Academic literature on the topic 'Fiction, historical, 20th century, post-world war ii'

<p>Anita Liepa (born 1928) is a contemporary Latvian prose writer whose creative work was closely related to the post-soviet period in Latvia in the late 20th – and the beginning of the 21st century. In her works she depicted significant evidence of complex and contradictory processes in the history of Latvia in the 20th century, especially those related to World War II and its consequences for Latvia. Her works are divided into two distinct groups: documentary prose and fiction. The writer was born in Daugavpils, a town on the south-eastern border of Latvia, that had a significant role in the history of Latvia, especially in relation to World War II, as the town, was the place of dislocation of the major cavalry corps regiment in Daugavpils fortress. A. Liepa’s uncle Anatolijs Sondors was the fortress commandant, who faced the entrance of the Red Army and along with other Latvian army officers was deported to the Far North of the Soviet Union and died there.</p><p>The present paper regards the depiction of the cultural space of Daugavpils in Liepa’s works, searching for parallels with the writer’s biography and views expressed in different media, that attribute specific connotations to the semantic of the topos of Daugavpils with border as its major dominant. The paper follows up the depiction of Daugavpils both in Liepa’s documentary prose (“Exhumation”, “Colt Years”, “Silenced Pages”) and fiction (“Windfall”). The paper is methodologically based on the notions of cultural geography, semiotics and feminist autobiography studies. It makes use of Mikhail Bakhtin’s term “topos” to denote a model of spatial construction. Border is singled out as the central element of the semantic of the topos of Daugavpils in Liepa’s works, focusing on its spatial, temporal aspects, as well as the depiction of culture environment.</p><p>The topos of Daugavpils is most precisely and extensively depicted in the memory novel “Colt Years” („Kumeļa gadi”). Though published in 1993, the novel had actually been completed before any other of Liepa’s documentary works; this may partially be the reason, why she made depictions of Daugavpils in her following works more laconic. However, the major difference is determined by the genre of her works. In documentary prose the topos of Daugavpils reveals the information about the epoch or what may be called “signs of the time”, activating the culture code (according to Roland Barthes’ division of codes into hermeneutic, semic, proairetic, symbolic, culture codes), yet also developing a bond with the depiction of action and manifestations of the narrator’s subjective emotional states and the system of values. In works of fiction, space is a poetic category closely related to other poetic elements of the text, foregrounding the hermeneutic, semic, proairetic and symbolic codes. Hence, in “Colt Years” the topos of Daugavpils depicts not only the historical and cultural realia and landmarks of the town in the period of the 1930–1940s, but also spatial opposites of two homes the homodiegetic narrator lived in (her deceased father’s house, where she spent the happiest time of her childhood, and her uncle’s hous, where she lived during her school years), accentuating the bond between space and the narrator’s psycho-symbolic reality (referring to the semic and symbolic codes). The link between the topos of Daugavpils and the plot in all documentary works regarded is implied by the locus of Daugavpils railway station as a point of departure or arrival of characters involved in central plot lines. Scenery seen through the train window is realistically described in detail, providing place names, geographical names, referring to earlier episodes of characters’ lives. Thus, the proairetic code is activated along with the culture and other codes. The hermeneutic code is activated in the novel “Windfall” in a very interesting way. On the one hand, the author realistically describes the town of Daugavpils referring to historical events of the time of Awakening there; on the other, the toponym “Daugavpils” is replaced by an imagined name “Rūdunava”. Thus, the analysis of the depiction of Daugavpils in A. Liepa’s works leads to conclusions about the close connection between the category of space and the genre.</p>

The research deals with creating a diverse reader image of an intellectual personality of a historian. V.K. Yakunin started his reading career as a student of Dnipropetrovsk State University in the 1960’s. During his studies he constantly visited the scientific library. It was at this time when he first became acquainted with rare and valuable editions on historical subjects. The reading experience of the historian is about 60 years. While writing his Candidate dissertation (1972) and PhD thesis (1990), he worked with a significant number of sources and literature, and he also used interlibrary loan services. He was a high-level bibliographer, he constantly searched and selected carefully new books of political and historical content. V.K.Yakunin began to collect his own library from the late 1960s. The analysis of his reader cards from the departments of scientific literature and fiction shows that scientist V.K. Yakunin paid primary attention to documents, book sources and periodicals. He perfectly knew the works of foreign historical science classics. He was interested in memoir literature. Psychological and art literature was not ignored by the scientist. The historian always turned to classical works and editions of contemporary Ukrainian writers. V. K. Yakunin’s private library totals about 2000 copies in Ukrainian, Russian and German. It has been stored in the Scientific Library since 2017. Each copy of the professor’s book collection received the stamp «Professor V.K. Yakunin’s Library». The chronological limits of the book collection cover the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century. Most publications are books of social and humanitarian directions. He was interested in the history of the 20th century: political history, public opinion, World War II, history of Nazism, the Ukrainian national movement. Memories held a special place in the book collection. Ways of acquisition to the Library: donations and purchasing. The historian was surrounded by books during his life. Thus, the value of the book collection of Professor V.K. Yakunin is in the presence of a large number of publications that give an idea of the state of book publishing in Ukraine and Russia and indicate the high intellectual level of its owner.

Famous German sociologist and philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, often points out that we not only live in postmodern but in ?post-secular society? as well. This post-secular society appears as a significant opposite to the society which we heard about several decades ago, and which was mostly secular or striving towards secularity. Almost all of the 20th century, and especially decades after World War II, was marked with stands that religion and the Holy are losing its significance in contemporary society. However, at the end of the 20th and especially at the beginning of the turbulent 21st century, we are witnessing the fact that religion is not defeated. More precisely, it did not lose its place both in private and public life. It is obvious that religion was ?under the radar? for different anticipators from the 20th century, which proved that it is still a complex social phenomenon that cannot be easily explained nor predicted. How did religion come back from ?nonsense? to the main stage of important contemporary social phenomena? What are the potentials of religion in causing, and what in the pacification of conflicts? What are the characteristics of religion-inspired conflicts, then and now? How contemporary monotheisms see the (just) war? These are some of the questions we tried to answer in this paper through the review of contemporary literature and content analysis. The author simultaneously analysed if numbers about the increase of believers in the world (absolute) and numbers in the percentage of faithful ones (relative) are valid indicators that religion returned in the context of former importance. Based on trends existing in this field during the last forty years, as well as on historical heritage left behind by contemporary monotheisms, the paper also presents a framework for a prognosis about the future of religion in the context of the upcoming conflicts.

This paper is devoted to the analysis of selected aspects how Ukrainian schools present the historical narrative that covers the post-World War II history of this country – particularly the period of late socialism. My goal was to establish how post-Maidan textbooks presented the times when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union in its superpower phase. I was especially interested in the current assessment of such phenomena as: post-Stalinist modernization, the movements opposing communist ideology, and the late socialist concept of the Soviet people. The source material was five new textbooks for historical education at high-school level approved for use by the Ukrainian authorities in 2019. The basic research method was discourse analysis: the content of the textbooks were critically evaluated in light of the ongoing political and social situation. Among the theoretical assumptions that were applied in the paper was that the historical narrative has a key importance as a function of the nation-state and as such serves its interests. To conclude the analysis below, it should be emphasized that historical narrative of Ukrainian Schools presents the past of the country in the second half of the 20th century as a general process of gaining independence from the Soviet centre. In the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, it should be assumed that the emancipatory nature of the interpretation of Ukraine’s national history is now irreversible.

Raising awareness on the political-historical background of the popular movements of the 20th century is very important because behind the stories there were often ill-considered political decisions. It is interesting to see how the last century leaders of the great powers represented their self-interests, and what political games they had developed to achieve their political goals. The interests of nations living in countries were often not interesting to take into consideration. The Soviet Union was not a nation-state, but neither was the United States of America, while at that time most of the European states were nationstates, and along this were nations that sought to assert their national interests, by force when necessary. However, the post-World War II political settlements did not serve the interests of the German nation, but divided its population and turned them against one other. This is why the movement of German citizens within Germany has occurred.

The article reviews the options for using the definition of “socio-cultural practices” in the Russian scientific literature. For the first time, it is intended to identify relevant historical content for research, communication, and commemorative practices currently implemented in the Siberian region. For a representative analysis of the historiography and empirical source, there is a socio-cultural approach and mnemosine – the science of public memory. The article presents the outcomes of study and public broadcasting of socio-cultural practices related to the incorporation of new territories of North Asia into the Russian state in the late 18th − 19th century, the growth of civil society in the early 20th century, the development of scientific, historical and cultural heritage in the 2nd half of the 20th − early 21st century. It highlights modern communication practices, which are based on information technologies (electronic archives), designed for the development of scientific heritage, historical information available to the general population. Special attention is drawn to the analysis of multi-level commemorative practices, the historical content of which is associated with the Great Patriotic War (World War II) and presented through Internet resources and publications, in particular, the magazine “Historical Courier”. From a civil-patriotic point of view the article shows the contribution of Siberian scientists toward the victory and post-war development of the country. It also considers the communicative and educational and leisure practices of local history museums (the Museum “Zaeltsovka”, the Museum of Science and Technology of the SB RAS) related to military-historical topics. The authors come to the conclusion that to response to the great challenges of our time, it is necessary to develop a system of socio-cultural practices based on the historical content and shape an active civil position of the population of Russia, and, in particular, the inhabitants of the Siberian region. Further study of the entire range of socio-cultural practices is relevant and promising for developing a model of commemoration, structuring and adaptation of historical past for effective use in working with the population and educating young people.

The article provides a historical background on the activities of the N. I. Vavilov All‑Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR) for a 125‑year period. The Institute began its history as the Bureau of Applied Botany in the end of the 19th century, the times of the Russian Empire; it went through the crucible of World War I, the October Revolution and the Civil War, to become the All‑Union Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) in the Soviet times. The Institute overcame the period of Stalin’s repressions and the devastating irreparable losses sustained during the World War II and the Siege of Leningrad. In the post‑war period, VIR underwent revival, and since 1967 has been proudly bearing the name of N. I. Vavilov. The most successful period in the history of VIR was in the 60‑70s of the 20th century, while in the 90s there followed a period of a sharp drop in funding of all research, and the institute staff was preserving and saving the Vavilov collection at the cost of incredible efforts. In the 21st century, VIR continues its work as a globally known leader in the spheres of systematic collection, comprehensive study, reliable conservation and rational use of genetic resources of cultivated plants and their wild relatives for solving the problems directly related to ensuring national and global food security.

AbstractScholarship has long held that Islamic reform was a preparatory stage for nationalism in the Muslim world. In challenge to this view, this article shows how in the context of 20th-century Algeria Islamic reformers and nationalists continued to maintain distinct political ideas, visions, and projects. The article examines the internal framework of the Association of Algerian Muslim ʿUlamaʾ, an Islamic reform movement founded in 1931 when Algeria was under French colonial rule, and its interactions with other local movements, especially the Algerian nationalist movement. Through a comparison of the discourse of the Algerian ʿulamaʾ to that of the nationalists, it argues that while both groups claimed to be successors of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, their understanding of politics (siyāsa) was different. Whereas the ʿulamaʾ associated politics with their own spiritual leadership, the nationalists associated it with institutions. The study situates these distinct visions within the post–World War II historical context, in which the expanding nationalist movement undermined the ʿulamaʾ’s popular appeal.

The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations, established by culmination of World War II, was created to maintain the security and cooperation of states in the post-war world. Leaders of the Big Three, who ensured the Victory over the fascist-militarist bloc in 1945, made decisive contribution to its creation. This system cemented the world order during the Cold War years until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the destruction of the bipolar structure of the organization of international relations. Post-Cold War changes stimulated the search for new structures of the international order. Article purpose is to characterize circumstances of foundations formation of postwar world and to show how the historical decisions made by the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition powers in 1945 are projected onto modern political processes. Study focuses on interrelated questions: what was the post-war world order and how integral it was? How did the political decisions of 1945 affect the origins of the Cold War? Does the American-centrist international order, that prevailed at the end of the 20th century, genetically linked to the Atlantic Charter and the goals of the anti- Hitler coalition in the war, have a future?Many elements of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations in the 1990s survived and proved their viability. The end of the Cold War and globalization created conditions for widespread democracy in the world. The liberal system of international relations, which expanded in the late XX - early XXI century, is currently experiencing a crisis. It will be necessary to strengthen existing international institutions that ensure stability and security, primarily to create barriers to the spread of national egoism, radicalism and international terrorism, for have a chance to continue the liberal principles based world order (not necessarily within a unipolar system). Prerequisite for promoting idea of a liberal system of international relations is the adjustment of liberalism as such, refusal to unilaterally impose its principles on peoples with a different set of values. This will also require that all main participants in modern in-ternational life be able to develop a unilateral agenda for common problems and interstate relations, interact in a dialogue mode, delving into the arguments of opponents and taking into account their vital interests.

Recent scholarship in critical urban theory, urban political ecology, and related fields has emphasized the “hybridity” of urban–environmental systems. This argument is contrasted with the socially constructed “binary” relationship between “city” and “nature” that dominated historical understandings of urban–environmental connections. Despite wide agreement on these issues, the trajectories that precipitated this shift in city–nature boundaries have been understudied. Many explanations position accelerating urbanization or changes in global political economy as driving the decline of the city–nature binary. This paper proposes that this transformation is also a product of the changing cultural and spatial dynamics of “race” between the 19th-century and the present. Drawing on research on urban parks in Chicago, I consider the production of park space at four important historical moments: (1) the mid-to-late 19th-century, when large picturesque parks were built; (2) the early 20th-century, when reform-oriented “small parks” were constructed; (3) the post-World War II period, which was marked by the development of recreation facilities; and (4) the contemporary period, where linear parks like Chicago’s 606 (which I term “imbricated spaces”) bring together built and natural environments in new ways. Through this analysis, I argue that the social construction of “city” and “nature,” as spatialized through urban park development, was co-produced with racialized spaces and symbols and contributed to the creation of metropolitan racial boundaries. Further, I argue that historical shifts in these racialized spaces and symbols have been implicated in the weakening of the city–nature binary and the rise of the hybrid city–nature relationship.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the evolution of children's historical fiction dealing with World War II in order to describe the changes that have occurred over the past 50 years. Two questions were asked in the study: (1) Has the characterization of protagonists portrayed in historical fiction about World War H evolved since 1943? and (2) Have the accounts of the events of World War H portrayed in historical fiction evolved since 1943? Content analysis was used as the method of collecting data. The sample consisted of 86 novels written from 1943 to 1993. Upon completing the reading and coding, the researcher discussed the categories and questions posed. As part of analysis, the discussion of the novels in each period was accompanied with an overview of trends in children's literature and events affecting society. The analysis led to the following conclusions: 1. Authors were impacted by changes in the social and political climate, as evidenced by the changes in the gender of the protagonists, an increase of violence, and the inclusion of women. 2. Novels written during the 1980s and 1990s were written with a stronger American perspective. 3. At the time that an increase of violence was seen in American society, descriptions of World War II events and protagonists' actions became more violent and more graphic. 4. Though the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war with Japan, an inadequacy still exists in the number of novels that provide readers with details related to the atomic bombs. Though much of World War II was fought in the Pacific Rim, a deficiency remains in the number of novels set in Pacific Rim countries. Recommendations for further research include performing a study that examines other genres, analyzing the changes observed in the portrayal of protagonists. A study could be conducted to analyze the author's ethnicity and relationship to the war and determine if differences exist.

This chapter presents a historic review of the use of photomontage and photo-based collage in Polish books for children (fiction and poetry) in the 20th century. The earliest example dates from 1934, whereas the latest one is dated 1981. The chapter begins with an outline of the artistic background in the period 1918–1939, it gives a short typology of photo-based illustrations, and then analyses the only known examples of genuine photomontage created for children’s books before World War II, namely works by Aleksander Krzywobłocki and Jerzy Janisch in Kometa Halley’a (Halley’s Comet) by Alina Lan, and a sample of works by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson. The chapter continues through the period of the so-called Polish School of Illustration (1950s–1970s), paying special attention to Adam Kilian and Stanisław Zamecznik’s illustrations, and ends with a presentation of the extensive and varied use of photography in illustrations by Bohdan Butenko, one of Poland’s most prominent illustrators.

Exile is one of the central motifs of the 20th century European culture and literature; it is closely related to the historical events throughout this century and especially those related to World War II. In the culture of East Central Europe, the phenomenon of exile has been greatly determined by the context of socialism and post-socialist transformations that caused several waves of emigration from this part of Europe to the West or other parts of the world. It is interesting to compare cultures of East Central Europe, the historical situations of which both during World War II and after the collapse of socialism were different, e.g. Latvian and ex-Yugoslavian ones. In Latvia, exile is basically related to the emigration of a great part of the population in the 1940s and the issue of their possible return to the renewed Republic of Latvia in the early 1990s, whereas the countries of the former Yugoslavia experienced a new wave of emigration as a result of the Balkan War in the 1990s. Exile has been regarded by a great number of the 20th century philosophers, theorists, and scholars of diverse branches of studies. An important aspect of this complex phenomenon has been studied by psychoanalytical theorists. According to the French poststructuralist feminist theorist Julia Kristeva, the state of exile as a socio-cultural phenomenon reflects the inner schisms of subjectivity, particularly those of a feminine subject. Hence, exile/stranger/foreigner is an essential model of the contemporary subject and exile turns from a particular geographical and political phenomenon into a major symbol of modern European culture. The present article regards the sense of exile as a part of the narrator’s subjective world experience in the works by the Yugoslav writer Dubravka Ugrešič (“The Museum of Unconditional Surrender”, in Croatian and English, 1996) and Latvian émigré author Margita Gūtmane (“Letters to Mother”, in Latvian, 1998). Both authors relate the sense of exile to identity problems, personal and culture memory as well as loss. The article focuses on the issues of loss and memory as essential elements of the narrative of exile revealed by the metaphors of photograph and museum. Notwithstanding the differences of their historical situations, exile as the subjective experience reveals similar features in both authors’ works. However, different artistic means are used in both authors’ texts to depict it. Hence, Dubravka Ugrešič uses irony, whereas Margita Gūtmane provides a melancholic narrative of confession; both authors use photographs to depict various aspects of memory dynamic, but Gūtmane primarily deals with private memory, while Ugrešič regards also issues of cultural memory. The sense of exile in both authors’ works appears to mark specific aspects of feminine subjectivity.

This paper traces a lineage of device-as-architecture through the mediatization of Julia Child’s kitchens. A historical survey of the changes to her kitchen and its relationship to interior design during the latter half of the 20th century suggest a reading of interior architecture not as a means to house new technology but rather as composed by technology and devices. Counter to Ryener Banham’s projection of a future where interior technologies give shape to an architectural exterior, Child’s kitchen reflects a growing trend in the second half of the 20th century in which tool-based clutter and the interior’s autonomy from the exterior, best characterized by the storage-accumulation aesthetics of lofts and garages, dominated. Rather than necessarily limiting the role of the architect to exterior form, the elevation of gadgets, gizmos, and devices to the status of architecture opened up the possibility for a functional user-driven design agency. Analysis of the kitchen backdrops that served as sets for her various cooking shows as well as the cataloging and installation of her kitchen in the Smithsonian Museum of American History reveal an evolution of architectural interiors that shifted with her own identity and paralleled shifting domestic aesthetics away from minimalism, modernism, and post-World War II home automation. This examination of Julia Child’s kitchens frame a narrative of domestic design beginning in the 1960s when tools and technology were increasingly seen as the backbone of a new ecological or environmental society. Julia Child’s display of functional clutter took part in popularizing a new craft aesthetic where tools were prominently displayed and often collectively used. The images of her kitchen, spanning four decades, provide a context for changing cultural and architectural discourse in relation to the aesthetics of function, devices, media, and attitudes toward preservation.