Word: stalinization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...rappel a l'ordre, the call to order. The custom has been to see it as a hiatus in the forward drive of modernism -- at best a faltering of energy, and at worst an Arcadian sham, a rehearsal for the coarse, repressive state art of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. This show is the first to take an inquisitive and fair-minded look at it. The curators, Elizabeth Cowling of Edinburgh University and Jennifer Mundy of the Tate, have done an admirably lucid job of presenting the material, sympathetic but without inflated claims...
Stripped of ethnic and regional antagonisms, Yugoslav nationalism could be a positive force. It helped Tito maintain autonomy against the aggressive designs of Stalin -- and in that sense was an early harbinger of the freedom Eastern Europe has now found. "Nationalism is not necessarily a bad thing," argues Miroslav Hroch, a historian at Prague's Charles University. He believes after four decades of communism it is inevitable that people will seek a national identity. "An old order has collapsed, and people have to belong to something," he says. "There is nothing wrong with their rallying to the flag." True...
...shelves might also help revive the vanished work ethic and boost productivity by establishing a link between earning money and being able to buy desirable merchandise. That link was severed in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, when Lenin's relatively liberal New Economic Policy was replaced by Stalin's industrial planning and forced collectivization of agriculture...
With new urgency, an old joke is making the rounds in Moscow. It may not be a knee slapper, but the times make it worth retelling. Shifts in Soviet leadership have historically moved from the bald to the hirsute: from the chrome-dome Lenin to the brush-cut Stalin; from Khrushchev to Brezhnev; from Andropov to Chernenko. Which brings everyone to Mikhail Gorbachev, who is nearly as bald as a darning egg, and to the upstart Boris Yeltsin, whose mane of graying locks ruffles conspicuously these days in the winds of change...
...exposed to a wide variety of goods that they had not seen before. It's only natural that they develop consumer envy and try to keep up with the Joneskys. Even the government is getting in on the act. The Central Committee has started renting out government dachas, including Stalin's country house on the Black...