The formation of Soviet cultural theory of music (1917–1948)

This article explores the continuities and discontinuities of pre-Revolutionary intellectual traditions in 1920s Soviet culture and the Stalin-era cultural revolution. Through examination of the pre-revolutionary philosophical legacy underpinning Soviet musicological theory, I demonstrate that there are decisive features, such as Soviet Prometheanism, that characterize the musicology of the 1920s that both underline and differ from the pre-revolutionary philosophy of music and the musicology of the 1930s. I offer the basic outlines of a Soviet cultural theory of music formulated by Russian music critic, historian, composer and musicologist Boris Asafiev (1884–1949) in the 1920s. Explaining and describing what I mean by a particular cultural theory of music in the Soviet context forms the core issue of my article.

     

Inside the World of the Soviet Professional

In this article Carl recounts his experiences with psychologists, educators, and researchers in the Soviet Union. While in the Soviet Union, Carl did live counseling sessions with Soviet citizens to demonstrate his person-centered approach. In the end, Carl reflects that the Soviet professional has needs and concerns similar to psychologists and educators in America. This is a joint report of work carried on by Carl Rogers and Ruth Sanford. The account was largely written by Carl, but Sanford contributed to it.     

Georgii Shakhnazarov and the Soviet Critique of Historical Materialism

The emergence of ideological and political pluralism in the Soviet Union during 1990 led to a growing number of critiques of Marxism-Leninism. The development of the internal Soviet critique of orthodox Soviet Marxism-Leninism culminated in the publication of a two-part article by Georgii Shakhnazarov in Kommunist in 1991. In this article Shakhnazarov outlined a comprehensive critique of orthodox historical materialism, and many of the ideas he developed became a central part of the Draft Party Programme of July/August 1991. This programme amounted to the virtual social-democratisation of Soviet Marxism-Leninism. The collapse of Soviet Marxism-Leninism can in part be explained by the internal critique of its basic tenets which developed in the period after 1988.     

Role of psychocultural factors in the adjustment of Soviet Jewish refugees: Applying Kleinian theory of mourning

The purpose of this paper is to show how failures of adjustment of Soviet refugees to America are to a great degree determined by their difficulties in mourning. The author argues that due to such difficulties, Soviet refugees may get fixated sometimes for long periods of time at different stages of the mourning process. Such fixations may be the causes for peculiar types of behavior, frequently exhibited by these refugees in America and attributed by various authors to their psychocultural characteristics. Melanie Klein's analysis of mourning and its relationship to manic depressive states is applied to understand the mourning process in this population. The author shows that difficulties in the mourning process experienced by Soviet refugees may be connected with the culturally acquired inhibitions of mourning. Such inhibitions are analyzed from a family, historical and cultural perspective.     

Political emancipation and the domination of nature: The rise and fall of Soviet Prometheanism

Frolov, I. T. (1990) Man, Science, Humanism: A New Synthesis (Buffalo, NY, Prometheus Books), 342 pp.

Graham, L. R. (Ed.) (1990) Science and the Soviet Social Order (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press), ix + 443 pp.

Understanding the place of science in Soviet culture is essential if we are to understand the distinctive character of the Soviet Union, its failings and contradictions, and its prospects for the future. This paper examines Soviet conceptions of the role of science in the socialist project. Focusing on Loren Graham's collection Science and the Soviet Social Order, the article critically assesses the claim that science and technology have been liberalizing influences on Soviet political culture. The paper concludes by considering Ivan Frolov's, Man, Science, Humanism, which attempts to reform Soviet conceptions of science by establishing a Marxist ‘scientific humanism’. Although Frolov challenges the idea of science as a means to subordinate nature, his approach is belied by his uncritical acceptance of a classic Soviet attitude to science; namely, the necessity of a total, systematic theory of humanity, nature and society. It is argued that the later stages of perestroika saw a marked loss of confidence in the power of science as a source of such ‘total theory’, and with this the history of Soviet Prometheanism appears to have come to a close.     

Suicide and suicidology in the Soviet Union

This study was conducted in order to obtain information on suicide in the Soviet Union, an important subject for which we have no scientific literature. Studies of attempted suicide in Soviet psychiatric journals were analyzed. This information was supplemented by interviews with Soviet psychiatrists now living abroad. The results of this inquiry show that suicide is a subject that clearly has become of increasing concern in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, in spite of the absence of essential statistical data on mortality, there is evidence indicating that the rate of Soviet suicide may be rising in certain parts of the country. Finally, growing concern about suicide has led to expanded prevention programs and to a new emphasis on social and psychological etiological explanations. In particular, the role of the Soviet family in crisis has been emphasized as a major influence in understanding the causes of suicidal attempts.     

Prejudice and peace: Is the Swedish youth neutral in its attitudes?

Two hundred and sixty Swedish students attending grade 9 were given a semantic differential to measure their attitudes towards four countries, Sweden, West Germany, USA, and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union received significantly more unfavourable ratings on nearly all variables than the other countries, which received mainly favourable or neutral ones. Most interesting, the Soviet Union is rated as "enemy", whilst the other countries are rated as "friends". Implications for peace education are discussed.     

Religiosity and Soviet ‘modernisation’ in Central Asia: locating religious traditions and rituals in recollections of antireligious policies in Uzbekistan

The main argument of this article is that religious policies implemented during the Soviet era and adaptations of the public to them produced a new understanding of religiosity and religious life among the population in Uzbekistan. The Soviet administration promoted the rejection of religion as an official policy and utilised a vast range of opportunities to criticise religion and promote secular education. However, there were other policies the public remembers as initially shocking to indigenous society but eventually accepted as positive because they assisted in the process of modernisation. These policies are exemplified by the hujum (unveiling) campaign to institutionalise safeguards against under-age and forced marriage, introduce conventional education and promote the wider integration of non-religious Soviet men and women into public life. An analysis of the manner in which people have come to terms with their past and their recollections of antireligious campaigns helps us understand how life under the Soviet government not only resulted in changes in lifestyles but also redrew the ‘boundaries’ of ‘proper’/‘modernised’ religious life and of what are now considered to be the religious remnants of the past.     

A note on remembering to execute planned actions

The purpose of this article is to call attention to the necessary role of remembering in the execution of planned actions, such as following instructions, delivering messages, and keeping appointments. Remembering in this context is considered within a theoretical framework of activities, actions, and operations advanced by Soviet developmental psychologists. The importance of remembering planned actions in applied settings, strategies employed by children and adults in remembering planned actions, relationships between motivation and remembering, and developmental relationships are discussed. In addition, several characteristics of the Soviet developmental approach are briefly noted.     

An Analysis of Addition and Subtraction Word Problems in American and Soviet Elementary Mathematics Textbooks

Current theories of how elementary school children solve addition and subtraction word problems have emphasized semantic characteristics of the problems as the major factor influencing ease of solution. The present study assesses the potential impact the instructional environment (textbooks, in particular) might have on the relative difficulty of different types of addition and subtraction word problems by comparing the presentation of word problems in four American textbook series with the corresponding presentation in one Soviet textbook series. In general, the four American text series were found to resemble each other but to differ markedly from the Soviet text series. Several important findings emerged: (a) Distribution of word problems across the various problem types was extremely uneven in the American texts, with two thirds of all problems being of only three simple one-step problem types. The Soviet problems were distributed over many types, including more complex two-step problems; (b) most of the problems in the American texts are those that American children find easiest to solve; (c) Soviet textbooks also provide a more variable and a more distributed method of presentation than do the American textbooks. The implications of this study are discussed in terms of theoretical models of word problem solving and in terms of practical ideas about textbook construction.     

Was the Soviet Union Totalitarian? The View of Soviet Dissidents and the Reformers of the Gorbachev Era

The article explains why Soviet dissidents and the reformers of the Gorbachev era chose to characterize the Soviet system as totalitarian. The dissidents and the reformers strongly disagreed among themselves about the origins of Soviet totalitarianism. But both groups stressed the effects of totalitarianism on the individual personality; in doing so, they revealed themselves to be the heirs of the tsarist intelligentsia. Although the concept of totalitarianism probably obscures more than it clarifies when it is applied to regimes like the Nazi and the Soviet, the decision of the dissidents and the reformers to use the term enabled them to clarify their own values and the reasons they felt compelled to criticize the Soviet Union and to call for its radical reform.     

Marxist guidance: a dialectic lesson

Based on primary sources published in the Soviet Bloc, this article reviews orthodox Marxist theory, methodology, and practice. It compares the stated goals of Marxist guidance with actual outcomes, and identifies the foundations of guidance in the Soviet Bloc in terms of Marxist philosophy and social doctrine. The application of dialectic methodology to guidance is also explained. Current symptoms of ideological unrest in socialist society as exemplified by the now-suppressed reform movement in Czechoslovakia are analyzed and its dynamics identified. Finally, the article draws conclusions applicable to guidance in this country.     

Socialist realism in the Soviet Union: Portrayal of Western European and North American businessmen

Success in Soviet trade negotiations depends to a great extent on the images that the Soviet negotiators form of their Western counterparts. These images, in turn, depend to a great extent on the images presented to such Soviet negotiators during their education, through various tales and stories.     

Marxist ideology and the Soviet economy

It is very tempting to reduce Soviet economic decisions and structures to pragmatic factors and to discount the influence of ideology. Without overemphasizing the influence of the latter, it seems clear that what happens in the Soviet economy is influenced by Marxism-Leninism, even though there is no question of making concrete predictions.     

Biology and the Jewish question after the revolution: one Soviet approach to the productivization of Jewish labor

In the 1920s a group of health professionals and biologists in the Soviet Union embraced the nascent eugenics movement in order to justify the promotion of physical labor among Jews. Eugenics offered a scientific approach to solving the “Jewish question” through the productivization of Soviet Jewry. Drawing upon the work of Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, this group linked the settlement of Jews on the land to the belief that the physiognomy of Jews engaged in physical labor would be genetically passed on to their offspring. The goal was to overcome the perceived debilitating psychological and physical traits of shtetl Jewry by mobilizing Soviet Jewry for the building of socialism. By the late 1920s, however, eugenics fell victim to the Kremlin’s materialist conception of human society that emphasized social engineering and voluntarism and excluded biological influences on the transformation of Soviet society.     

Russification as a factor in religious conversion. Making Lenin roll over in his grave

The Soviet project was as thoroughly atheist as any geopolitical system seen on the world stage. Yet in a way that V.I. Lenin could have never imagined, one of the main objectives of Soviet authorities has now become a significant factor in Central Asian Muslims converting to Christianity. Russification is the term normally used to describe the social process, whereby non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union became acculturated into Russian patterns of life, thought and worldview during the Soviet era. The result was that many Muslims inhabited both Soviet/Russian and Muslim cultural space, thus creating a new cultural identity that facilitated religious conversion away from Islam. This field research report uses the lens of personal conversion stories to examine some aspects of this phenomenon. Also, the range of personal experiences points towards the need to understand Russification as a spectrum of acculturation.     

School psychology in the U.S.S.R.

Soviet psychologists perform various tasks and provide useful psychological services for pupils and educators. This article describes the general characteristics of education and the preparation and research of psychologists in the U.S.S.R. Also discussed are current practices and emerging trends relating to the establishment of school-based psychological services as well as future developments that may lead to the enhancement of the profession of school psychology in the Soviet Union.     

Croatian controversy

A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer Vol. 3. Soviet Studies on the Church and the Believer's Response to A theism, by Dmitry V. Pospìelovsky. London: Macmillan Press, 1988. Paperback, 325pp. £14.95

Symbols of Power: The Esthetics of Political Legitimation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe edited by Clars Arvidsson and Lars Eric Blomqvist. Almqkvist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1987, 185pp.

Fear no Evil by Natan Sharansky. London: George Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd, 1988. 468 pp., £16.95