Alexey Tikhomirov | Bielefeld University (original) (raw)

Papers by Alexey Tikhomirov

This article explores practices of humiliating Germans during their forced removal from Eastern E... more This article explores practices of humiliating Germans during their forced removal from Eastern Europe in 1945. Despite decades of historical studies of expulsion and violence in modern states and colonial settings, this area of inquiry has not received much attention. Drawing on ego-documents written by displaced persons and official documents from local contexts, I argue that practices of humiliation directed against Germans became an integral part of the rebirth of nation-states shortly before and just after the end of the war on the Eastern front. Accepting popular rites of violence, including acts of humiliation, enabled the authorities to manage the widespread desire for revenge. This toleration simultaneously allowed ordinary people not only to participate in violence during the liminal phase of the transition from war to peace but also to engage in state- and nation-building from below. The state monopoly on violence was thus consolidated by integrating rites of violence and elements of popular justice—vengeance—into the official jurisdiction and institutional procedures for dealing with Nazi crimes. For East European societies, practices of humiliation directed against a hated enemy were perceived as legitimate justice: they redefined the sacral boundaries of national communities by giving ordinary people the feeling that they were protecting their purity and restoring their damaged honor. To explain the longevity and polycentrism of the European culture of violence, I also address the capacity of “deep” emotional memory to reactivate practices of violence across time and space through internalized rituals.

The workshop will explore multiple Cold War encounters, subjectivities, and networks that dis-/co... more The workshop will explore multiple Cold War encounters, subjectivities, and networks that dis-/connected the world during this global conflict, from the perspective of entangled and cultural history. To go beyond the analytical binary of the USA-USSR confrontation, we are eager to investigate the polycentricity of the Cold War by exploring the web of transcultural exchanges, contacts, and solidarities of people, institutions, ideas, emotions, and materialities across the so-called 'First', 'Second', and 'Third Worlds'.

Trust and distrust have been crucial factors in historical processes and resources for the workin... more Trust and distrust have been crucial factors in historical processes and resources for the working of diverse political, economic, legal, and gender orders. Paradoxically, until recently historians have ignored that obvious fact, although the concept of trust has influenced the production of fundamental knowledge about ‘modernity’, ‘the state’, ‘society’, and ‘the individual’ in other human sciences. Inspired by the cultural turns of recent decades, some historians have done a great deal of research on the varieties of meanings, expressions, and scenarios of trust and distrust across time and space. I invited three leading scholars—Geoffrey Hosking in modern Russian history at University College London, Francesca Trivellato in early modern European history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Ian Forrest in medieval history at Oxford University—to share their reflections on the significance of trust and distrust in their explorations of the human past. By noting differences and making comparisons about how trust and distrust functioned through diverse eras, the interview problematizes the roles of (dis)trust in individual and collective behaviour, in coping with risks and creating security, and in establishing hierarchies, inequalities, and power relationships as well as solidarities, networks, and emotional bonds. The search for analytical languages and concepts of trust outlines new research agendas and, in doing so, has the potential to link political, economic, social, and cultural history. This conversation about trust and distrust among historians is a pivotal contribution to the booming interdisciplinary dialogue on this rich and complex topic, which belongs to both the social sciences and neuroscience. This is an area of inquiry that reminds us that the heterogeneity of (dis-)trust depends on historical situations and challenges us to think about the ‘dark’ sides of trust such as the notions of ‘forced trust’ or ‘acts of discrimination.’

The chapter gives an overview of the premodern and modern foundations of personality cults of the... more The chapter gives an overview of the premodern and modern foundations of personality cults of the ruler. Their intersections have transformed the leader cult in a powerful tool for making modern politics, managing a mass society, and creating modern subjectivities. This contribution presents evidence that ruler cults were vital for a variety of political and social orders, going far beyond the communist states and modern dictatorships of the twentieth century. Looking at the familial foundations of the ruler cult as well as its spatial and the ritual orders in diverse contexts of state-, empire-, and society-building the chapter focuses on the similarities that united many personality cults in both dictatorships and democracies, in the East and the West, in closed and open societies. In conclusion I argue that historical change from premodern to modern times has been marked by three major, interconnected shifts: a transition from the ruler’s invisibility to visibility, coldness to warmth, uniformity to multiplicity. This transition has impacted the emergence of modern personality cults as the sacred centre of a particular social order and continues to influence the flourishing of ruler cults in the contemporary world.

Workshop at the German Historical Institute in Moscow, 3–4 September 2020, supported by the Frie... more Workshop at the German Historical Institute in Moscow, 3–4 September 2020, supported by
the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Russia and the German Historical Institute in Moscow

Conveners: Kirsten Bönker (Göttingen/Bielefeld), Alexey Tikhomirov (Bielefeld)

Im Zentrum des Beitrages steht die Analyse der Kategorie des „Vertrauens der Partei“ in der Etabl... more Im Zentrum des Beitrages steht die Analyse der Kategorie des „Vertrauens der Partei“ in der Etablierung der sowjetischen Subjektivitäten im frühen Sowjetrussland. Basierend auf den verschiedenen Typen von Bittschriften der BürgerInnen an die Partei- und Staatsautoritäten werden die Techniken des autobiographischen Schreibens in die Prozesse der bolschewistischen Persönlichkeits-, Staats- und Gesellschaftsbildung eingebettet. Der Autor zeigt, wie das „Vertrauen der Partei“ moralisiert und materialisiert, personifiziert und beglaubigt, visualisiert und geschlechtsspezifisch definiert wurde. Insbesondere während des Großen Terrors wurde es zum alltäglichen Kampfbegriff, um über das Leben und den Tod einer Person zu entscheiden.

The introduction to the special issue defines trust/distrust from an interdisciplinary perspectiv... more The introduction to the special issue defines trust/distrust from an interdisciplinary perspective, treating these emotions as analytical categories and outlining their potential for historical analysis. Inspired by the emotional and sensory turns, the guest editor examines the shift from Stalinist violence towards a politics of trust and empathy. This new politics saw these feelings as powerful emotional forces and moral resources that not only made it possible to renegotiate a social contract between the state, society and the individual, but also enabled the stabilisation of the Eastern bloc as a whole in the post-Stalin era. Differentiating between regimes and communities of trust/distrust, the author sheds light on the grammar of trust and distrust under state socialism, which impacted the shared sense of stability and inner hybridity of the socialist personality. By connecting trust and distrust with the key analytical categories of gender and generation, morality and power, consumption and materiality, and self and subjectivity, this special issue is a contribution to a history of trust and distrust that provides further reflection on the unceasing debate about what socialism was and what the lived experience of socialism continues to be in post-communist space.

The dominance of classic political history for many years led to the disregarding of “relatives’ ... more The dominance of classic political history for many years led to the disregarding of “relatives’ letters” as a crucial source for understanding the formation of the Soviet state and society. These were letters to Soviet officials from ordinary people who perceived the state as a family and imagined its leaders as their close relatives. Broadening a dominant concept in recent Soviet studies, that of speaking Bolshevik, I explore “relatives’ letters”, analysing the fact that their authors were speaking kinship as evidence that reveals the premodern foundations of modern states and uncovers a social practice for generating power in everyday routines. Freed from the constraints of Weberian-modernisationist and Burkhardtian paradigms, I reflect on the ways that seemingly opposed ideas about tradition and modernity, power and kinship, status and marginality, the licit and the illicit infused representations of “Soviet citizenship” and analyse how letter writers justified their connections with the abstract concept of “the state”. “Relatives’ letters” show that the state lived in and through its subjects: Imagining a state as a political family and leaders as close relatives provided a source of identity and contributed to social cohesion in the Soviet empire but also explains the very nature of contemporary informal relationships. Consequently, speaking kinship became a universal political language of governance and the language of ordinary people’s emotional attachment to the paternalistic state.

В статье анализируется историческая и идейно-политическая коллизия, возникшая по итогам закрытого... more В статье анализируется историческая и идейно-политическая коллизия, возникшая по итогам закрытого заседания ХХ съезда КПСС, когда стратегия управления общественным мнением в процессе десталинизации в СССР и странах социалистического лагеря столкнулась с непредсказуемыми последствиями «утечек информации» о содержании секретного доклада Н. С. Хрущева, инициированных информированными о нем видными деятелями международного коммунистического движения. В итоге риторика десталинизации перешагнула дискурсивные границы партийного руководства СССР, дав старт публичным дискуссиям об И. В. Сталине и сталинизме на Западе. Внимание автора концентрируется на первоначальных (непосредственно в 1956 г.) последствиях развенчания культа Сталина в ГДР. Реакцией на это членов СЕПГ и общества в целом стали, с одной стороны, попытки любой ценой «поддержать имидж» прежнего вождя, а с другой эскалация иконоборческих практик, наиболее ярко обнажившая кризис репрезентаций тоталитарной власти. Конец этим «либеральным тенденциям» положило Венгерское восстание осенью 1956 г., побудившее режим СЕПГ перейти к более жесткому контролю над публичным дискурсом и вновь приступить к репрессивной политике подавления инакомыслящих. Тем не менее десталинизация 1956 г. имела важный терапевтический эффект для послевоенного немецкого общества, позволила населению впервые нарушить предписанное государством молчание и открыто заговорить о наболевших проблемах. Официальная ревизия имиджа Сталина сделала возможным начало коллективной эмоциональной работы немцев с травматическим опытом депортаций, насилия и территориальных потерь.

Аннотация: Одной из центральных задач утверждения советской власти большевиками являлся проект со... more Аннотация: Одной из центральных задач утверждения советской власти большевиками являлся проект создания нового человека: с новым сознанием, новой душой и новым телом. Сотворение идеальной субъективности должно было стать залогом достижения коммунизма. В настоящей статье авторна примере писем граждан в партийно-государственные инстанции анализирует становление советской субъективности после захвата власти большевиками с центральным вопросом о том, как люди
пересотворяли себя в советских личностей, с одной стороны, и как партия и государство проводили мониторинг ≪правильных≫ идентичностей через политику социальной инженерии — с другой. Рассматривая генезис модерного советского субъекта и его роли в формировании советского государства и общества, особое внимание уделяется анализу категорий ≪доверия≫ и ≪недоверия≫ в установлении
моральных связей между индивидом и партией, в процессах социального дисциплинирования и установления неравенства, а также в механизмах самоконструирования историческими агентами репрезентаций надежности и достоверности для завоевания, оправдания и возвращения ≪доверия партии≫. В заключении акт суицида среди большевиков рассматривается в качестве радикального примера самоустранения субъекта из советского порядка, указывая на четкую границу интервенции идеологии в сознание нелиберального субъекта.

Abstract: One of the Bolsheviks’ central tasks was to create a New Man equipped with a new consciousness, a new soul and a new body. Forming an ideal subjectivity was supposed be the key to achieving communism. Using citizens’ letters to party-state institutions, the author analyzes the emergence of Soviet subjectivity after the Bolsheviks seized power by asking two crucial questions. On one hand, how did people remake themselves into Soviet subjects? On the other hand, how did the party and state monitor ≪correct≫ identities through their policy of social engineering? In examining the genesis of the modern Soviet subject and his / her role in building the Soviet state and society, the focus is first on how the categories of ≪trust≫ and ≪distrust≫ established the moral bonds between the individual and the party; second, how these categories operated both in social disciplining and creating inequality; and third, how they impacted historical agents’ self-construction of representations of their reliability and trustworthiness as they strove to earn, vindicate and return the ≪party’s trust.≫ Finally, the article analyzes suicide among the Bolsheviks, treating it as the subject’s most radical way of self-removal from the Soviet order, which indicates a clear-cut limit to ideology’s intervention into the non-liberal subject’s consciousness.

The main sources of this article are letters from ‘ordinary people’ to Soviet leaders. Counterbal... more The main sources of this article are letters from ‘ordinary people’ to Soviet leaders. Counterbalancing current theories about trust and distrust, it analyses correspondence between people and state to explore for the first time the phenomenon of ‘forced trust’ as a central feature of Communist modernity. Forced trust represents a paradox that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet state: an illiberal system was promoting a liberal subject who was forced to trust in the state and the party but, at the same time, experienced his/her limited autonomy by generating personal meanings, interests and needs as a part of life under the dictatorship.

Conveners: Kirsten Bönker (Göttingen/Bielefeld), Alexey Tikhomirov (Bielefeld)

Кремль слезам (не) верит?! «Родственные письма» лидерам государства и партии в СССР Многолетнее д... more Кремль слезам (не) верит?! «Родственные письма» лидерам государства и партии в СССР Многолетнее доминирование классической политической истории привело к игнорированию «родственных писем» в историографии о советском прошлом. Речь идет о письмах к партийно-государственным лидерам от рядовых граждан, понимавших государство в категории «семьи» и воспринимавших политических лидеров в качестве своих близких родственников. Расширяя доминирующую в современных исследованиях концепцию Стивена Коткина «говорить по-большевистски», я анализирую «родственные письма» и языковые стратегии их авторов как стремление «говорить по-родственному». Это указывает на «открытие заново» в СССР домодерной традиции восприятия глав государства в системе семейно-родственных координат и проливает свет на социальную практику генерирования власти в повседневности. В докладе я покажу, каким образом авторы «родственных писем» провоцировали эмпатию у кремлевских бюрократов и устанавливали личные связи с абстрактной идеей «государства». Мой главный тезис заключается в утверждении, что риторика родства и семейственности превратилась в универсальный инструмент построения государства снизу и стала тем языком рядовых граждан, который позволяет идентифицировать наиболее интимный канал эмоциональной связи индивида с патерналистским государством как в СССР, так и за его пределами.

My presentation focuses on the emergence of the post-war visual occupational regime in East Germa... more My presentation focuses on the emergence of the post-war visual occupational regime in East Germany, which was logistically organized and managed by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG) in close cooperation with the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED). After the victory over Nazi Germany, the Bolshevik propaganda state expanded its borders to East Germany and applied its methods of propaganda work to the defeated German nation, which was forced into a political conversion, transforming itself from “enemy number one” into the “best friend of the Soviet Union”.

I argue that the visualization of power was an important instrument for establishing the Soviet occupational regime. It included the politics of reorganizing public space in the Soviet Zone by purging Nazi symbols and saturating it with Soviet propaganda artifacts (posters, slogans, monuments etc.). Visualization of power meant politicizing public spaces and creating communicative space where the rulers and ruled negotiated the borders between permissible and tabooed language, practices and emotions. Visualization of power in East Germany was especially important because post-war Sovietization turned this territory into what was imagined as western borderland of the Soviet empire, a “show-case of building socialism” and an ideological – in fact, very visible, – front line in the Cold War.

Official Soviet discourse stigmatized the muckraker (kliauznik) as an incessant complainer who wa... more Official Soviet discourse stigmatized the muckraker (kliauznik) as an incessant complainer who was dissatisfied with the Soviet order and created a tangle of red tape from the unceasing stream of his letters to every possible party and state institution. In Soviet comedies, newspapers and illustrated magazines, the “muckraker” was ridiculed and publically shamed. When perestroika began, with its policy of glasnost’ and the appearance of new print media about human rights, people who had been labeled as muckrakers found it possible for the first time to tear off the masks that had been pinned on them and talk openly about their own experience of life in the USSR. My talk recreates a portrait of the muckraker, or, as I argue, a Soviet individual who was in fact fighting for individual and human rights.

My paper analyzes scenarios for ending violence after Stalinism, focusing on the establishment of... more My paper analyzes scenarios for ending violence after Stalinism, focusing on the establishment of a new emotional style and the search for new — emotional — resources for legitimizing the Soviet regime during the Brezhnev era. My paper sheds light on a point that has been overlooked in recent scholarship: by binding state and individual, emotional language and emotional practices played crucial roles in politically mobilizing the population and helping Soviet subjects to make sense of their life. If in Stalin’s Russia the regime focused above all on the ‘public displays of affection’ — the creation of public representations and mass rituals wherein feelings of happiness, love and gratitude to the state were expressed without regard for individual experience, after the war and very successfully in the 1970s, Soviet society demanded that the state showed empathy for the moods, needs and future plans of every citizen. Consequently, we see the establishment of a dictatorship of empathy, one that did not taboo and reject the individual’s feelings but rather, accepted and tried to respond to the Soviet citizen’s needs and emotions. Trust in the Soviet order grew as a result of this policy, fostering a sense that the Soviet system was stable and indestructible.

The goal of my paper is to analyze the trust structures in Soviet society under Brezhnev that gav... more The goal of my paper is to analyze the trust structures in Soviet society under Brezhnev that gave the population a sense of the stability and inviolability of the political order. In the 1960s and 70s especially, the regime’s legitimacy rested to a large extent on promoting trust. Taking an interdisciplinary approach (especially drawing on Barbara Misztal’s and Piotr Stompka’s concepts of trust) I am looking at the way Soviet state moved from Stalinist terror and violence towards creating normative coherence and accountability, more openness and a sense of the state’s reliability in Brezhnev’s Russia.

The goal of the paper is to analyze the practice of letter writing to Bolshevik leaders as a cent... more The goal of the paper is to analyze the practice of letter writing to Bolshevik leaders as a central trust-building practice that ensured the legitimacy and stability of the Soviet political order. Some examples should demonstrate how both state and individuals used letter writing and the language of trust and distrust in their own interests, achieving personal goals and constructing different identities. My general thesis is as follows: by seizing the monopoly on defining and distributing trust, the party and state were able to create a regime of forced trust. The sheer ineffectiveness of the bureaucratic system made people feel defenceless and distrust ‘abstract’ state institutions, and instead pushed them to seek alternatives and join networks of forced trust within which local patrons and the heads of state were perceived as legitimate recipients of trust as well as personal protectors. The established “discipline of trust” (Lenin) led to a contradiction: an illiberal system promoted a liberal subject who was forced to trust the state and party but, at the same time, through public letter writing experienced and conceptualised him/herself as individuals albeit with a limited degree of autonomy.

This book examines the construction, dissemination, and reception of the Stalin cult in East Germ... more This book examines the construction, dissemination, and reception of the Stalin cult in East Germany from the end of World War II to the building of the Berlin Wall. By exporting Stalin’s cult to the Eastern bloc, Moscow aspired to symbolically unite the communist states in an imagined cult community pivoting around the Soviet leader. Based on Russian and German archives, this work analyzes the emergence of the Stalin cult’s transnational dimension. On one hand, it looks at how Soviet representations of power were transferred and adapted in the former “enemy’s” country. On the other hand, it reconstructs “spaces of agency” where different agents and generations interpreted, manipulated, and used the Stalin cult to negotiate social identities and everyday life. This study reveals both the dynamics of Stalinism as a political system after the Cold War began and the foundations of modern politics through mass mobilization, emotional bonding, and social engineering in Soviet-style societies. As an integral part of the global history of communism, this book opens up a comparative, entangled perspective on the ways in which veneration of Stalin and other nationalistic cults were established in socialist states across Europe and beyond.

«Сталин — лучший друг немецкого народа!» Как ни парадоксально звучал данный восточногерманский ло... more «Сталин — лучший друг немецкого народа!» Как ни парадоксально звучал данный восточногерманский лозунг пропаганды для современников после 1945 г., он отражал исторические реалии складывания нового политического порядка в послевоенной Европе и являлся результатом процесса советизации территории бывшего врага. После победы Советского Союза во Второй мировой войне экспорт культа Сталина в страны социалистического блока превратился в эффективный инструмент идеологической экспансии Центра (Москвы) на Периферию (Восточную Германию), обучая население говорить, действовать и чувствовать по-советски. Настоящая книга рассказывает читателю о процессе становления, расцвета и забвения культа Сталина в Восточной Германии в период с 1945 по 1961 г. О том, как происходил идеологический трансфер из СССР в советскую оккупационную зону и как онемечивались советские репрезентации власти в чужом политическом пространстве, какую роль сыграл культ Сталина в мобилизации населения и утверждении диктатуры СЕПГ, как рядовые немцы реагировали на предложение нового «фюрера» в лице советского лидера и переделывали себя из «врагов» в «друзей» Сталина речь идет в этой книге.

Книга предназначена для специалистов-историков и для широкого круга читателей, интересующихся историей России и СССР, историей Восточной Германии (ГДР) и других обществ советского типа в Восточной Европе после 1945 г.

This special issue presents interdisciplinary approaches to decoding the deeper grammar of trust ... more This special issue presents interdisciplinary approaches to decoding the deeper grammar of trust and distrust in socialist societies by applying methods from oral history and anthropology, social and cultural history, ethnography and sociology. To historicise trust and distrust, and to identify their traces in a wide range of sources, the authors studied the ideological and economic, moral and material, spatial and legislative as well as the subjective dimensions of state socialism. The contributors look at the shift from Stalinist violence towards a politics of trust and empathy as emotional forces and moral resources that made it possible to renegotiate a social contract among the state, society and the individual, and which also enabled the stabilisation of the Eastern bloc as a whole in the post-Stalin era. This special issue contributes to a history of trust and distrust that provides a further reflection on the debate about what socialism was and the ways in which this experience continues to exist in post-communist space.