhenitsyn’s innovations to the skaz allowed readers to connect with their past. The paper also mentions theories such as Traumatic Realism to comprehend how such a bleak novel positively impacted post-Stalinist readers. …

Stolperstein/Stumbling Stone For Holocaust Survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hymann, Bochum/German, Toronto/Kanada Und New York, Ny, Usa, Courtney Conte, Mona Eikel-Pohen

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The documentation tries to capture the life of Holocaust survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman who spent his youth in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, and was forced by the National Socialists to leave parents, home, and country. The documentation does not claim to give a full picture, just an insight into Otto Heimann's/Bob Hyman's life.

It will be read out on June 6, 2023 in Bochum, Germany when a Stolperstein, a stumbling stone, will be place near Alte Bahnhstraße 6 in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, to commemorate Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman, so that we and future generations may learn from history.

Diese Dokumentation versucht, das Leben Bob …

Bookends: Freemasonry In Russia, Past And Present, James Patrick Greene

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to explore Russian Freemasonry in both the reign of Peter I and in theRussian Federation following the collapse of the Soviet Union, two periods where the relevant scholarship has largely fallen silent. The first chapter argues that early Masonic influences were both present at the court of Peter I and accepted by the Tsar. These intellectual trends, traceable in the libraries, social connections, and writings of individual Jacobites, would reemerge in the institutional Freemasonry in the reign of Catherine II. The printing and translation activities of Novikov and Lopukhin indicate a strong interest in these mystical ideas …

Soviet Commemoration And Myth-Making Of The Nazi Extermination Camps: Case Studies On Treblinka, Sobibór, And Majdanek, Isaac Bluestein

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The Nazi extermination camps of Treblinka, Sobibór, and Majdanek, all located in Eastern Europe, are understudied, underdiscussed, and undermemorialized in public and scholarly memory. In this paper, I seek to conduct case studies of these three camps, their histories, and their commemoration efforts. Ultimately, four main factors prevented these camps from achieving the solemn recognizability they deserve and from having their victims’ stories adequately told; little remains of these camps compared to concentration camps in Germany, fewer individuals survived them to emphasize their importance, the Soviet Union possessed near complete control of their study and commemoration, which allowed for them …

Airplane Hangars And Triple Hills: Renovation, Demolition, And The Architectural Politics Of Local Belonging At The Our Lady Of Csíksomlyó Hungarian National Shrine, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

In 2019, Pope Francis, leader of the global Catholic Church, celebrated an outdoor Mass at the Our Lady of Csíksomlyó Hungarian national shrine in Romania. When the Franciscan Order that runs the shrine published renovation plans for the altar where the pope would appear, the Facebook post received over 800 outraged comments, including one man who asked, “How can such a beautiful Hungarian symbol, so perfectly integrated into the landscape, be humiliated like this?” By situating these expressions of outrage in the history of Eastern European material politics, I argue that the aesthetic value the commentators were defending – a …

The Parish Choir Movement And Generational Festivals In Romania’S Socialist Period: New Community Festivities In Transylvania’S Gheorgheni (Gyergyó) Region, Eszter Kovács

Journal of Global Catholicism

Among the post-1945 East European socialist regimes, Romania and Poland were the only countries where the Catholic Church—despite government interventions, controls, and bans—managed to play a significant social and political role in community life. This case study provides an ethnographic description of the parish choir movement and graduating class reunions, called “generational festivals” in Hungarian, in the Gheorgheni (Hu: Gyergyó) region in the 1970s and 1980s. The gatherings will be analyzed in the context of everyday life, the socialist system’s distinctive shortage economy, and official limits on religious activity that characterized the era. I will first describe the world of …

Overview & Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Fostering Communist Elites: Cold War Czechoslovakia's Foreign Student Program, Emily Hackett

Slavic Studies Honors Papers

During the Cold War, educational policy became a strategic and consequential avenue of soft power. Countries on both sides of the East-West divide developed travel and study exchanges to cultivate relationships with other countries, and to prepare future generations for work in an increasingly internationalized world. Despite supporting a fear of foreigners and isolating people from travel outside of the Communist bloc, the Soviet Union sponsored select students from other countries to study in its institutions of higher education.

This thesis aims to provide insight into the structure and events of the Czechoslovak foreign student program with the Soviet Union …

Black October: The Migration Of Black Americans To The Soviet Union In The Interwar Period, Alice Volfson

Slavic Studies Honors Papers

Through an in-depth look at first-person accounts, primary documents, and archival research, this project broadens the scope of information available about the interwar migration of Black Americans to the Soviet Union for agricultural, industrial, and artistic initiatives which helped advance the Socialist Project. These men and women had different motivations for their emigration stemming from racial solidarity with various Soviet peoples, economic reasonings, and safety from American racism. This paper hopes to bring to life the stories of those whose legacies have been lost to history by uncovering their lives under communism, their achievements and recognitions, and that of their …

The Other Side Of The Coin: Russification Practices And Perestroika Policies (1985-1991), Lev Pushel

History Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Staging Soviet Ideals: The Birth Of Soviet Ballet And Its Reception 1927-1932, Abigail Rose Crosby

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This project explores ballet’s development as a Soviet art form through the critical reviews of three early Soviet ballets: The Golden Age (Zolotoy vek, 1930), The Bolt (Bolt, 1931), and Flames of Paris (Plamya parizha, 1932). Prior to the implementation of Socialist Realism, which set parameters for all cultural production within the Soviet Union from 1934 onward, definitions of Soviet culture were often unclear. As a result, it was often difficult for ballet makers to know what to produce and given the art form’s deep aristocratic roots, pressure to innovate in order to fit into the Soviet cultural project was …

Who Sent The Devil Down To Georgia? An Analysis Of The Causes Of The Russo-Georgian War Of 2008 And Its Effects On Georgian Democracy, Kris Bohnenstiehl

The Commons: Puget Sound Journal of Politics

No abstract provided.

Russia's Agenda For Ukraine: An Examination Of Putin's Media Propaganda Narratives, Gillian Grace Littleton

Honors Theses

This thesis explores Russian discourse about Ukraine as reflected in Russian popular media since 2014’s Euromaidan Revolution. The thesis provides an overview of Russia’s historic denial of Ukrainian statehood and it argues: Russian historians and politicians have seen Ukraine as a “little-brother” nation to Russia, with a shared Slavic heritage, and that any attempts by Ukrainians to separate themselves from Russia are Western influence movements. The thesis examines three types of mass media in order to demonstrate the interaction between history, politics and popular culture. Chapter 1 explores the public speeches of key Russian political figures including Vladimir Putin himself, …

Modern Russian Reflections On The Soviet-Afghan War, Octavio Camba

University Honors Theses

The work is focused on the translation and analysis of Russian news articles in recent years which reflect on the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989. Various sources offer lessons of the war, and the reflections carry criticisms of the Soviet failures in warfare and governance that created the present situation in Afghanistan, directly and with related consequences. The Soviet Union was a large conventional army that attempted to create political transformation in Afghanistan by supporting the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan in order to stop the perceived threat of radical political Islam, and its spread into the Soviet Central Asian republics …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Religious Mega-Events And Their Assemblages In Devotional Pilgrimages: The Case Of Círio De Nazaré In Belém, Pará State, Brazil, José Rogério Lopes, André Luiz Da Silva

Journal of Global Catholicism

The article presents a typological categorization of contemporary mega-events and their characteristics, in order to interpret the assemblages mobilized by sectors of the Catholic Church in traditional devotional pilgrimages in the northern region of Brazil. It uses ethnographic accounts of the Círio de Nazaré feast, in Belém, Pará state, Brazil, considered the largest Catholic procession in the West, in order to analyze how the promotion of this event is organized through institutional and market logics that overlap with the religious phenomenon, evincing a contemporary trend. These assemblages open a field of possibilities for institutional religious reproduction and generate concentric flows …

Radna: The Holy Shrine Of The Multinational Banat Region (Romania), Erika Vass

Journal of Global Catholicism

Radna is the sacral heart of the Banat region in Romania. The shrine has united the Catholics for centuries in veneration of Virgin Mary regardless of their nationality and native language. Roman Catholic Bulgarians, Croatians (called Krashovani), Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Romanians, and Slovakians venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary together, but believers of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Church also visit the sacred venue. Until the borders changed after the First World War, a great number of pilgrims had visited Radna every year from the region of the Great Hungarian Plain. The pilgrimage may be considered a rite of passage connecting …

Minor Letnica: (Re)Locating The Tradition Of Shared Worship In North Macedonia, Ksenia Trofimova

Journal of Global Catholicism

This paper addresses trajectories of historical and devotional continuity of the annual pilgrimage to a Marian shrine. It analyzes the ways in which traditional worship of the Catholic Church in Letnica (Kosovo)—a major regional sanctuary of the former Yugoslavia—is relocated and replicated in a small chapel of St. Joseph in Skopje (North Macedonia). Both sites have been for a long period of time institutionally connected and shared by followers of different religious traditions (Catholic and Orthodox devotees, and especially by Muslims). Drawing upon fieldwork carried out in Macedonia and Serbia between 2014-2019, I focus on the processes of social construction …

Overview And Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Women At War: Soviet And American Airwomen In Combat During World War Ii, Hayden Woodyatt

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the combat roles of Soviet and American airwomen during World War II. Both the Soviet Union and the United States utilized women in the war effort between 1943-1945 in different capacities. The United States and the USSR were in very different geographical locations when it came to Germany; the US was across the Atlantic Ocean and not in a vulnerable position while the USSR was fighting a war on its home turf. The need for soldiers was very different. In addition, the cultures of the two countries were very different in their attitudes towards the equality between …

The Interwoven Existences Of Official Catholicism And Magical Practice In The Lived Religiosity Of A Transylvanian Hungarian Village, Cecília Sándor

Journal of Global Catholicism

During the last five years I have been doing field research in a Transylvanian Hungarian village, Sânsimion (Hu: Csíkszentsimon). I present my research on this religiously homogenous, Catholic community’s worldview. Based on interviews conducted with members of the village’s various age groups, I map religious and magical knowledge passed down through the generations, using the theoretical frame of collective memory and religious transmission. Second, I highlight two different but coexisting “constructions of reality” in this rural community. By “constructions of reality,” I mean interpretations of reality expressed in narrative discourses and local magical practices that are closely and inextricably interwoven …

Rockin' The Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices, Kinga Povedak

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article focuses on the unique dimensions of lived or vernacular Catholicism through the analysis of contemporary congregational music in Hungary. Looking at the musical lives of Hungarian Roman Catholics from the late 1960s to contemporary times can provide us with new understandings of the theological contents and aesthetics, as well as the vernacular religiosity of the community. Christian popular music appeared behind the Iron Curtain relatively early, in 1967 when the first “beat mass” was created and introduced at Budapest. The early Christian popular music sounded astonishingly similar to the songs of the American Folk Mass Movement of the …

Longings, Letters And Prayers: Visitor's Books At Hungarian Marian Shrines, Krisztina Frauhammer

Journal of Global Catholicism

The following study seeks to show the flow of contemporary rituals associated with pilgrimage shrines. I will consider how visitor’s books placed on display at shrine churches are being utilized in the modern context by pilgrims and tourists alike. Requests, words of thanksgiving, and testimony are coupled with an honest, reflexive style that lends to the formation of these individualized prayers. These prayers are original, specific and peculiar as they follow patterns that are informal in nature. These prayers allow pilgrims to initiate contact with the Transcendent through the act and practice of writing. An idiosyncratic form of sacred communication …