История Bordyugov G.,  Devyatov S., Kotelenet  E. The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

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Жанр: История
Издательство: Проспект
Дата размещения: 09.02.2016
ISBN: 9785392194995
Язык: не указан
Объем текста: 230 стр.
Формат:
epub

Оглавление

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION. Theme 1. THE STUDY OF MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY: MAIN CHARACTERISTICS AND TRENDS

Theme 2. RUSSIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY: ITS SELF-IMAGE, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, AND CONTRADICTIONS OF ITS DEVELOPMENT

Theme 3. FESTIVAL OF THE OPPRESSED OR SOCIAL DISEASE? THE NATURE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS

Theme 4. EMERGENCY MEASURES AND THE «EXTREME EMERGENCY REGIME» IN THE SOVIET REPUBLIC AND OTHER STATE FORMATIONS ON THE TERRITORY OF RUSSIA, 1918‒1920

Theme 5. FROM «WAR COMMUNISM» TO THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY: CONTRADICTIONS OF THE NEP

Theme 6. NEP DOWNSIZING AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE POLICY OF EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES INTO A PERMANENT SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT

Theme 7. THE 1930S: CRISES, REFORMS, REPRESSIONS

Theme 8. THE HIERARCHY OF THE GREAT TERROR

Theme 9. ILLUSIONS AND AWAKENING OF THE GENERATION OF 1930S

Theme 10. THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR 1941‒1945: MAIN EVENTS AND POPULAR MOOD IN THE UNOCCUPIED SOVIET UNION

Theme 11. THE PEOPLE AND PROBLEMS OF THE POST-WAR ERA

Theme 12. THE KHRUSHCHEV’S THAW AND ITS REVERSE SIDE

Theme 13. SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES: FROM REFORMS TO STAGNATION

Theme 14. THE 1980S: THE SPACE OF POWER AND A SEARCH FOR NEW WAYS OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS

Theme 15. AUGUST PUTSCH OF 1991 AND THE TERMIDOR OF YELTSIN

CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA. WITH WHAT DOES RUSSIA ENTER THE NEW MILLENNIUM?. Theme 16. THE REALM OF POWER UNDER VLADIMIR PUTIN

Theme 17. REFORMS AND THE HIERARCHY OF NATIONAL PROJECTS

Theme 18. LOCATING OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD OF 1917 IN RUSSIAN HISTORICAL MEMORY

Theme 19. THE GREAT VICTORY OF 1945 IN HISTORICAL MEMORY

Theme 20. TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUSSIAN UTOPIAS: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE AS IMAGINED BY THE STATE AND DESIRED BY THE INTELLIGENTSIA

MAIN EVENTS, DATES AND GLOSSARY

SELECTED BIOGRAPHIES



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Theme 10.
THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR 1941‒1945: MAIN EVENTS AND POPULAR MOOD IN THE UNOCCUPIED SOVIET UNION


We propose to remember the turning-points of the Great Patriotic War. We’ll be helped with the scheme:


1) June 22, 1941 — November 1941. The outbreak of the war; heavy retreat of early months; the loss of strategic initiative.


2) December 1941. The battle and victory at Moscow; stabilizing of the main front; attaining of the strategic balance.


3) Summer 1942. Defeats and retreat again; losing of strategic initiative.


4) The Stalingrad battle of Winter 1942/43. The beginning of the change in war; regaining of the strategic initiative.


5) The battle of Kursk, Summer 1943. The turning-point of the war; a general strategic offensive; the liberation of the occupied territories.


6) The last stage. War in Europe; the Berlin battle; the capitulation of Germany.


The adherents of the social system created in the USSR during the 1930s, having retreated within their own country in view of ferocious criticism of Stalinism, have fallen back on the victorious war against Hitler’s Germany as their last defensive position. Their logic runs this way: even if Stalin himself did everything wrong, his model of social structure secured the victory over fascism, and by that token alone it was the right structure. But an approach to the issue that strictly follows the historical documents shows something else: the system that, it seems, was created for the conduct of war and that was justified in many people’s eyes by the expectation of a coming war unveiled its incapacity in the first weeks and months of the fighting.


The leaders of the Soviet system at the time, having already taken massive repressive actions against the people, strengthened their power as the German invasion began at the price of the submission of the whole country to the secret police. The leadership achieved the alienation of those people capable of thinking for themselves. The illusion arose that a monolithic unity had been created, but this monolith baked in the ovens of Stalinism, as quickly became evident in the fighting, was simply not in a position to conduct the war.


The first clashes with the Germans showed that many people who had been advanced to commanding positions after the purges and repressions of the 1930s were of poor quality, incapable of demonstrating initiative. The extraordinary situation of the early days of the war, both at the front and in the rear, required extraordinary action, not the blind fulfillment of an order no matter how petty. Independent and creative actions were required; blanket orders had no effect and sometimes led to disastrous results. A completely different kind of logic for action was required: the unconditional fulfillment of an order but with freedom of choice of the means to carry it out. However, such thinking was absolutely contradictory to the logic beaten into the heads of the new stratum of commanders on the eve of the war. Time was necessary to allow those with some intellectual, cultural, and political potential to rise through the system.


Perhaps it was Stalin himself who was the first to sense this crisis of his brand of socialism. At the end of the war, he let out a secret: in 1941 the people had the right to demand the government’s resignation, but had not done so. We can say today: yes, but not because the government had done such a good job. The «system» proved to be wrong for the war; it was fit only to strengthen Stalin’s personal dictatorship. Fundamental changes were required to overcome the crisis of the first days of the invasion.


The rapidly changing situation at the front and in the rear did not require giving up a hierarchical, inflexible mode of leadership. On the contrary, under wartime conditions power must be concentrated in a single center. But the problem was how to divide power and functions between the center and local authorities. The type of management that had been created by the end of the 1930s permitted no autonomy of action. Ordinary people were reduced to «little screws» of the mechanism.


On the surface it seemed that all Soviet citizens were for the regime and for comrade Stalin. But that is a myth; reality was vastly different. Not the official, public documents, but others now available to researchers reflect the real feelings of the people. These new sources allow us to reconstruct a more accurate picture of the past in place of the one that Stalinist leaders and other Soviet officials into recent years so ardently desired.


The study of popular attitudes during wartime is indeed complicated. Popular attitudes have meaning that one wants to understand, but which one should not judge. Although we have our own ideas and notions about World War II, we do not have the right to impose these views of history and life on the wartime generation, which after all operated under extreme pressure from various directions.


There is another, possibly even more serious difficulty in trying to draw a composite picture of people’s mentality during the war. Frank accounts of popular attitudes for the years 1941 through 1945 have been saved in unusual and rare sources — namely, the closed channels of party and state information, intended only for the Stalinist elite. In its analysis of popular attitudes, Soviet historiography long relied on exclusively official sources: the central and local press and lectures and speeches from all types of meetings (usually censored in advance). All of these materials had a particular orientation, demonstrating social unity, patriotism, and loyalty to the party and Stalin. In this way, a unified picture of popular attitudes developed. Almost to the very end of the USSR’s existence, its leadership considered discussions of diversity in popular wartime perceptions and reactions to be unacceptable. The party hierarchy therefore diligently kept much information on the war secret from all but a limited circle of high officials.


Documents made available in 1991 by the Communist Party Central Committee’s Bureau of Propaganda and Agitation, preserved in the former Central Party Archive in Moscow, point toward a picture of widely varying responses, hopes, and criticisms expressed during the war. Who recorded social attitudes from 1941 to 1945? Answering this question identifies the main channels through which information reached the top authorities.


Surveillance of public attitudes mainly occurred in small social groups and was led by party cadres and workers of the regional NKVD-NKGB, the security police. As a rule, on this level, the most pervasive, spontaneous, emotional, and often fluctuating feelings and opinions of simple people were recorded. In such records there is no precise personalization. Instead there are anonymous mass rumors, as well as rejoinders, slips of the tongue, and so on — everything that might be called «the voice of the people.»


Reports to higher party echelons by leaders and members of the propaganda groups of the Central Committee (CC), which traveled around the country, were also clear and constant channels of information. The most interesting component in these reports is the voluminous lists of questions asked in very different places, from lectures on factory floors or collective farms to plenary sessions and meetings of active party members. All these questions were categorized according to standard methods and directed to the CC.


On the local level, spontaneous and unconscious moments rarely appeared, in proportion to the small share of anonymity accorded people as they participated in meetings. Yet the questions sometimes illuminate popular attitudes. In their content, these questions are much more valuable and interesting than the texts of lectures, which had to be approved in advance by central authorities.


The next traditional channel of surveillance was opening private correspondence. This process was carried out by the departments of censorship in the NKVD-NKGB. However, in spite of its wide use, this source of information yielded practically no ideological content. The summaries of correspondence prepared by the departments of censorship between 1941 and 1945 are filled with everyday materials as well as coverage of complaints about disastrous conditions, for instance, among workers of evacuated enterprises. This means that after the machinery of repression began to work well during the 1930s, people learned not to trust personal writings for the elaboration of their thoughts and ideological views.




The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

The XXth Century Political History of Russia presents lecture materials for academics working with undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers of Russian history.<br /> The chapters are an unusual insight into the Russian past, which makes the readers think, analyze and also reconsider some events of the Russian history. It is an exciting blend of stories of the past and future trends, allowing to make forecasts and predictions.

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История Bordyugov G.,  Devyatov S., Kotelenet  E. The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

История Bordyugov G., Devyatov S., Kotelenet E. The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

История Bordyugov G., Devyatov S., Kotelenet E. The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials

The XXth Century Political History of Russia presents lecture materials for academics working with undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers of Russian history.<br /> The chapters are an unusual insight into the Russian past, which makes the readers think, analyze and also reconsider some events of the Russian history. It is an exciting blend of stories of the past and future trends, allowing to make forecasts and predictions.

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