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Einsteins article “Science and Religion” explains the connection between knowledge (science) and religion. Einstein believes that knowledge is extremely important and must be taught at school, but that this knowledge cannot teach us anything beyond how facts are related and conditioned to each other. Religion is the missing key to this equation. Einstein states: “to make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man”. Religion brings everything together with knowledge, humans will obtain the highest aspirations and judgements with this tradition.

I found this article to be extremely interesting because we currently live in a world that is dominated by technology and its advancements rather than a world that is controlled by religion. Religion in the modern world does not connect the facts together and enhance our knowledge. Religion is a belief of a “God” who controls power. Technology, although rather scary, has grown rapidly in the past decade that it is becoming the new “God”. Technology rules our everyday life in all aspects. This can be big or small: anything from a cell phone to a machine gun to an industrial machine. Technology trumps Religion in all aspects of life.

How has religion changed roles over time and when did this happen?

Alexandra Kollontai

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In a number of her written works, Alexandra Kollontai asserts the soviet necessity for ‘free love.’ This is a free love founded on a “singular morality” for both men and women, unlike the male-dominated, capitalistic, love. She advocated a revised view of sexuality that moved away from the “bourgeois dichotomy of gender and assumption.”

If Kollontai was to successfully revise gender in the Soviet Union,the soviet woman’s “double-burden” would not have existed. In Kollontai’s works she advocates a cultural equality between men and women (while also the complete Socialization of child-raising –“The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.”) which would have balanced home work between the great many mothers and fathers of the Union equally.

Alexandra Kollontai founded the “Women’s Department” in 1919 and also served as the People’s Commissar for Social Welfare. Though she opposed “bourgeois” liberal feminism, many of her works advocate for strong social reform for women in the Union.

For further reading see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/

Stalin’s Industrialization of the Country

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In Stalin’s Industrialization of the Country, 1928, he states, “Look at the capitalist countries and you will see that their technology is not only advancing, but advancing by leaps and bounds, outstripping the old forms of industrial technique.” This statement refers to Stalin’s fear that the Soviet Union’s industry was lagging behind other European countries, and as a result, the country will be unable to achieve socialism. In this statement, he argued that the reason for the success of various capitalist countries was due to the fact that they were far ahead of the Soviet Union in terms of technological advancement.

This quote is significant because it captures the fear that was present throughout Stalin’s writings, and more generally, throughout the Soviet Union. In this piece, it is clear that Stalin feels as though industrialization is a race that the Soviet Union must win, no matter the cost. He repeatedly compares the Soviet Union to other, more advanced European countries with a sense of apprehension. Industrialization of the Country, 1928 seems to focus largely on using a fear of lagging behind to promote industrial productivity. Stalin seems to have felt that instilling a sense of fear in society would be the best and most productive means of change.

How convincing do you think Stalin’s approach would have been? Was approaching industrialization as a race that the Soviets needed to win the proper way to go about achieving socialism?

Housing the Poor in England

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In the documentary Housing Problems, directors Elton and Anstey attempt to document the living conditions of workers in the slums of England. As they document the current conditions and the current/proposed changes, there is an interesting trend to note: the involvement of the private sector in solving the poor’s issues. Rather than leave the government to design, build and construct new buildings designed to improve the living conditions of the poor, businesses such as cement firms and gas companies were promoting contests in which new living quarters were developed. While this is an interesting development, the real question is why are these business promoting these contests? How does it benefit them? Why are they doing such activities?

As we see these trends in inter-war Europe, we as students truly fail to contextualize the futurism that is promoted in the documentaries and where reality truly went. While all of the developments mentioned in the new “slum” buildings would have created a fantastic world, how many of these buildings were constructed in reality? We see the blip in the attempt to deal with poverty, but fail to grasp what these evolutions mean in the overall history of Europe.

Housing Problems

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Housing Problems is a 1935 document about housing problems in Britain. The video is very similar to Orwell’s piece entitled ‘Road to Wigan Pier’. It depicts the poor conditions that the lower class in Britain had to live in. It is also interesting to notice that the people who are interviewed are wearing what appears to be decent clothes, with one man even wearing a three-piece suit, without the jacket. I don’t know if this was common attire, but in my opinion it looks like these people did their best to look good, despite the fact that this was a film documenting their poor living conditions. Logically, looking as bad as possible would be conducive to the documentary and thus to the possibility of attaining help, but the emotional response of the interviewees represents the idea of pride that was still prevalent in this ‘new poor’ section of society.

Solzhenitsyn — It was a Good Day

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Does anything really  go wrong for Shukhov in “One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich”?Nah — to use the words of rapper Ice Cube — “it was a good day.”

So, how does Solhenitsyn convey the trials of camp life? Despite Shukhov’s experience at maneuvering camp politics and his relatively optimistic outlook, the audience can still see the hardships through how Shukhov notes his surroundings. The way he comments on the other ” zeks’ ” behavior, on how it will affect their lives in the camp, depict many of the lessons he has had to learn in the camps. Many instances of punishment or distress we read in this novel are portrayed through Shukhov’s experienced view. Ultimately, he does serve his sentence. But, Shukhov does this after being worn down by camp life and having to rebuild himself on experience. He knows who to avoid, and why; who to trust, and why; the politics of the camp, and how to maneuver; and the consequences the newer zeks face in the 104th due to their inexperience.

I’ve included a censored version of Ice Cube’s song below to illustrate the similar methods employed to depict hardship.

\[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_t1oNXU5CE”]

Fighting Poverty in Britain

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The interwar period brought about a shift in Britain’s attitudes toward the poor.  Rather than continuing to believe that poverty was the fault of the poor, the British government began to implement programs aimed at helping them and increase awareness about their plight.  The documentaries Housing Problems and Enough to Eat are examples of these efforts at awareness.  Housing Problems interviews residents of a British slum about their living conditions while Enough to Eat describes Britain’s efforts at minimizing malnutrition.

In Housing Problems, the use of interviews with actual slum residents offers a more human look at the issue than simply a reading of statistics.  These people give their own emotional accounts of their struggles, which allows the viewer to feel more sympathy toward them.  This technique also helps to give the impression that the government views these people as individuals who they want to help, rather than just another aspect of creating a stronger nation.  The documentary gives faces and stories to the struggles of slum life in order to create emotion while at the same time separating the British government’s motives from those of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, whose main concerns were strengthening the state.

While Enough to Eat also creates the image of a more sympathetic government, it also implies the more far reaching effects of introducing nutrition to the impoverished.  At one point of the documentary, one of the men who is being interviewed states that the government’s methods are an “…important factor in restoring peace” because the promotion of nutrition will also help boost world trade again.  This implies that while promoting better nutritional habits amongst the poor is of concern, ensuring that Britain assumes a powerful role in trade is also of importance to the government, and they will do this in any way possible.  This documentary does a better job of displaying more of the underlying motives of helping the poor in Britain.

Could the British have had any greater motives in wanting to improve the housing conditions of the poor as well?

Poverty in Interwar Britain

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Following the First World War, the general British attitude toward the poor and their situations changed. It was then thought that it was people’s own fault for being poor. They were too lazy to work hard enough to afford better living quarters. In his writings “Road to Wigan Pier” and “Down and Out in Paris and London”, George Orwell, argues against this idea. Those who are poor, for the most part, are not well educated, and perform unskilled labor. They lack skill sets and the means to obtain a skill set that would allow them to acquire higher paying jobs.

In his short film, Housing Problems, John Grierson interviews people living in British slums. They’re not happy to be living there, but they don’t have a choice. They can’t afford to live anywhere else, and they feel some shame about their living situations. The film argues that if people are provided with well-built homes, that they can afford, they will take care of these homes. Living in the slums, people are not motivated to keep their homes clean because they’re falling apart and full of rodents.

Even in the slums, people attempted to keep up appearances, with a well-kept living room, like that of the first interviewee. This seems to conflict with the film’s assertion that only a well built home will be well kept by its inhabitants. Why did people maintain living rooms in a smilingly bourgeois style?  Was it to preserve their dignity in their filthy homes? Was it to uphold personal or family identity in a row of identical homes?

 

 

The Demise of Purity

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Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone is a historical novel that follows the journey of Pietro Spina, a young communist revolutionary. Pietro Spina returns to Italy from exile and is being hunted by police, so he takes on the identity of Don Paolo Spada, a priest, to avoid capture. It is clear that this novel’s goal is to denounce fascism and praise communism, while portraying a sympathy for peasants and landowners.

Cristina, Don Paolo’s love interest, is the character that intrigued me the most. In this novel it was obvious to me that Cristina was the symbol of purity. She was the glue that held her family together; she put off her dreams of becoming a nun to take care of her family and their home. In chapter 9, Don Paolo goes to Cristina’s house to meet her family and father, Don Pasquale. There, Cristina, Don Pasquale, and Don Paolo talk about Cristina’s youth. Don Pasquale tells Don Paolo that when Cristina was a baby he left her in the pram, and a wolf came. However, the wolf didn’t eat Cristina, which is strange because she would have been easy prey (98). Contrasting with Cristina’s experience in childhood, at the very end of the novel, Cristina dashes to the mountain to look for Don Paolo, who she now knows to be Pietro Spina. Through the snow she desperately calls out for him, looking for Pietro. Dishearteningly, when she calls out for Pietro, only the howl of wolves is returned.  She knows that they are coming to kill her. She makes a cross and sinks to her knees knowing her death is imminent (270). To me, this contrast symbolized that in a world such as Facist Italy, purity cannot survive. Eventually, the “wolf” will “eat you”, no matter how long you have escaped it before.

Is this symbol an over-dramatization of a socialst’s view of a fascist government?