Nina Tumarkin | Wellesley College (original) (raw)
Papers by Nina Tumarkin
Journal of Cold War Studies, Jul 1, 2014
The American Historical Review, Feb 1, 2003
The impulse to commemorate military victory by building some sort of shrine is as old and as wide... more The impulse to commemorate military victory by building some sort of shrine is as old and as widespread as human civilisation itself. Indeed, it is surely a mark of civilisation, albeit a secondary, refined form of activity. When Tamerlane celebrated his conquest of Delhi in the fourteenth century by ordering the construction of a mound made up of 30 000 enemy skulls, he was designing a primitive war memorial.
Slavic Review, 2010
What would Marcel Proust and Vladimir Nabokov have made of the volume under review? It is first o... more What would Marcel Proust and Vladimir Nabokov have made of the volume under review? It is first of all a book about memory. About collective and individual memory, about the many ways in which peoples and people ignore, resist, confront, grapple with, distort, expand, create, and recreate the past through talk, action, ritual, text, art, song, cinema, and other media. Each of the twenty-three short chapters directly addresses some aspect of this eternal theme. How Russians and Germans have touched, retouched, and are still reaching out for the varied parts of the World War II elephant here takes precedence over the lumbering beast herself. The editors of this conference volume, Arja Rosenholm and Withold Bonner, teach language, literature, and cultural studies at the University of Tampere, Finland, which in 2006 hosted this seminar on collective and individual memory of World War II in Russia and Germany. Most of the contributors, a mix of established and junior scholars and doctoral candidates, come from northern Europe, including Russia. History, literature, and cultural and media studies are the main disciplines represented, along with sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. The editors' cogent introduction and most of the essays presuppose the reader's familiarity with contemporary memory studies and with the war itself. A few of the essays in cultural studies use language that might make them less accessible to some readers. When, on the eve of Victory Day 2009, President Dmitrii Medvedev assailed those who sought to "falsify" history by questioning the heroic narrative of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War (and its aftermath) then established a commission to "protect" Soviet history and, in 2010, a few days before the sixty-fifth anniversary of the victory, sent a message to the United Nations urging every member state to fight efforts to "profane the glory of the heroes" who defeated Nazism, it was evident that in the former Soviet Union the public memory of the war will continue to be exploited and contested. Recalling the Past addresses compelling questions. How have conventional narratives affected memories of the war? And how, in turn, does the reformation of memories of World War II influence the reconstruction of national identities in two countries that have been forging new national identities since 1990-91? About three-quarters of the essays focus primarily on Russians. Authors explore primary sources, some well known, as in Helena Goscila's fine overview of Soviet World War II posters, but most are lesser known or archival. Some chapters proffer interrogations of single texts or deconstruct as text individual cultural productions—a film, a novella, a museum. Most investigate small collections of sources—a few letters, diary entries, interviews, songs. The close lens illuminates the complexities of memory reformation, particularly the ways in which personal and group memories draw on official or traditional narratives, rituals, and tropes. This approach leaves authors little opportunity to substantiate general observations about Russians' and Germans' war memories. Thus the book offers more material on individual than on collective memory. It starts out with essays on two legendary cities: Volgograd and Leningrad. Not long before the 2006 conference, philosopher Elena Trubina visited Volgograd. At the tour's end the guide pointed her finger at the mammoth snarling Motherland statue and said: "You see now just how big is our Motherland . . . and how small all of you are" (26). What a perfect expression of one of the many goals of the Soviet-era cult of the Great Patriotic War—to shrink citizens' sense of their own worth as they contemplate the heroes who famously saved them and the world from fascist enslavement. Trubina found that visitors passively accepted their smallness vis-a-vis the state, and young people appeared to participate eagerly in traditional rites. Many authors of essays on Russia note that the intense debates on the war in the 1990s, replete with accusations that Iosif Stalin was more to blame than Adolf Hitler for the almost 30 million war dead were squelched in the fol-
European Review, Oct 1, 2003
Slavic Review, 2002
tion, the prefaces and other commentary they attached to their translations, the translating choi... more tion, the prefaces and other commentary they attached to their translations, the translating choices and styles they adopted, and how their works came to be published. She also includes a complete chronological bibliography of published translations by women for the period. Rosslyn gives three main reasons for her decision to focus on women translators. First, she wants to make a contribution to "the task of recovering forgotten Russian women writers" (7). In addition to a wealth of incidental information about a large number of individuals, she provides detailed and memorable biographical sketches of three pioneering women translators: Anna Vel'iasheva Volyntsova, Mar'ia Sushkova, and Anna Bunina. Second, Rosslyn is concerned with the broader question of women's social history, particularly women's role in spreading enlightenment in Russia. Her accounts of girls' education in foreign languages and the texts they chose to translate are illustrative of this issue. She also mines a good deal of information from prefaces and emendations that women translators made to their source texts. Finally, Rosslyn considers the more theoretical question of gender in translation. She attempts to situate her material in the context of recent work in translation studies and considers such questions as what kind of authorial (or authoritative) stance the translators took, how their decision to enter public discourse was received, and how they dealt with gender identification in first-person discourse.
Human Rights Quarterly, May 1, 1983
"I think," Maxim Gorky wrote in 1922, "that the Russian masses have a special pred... more "I think," Maxim Gorky wrote in 1922, "that the Russian masses have a special predilection for brutality in the same way, let us say, that the Englishman has a sense of humour."' Gorky was arguing that violence was the basis of all power relationships among the Russian peasantry, and that peasants manifested political dominance by brutalizing each other. Gorky was a Marxist and, of course, had utter disdain for the peasantry. But his observation may fairly be said to reflect that of the new regime, which at the time he wrote was consolidating its power following the protracted Russian Civil War of 1918-1921. Early on in the history of Soviet Russia, brutality and the threat of brutality became a prime means of expressing political power; likewise, popular submission to brutality and to the threat of it became a conventional manifestation of political acquiescence. This, perhaps, is what Professor Gibian means by the "domesticated" quality of terror in Russia.2 I should like to suggest that Soviet Russia also developed at least one alternate convention for demonstrating acquiescence to political authority: public participation in organized political ritual. The first such ritual to be standardized on a national scale was the cult of Lenin. As the Russian Revolution progressed, the Communist Party recognized the need for new symbols to confer meaning upon the political chaos. Increasingly the Party centered its claims to legitimate rule on the figure of Lenin who, as the revolution's author and guiding force, provided a fit subject for idealization. The Lenin cult was an organized system of rituals and symbols whose collective function was to arouse in the cult's participants and spectators the reverential mood necessary to create an emotional bond between them and the Party-the symbolic Lenin personified. At the very least the Lenin cult ritual was to induce the public to go through the motions
Foreign Affairs, 1995
This eye-opening book shows how Communist state and party authorities stage-managed the Soviets m... more This eye-opening book shows how Communist state and party authorities stage-managed the Soviets memory of World War II, transforming a national trauma into a heroic exploit that glorified the party while systematically concealing the disastrous mistakes and criminal cruelties committed by the Stalinist tyranny..
The American Historical Review, Jun 1, 2012
The American Historical Review, Dec 1, 2020
Foreign Affairs, 1983
... This felt like a slow-motion pilgrimage to a holy place, which in a way it was. ... past, and... more ... This felt like a slow-motion pilgrimage to a holy place, which in a way it was. ... past, and its history demonstrates the pull of the irrational in the forma-tion of Soviet political culture ... not objects of worship, but it was generally believed that the icon served as a vehicle through which ...
Journal of Cold War Studies, Apr 1, 2016
Book Reviews for this proposition actually illustrates fears about the breakup of the Warsaw Pact... more Book Reviews for this proposition actually illustrates fears about the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the possible emergence of a new "cordon sanitaire" between the West and the USSR (Doc. 22), but in my view it says nothing more than that. The documents Hilger has published do not change the basic picture we have had up to now of the German reunification process. The numerous talks at the ministerial level can indeed be read as "German diplomacy's attempts to gain Soviet trust" (p. 11). Above all, they provide a crucial and deep focus on the West German relationship with the Soviet Union and enable the reader to obtain a better understanding of Genscher's role and impact.
The American Historical Review, 1996
This eye-opening book shows how Communist state and party authorities stage-managed the Soviets m... more This eye-opening book shows how Communist state and party authorities stage-managed the Soviets memory of World War II, transforming a national trauma into a heroic exploit that glorified the party while systematically concealing the disastrous mistakes and criminal cruelties committed by the Stalinist tyranny..
History, Culture, Politics, 2009
The American Historical Review, 1983
... This felt like a slow-motion pilgrimage to a holy place, which in a way it was. ... past, and... more ... This felt like a slow-motion pilgrimage to a holy place, which in a way it was. ... past, and its history demonstrates the pull of the irrational in the forma-tion of Soviet political culture ... not objects of worship, but it was generally believed that the icon served as a vehicle through which ...
Journal of Cold War Studies
Four distinguished experts on Soviet history and Soviet politics discuss the issues raised by And... more Four distinguished experts on Soviet history and Soviet politics discuss the issues raised by Andrea Graziosi in his article “The Weight of the Past in Post-Soviet Russia,” which appeared in the Winter 2020–2021 issue of the JCWS. The article and the discussion forum are the first of several items that will be published in the journal over the next few years assessing a variety of legacies of the Cold War.
Journal of Cold War Studies, Jul 1, 2014
The American Historical Review, Feb 1, 2003
The impulse to commemorate military victory by building some sort of shrine is as old and as wide... more The impulse to commemorate military victory by building some sort of shrine is as old and as widespread as human civilisation itself. Indeed, it is surely a mark of civilisation, albeit a secondary, refined form of activity. When Tamerlane celebrated his conquest of Delhi in the fourteenth century by ordering the construction of a mound made up of 30 000 enemy skulls, he was designing a primitive war memorial.
Slavic Review, 2010
What would Marcel Proust and Vladimir Nabokov have made of the volume under review? It is first o... more What would Marcel Proust and Vladimir Nabokov have made of the volume under review? It is first of all a book about memory. About collective and individual memory, about the many ways in which peoples and people ignore, resist, confront, grapple with, distort, expand, create, and recreate the past through talk, action, ritual, text, art, song, cinema, and other media. Each of the twenty-three short chapters directly addresses some aspect of this eternal theme. How Russians and Germans have touched, retouched, and are still reaching out for the varied parts of the World War II elephant here takes precedence over the lumbering beast herself. The editors of this conference volume, Arja Rosenholm and Withold Bonner, teach language, literature, and cultural studies at the University of Tampere, Finland, which in 2006 hosted this seminar on collective and individual memory of World War II in Russia and Germany. Most of the contributors, a mix of established and junior scholars and doctoral candidates, come from northern Europe, including Russia. History, literature, and cultural and media studies are the main disciplines represented, along with sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. The editors' cogent introduction and most of the essays presuppose the reader's familiarity with contemporary memory studies and with the war itself. A few of the essays in cultural studies use language that might make them less accessible to some readers. When, on the eve of Victory Day 2009, President Dmitrii Medvedev assailed those who sought to "falsify" history by questioning the heroic narrative of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War (and its aftermath) then established a commission to "protect" Soviet history and, in 2010, a few days before the sixty-fifth anniversary of the victory, sent a message to the United Nations urging every member state to fight efforts to "profane the glory of the heroes" who defeated Nazism, it was evident that in the former Soviet Union the public memory of the war will continue to be exploited and contested. Recalling the Past addresses compelling questions. How have conventional narratives affected memories of the war? And how, in turn, does the reformation of memories of World War II influence the reconstruction of national identities in two countries that have been forging new national identities since 1990-91? About three-quarters of the essays focus primarily on Russians. Authors explore primary sources, some well known, as in Helena Goscila's fine overview of Soviet World War II posters, but most are lesser known or archival. Some chapters proffer interrogations of single texts or deconstruct as text individual cultural productions—a film, a novella, a museum. Most investigate small collections of sources—a few letters, diary entries, interviews, songs. The close lens illuminates the complexities of memory reformation, particularly the ways in which personal and group memories draw on official or traditional narratives, rituals, and tropes. This approach leaves authors little opportunity to substantiate general observations about Russians' and Germans' war memories. Thus the book offers more material on individual than on collective memory. It starts out with essays on two legendary cities: Volgograd and Leningrad. Not long before the 2006 conference, philosopher Elena Trubina visited Volgograd. At the tour's end the guide pointed her finger at the mammoth snarling Motherland statue and said: "You see now just how big is our Motherland . . . and how small all of you are" (26). What a perfect expression of one of the many goals of the Soviet-era cult of the Great Patriotic War—to shrink citizens' sense of their own worth as they contemplate the heroes who famously saved them and the world from fascist enslavement. Trubina found that visitors passively accepted their smallness vis-a-vis the state, and young people appeared to participate eagerly in traditional rites. Many authors of essays on Russia note that the intense debates on the war in the 1990s, replete with accusations that Iosif Stalin was more to blame than Adolf Hitler for the almost 30 million war dead were squelched in the fol-
European Review, Oct 1, 2003
Slavic Review, 2002
tion, the prefaces and other commentary they attached to their translations, the translating choi... more tion, the prefaces and other commentary they attached to their translations, the translating choices and styles they adopted, and how their works came to be published. She also includes a complete chronological bibliography of published translations by women for the period. Rosslyn gives three main reasons for her decision to focus on women translators. First, she wants to make a contribution to "the task of recovering forgotten Russian women writers" (7). In addition to a wealth of incidental information about a large number of individuals, she provides detailed and memorable biographical sketches of three pioneering women translators: Anna Vel'iasheva Volyntsova, Mar'ia Sushkova, and Anna Bunina. Second, Rosslyn is concerned with the broader question of women's social history, particularly women's role in spreading enlightenment in Russia. Her accounts of girls' education in foreign languages and the texts they chose to translate are illustrative of this issue. She also mines a good deal of information from prefaces and emendations that women translators made to their source texts. Finally, Rosslyn considers the more theoretical question of gender in translation. She attempts to situate her material in the context of recent work in translation studies and considers such questions as what kind of authorial (or authoritative) stance the translators took, how their decision to enter public discourse was received, and how they dealt with gender identification in first-person discourse.
Human Rights Quarterly, May 1, 1983
"I think," Maxim Gorky wrote in 1922, "that the Russian masses have a special pred... more "I think," Maxim Gorky wrote in 1922, "that the Russian masses have a special predilection for brutality in the same way, let us say, that the Englishman has a sense of humour."' Gorky was arguing that violence was the basis of all power relationships among the Russian peasantry, and that peasants manifested political dominance by brutalizing each other. Gorky was a Marxist and, of course, had utter disdain for the peasantry. But his observation may fairly be said to reflect that of the new regime, which at the time he wrote was consolidating its power following the protracted Russian Civil War of 1918-1921. Early on in the history of Soviet Russia, brutality and the threat of brutality became a prime means of expressing political power; likewise, popular submission to brutality and to the threat of it became a conventional manifestation of political acquiescence. This, perhaps, is what Professor Gibian means by the "domesticated" quality of terror in Russia.2 I should like to suggest that Soviet Russia also developed at least one alternate convention for demonstrating acquiescence to political authority: public participation in organized political ritual. The first such ritual to be standardized on a national scale was the cult of Lenin. As the Russian Revolution progressed, the Communist Party recognized the need for new symbols to confer meaning upon the political chaos. Increasingly the Party centered its claims to legitimate rule on the figure of Lenin who, as the revolution's author and guiding force, provided a fit subject for idealization. The Lenin cult was an organized system of rituals and symbols whose collective function was to arouse in the cult's participants and spectators the reverential mood necessary to create an emotional bond between them and the Party-the symbolic Lenin personified. At the very least the Lenin cult ritual was to induce the public to go through the motions
Foreign Affairs, 1995
This eye-opening book shows how Communist state and party authorities stage-managed the Soviets m... more This eye-opening book shows how Communist state and party authorities stage-managed the Soviets memory of World War II, transforming a national trauma into a heroic exploit that glorified the party while systematically concealing the disastrous mistakes and criminal cruelties committed by the Stalinist tyranny..
The American Historical Review, Jun 1, 2012
The American Historical Review, Dec 1, 2020
Foreign Affairs, 1983
... This felt like a slow-motion pilgrimage to a holy place, which in a way it was. ... past, and... more ... This felt like a slow-motion pilgrimage to a holy place, which in a way it was. ... past, and its history demonstrates the pull of the irrational in the forma-tion of Soviet political culture ... not objects of worship, but it was generally believed that the icon served as a vehicle through which ...
Journal of Cold War Studies, Apr 1, 2016
Book Reviews for this proposition actually illustrates fears about the breakup of the Warsaw Pact... more Book Reviews for this proposition actually illustrates fears about the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the possible emergence of a new "cordon sanitaire" between the West and the USSR (Doc. 22), but in my view it says nothing more than that. The documents Hilger has published do not change the basic picture we have had up to now of the German reunification process. The numerous talks at the ministerial level can indeed be read as "German diplomacy's attempts to gain Soviet trust" (p. 11). Above all, they provide a crucial and deep focus on the West German relationship with the Soviet Union and enable the reader to obtain a better understanding of Genscher's role and impact.
The American Historical Review, 1996
This eye-opening book shows how Communist state and party authorities stage-managed the Soviets m... more This eye-opening book shows how Communist state and party authorities stage-managed the Soviets memory of World War II, transforming a national trauma into a heroic exploit that glorified the party while systematically concealing the disastrous mistakes and criminal cruelties committed by the Stalinist tyranny..
History, Culture, Politics, 2009
The American Historical Review, 1983
... This felt like a slow-motion pilgrimage to a holy place, which in a way it was. ... past, and... more ... This felt like a slow-motion pilgrimage to a holy place, which in a way it was. ... past, and its history demonstrates the pull of the irrational in the forma-tion of Soviet political culture ... not objects of worship, but it was generally believed that the icon served as a vehicle through which ...
Journal of Cold War Studies
Four distinguished experts on Soviet history and Soviet politics discuss the issues raised by And... more Four distinguished experts on Soviet history and Soviet politics discuss the issues raised by Andrea Graziosi in his article “The Weight of the Past in Post-Soviet Russia,” which appeared in the Winter 2020–2021 issue of the JCWS. The article and the discussion forum are the first of several items that will be published in the journal over the next few years assessing a variety of legacies of the Cold War.