Tag Archives: Russia

Replanning Sevastopol

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Students know of the widespread devastation that resulted from WWII, but most history lessons stop just short of how those countries, cities and towns picked up the pieces and rebuilt their homes. As this reading shows, it wasn’t an easy task. Sevastopol needed to be completely rebuilt–and not just the buildings, but social services as well. Infrastructure was close to nonexistent, public health services were failing the population and all the while, architects and city planners were attempting to “russify” the Ukrainian city with a city-wide face lift in the Russian style.

Credit: crisisboom.com

Credit: crisisboom.com

In typical Soviet Union fashion, the state wanted Sevastopol to be rebuilt in the Russian image. As Professor Qualls wrote in his article, “the perceived reversion to tradition meant a Russian ethnic identification wrapped in a Greek architectural façade, yet devoid of all hints of competing identifications.” When I read this, I was completely unfazed. Why of course the government would use this opportunity to impose Russian culture on  Sevastopol. It would be logical for the people of Sevastopol to want to rebuild their own heritage, commemorate their losses in their own fashion and construct a city of their own choosing–but this wasn’t an option under Soviet rule.

It was this “top-down” approach to reconstruction that most caught my attention in the article, but the health and safety conditions plaguing the city were of great importance as well. It took several years before disease began to decline, living conditions (such as apartments with adequate space so as not to spread disease) improved, health services (such as ambulances) were restored and the population began to rebound. Of course, the important thing is that the city did achieve this stability, but I’m sure that if compared to the reconstruction timelines of Western European nations, the case of Sevastopol look quite bad.

Charges Reduced in Greenpeace Case

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Yesterday, Russian investigators reduced the charges against the crew members of the Greenpeace ship who held a protest against exploitation of natural resources at an oil rig in the Arctic Ocean from piracy to hooliganism.  Piracy charges could have resulted in a prison sentence of 15 years while the penalty for hooliganism is 7 years. Russia’s Investigative Committee has presumably lowered these charges in order to avoid any more diplomatic confrontation over the fate of the crew members, who hail from over 18 nations. Members of Greenpeace Russia believe that even the charges of hooliganism should be dropped, as it was a peaceful protest.

After the protest on September 19th, the ship was towed to Murmansk, where everyone on board was charged with piracy and denied bail. President Putin remarked a month ago that piracy was not an appropriate charge but agreed that Russia’s border guards had the right to cut the scaling cables of the activists and fire warning shots. These remarks made have helped reduce the charges, but why not earlier? Why are possible charges of violence against authorities being mentioned if none of the crew members nor activists were armed or resisted upon arrest?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/world/europe/russia-reduces-charges-against-greenpeace-activists.html

Disappearing Cultures of Northern Siberia

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I was happy to discover that sources on my research topic were plentiful in both the scholarly and the cyber world. The websites were typically more recently published than some of my scholarly sources, but there are some exceptions. The web sites are, as expected, more interactive and interesting to read than many of the scholarly sources simply because most have color photos. Most of my online sources were produced by organizations aiming to raise awareness for these groups, rather than scholars doing research like my print sources.

I’ve learned that each type of source has its use. For instance, scholarly journal articles are typically much more focused in scope and so to search for and use them your research questions must also be more narrowed. Books are daunting sources because they hold so much information, but again, if you narrow your scope you can limit yourselves to chapters within books, rather than read the entire thing. It is my website sources that have surprised me the most. After 3 years in college I had ultimately written off websites as being of any use in a formal research paper, but this project has changed my mind. Of course, a bibliography should not be built entirely upon websites, but as long as the site is credible it can be a great source for background information and media, as well as a springboard for other sources, whether cyber or in-print.

This project has certainly taught me to broaden my research parameters to include multiple types of sources. It has also showed me the benefits of breaking a large project into chunks and completing smaller tasks along the way. That is not a new discovery, but it is something that I often forget in my busy day-to-day life. I’ve also discovered just how useful certain online tools can be (the Evernote clipper tool is a great example.) Even though Evernote itself hasn’t been groundbreaking in this research process, the clipper tool has been refreshingly useful. Blogging on my paper topic has also helped me develop my ideas and think about my project in new ways.

Moving forward, I am going to focus on answering three questions: how did the lives of these tribes people change as a result of Soviet policy? How did they try to adapt to these changes? Were their adaptions successful?

I realize that these questions can may still change as I finish my research, however I believe they get at the heart of what it means for a culture to “disappear.” In order to answer these questions, I will need to understand tribal life before these Soviet policies, exactly how these Soviet policies affected the traditional way of life, and how these cultures have fared since. I believe all of my sources cover these aspects and more, but I will being by focusing on journal articles that have clearly stated theses and arguments to help me get on my way.

Below is a link to my updated annotated bibliography:

Annotated Bibliography with Web Sites

 

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”]

Day in the Life

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Although the critically acclaimed prose of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has been diminished through translation, Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivers a powerful novel which exposes the tribulations and inhumanity in Russian labor camps in the 1930s. Ivan Denisovich is a former soldier who was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp located in Siberia. As long as the temperature did not drop to negative forty-one degrees, Ivan and the other prison inmates were sent out in groups to perform tasks which mostly involved construction or heavy labor. The prisoners were malnourished, ill equipped for the elements, and abused by prison staff on a daily basis.

Something that interested me as I read this novel was the fact that the events took place over the course of a day, which makes the reader think of the potential types and severities of events which simply did not occur in that time frame. Another thing which stuck out to me was the fact that labor is seen as a type of privilege–it was unfortunate to have your rights to perform labor stripped because otherwise it was harder to stay warm and feel alive.

Probably my favorite quote from this novel may have been the saying “How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand a man who’s cold?”. (23) It is used repeatedly and represents the two sides of “us” and “them” that is a ubiquitous theme when learning about Russian class relations.

Meteorite in Lake Chebarkul

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Yesterday a meteorite was dredged from Lake Chebarkul, in the Southern Urals region, about 900 miles east of Moscow. The meteorite, which is believed to be a chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteor from the meteor shower last February due to the dents in its structure which are similar to the Chelyabinsk meteors. The rock is 5 feet long and weighs approximately 1,255 pounds but upon weighing the rock, it broke into 3 pieces. According to the BBC website and the meteorite curator at the London Natural History Museum, the rock has the markings and “thick melted crust” of a meteorite.

The lake itself is bordered on other sides by towns, Chebarkul and Chelyabinsk. Several small islands on the lake are used as sanatoria. Is it dangerous to live and have rest or vacation homes on a lake where meteorites have been known to land? Should measures be taken to observe the sky more carefully for further meteor showers?

 

 

source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/16/235486934/divers-dredge-up-a-half-ton-chunk-of-russian-meteorite

Nuclear Waste and Sustainability in the Russian Nuclear Industry

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Of the scholarly websites and books that I am using for this project I have found a number of similarities. Many of these sources are a form of anthology, where books have chapters the web sites have pages. But, a very distinct feature of the web site is its growth and development. Where a book would have to be republished, or have additional volumes, a web site allows for scholars to access and revise a number of times with relative ease. Additionally, on some internet outlets, the sites allow for commenting on articles or provide links to response pieces. This illustrates an evolving dialogue in the field that a book is, by nature, unable to provide.

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In looking for the number of multimedia sources that this project has prescribed I have developed a number of skills that have already begun to help me in other areas of my research. I have found that much of a topic’s philosophy and history is easiest found in reliable scholarly texts, but having websites or scholarly blogs provide more contemporary and evolving views.

As for my review of Evernote, I must say that it has been difficult to preserve the bibliographies’ citation format while using the program. I have found it useful for storing snippets of information for personal use, as I can access it across platforms. I did not find myself using Evernote to discover other information gathered by users that might pertain to my research, but I can see such a service being useful. Ultimately, the service falls short of our primary need for it — class sourcing — when our primarily shared document, the bibliography,  is so negatively affected.

I have begun plotting a timeline. By going through each source and plotting relevant data on a time scale, I can identify patterns of change. Already I have found correlations between the evolution of reactor designs and the “Green Movement” starting in the 1980, which was unexpected. Many of my preconceptions of Soviet nuclear policy have been changed by the research I’ve done and I feel far more open to interpreting the information than using it to support what I believed to be true.

 

Here’s a link to my bibliography:

http://goo.gl/sMivIq

The Future of Russia’s Higher Education

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Check out this article in The Moscow Times on the future of Russian universities.

Mark Nuckols, a journalist for Moscow Times, points out how Russian universities have not cracked the top 200 universities in the world for another year in a row. Nuckols points to several facts that explain this.

For one, funding universities requires an efficient bureaucracy to coordinate the various in-flows of money. Russia is not well known for this bureaucratic organization.

Russian universities have a higher level of corruption and distrust, creating a poor environment for research and collaboration.

US universities have also collaborated closely with industries and businesses, providing both funding and incentive for innovations.

Top-notch professors in Russia seek employment at the worlds best universities–which as the aforementioned ranking tells us, does not include any Russian universities. Conversely, very few western academics seek employment in Russia due to the less liberal society and restricting laws.

Nuckols goes on to explore potential ways Russia could reverse this trend, but the picture he paints isn’t too optimistic. What does this mean for Russia’s future?

Penal Systems of World Powers

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Abladen grosser Steinbrocken am Weissmeer-Ostsee-Kanal, 1932

The organization of Soviet labor camps hoped to accomplish a number of purposes. These projects were improvements on the infrastructure of the Soviet Union and, ultimately, the economy. Considering how swiftly the Belomor was completed (“Twenty months and it must be built cheaply” –Stalin) and the lack of material resources, this success was based primarily on the re-purposing of an otherwise idle prison population. Granted, the ‘labor camp’ style of  punishment in the Russian penal system was established long before Soviet rule but the Soviets were the first to implement it on such a large and effective scale. Removal of ‘undesirables’ was, as we can see from Stalin’s policies, a high priority. These “enemies of the State” would then (hopefully) be re-educated by exposure to a good Soviet work ethic. This pool of shiftless ‘kulaks’ isolated to the wilderness would provide the Soviet Union with a valuable resource key to large projects, such as the Belomor Canal, developing in the Union –cheap labor.

At the same time, the United States was facing some of the earliest waves of incarceration increases while also not greatly revising her penal system.Moving into the 1930s, labor derived from the then locally-managed institutions was made illegal and a national “Bureau of Prisons” was formed. Now in charge of more than 160 institutions, and with very little experience, the Bureau prescribed a “penopticon” model to their prisons –a style which allowed for maximum surveillance of a maximum number of inmates. The prison population would not stop increasing until the onset of America’s involvement in World War II. Many Capturehistorians argue that American productivity and mass of troops helped turn the European front. But, how different is this from the labor in the Soviet camps? We can say that the quality of life was far better and the pay, of course. But, the camps were focused on a mass of cheap labor. When the prisons were releasing such numbers of inmates, a mass  of labor was definitely produced and the larger general supply of labor provided lower wages to employers — though not the free prison labor of Stalin’s camps.

If we examine both countries now, when the U.S. and Russia are both among the world’s top ten largest incarceration rates (716/100,000 citizens and 490/100,000 respectively), should we expect any change in penal policy?

Sovietization of Spanish Niños

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During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, Stalin decided to test the influence of the Soviet state by providing some “assistance” to the warring nation. He did this in several military and political ways, but the focus of our class reading this week was on the nearly 3,000 Spanish children that the Soviet Union took in as refugees from the war.

There was an ulterior motive, however, that wasn’t too surprising given the Stalin’s history. While promoting Communist ideals in Spain itself via propaganda, Stalin saw these child refugees as tools. The state would educate them in Soviet ways and make them into the perfect hybrid of Spanish-Soviet culture. The children’s acceptance of communist ideology would prove its universal appeal while symbolizing the selfless and altruistic nature of Soviet society. It was a win-win.

The niños were taught camaraderie, respect for authority, independence and discipline in addition to their academic undertakings. This was done by adult role models that perfectly embodied Soviet ideals. If the designated teachers were later deemed “politically illiterate,” meaning they did not embody and teach Soviet values with enough conviction, they were removed from their posts (usually under the guise of some other complaint against them.) Although these subpar instructors were not labeled “political enemies” of the Soviet state, the process did help identify them as weaker members of Soviet society and the government preferred to keep tabs on such citizens.

The refugee program for the Spanish children is yet another example of the creative and guileful policies of the Soviet Union. You would be hard-pressed to find a political leader as detail-oriented, goal-driven and determined as Stalin. His desire to transform the Soviet Union into the perfect communist state knew no bounds.