Monthly Archives: February 2013

And another [case of Tonypandy] bites the dust

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How does a bedridden cop crack one of the biggest mysteries in English history? Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time illuminates what it means to “do” history. When the protagonist Detective Grant becomes intrigued with a portrait of Richard III and the horrendous crime the medieval monarch is supposed to have committed, he sets out to uncover what really happened.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk.

Grant soon finds that modern sources are unable to adequately explain how or why Richard III might’ve murdered his two young nephews. In fact, while they portray a sinister and calculating king they also acknowledge his many admirable qualities and achievements; it is this apparent contradiction that spurs Grant to dig deeper.

The detective is scandalized to find out that Sir Thomas More’s History of King Richard III, a contemporary account and the definitive history of the period, is nothing but a regurgitation of another’s story; More was only a boy during Richard’s reign. Interrogating sources is an important part of a historian’s work. We must seek to contextualize documents and not simply take them at face value. The questions we are currently asking in our archive assignment are a good guide: Who created the document and when? Who is the intended audience? What is the intended purpose of the document? Etc.

Grant is finally able to get his hands on some primary sources with the help of his sidekick-researcher Brent Carradine. Little by little, he pieces together the puzzle of the past. In some cases, what sources don’t say is as important as what they do say: in Henry Tudor’s Bill of Attainder against Richard, the new monarch makes no mention whatsoever of his predecessor’s crime.

Another notable aspect of Grant’s historical journey is that he talks with his companions and colleagues, much like a historian might dialogue with her peers. He shows us the importance of reasoning out loud and bouncing your ideas off of others.

In the end, Grant outlines the evidence he has amassed and builds his case. The driving question guiding the detective’s research: who had the profile and the motives to dispose of the princes? Was it the long-accused Richard III or his successor the usurping Henry VII who killed Edward’s two sons? For Grant, the facts just didn’t stack up against Richard. He is widely-reported as having been a level-headed, just, and merciful king. Henry, on the other hand, was power hungry and crafty. We can almost never know exactly how history happened, but we can make informed theories about the past based on the evidence we have. Using the evidence and his knowledge of human nature, Grant busts the case of how a malicious rumor came to be accepted as truth.

World of Art

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Reading the Massie article assigned for today was particularly interesting for me because of the work I have been doing at my job in the college archives. A large number of books related to the World of Art movement were donated to the college by an alumni whose grandfather, Basil Troussoff, studied with Aleksander Benois, and worked as a painter and set designer in New York theater after he immigrated to the United States. The archives also hold a large amount of Basil’s personal papers, which I have been working on cataloging for the past year, culminating in an exhibit that will be on display very soon in the basement of the library.

Many of the books that were donated are exhibit catalogs from relatively unknown avant garde painters that whose work was displayed in Moscow in the from the late 19th century to the 1920’s. There are some by the more well-known painters as well, such as Aleksander Benois and Konstantin Somov. Many of the catalogs are also for exhibits of folk art from various regions of Russia. I originally thought this was a separate interest, but based on the focus of Russian roots and Russian identity in the principles of this movement, I now understand why Basil collected the books that he did. The archives also has an original copy of the publication World of Art, which showcased much of the work produced by members of the movement.

What I find especially interesting is that even though Basil was not participating in the same place as the center of the World of Art movement and even somewhat later, he still practiced the principals important to the movement, such as collaboration. Though he exhibited his own paintings, he focused on set design. Though he wasn’t working on such controversial pieces as the Rite of Spring, he helped to design sets in the studio of Joseph Urban, for performances by the Ziegfeld Follies and the Metropolitan Opera, important organizations in American theatre history.

Battleship Potemkin

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On Wednesday I attended the film Battleship Potemkin. Before seeing this film I knew little about how the Russian Revolution began but after the viewing, I had a much greater understanding of what led up to the first Russian Revolution. I was quite shocked at how horrifying the conditions were for the low ranking men, while the officers were granted significantly higher standards of living. One scene in particular that showed this was the scene in which the sailors complain that the meat they are being served is rotten and infested with maggots. Despite the fact that the meat looks repulsive, the ship doctor says that the meat is perfectly fine and that the maggots were not anything to make a big deal about. Up until this point I had not realized the magnitude of the difference in treatment among the classes. As one of the sailors puts it “Russian POW’s in Japan are fed better than this.” This comment illustrates how many Russians felt they were not being adequately cared for by anyone in the government.

Another part of the movie that I found particularly interesting was how easy it was to sway the Russians into action against figures of authority. As the dissenters are about to be executed on the ship, Vakulinchuk yells to the firing squad “Brothers, who are you shooting?” This simple statement is all that these men needed in order to turn their weapons against their abusive officers. Later, when Vakulinchuk’s body is on display in the city, the masses are moved to action through the sight of this fallen hero, whose body lay with a sign that said “Killed for a bowl of soup.” It appears that by this point, the Russian people were so fed up with their government, that they only need a small spark in order to ignite, a spark that Vakulinchuk provided through his death. Although this revolution was deposed by the czars men, the killings of the masses only further served to spark the hatred and resentment of the government.

After seeing this movie, I understand how it could be such a powerful form of propaganda amongst Russians as it shows the incredible cruelty of the czars government, while at the same time advocating the rise of the masses against an oppressive power.

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In our process of learning about the Revolutionary period, one idea in particular stands out to me. This idea is the concept of “devoting yourself to a revolution.” Rakhmetov, for example gives up an entire lifestyle of carnal indulgence for the sake of personal improvement. This can be seen through his vigorous exercises, celibacy, strict diet and constant acquiring of knowledge. As we discussed in class, this is precisely the kind of professional revolutionary that Lenin wanted. In my opinion, this is a dangerous perspective. It requires a lot of people to be wholly dedicated to a cause in the context of education and thorough understanding. Gathering a party with a cause is not necessarily difficult but making sure that each member of the party is deeply and intensely qualified is a different issue. A modern example of this issue may be the American war in the middle east. Many American’s rallied against those that attacked the trade centers but failed to learn why the United States was attacked.

In the context of modern Russia, there is another issue. If a political party is made strong by both the level of dedication of it’s members and it’s size, then we can assume that perhaps those aspects are of equal necessity. The modern Russian population, however, is dwindling. While it is of course impossible to predict exactly what will happen in upcoming years, if a population grows drastically smaller there will of course be less people to strengthen political parties. This is a stark contrast between the Revolutionary Period we have observed and modern Russia. I would be curious to further explore the implications of population and it’s relation to political parties, education and general societal development in upcoming weeks.