The Work of Culture in Uncertain Times: Conversations in the Russian Far East (original) (raw)
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The Post-Soviet Museum: History Ruptures,Memory,Continuties by Ludmila D. COJOCARU
BRUKENTHALIA ,Romanian Cultural History Review Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei No. 3 2013, 2013
Museutopia. A Photographic Research Project by Ilya Rabinovich will be of great interest for a large audience of people from the lovers of photography, museums, history or Moldova‘s cultural life to the consecrated scholars studying visual arts, philosophy, ethnography, museology or memory and identity through the investigation of complex interrelationship between ‗gaze, diaspora, trauma‘ (p. 15). The impact of dramatic transformations happened between the last decade of socialist period and the first two decades of post-soviet Moldova history still constitutes a disputable topic among specialists from different fields, as well as the emerging public history discourses on memory, identity and nation-building. Along the lines of Benedict Anderson work on nationalism and identity (Anderson 1991), the specialists in cultural heritage Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius consider, in terms of imagination, national museums are uniquely placed to illuminate that which is actually imagined with reference to an emerging,re-emerging or fully formed nation‘‘(Aronsson, Elgenius 2011, 5).
Russian Cultural History Lost and Found
Russian Studies in History, 2015
Revival is a key concept for post-Soviet cultural identity, and "Lost and Found" has become a familiar theme in contemporary culture. Following decades of ruthless destruction and neglect, the first post-Soviet decades have seen the most conscientious effort to regain those losses, with remarkable results. The current research in Museum Studies addresses the dispersal of the Russian cultural heritage that took place during the Soviet era.
The Museum as a Political Instrument: Post-Soviet Memories and Conflicts
2022
This book presents an elaboration of selected materials from the author’s doctoral thesis, Dissonant Memories in the Post-Soviet Space: Newly Established Museums and Political History in Russia (1991–2016), supervised by professor Luca Basso Peressut and co-supervised by professor Francesca Lanz. The thesis was successfully defended on June 30, 2020, at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano.
The paper addresses the influence of socialist realism on the research and representation of Soviet contemporaneity in ethnographic museums in the 1930s on the basis of a case study of The State Museum of Ethnography in Leningrad. A comparison of museum ethnography at the time of 'cultural revolution' and mature Stalinism reveals an array of features pointing to the impact of socialist realism. The Soviet historical narrative was embedded into museum displays, in some cases transformed into fictionalised biography. 'Leading' and 'distinguished' districts, collective farms, plants and people replaced 'average' ones in their roles of typical objects of fieldwork study and exhibition representation. Avant-garde design was replaced by socialist realist designs; life groups with picturesque backdrops became the constructive and conceptual dominants of exhibitions. Socialist construction was displayed not only by flat paper materials (photographs, diagrams, slogans, etc.) and collections of industrial objects, etc., but also by paintings, graphics, sculptures, and folk decorative arts. The making of politically appropriate displays presupposed a powerful interweaving of science and ideologically inspired art throughout all phases of preparation: from fieldwork to the mounting of the exhibition in the museum. As a result, in the second half of 1930s ethnographers were no longer able to study contemporaneity as such; rather, they were expected to investigate 'the green shoots of the future in the present'. K e y w o r d s: socialist realism, cultural revolution, ethnographic museum, history of ethnography, ethnography of con-temporaneity. T o c i t e: Petriashin S., 'Socialist Realism and Ethnography: The Study and Representation of Soviet Contemporaneity in Ethnographic Museums in the 1930s', Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 2019, no. 15, pp. 155-182. d o i:
Boundary Objects of Communism: Assembling the Soviet Past in Lithuanian Museums
2013
Acknowledging that every study of post-Soviet museums is a pilot study and that it is subject to the aforementioned limitations, this chapter seeks to cast some light on the rich social, material, political, and professional diversity and heterogeneity of assembling the communist past in Lithuanian museums. The analysis focuses on six museums, created by amateurs or cultural professionals, owned by the state or private individuals, newly built or revamped: the Ninth Fort , the Museum of Victims of Genocide, the Museum for Resistance and Deportations in Kaunas (established in 1993 and transferred to Kaunas City Museum in 2005), Grūtas Statue Park, the Lithuanian National Art Gallery, the Open Air Museum's Sector for Deportations and Resistance. State museums are often misunderstood to be channels for official state discourses that stem from policy documents and politicians’ speeches. However, in many cases a state museum is just an administrative status, when in fact the organization was created and maintained by civil society groups that managed to lobby and gain state funding and administrative support. It can perhaps be agreed on a minimal definition of a museum as an attempt (not a final result) to stabilize an idea or a story as an important one and relevant to the public. Museums are organizations, and like all organizations, they are better understood as processes, as a mesh of social practices and material settings. The museums’ formal administrative structures inscribed on paper and embodied in the architecture of offices and bank accounts, and their exhibitions, publications, and objects in storage are just one part of a highly complex reality. A proper study of a museum would be sensitive to this processual and material nature and investigate the moments of change. Ultimately, we study museums in order to contribute to a better understanding and discourse about the past: an academic study should avoid treating its object of analysis, critique, and advice as a static entity.
De-memorizing the Traumatic Soviet Past: The Repression of Russian Political History Museums
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict, 2024
Cultural politics, identitarian dynamics, and ideological trends of today's Russia represent a case of a steadily strengthening repressive mechanism aimed at a total instrumentalization of history and memory. Museum practice, especially in case of museums dealing with contentious and traumatic heritage, is widely used by the Russian state as an efficient and powerful tool for specific narratives that fit into the ideological framework of Vladimir Putin's political regime. These narratives enhance the cult of personality, historical mythmaking, and political propaganda. In this context, such Russian museums as the Perm-36 Memorial Museum and the Sakharov Center can be seen as both catalysts of memory-related discourse and targets of the dispersed violence nurtured by victimhood affects of Russia's regime.
SEER, 2024
Soviet economy and ending the Cold War, respectively. Bergmane employs the concept of uncertainty, showing that while the US administration had an abundance of information, it had little understanding or imagination regarding how developments would play out. Gorbachev had a vision, but little understanding of the consequences of his reforms and the social forces they would unleash. On the other hand, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian societies and their leaders knew exactly what they wanted and generated a remarkable consensus around their goals. Bergmane superbly navigates the intricacies of the triangular relationship between Washington, Moscow and the Baltic republics, although for readers unfamiliar with the Baltic context a chronology of events would have been helpful. This excellent book is highly recommended for anyone seeking greater insight into the end of the Cold War and the demise of the USSR.