Rock music had been known in the Soviet Union pre-1972, but it was a western phenomenon followed mainly by young people. As James von Geldern mentions, like opera is usually thought to be sung exclusively in Italian, rock was thought to be sung exclusively in English. The thought of hearing rock music sung in Russian […]
Week 9 Posts
Khrushchev: Stuck in the Past
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Nikita Khrushchev was a very “forceful”, as James von Geldern would put it, critic of the arts. He was quite threatened by any new or unfamiliar styles of art, and would immediately present those thoughts to the artist, egged on by his colleagues. With the vast new styles of modern art and music developing in […]
Red Star, Week 8 Posts
The “Real” 1950s Soviet Woman
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In the 1950s the ideal Soviet women would be a homemaker, feeding and taking care of her children, her home, and her husband in addition to looking good and having time for leisure activities like reading or going to the cinema. But this was not the reality of all Soviet women. Many had no time […]
Red Star, Week 7 Posts
Between Shades of Gray
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Over spring break I read Between Shades of Gray (published March 2011), a young adult historical fiction novel by Ruta Sepetys. The story follows a 15-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941 who is taken from her home with her mother and younger brother by the NKVD (Soviet secret police). They are put on a crowded, dirty […]
Red Star, Week 4 Posts
The Muslim East
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For this week’s blog post I decided to focus on the question: what role did nationality and religion play in the formation of the Soviet State? I first checked out the subject essay by Lewis Siegelbaum, “The Muslim East” to see if I could get an overview of what was going on between the Soviet […]
Comrades' Corner, Week 2 Posts
What is an Octoberist?
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For this week’s blog post, one of the options was to talk about something that interested us about The Revolution of 1905. After reading Chapter 8, I decided to explore into what the October Manifesto is and who the Octoberists are, as well as look into a few things that are associated with those terms […]
Comrades' Corner, Week 1 Posts
The Historic Town of Suzdal
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Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. View of Suzdal’ from the Kamenka River, 1912. Digital color rendering. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-04449 (58) http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/prk2000002416/ “View of Suzdal’ from the Kamenka River” is a photo of the town of Suzdal taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii in 1912. I was drawn to this photo not only because […]
Uncategorized
HELLO!
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This is the first post for my Spring 2016 20th Century Russia course blog. Stay tuned for more!
