Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Soviet union, history, 1917-1936'

This thesis contributes to existing discussions of Soviet subjectivity by considering how the efforts of the Party leadership and state agencies to shape personal and collective identities were mediated by the teaching of Russian classics to teenagers. It concentrates in particular on the history of literature course provided by Soviet schools for the upper years. The study addresses the following questions: (1) How was literary expression employed to instigate children's emotions and create interpretive habits as a way of inculcating a Soviet worldview? (2) What immediate effects did the methods have on teenagers? (3) What were the long-term effects of this type of indoctrination? Answering these questions required close reading of material produced by official authorities, such as methodological programmes, teachers' aids, professional journals, and textbooks for class instruction, and also of material produced by those at the receiving end of Stalinist literary instruction, including both sources contemporary to the period under scrutiny (i.e. diaries written between 1936-1941), and later autobiographical material (memoirs, oral history). I argue that for many teenagers growing up during this period, indoctrination in the classroom blurred the boundary between reality and fiction, and provided a moral compass to navigate their social environment, to judge others as well as themselves along prescribed lines, and model their lives on the precepts and slogans of the characters and authors they encountered, particularly the 19th-century radical democrats. Retrospective accounts - interviews, memoirs, and written responses to questions - expose the durability of the moral and ethical lessons derived from Russian classics and reveal the enduring Soviet emotional complex formed by this literary instruction. Investigating the impacts of the study of Russian classics on Soviet recipients, particularly from elite groups such as the city intelligentsia, my discussion highlights the political traction of the literary in, for instance, forming feelings of group belonging and strong emotional responses to differing views. I conclude with a discussion of the relation of this to long-term political effects, including the re-appraisal, in the twenty-first century, of Stalin-era teaching methodology as an effective way of instilling patriotic sentiments in students, and the legacy of Soviet perceptions and practices in the expression of personal and collective identities in the post-Soviet period.

The passions aroused by the Spanish Civil War have yet to recede. The extensive literature that has been produced and continues to be published testifies to this fact. From the outset of the war in Spain, numerous European countries actively participated in the Spanish conflict. However, Soviet military "aid" to the Republican government "has provoked more questions, mystification and bitter controversy than any other subject in the history of the Spanish Civil War."1 Although the Spanish Civil War took place almost 70 years ago, and the intervention or non-intervention of many countries in Spain is well documented, Soviet involvement remains an "enigma". Little is known of Stalin's motives in Spain and even less information has emerged on the Spanish gold reserves that were sent to the USSR. This dissertation attempts to come to terms with both of these questions and, with the help of new documentation, challenge previously-held assumptions regarding Soviet foreign policy in Spain.
1Gerald Howson. Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War. (New York: St Martins Press, 1998), 119.

Das Wort was a literary journal published by German Communist writers and fellow-travelers exiled in Moscow from 1936 to 1939. It was to be a mouthpiece for German literature in exile and to promote the Popular Front policy, which sought to unite disparate elements in non-Fascist Europe in opposition to the Nazis. Das Wort, under the editorship of German Communist writers whose close association with the Soviet Union had been well established in the previous decade, tried to provide a forum for exiled writers of various political persuasions, but was unwavering in its positive portrayal of Stalin's Soviet Union and the policies of that country. As the level of hysteria grew with the successive purges and public show trials in the Soviet Union, the journal adopted an even more eulogistic and militant attitude: any criticism or expression of doubt about Soviet policy was equated with support for Fascism. Thus the ability of the journal to contribute to the formation of a true common front in Europe to oppose Fascism was compromised from the outset by its total support for the Soviet Union. The Popular Front policy foundered on this issue, and that portion of German literature in exile which was to form the first generation of East German literature was inextricably bound to the Soviet Union well before the German Democratic Republic came in to existence.

This study concerns the sources of the revolutionary Bolshevik elite's social and ethnic origins in Late Imperial Russia. The key finding is that the Bolshevik leadership of the revolutionary years 1917--1924 was highly ethnically diverse in origin with non-Russians---Jews, Latvians, Georgians, Armenians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians---constituting nearly two-thirds of the elite. The 'Russian' Revolution was led primarily by elites of the empire's non-Russian national minorities. This thesis therefore considers the sources of their radicalism in the peripheries of the multinational empire.
Although the 'class' language of socialism has dominated accounts not only of the causes of the Revolution but also of the sources of Bolshevik socialism, in my view the Bolsheviks were more a response to a variety of cultural, linguistic, religious, and ethnic social identities than they were a response to class conflict. The appeal of a theory about class conflict does not necessarily mean that it was class conflict to which the Bolsheviks were responding; they were much more a product of the tensions of a multi-ethnic imperial state than of the alienating 'class' effects of an industrializing Russian state.
How 'peripherals' of the imperial borderlands came to espouse an ideology of the imperial 'center' is the empirical focus. Five substantive chapters on Jews, Poles and Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Transcaucasians, and Latvians, consider the sources of their radicalism by contextualizing their biographies in regional ethnopolitics and in relationships to the Tsarist state. A great attraction of Russian (Bolshevik) socialism was in what it meant for ethnopolitics in the multi-ethnic borderlands: much of the appeal lay in its secularism, its 'ecumenical' political vision, its universalism, its anti-nationalism, and in its implied commitment to "the good imperial ideal". The 'elective affinities' between individuals of different ethnic strata and Russian socialism varied across ethnic groups, and often within them. One of the key themes, therefore, is how a social and political identity is worked out within the context of a multinational empire, invoking social processes such as nationalism, assimilation, Russification, social mobility, access to provincial and imperial 'civil societies', linguistic and cultural choices, and ethnopolitical relationships.

British press opinion concerning the Soviet Union in the 1930s contributes to an understanding of the failed cooperation, prior to 1941, between the British and Soviet Governments. During the trial of six British engineers in Moscow in 1933, the conservative press jingoistically responded by demanding stringent economic action against the Soviet Union and possibly severing diplomatic cooperation. The liberal and labour press expected relations to improve to prevent similar trials of Britons in the future. Despite the strain in relations and ideological differences, between 1934 and 1935, Britain and the USSR worked for collective security. The quality conservative press was willing to support a closer relationship, though popular conservative newspapers remained anti-Soviet. The liberal and labour press, though hoping for more, expressed relief that Britain was improving relations with the Soviet Union. The Spanish Civil War led the conservative press to resume its non-collective beliefs and to become ideologically critical of the Soviet Union. The provincial conservative newspapers were the exceptions. Liberal and labour papers were annoyed with the British refusal to cooperate with the USSR over Spain and became disappointed by the Government's decision to support appeasement rather than collective action. While the British Government reviewed the benefits of collective security, the Moscow show trials damaged Britain's belief in the stability of the USSR. All papers realised there was something seriously wrong in the Soviet Union. The conservative press advocated avoiding cooperation with a country weakened by purging. The liberal and labour press, though concerned about the image of the USSR, realised that Britain required an East European ally and called for an improvement of existing relations. In 1939 nearly every newspaper demanded the British Government form an alliance with the USSR against Hitler's aggression and criticised both governments for wasting time. Condemnation of the Soviet Union's signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact and role in the partition of Poland was relatively limited as hope remained that Britain and the USSR would collaborate to defeat Hitler. However, the Winter War strained these hopes and led to intense press condemnation of the Soviet attack on Finland. Nevertheless, in July 1940 newspapers became interested in the emerging conflict of interests between Germany and the USSR. Despite criticism of Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe, the press accepted that Britain's security depended on the Soviet Union. All newspapers welcomed the alliance in 1941 and ignored ideological issues.

This is a study of the foreign and domestic policies of the USSR as they pertain to its war-readiness, as well as the degree to which these policies presumably opened the door to the European conflagration and, in 1941, to the Nazi-Soviet war. Topics to be discussed include: (1) the crash industrialization of the Soviet Union and industrial war preparations from 1928--41; (2) the development of Soviet military doctrine before and after 12 June 1937; (3) a critical re-examination of the popularly accepted reasons for the devolution of the Soviet armed forces; and (4) Soviet foreign policy from 1937--41. The chronological end of the paper (1941) is followed by a brief epilogue discussing the evident success of the Soviet industrialization program by reference to Soviet industrial performance during the Nazi-Soviet war. Furthermore, the epilogue will challenge the popular depiction of the German invasion as an effortless, seamless advance into the Soviet heartland.

This study traces the career of Robert Francis Kelley and his influence on American-Russian Relations during the nonrecognition period (1917-1933). The focus of this examination is Kelley's role in formulating, implementing, and sustaining America's anti-communist policy developed and solidified during the 1920s and 1930s. Particular attention is given to the senate recognition hearing of 1924, Kelley's training of future diplomats (George Kennan, Charles Bohlen, et al.), and his contributions to the preparations leading to the United States' recognition of Russia in 1933. Using Kelley's papers and personal correspondence, this study shows the growth of a man and the evolution of a policy.

In 1922, the Bolshevik government expelled some 160 prominent intellectuals from Russia. Numbered among these were many of the leaders of the Religious Renaissance which had flourished since the turn of the century. They advocated a "third way": neither for the Tsarist regime nor the Bolsheviks; neither for Capitalism nor Communism; neither for Materialism nor Idealism; rather, they promoted personalist, spiritual development (Godmanhood ), Christian economic ethics (Sobornost'), and a path to knowledge informed by reason, but guided by faith (Religious-Philosophy ). Forced to join the Russian diaspora, these religious philosophers continued to advance their movement with the help of the Young Men's Christian Association. Largely at the initiative of Nikolai Berdyaev (1874--1948), they also began to interact with the French intellectual milieu in Paris in order to develop inter-confessional and cultural understandings. Although Russian religious-philosophy suffered a certain decline following World War Two, many of their writings had returned to the USSR. As Soviet intellectuals discovered these works, they gradually began to revolt against dialectical materialism, and aspire to recover the religious-philosophical tradition. In 1988, this Return was at last made possible, and religious-philosophy has been enjoying a second renaissance which continues unabated today.

During the third year of the Great War 1914-1918 Russia experienced the upheaval of revolution, precipitating the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and installation of the Provisional Government in March, and culminating in the Bolshevik takeover of November, 1917. Due to the political, military, and economic chaos which accompanied the revolution Russia was unable to continue the struggle on the eastern front. Russia was not fighting the war against the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary alone, however, and her threat to capitulate was of the gravest concern to her Allies, Great Britain and France. In fact the disintegration of Russia's war effort was the pivotal issue around which Anglo-Russian relations revolved in 1917. Britain's war policy was dominated by the belief that the eastern front had to be maintained to achieve victory. It appeared that any interruption to the eastern front would allow Germany to reinforce her lines on the western front, then to win and control the economic destiny of Europe. Britain could not allow this to happen. This study focuses on the reportage from British diplomats and representatives in and outside of Russia to their superiors at the Foreign Office in London from December 1916 to December 1917. A vast wealth of documentation is available in the Foreign Office Correspondence. Analysis of these notes reveals certain trends which were dictated by the kaleidoscopic turn of events in Russia and the national ethos of these representatives. A minute analysis demonstrates a great diversity of opinion regarding the situation in Russia, ranging from optimism to pessimism and objectivity to prejudice in all phases of the year 1917. To a limited degree this diversity can be correlated with the geographical location and diplomatic status of the individual representatives. Above all it is clear that when historians quote from these sources, they choose the quotations which support the conclusions they have already reached because they know the outcome of the developments that they are describing. The individuals on the spot at the time were far less prescient and insightful. They were much more affected by their own historical prejudices and rumours, as well as the vagaries and short-term shifts of their immediate environment. Many of them believed in the great-man theory of history; a number attributed all developments and difficulties to some aspect of the Russian national character; some explained certain events during the year by conspiracies, especially of the Jews, with whom they tended to equate the Bolsheviks. Only a few were consistently solid and realistic in their appraisal of events, attributing them to factors favoured by our most respected historians.
Arts, Faculty of
History, Department of
Graduate

This thesis examines the experiences of the overseas Chinese in the Russian Far East during the revolutionary and Civil War period from 1917 to 1920, as well as their responses to the upheaval. Bucking the current trend towards transcultural history, the thesis argues that Chinese identity and nationalist language were of prime importance to this community. By concentrating on Chinese-language sources, the thesis re-privileges the community's internal discourses and highlights the prevalence of nationalist rhetoric across the Sino-Russian border. It also sites the Chinese community's use of nationalist language within the context of the global diaspora, for which questions of national weakness and revival were also pressing. Going further, the thesis postulates the presence of "Chinese nationalism with Russian characteristics", in which the issues surrounding Chinese nationalism as a whole were heightened. It shows that the rhetoric of 'national humiliation' and victimhood were particularly immediate to the community in the Russian Far East, since it was located at one of the epicentres of imperial contestation. In practice, this led to a modus vivendi with the Reds and a decisive turn against the Whites. Furthermore, the chaos of the revolutions and Civil War imbued this nationalism with an opportunistic quality. The collapse of Russian state power became the 'opportunity of a thousand years' for China to redress past wrongs. This allowed the overseas community to work closely with local authorities and the Beijing government to achieve shared goals. New civil society organisations with community-wide aims were formed. Beijing extended its diplomatic reach in the form of new Far Eastern consulates. Finally, common nationalist rhetoric underpinned China's successful attempt to re-establish its civilian and military presence on the Amur River. "Chinese nationalism with Russian characteristics" could be effectively harnessed to secure multi-level and cross-border cooperation.

This dissertation aims to explain how Soviet national historiographies were constructed in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, in 1936-1953 and what the political and ideological reasons were behind the way they were written. The dissertation aims to contribute to current scholarship on Soviet nationality policies; on Stalinist nation-building projects; and to the debate on whether the Soviet period was a project of developmentalist modernization or not. This dissertation aims to examine the process of national history writing in three republics from the local point of view, by using the local archival sources. For this research, archival materials that have been overlooked by scholars up to this point from the archives of the communist parties, academy of sciences, and central state archives in Kiev, Ukraine, Baku, Azerbaijan, and Almaty, Kazakhstan have been collected. The timeline starts with Zhdanov’s commission in 1936, which summoned historians and ideologues of the Communist Party in Moscow to write an all-Union history because a parallel campaign of writing national histories had been initialized by the local communist parties. The first two chapters cover the pre-war (1936-1941) period, when national histories were written after the demise of Pokrovskiian historiography. Although there was one ideology, there were different preferences in solving the problem of ethnogenesis, defining national heroes, and also different preferences among the sections of the past that national histories emphasized. The third chapter explains the construction of national histories during the war period (1941-1945). The chapter also presents how national histories were used for wartime propaganda. Finally, the last chapter is about the post-war discussions and the shift of emphasis from ‘national’ to ‘class’ that occurred in the non-Russian national narratives in the Zhdanovshchina period. While there was an ‘imperial design’ for the necessities of managing a multi-national state, the Soviet Union also appears as a modernization project for all three cases by constructing national narratives. Though non-Russian Soviet historiographies produced contradictory narratives in different decades, they also homogenized, codified and nationalized the narrative of the past. Regional, dynastic, religious, tribal figures and events incorporated into grandiose national narratives. Nations were primordialized and their national identities armed with spatial and temporal indigenousness within the borders of their national republics. Modern national identities of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gained from this homogenization and codification by the Soviet regime. Although modernism is not only about construction of national narratives, the latter points out the developmental and modernizing character of the Soviet period.

Domestic, not foreign affairs drove Soviet policy on Jewish emigration during the period of 1968-1989. This study challenges the prevailing view that fluctuating levels of exit from the USSR were correlated to the climate of relations between the USA and the USSR. The analysis also considers Soviet-German emigration for comparative perspective. Extensive historical background, with special emphasis on Soviet nationality policy is provided.

Women have been part of modern revolutions since the American Revolution against Great Britain. Most descriptions and analyses of revolution relegate women to a supporting role, or make no mention of women's involvement at all. This work differs from prior efforts in that it will explore one possible explanation for the successes of three revolutions based upon the levels of women's support for those revolutions. An analysis of the three cases (Ireland, Russia, and Nicaragua) suggests a series of hypotheses about women's participation in revolution and its importance to revolutions' success.

This dissertation is a quantitative study with elements of qualitative analysis. The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate WHAT was written about Ukraine's independence 1917 in Swedish press 1917–1918. The qualitative part of the survey was intended to answer the question if the newspaper's political attitude influenced the news reports during the chosen period. The exact periodization was determined to be between March 1, 1917 and June 30, 1918. This periodization was chosen because of the March Revolution in 1917, which triggered independence declarations in a number of countries oppressed by Moscow, who now saw their chance of freedom. June 1918 became the end of the investigation because it was just when the peace agreement between Ukraine and the Soviet Union was signed. The source material has been chosen to represent a multitude of ideological orientations. It was liberal, moderate, conservative, liberal and left-wing orientations. The source material consisted of newspaper articles from the following newspapers: Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet, Göteborgs Aftonblad, Svenska Dagbladet, Dalpilen, Kalmar Tidning and Norrskensflamman. Quantitative methodology was used on the source material. This method consisted of a reviewing of newspaper articles in searching of news reports from Ukraine or articles which had something to do with the events in Ukraine. Every newspaper was searched day after day. The crawled material was presented in two chapters representing different periods. The first chapter of the results presented the results from 1917, and more precisely from March to December 1917. The second chapter presented the results from 1918, but also from December 1917, that is, the result from December 1917 through June 1918. The whole result was then discussed in a separate chapter where the qualitative analysis was also discussed. The result of the quantitative analysis showed that it has been written relatively sparcely about Ukraine's independence although the volume of articles increased from December 1917 and even more in 1918. Sometimes there were articles on the first page. But for the most part, the articles with Ukraine issues were placed among other foreign articles. It was also found in the survey that it was the first World War that drew attention to the newspapers, even though the events in Petrograd and then in Ukraine took more space. This survey also showed that what was written about Ukraine's independence was also what appears in the reference literature. The news reports reported how Ukraine proclaimed independence in March 1917 and later on proclaimed an independent republic in November 1917 when the Bolsheviks conducted their coup d'état in Petrograd. The newspapers also wrote how the Russian Communists sent a declaration of war to Ukraine in December 1917 and about the war that followed. The articles also tell us how negotiations on Ukraine Peace went on in Brest-Litovsk, and how they ended up with alliance between Germany and Ukraine with the campaign against the communists. It was told how the German army marched into Ukraine to free it from the bolsheviks. Until May 1918 there were battles between the German-Ukrainian Army and the Communists. In June 1918 the peace agreement was signed and this survey’s investigation ended. The survey showed that it was written about Ukraine's independence in all newspapers. Dagens Nyheter had the most news articles linked to the survey. Although the number of articles was not subject for analysis in this survey. The qualitative analysis was based on using Höjelid's theoretical concepts "positive sound" and "negative sound" on the quantitative analysis material. The qualitative analysis’ result showed that it was almost impossible to see the differences between the newspapers because the articles were traded between the newspapers, i.e. the content was copied straight away. It should be noted that not all content was the subject of copying between the newspapers. Copying occurred to a greater extent, but there were still original articles derived from the respective newspaper. Most of the articles were also direct telegrams that were communicated abroad to the newspaper's editors. A lot of these telegrammic articles were sent with a purpose to mislead society. These angled articles were published without further examination in Swedish press. There were articles from, for example, Dagens Nyheter whose editors noted the "strange Petrograd reports" and informed about it for the purpose of enlightening the public. However, as most newspapers were occupied with World War I, as was shown in the source material, the newspaper editorial office was less interested in other foreign events. Therefore, such angled articles could be found in Swedish press on a larger scale.
Denna avhandling är en kvantitativ studie med inslag av kvalitativ analys. Syftet med denna kvantitativa studien var att undersöka VAD som skrevs om Ukrajinas självständighet 1917 i svensk press 1917–1918. Den kvalitativa delen av undersökningen ämnade att besvara frågan om tidningens politiska hållningen påverkade nyhetsrapporteringen under den valda perioden. Den exakta periodiseringen fastställdes att vara mellan den 1 mars 1917 och den 30 juni 1918. Denna periodisering valdes på grund av marsrevolutionen 1917 som utlöste självständighets-förklaringar i en rad länder som var förtryckta av Moskovitien och som nu såg sin chans till frihet. Juni 1918 blev slutpunkten i undersökningen därför att det var just då som fredsavtalet mellan Ukrajina och Sovjet undertecknades. Källmaterialet har valts att representera en mångfald ideologiska inriktningar. Det var liberal, moderat, konservativ, frisinnad samt vänstersocial inriktningar. Källmaterialet bestod av tidningsartiklar från följande tidningar: Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet, Göteborgs Aftonblad, Svenska Dagbladet, Dalpilen, Kalmar tidning och Norrskensflamman. Det användes kvantitativ metod på källmaterialet som bestod i en genomsökning av tidningsartiklarna efter nyhetsrapporter från Ukrajina eller som hade något med händelserna i Ukrajina att göra. Varje tidning genomsöktes dag för dag. Det genomsökta materialet presenterades i två kapitel som representerade olika perioder. Det första resultatkapitlet presenterade resultatet från år 1917, och mer exakt från mars till december 1917. Det andra kapitlet presenterade resultatet från år 1918, men även från december 1917, det vill säga resultatet från och med december 1917 till och med juni 1918. Det hela resultatet diskuterades sedan i ett eget kapitel där även den kvalitativa analysen diskuterades. Resultatet från den kvantitativa analysen visade att det har skrivits relativt sparsmakat om Ukrajinas självständighet även om artikelmängden ökade från december 1917 och ännu mer under 1918. Ibland förekom det artiklar på första sidan. Men för det mesta placerades artiklarna med Ukrajina-frågor bland andra utlandsartiklar. Det framgick också i undersökningen att det var mest första världskriget som upptog tidningarnas uppmärksamhet, även om händelserna i Petrograd och sedan i Ukrajina tog allt mer plats allt eftersom. Denna undersökning visade också att det som skrevs om Ukrajinas självständighet var också det som förekommer i referenslitteraturen. Nyhetsrapporterna berättade hur Ukrajina utropat sin självständighet i mars 1917 tills landet proklamerat en oberoende republik i november 1917 när bolsjevikerna genomförde sin statskupp i Petrograd. Tidningarna skrev också hur de ryska kommunisterna skickade krigsförklaring till Ukrajina i december 1917 och om det kriget som följde efter det. Artiklarna berättar även om hur förhandlingarna för Ukrajinafreden gick till i Brest-Litovsk samt hur dessa avslutades med att Tyskland allierade sig med Ukrajina i kampen mot kommunisterna. Det berättades hur den tyska armén marscherade in i Ukrajina för att befria det från bolsjevikerna. Fram till maj 1918 pågick det strider mellan tysk-ukrajinska armén och kommunisterna. I juni 1918 undertecknades fredsavtalet och där slutade undersökningen.  Undersökningen visade att det skrevs om Ukrajinas självständighet i samtliga tidningar. Dagens Nyheter hade flest nyhetsartiklar kopplade till undersökningen. Även om antalet artiklar ej var i syfte att analysera i denna undersökning. Den kvalitativa analysen gick ut på att använda Höjelids teoretiska begrepp ”positiv klang” och ”negativ klang” på den kvantitativa analysens resultatmaterial. Det kvalitativa resultatet visade att det var nästintill omöjligt att se skillnad mellan de olika tidningarna eftersom artiklarna traderades mellan tidningarna, det vill säga innehållet kopierades rakt av. Det bör påpekas att inte allt innehåll var ämne för kopiering mellan tidningarna. Kopieringen förekom i större utsträckning men det fanns ändå originella artiklar som härstammade från respektive tidning. De flesta av artiklarna var dessutom direkta telegram som kommunicerades i utlandet till tidningens redaktioner. En hel del av dessa telegraferade artiklar skickades med ett givet syfte att vilseleda samhällsopinionen. Dessa vinklade artiklar publicerades utan vidare granskning i svensk press. Det förekom artiklar från exempelvis Dagens Nyheter vars redaktion uppmärksammat de ”märkliga Petrogradrapporter” och informerat om det i möjligt syfte att upplysa allmänheten. Men eftersom de flesta tidningarna var upptagna med första världskriget, som det visades i källmaterialet, var tidningsredaktionerna mindre intresserade av andra utländska händelser. Därför kunde sådana vinklade artiklar förekomma i svensk press i en större omfattning.

This thesis examines the impact of Soviet anti-religious policies on the Muslims of Central Asia from 1917 to 1938. The long struggle of the Bolsheviks to come to the power, their attempts to perpetuate the Russian hegemony in Central Asia, and the reactions of the Central Asian people towards the new regime will all form part of this thesis. Having successfully brought about the revolution, the Bolsheviks faced many challenges. One the famous slogans of the revolution, recognition of each nationality's right of self determination, boomeranged on the Bolsheviks, with the European proletariat deserting from the path of the revolution and proclaiming their own independence. In this situation, the Bolsheviks endeavored to gain the support of the Muslims. The government made many promises to the Muslims but, at the same time, dissolved the Kokand government established by the Muslims, causing Muslium revolts throughout the Central Asian region. The Muslim threat was met with measures of appeasement. The government's promises succeeded in attracting the modernist Muslims to cooperate with the regime. A strategy of "divide and rule" and of indirect attacks on Islam was employed, aiming at the annihilation of Islam. Conservative Muslims continued to vehemently oppose the Soviet regime and its policies. But, given the success of the regime in the civil war, and the lack of unity and the strength among Muslims, the Soviet anti-religious policies in Central Asia succeeded at the institutional level, to do great damage to Islam. However, these policies proved ineffectual in destroying the influence of Islamic teachings on the Muslims of Central Asia.

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The present work rescues the reflections of the English marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm about the history of the socialism within the Brief XX Century , more specifically the soviet socialism between the year 1917, in Russia, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991. Beginning from his personal history as a communist activist and as an intellectual of the English Social History we outline his ideas about the socioeconomic and political conditions which originated the October of 1917 and the raise of the so called really existing socialism in the Soviet Union and East Europe, as well as its implications on the history of the XX century, on marxist thinking, and on the political strategies of the international communist movement. Using tools as the ontological conception of the marxist work identified initially by György Lukács and kept on by István Mészáros and José Chasin we tried to analyse the contribution of Hobsbawm s historiographical thinking on the fight to overcome inequalities economic and social injustices created by the hegemonic capitalist mode in the world nowadays
O presente trabalho resgata as reflexões do historiador marxista inglês Eric Hobsbawm sobre a história do socialismo no Breve Século XX , mais especificamente do socialismo de tipo soviético que se desenvolveu entre a Revolução Russa de 1917 e o colapso da União Soviética em 1991. Partindo da sua trajetória pessoal de militante comunista e intelectual de relevo da História Social Inglesa, destacamos suas ideias sobre as condições socioeconômicas e políticas que originaram o Outubro de 1917 e a construção do chamado socialismo realmente existente na União Soviética e no Leste da Europa, bem como suas implicações na história do século XX, no pensamento marxista e nas estratégias políticas do movimento comunista internacional. Municiados pela concepção ontológica da obra marxiana identificada inicialmente por György Lukács e continuada por István Mészáros e José Chasin , procuramos analisar a contribuição do pensamento historiográfico de Hobsbawm na luta pela superação das desigualdades econômicas e injustiças sociais geradas pelo sistema capitalista hegemônico atualmente no mundo

Defence date: 14 December 2001
Examining board: Prof. Andrea Graziosi, Università Federico II, Napoli ; Prof. Terry Martin, Harvard University ; Prof. Arfon Rees, EUI ; Prof. Jaime Reis, University of Lisbon (supervisor)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

This dissertation explores the ethical and aesthetic stakes of readers’ judgments by analyzing mock trials of literary characters that were performed in Soviet Russia and abroad in the 1920s and 1930s. Literary trials were part of a larger craze for public mock trials in the decades after the Russian Revolution. Mock trials functioned as a participatory and educational form of entertainment. Fictional defendants included Lenin, invented characters accused of drunkenness and hooliganism, and the Bible. At the same time as increasingly propagandistic mock trials were being performed, intellectuals staged trials of characters from nineteenth-century and contemporary Russian literature. In émigré communities such as Berlin, Paris, and Prague, literary trials were popular as entertainment and fundraisers through the 1920s and 1930s. My analysis focuses on mock trials of characters from works by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, whose novels proved especially popular for mock trial adaptations in the 1920 and 1930s. I also consider Nabokov’s participation in a mock trial based on The Kreutzer Sonata as a bridge between Tolstoy’s novella and Nabokov’s later novel Lolita. I read back and forth between the literary works and their mock trial adaptations in order to explore both how trial participants interpreted the texts and how the texts respond to the kinds of judgment at work in the trials. The challenges that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy’s fiction pose to readers became the central questions of mock trial adaptations: What is the relationship between interpretation and truth? Do we have the right to judge others? Does narrative have the power to redeem? I argue that while Soviet and émigré literary trials offer selective, politically motivated readings of the original works, they also enter into dialogue with the works’ major ethical questions and offer new ways of thinking about how truth, judgment, and redemption operate in them. As a result, the mock trials bring together two approaches to literature: a reader-centric approach that interprets the text in order to reveal something about the reader’s current reality, and a text-centric approach that aims to uncover the original meaning. While some of the literary trial interpretations and judgments appear to be misreadings, or bad readings, of the original works, I argue that this kind of reading, which closely attends to textual details while asking the text to speak to the readers’ present, offers a model for an ethically engaged approach to literature.