It really is a painful history, isn’t it? Thanks for writing about the Afghan war from this perspective and for noting your family connection to the struggle. How does the American support for the Mujahideen in the 80s fit with what you describe here?
Author: A. Nelson
Comment on An Olympic Medal In Distraction by A. Nelson
I like the connections you draw between the Olympic boycott and the invasion of Afghanistan, and the map is especially effective as a visual shorthand to the history of Olympic boycotting. And using the Current Digest was a great idea! Make sure and use the “stable URL” so others can find the articles you use. (check the link and you’ll see what I mean).
Comment on It’s 1985 and Soviet Farms Still Suck by A. Nelson
As Emma suggested, the “dying village” is a trope that appears across the urbanizing world in the late twentieth century. I like the way you chart the ongoing concerns and inability of the government to “do anything” about agriculture in the Soviet Union. If there was a “stagnant” economic area, this would have to be it.
Comment on Kino and the Underground Music Scene by A. Nelson
Agree with Emma! And that story about “Tsoi Lives” also echoes a famous poem by Mayakovsky about Lenin: “Lenin, Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin will (always) Live” (check your Duo Lingo app to see why this sounds way better in Russian…
Link to Tim’s post: https://ukrophistory.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/all-along-the-watchtower-the-soviet-vietnam/
Comment on So Now We Have Equality by A. Nelson
I love this film, but it is hard to escape the message that no matter how accomplished she might be, a woman needs a man to be happy and successful. The whole “double burden” problem is so intractable — we even have a version of it in the US.
Comment on It’s (Not) Five O’Clock Somewhere… by A. Nelson
I like the way you highlight the multiple drawbacks of the anti-alcohol campaign! Lara also wrote about this, but from a slightly different angle. One question I always have about this issue is: “how could it have been done better?” I mean, we assume that drinking less alcohol is probably a good thing — so what’s an appropriate / effective way to accomplish that? Was the anti-alcohol campaign an effort to legislate a social problem away?
Comment on Women’s Sexuality and the Changing Culture of the 1980s by A. Nelson
Agree with Emma — that CD article was a great find. This is such an important topic, and I’m really glad we’re getting some good posts that approach changing attitudes from different angles. Check out Lily’s thoughts here: https://bigbeariswatchingyou.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/roxanne/comment-page-1/#comment-67
Comment on Party Politics No Longer by A. Nelson
I like the clarity with which you chart the dissolution of the Party! Who would have thought that something everyone perceived as being so monolithic could just fall apart like that? It would be interesting to see what kinds of coverage there is in the Current Digest on this.
Comment on Roxanne by A. Nelson
Agree with Emma 100%! Also, have you seen Interdevochka? (there’s a still from it in the image gallery for the 17M module you used.) It’s pretty powerful — about sex work, adolescence, social decay — it made a huge stir in the Soviet Union when it came out.
Comment on The Tale of Two Yuri(es): A Story of Corruption and Diamonds by A. Nelson
Thanks so much for this! What a story….and you know, I knew most of this already…but had somehow missed one very important and one really interesting (to me anyway) point. The important one is that I never realized that the diamond mine was an open pit mine — this makes the “cost” of gems ever so much higher, IMO. But what really got me was the bit about Igrimova’s diamonds! Have you checked her out? She was a pretty formidable lion tamer. I don’t think I would mess with her.
Seriously, though — good detective work here and thank you for connecting this tale of corruption to the broader crisis of political legitimacy in the late Soviet period.
