Tag Archives: Russia

Pussy Riot Member Moved without Family’s Knowledge

Posted on by

The jailed member of Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was moved to a Siberian prison during an almost month-long period while her family was unaware of her whereabouts. Russian prison authorities moved Tolokonnikova after a highly publicized hunger strike over a distance of several thousand miles without telling her family  where she was being moved. Movement of prisoners often takes this long because the trains that transport the prisoners stop many times in different prisons throughout Russia. Russian authorities also are not legally required to say where a prisoner is being moved until after a transfer has taken place.

Today it was confirmed that after 24 days without contact with her family, Tolokonnikova was moved to a prison in the region where she once lived with her mother, Krasnoyarsk. Her husband initially believed Tolokonnikova was being moved to the town of Nizhny Ingash, which is 185 miles away from Krasnoyarsk. Tolokonnikova is currently in the hospital for convicts in Krasnoyarsk instead of the prison, being treated in a tuberculosis hospital. While she does not have tuberculosis, she is being treated for the hunger strike complications.

Is it ethical to move prisoners without notifying their families? What would the American reaction be if something like this happened to a prisoner in the United States?

 

 

 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gciKYJkfXvRRedTJWDS9iejQ0eyw?docId=514fe0ae-a58a-4779-ae62-7d5be9df86c5

Working Women in Russia

Posted on by

The women’s double burden of simultaneously juggling their working life with their domestic lives has not improved much since 1936 in Russia. Up until the late 1970s, women practically had twice the workload as men. In the 1930s, the Soviet state basically falsely advertised women’s emancipation by massively increasing women’s participation in the workforce while undermining their facade by cutting wages in half and reversing the importance of the states role in child raising and placed it on the Russian family.

In the United States in the 1950’s, you see a more complete split in the working and domestic spheres with gender roles. The stereotypical nuclear family, such as ones that can be recognized on the popular television show “Mad Men”, would have a man in the workforce, with the women taking care of the domestic chores and child raising. In modern American society, where women have a much larger share of high paying jobs than they did roughly 70 years ago, there are more male figures which are involving themselves more heavily in the domestic environment, where the women make most of the income.

One things which fascinated me about women’s jobs in Soviet Russia throughout the 20th century is that they consistently dominated teaching and education. How revered were teachers in the Soviet Union compared to the United States? What about in compared to a culture which places a higher emphasis in education? Such as China or Korea?

The Dissident Movement

Posted on by

In the 1960s and early 1970s, a dissident movement surfaced among Soviet intellectuals. This movement is thought to be contributed to Khrushchev lessening his control on the State. The movement illustrates the State’s inability to adapt to the expanding mobility of the people. The activists in this movement were highly motivated for their cause. Their passion and sentiments were so large, beyond their numbers.

The ways in which the people in the movement expressed their ideologies varied from protests to literature to journals. For example, the people of this movement would circulate some manuscripts of banned books. I think that this is a bold statement and showed their dedication to the cause. A leader in this movement, particularly the concept of freedom and human rights, was Andrei Sakharov. His most famous work is his essay, “Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom”.

The Soviet State would try to suppress the events regarding this movement via propaganda. This propaganda would negate the movement’s ideologies, threaten the loss of job and imprisonment, and confiscate the literature being circulated.

The Dissident Movement in the Soviet Union

Posted on by

Soviet intellectuals in the late 1960s and early ’70s decided it was high time to voice their opposition to the current political situation in the Union. The movement had roots in the Khrushchev era when the state loosened controls ever so slightly, but by the time Brezhnev came to power and tried to restrict expression yet again, the movement was already taking off.

It was a period of both hope and desperation. For the dissidents, there was hope. Their public protests and demonstrations against the Soviet state system only further emboldened their radical thinking; they believed they were the “conscience of society” and had a duty to stand up and demand freedoms for the people of Russia. The dissidents sought democratic socialism and political liberalism, while condemning western ideologies that overshadowed Russian Orthodox values.

Roy Medvedev, a dissident movement leader.
Credit: www.soviethistory.org

For the Soviet authorities, desperation was in the air. Their legitimacy was being called into question and they could not afford that. Their attempts at controlling the dissidents were tried and true Soviet tactics: confiscating literature, exiling leaders, condemning offenders to prison or mental institutions, removing dissidents from their occupations, and launching propaganda campaigns to counter and delegitimize dissident ideology.

The actual number of dissidents may have been small, but their impact was disproportionately large. The Soviet’s attempts to regain control of public thought were desperate and futile, and if there is one thing I have learned from studying history, it is that desperate actions of a government mark the beginning of the end. I would not go so far as to credit the dissident movement with being the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union. However, it was another blow to their ideology and power, and it is a movement that ought not to be overlooked.

From Russia with LGBT Love

Posted on by

This past summer, President Vladimir V. Putin passed a law that banned “propaganda on nontraditional sexual relationships” officially meant to protect children but known to be an anti-LGBT law. The New York Times asked Russians to send in their stories of being LGBT in Russia and several of those stories were published yesterday. The New York Times received over 400 stories from Russians and Russian-Americans and published 9 accounts from LGBT Russians of different ages, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Many of the accounts said that the psychological affects on their lives the law has caused has led many to strongly consider leaving the country. Many of the younger Russians spoke of the importance of the Internet in finding other LGBT individuals in Russia and feeling less isolated.

A few of the accounts spoke of coming out to friends and family and the mixed reactions; some positive and supportive, others homophobic. One account from a gay man in a relationship spoke of a false marriage with a lesbian friend in order to hide their true relationships with other people of the same sex. One woman said she and her partner had decided to wait to have children given the political climate. One account spoke of St. Petersburg becoming less tolerant.

Given all this negative press about the new law and the upcoming Sochi Olympics, is it likely more LGBT Russians will have no alternative but to leave their country if the political climate doesn’t improve? What can the US and other countries do to show their support of LGBT individuals around the world?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/world/europe/stories-of-being-gay-in-russia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&

Growing Up In A “Normal Time”

Posted on by

Rowley’s interview with Natalie P. was not only relatively uplifting, but also opened my eyes to the the ignorance of learning in our culture. Despite going to a selective liberal arts college in what people have labeled the “information era”, I have never met someone my age whose thirst for learning was so insatiable. It was not only Natalia, however, it was also all of her classmates. Although it is sad, it is tough to imagine myself in a classroom where every student was so eager to learn. It has been said that college is the only commodity we pay for to not attend, with students taking out loans of tens of thousands of dollars yet make decisions to skip class or voluntary distract themselves in it.

It makes me think about living standards in comparison to educational or academic desire and performance. I would assume someone growing in lesser living conditions would see education as an opportune privilege and try to be as active as possible. In contrast, students I have grown up with have often loathed school, class, homework, or opportunities to learn because it has been seen as a chore rather than a way to better yourself in ways impossible otherwise.

How does culture and lifestyle effect education in a society? If you had been raised in much better or worse conditions than you have, do you think it would have changed the way you participated in your education?

Political Languages

Posted on by

Both Viktorovich and Natalia touch on the impact of learning English in grade school and, to an extent, elaborate on how they expanded that knowledge as they got older. This language was designated as a critical foreign language in the Soviet Union. How should we interpret this given the geographical distance between the USSR and the next English speaking country? In the United States, the common elementary language is Spanish. Is this because of the strong political and cultural influences coming from the other American countries and Spain? Doubtful.

russia-america

The interviews from Saratov touch on the global political importance of knowing English during the late Soviet Union. Many resources abroad (radio programs, “European News”) were English influenced. The Soviet understanding of this allowed it to be a competitive power in the technological, cultural, and arms races.  This allowed many citizens of the USSR to embrace and understand global news and influences. Viktorovich displayed an understanding of the varying cultures he encountered in the army. Could this empathy been nurtured by his exposure to the global community? If so, language was his entrance to the discussion.

The United States’ pre-occupation with Spanish (not a State-recognized critical language) is not geared toward embracing a global political community. In fact, the cutting of Russian research funding seems to insinuate movement in the opposite direction — isolationism. Either that or the United States does not recognize the global influence Russia holds and this unprecedented cut was made out of arrogance, ignorance, or a mix of both.2008-469--America-and-Russia-agree

Disappearing Culture: Native Tribes of Northwestern Siberia

Posted on by

You can find a brief section of my upcoming paper at the following link:

Disappearing Culture

In this section I address governmental policy towards indigenous groups in 19th Century as well as Soviet policy in the 20th Century. These topics will fall in the middle of my final product so bear in mind that more information will come before and after these pages.