{"title":"Engineering Soviet Society with Passports","authors":"Nataliya Kibita","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.a904391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.a904391","url":null,"abstract":"The place and role of the Soviet passport and the passport system in shaping Soviet state and society have not escaped the attention of scholars.1 Albert Baiburin’s new monograph, The Soviet Passport, builds on the existing knowledge and, by placing the Soviet passport in the center of a historical and anthropological investigation, takes the discussion further. The Soviet Passport examines the evolution of the content of the Soviet passport and passport system from the Russian Empire until the post-Soviet period, explains how the Soviet passport system worked officially and unofficially, and discusses how the passport and its content affected people’s lives. The book consists of three sections. The first section is focused on the passport system as an instrument of social engineering. Here Baiburin discusses why the Bolsheviks, after having abolished the Russian passport system in November 1917, restored the passport in 1932. He shows that in many respects, the Soviet passport was similar to the Russian imperial one, and not only in content. Both aimed to control freedom of movement, strengthen the social structure, and ensure that the population paid its dues to the state (through taxes before 1917 and serfdom until 1861 and military or kolkhoz service after 1932). But the Soviet passport system differed from the pre-1917 Russian passport in that it was conceived as a tool of oppressive control and to conceal the economic failures of the Soviet","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41315868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Weaponizing Self-Determination in 1918: Crimea as \"German Riviera\" and Tatar National State","authors":"M. Akulov","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.a904384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.a904384","url":null,"abstract":"In November 1917, Der Neue Orient, the official organ of the German Intelligence Bureau for the East, published a piece in support of the national movements in revolutionary Russia. Along with the promotion of enfranchisement (Menschenrechte), the mobilization of the non-Russian peoples could, it hoped, engender geopolitical rearrangements altering for the better the course of events in the world and also Germany’s position in it. “The non-Russians [Fremdvölker] ... surround the actual area inhabited by the Great Russians as a mighty ring. Every attempt at expansion undertaken by the Russians would have to pass through the resistance of the people on the periphery of the federation.... The arm grabbing across the border will [thus] be permanently exposed to the risk of being severed from the Russian body.” Liberated, self-conscious, and politically empowered, the national autonomies and sovereignties (Verselbständigung) would absorb the shock of Russia’s imperial thrust before it acquired threatening proportions.1","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42747842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Royal Illness, Professionalized Loyalty: The Wife of Alexander II under Count Aleksandr Adlerberg's Care","authors":"Mikhail Dolbilov","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.a904383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.a904383","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42171459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Soviet and Ethnic: Cultural Policies and National Identity Building in Soviet Belarus under Petr Masherau, 1965–80","authors":"N. Chernyshova","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.a904385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.a904385","url":null,"abstract":"The 2020 mass protests in Belarus have been remarkable for bringing to the fore a shared sense of national community that many scholars and observers thought missing among Belarusians. Belarus has been described as “a denationalized nation” and the most Soviet of the 15 republics, with a weak or indifferent sense of ethnic identity.1 Others, however, observe that the process of Belarusian identity formation is incomplete but ongoing, with several competing national identities, each drawing on different foundation myths.2 The Belarusian process of national renaissance during","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48646093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Castrates, the Specter of Pugachev, and Religious Policy under Nicholas I","authors":"Maureen Perrie","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.0017","url":null,"abstract":"The tenure of L. A. Perovskii in the Ministry of the Interior (1841–52) witnessed a growing interest by the tsarist government in the collection of information about the Old Believers, the traditionalist Orthodox Christians who rejected the church reforms introduced under Patriarch Nikon in the 17th century. Perovskii’s policies have been well described by Thomas Marsden in his book on religious toleration in 19th-century Russia. Marsden sees Perovskii’s approach as marking a new stage in government policy toward the Schism. By stressing its political significance and depicting it as a potential threat to the security of the state, Perovskii laid the basis for the policies of his successor, D. G. Bibikov, who in 1853–55 embarked on a campaign of harsh repression of Old Belief.1 Marsden identifies three main areas in which Old Belief was found to be a political threat in the mid-19th century. First, in 1846 the priested Old Believers (popovtsy) established an episcopate in Austrian Belaia Krinitsa which could ordain priests for their community in Russia, thereby evading the restrictions on their acquisition of priests that had been imposed by the government of Nicholas I. Second, the community of priestless Old Believers (bezpopovtsy) based in the Preobrazhenskii Cemetery in Moscow was claimed to harbor antistatist elements who refused to pray for the tsar, while some of them even regarded the monarch as the Antichrist. And finally, in 1850 one of the fact-finding expeditions that Perovskii sent to the localities to collect information “discovered” in Iaroslavl ́ Province the sect of beguny (Runaways) or stranniki (Wanderers), whose identification of the tsar as Antichrist had led them to avoid all engagement with the state and its institutions, thereby committing acts that officialdom understandably","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48661369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Close Quarters: Dealing with Difference in the (Post-)Soviet Realm","authors":"Maike Lehmann","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.0021","url":null,"abstract":"The kommunalka as a living arrangement particular to the Soviet Union appeals to researchers as much as it fascinates people who first come across this space with its complex rules and relationships. Its challenge to Western notions of private and public, the coexistence of fierce territoriality and intimate relationships in cramped quarters, which could elicit the whole range of emotions between inhabitants who often hailed from wildly diverging backgrounds and did not live together by choice, has turned the kommunalka into an allegory for the whole Soviet Union.1 As a metaphor, it has also been popular with scholars working on the multiethnic character of","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45064970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Cultural and Political Imaginary of Cybernetic Socialism","authors":"Clemens Günther","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.0018","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, we have seen a surge in research on Soviet cybernetics. Drawing on some earlier studies and Slava Gerovitch’s seminal From Newspeak to Cyberspeak, researchers have substantiated the role of cybernetics as a key element in late Soviet epistemology.1 During the Thaw, cybernetics became an “intellectual, technical, and institutional resource for innovation and change” and one of the cornerstones of socialist governance.2 Through the computerization of economic planning and the production process, the government hoped to enhance the quality of decision making in various fields. In architecture, cybernetic modeling became one means for planning and designing the new Soviet city.3 In the humanities, cybernetics was a vital component for establishing the “Soviet Empire of Signs” and for the introduction of statistical methods in linguistics, art, and historiography.4 In environmental studies, cybernetic methods were","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44508188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"A Sixth Part of the World\": The Career of a Spatial Metaphor in Russia and the Soviet Union (1837–2021)","authors":"F. Schenk","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.0019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42443996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Making of Minorities on Europe's Periphery","authors":"Olena Palko","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.0026","url":null,"abstract":"According to conventional views, minorities became an issue in world politics only after the establishment of nation-states in East-Central Europe in the aftermath of World War I. Nonetheless, most recent scholarship tends to question the extent to which empires can “think” like nation-states— that is, pursue national consolidation via standardization of its diverse populations.1 Those newly formed governments in the region, meanwhile, are more often conceptualized as, using Roger Brubaker’s definition, nationalizing states, essentially “ethnically heterogeneous [states] yet conceived as nation-states.”2 In this theoretical debate, the Soviet Union","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44116914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"David Joravsky (1925–2020)","authors":"J. Bushnell, S. Fitzpatrick","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.0027","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44911226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}