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Books by Ulrike Huhn
Wie lebten orthodoxe Christen ihre Religiosität in der atheistischen Sowjetunion der Kriegs- und ... more Wie lebten orthodoxe Christen ihre Religiosität in der atheistischen Sowjetunion der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit, nachdem in den Jahren des Terrors die meisten Kirchen geschlossen und viele Priester verhaftet worden waren? Orthodoxer Glaube und religiöse Praktiken waren, anders als die Bolschewiki vorhergesagt hatten, nicht tot. Sie lebten nur unter anderen Bedingungen und jenseits der Kirchenräume fort. Wallfahrten, Andachten und religiöse Feste schufen eigene Zeiten und Räume, die dem Zugriff des Staates weitgehend entzogen waren.
Doch religiöses Leben und die atheistische Sowjetunion mussten nicht in einem Widerspruch stehen. Dies zeigte sich, nachdem die sowjetische Führung im Herbst 1943 eine scharfe Kehrtwende im Verhältnis zur Religion vollzogen hatte, u. a. um den westlichen Verbündeten entgegen zu kommen. Sie erlaubte die Wiederwahl eines Patriarchen und die Wiederherstellung der Kirchenstrukturen und schuf damit neue Bedingungen für orthodoxe Christen in der Sowjetunion. Damit vergrößerte sich der Spielraum für alle Akteure: Orthodoxe Gläubige bezogen in Abhängigkeit von ihrem Verhältnis zum sowjetischen Staat Stellung für oder gegen das nun von der Parteispitze unterstützte Moskauer Patriarchat; Priester gingen Allianzen mit staatlichen Vertretern ein und griffen mitunter auf die Ressourcen des Staates zurück; der Staat selbst schwankte zwischen Ablehnung und Duldung der Kirche und bestimmter kirchlicher Praktiken.
Doch dies erzeugte nicht nur neue Spannungen. Viele Christen in der Sowjetunion beanspruchten nunmehr gesellschaftliche Normalität und Akzeptanz. In der Folge entstand eine neue gesellschaftliche Gruppe, die man als „sowjetische Gläubige“ bezeichnen könnte.
Papers by Ulrike Huhn
Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas
Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West, 2020
Die Suche nach der "verlorenen Welt" der Schtetl in der Sowjetunion Auf der Suche nach ihrer jüdi... more Die Suche nach der "verlorenen Welt" der Schtetl in der Sowjetunion Auf der Suche nach ihrer jüdischen Identität unternahmen jüdische Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten in der späten Sowjetzeit Expeditionen an die Orte ihrer Vorfahren in die historischen jüdischen Siedlungsgebiete im heutigen Baltikum, in Belarus und in der Ukraine. Diese zunehmend wissenschaftlich orientierte Kultur-und Ausreisebewegung führte schließlich zur Etablierung mehrerer judaistischer Forschungseinrichtungen.
Dubnow Institute Yearbook, 2018
After years of difficult conditions for Jewish Studies in the Soviet Union, a new Jewish Historic... more After years of difficult conditions for Jewish Studies in the Soviet Union, a new Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Commission was founded in 1982. It was a daring undertaking, especially taking into account the fact that some of its members had applied for emigration to Israel and took part in the independent Jewish movement. However, other founding members were reputable colleagues of the Institute of Ethnography, the Soviet Academy of Sciences, who, in addition to their work for the Jewish commission, did research on other ethnographic subjects. In 1982, the Commission convinced the only Yiddish-language Soviet journal “Sovetish Heymland” to launch a special section on Jewish ethnography. “Sovetish Heymland” was originally meant to propagate USSR’s liberal attitude towards its Jews and thus to serve as a Soviet soft power tool. Despite the distrust of, and surveillance by, the state, Jewish commission’s members of the Jewish movement used the state’s official structures, such as “Sovetish Heymland” and the Academy of Sciences, to recover the heritage of its predecessor in archives and museums and to conduct field research in remote areas of the Soviet Union. In doing so, it served both as a platform for exchange and as a starting point for some future professionals in Jewish studies.
Этнографическое обозрение, 2019
After years of difficult conditions for Jewish Studies in the Soviet Union, a new Jewish Historic... more After years of difficult conditions for Jewish Studies in the Soviet Union, a new Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Commission was founded in 1982. It was a daring undertaking, especially taking into account the fact that some of its members had applied for emigration to Israel and took part in the independent Jewish movement. However, other founding members were reputable colleagues of the Institute of Ethnography, the Soviet Academy of Sciences, who, in addition to their work for the Jewish commission, did research on other ethnographic subjects. In 1982, the Commission convinced the only Yiddish-language Soviet journal “Sovetish Heymland” to launch a special section on Jewish ethnography. “Sovetish Heymland” was originally meant to propagate USSR’s liberal attitude towards its Jews and thus to serve as a Soviet soft power tool. Despite the distrust of, and surveillance by, the state, Jewish commission’s members of the Jewish movement used the state’s official structures, such as “Sovetish Heymland” and the Academy of Sciences, to recover the heritage of its predecessor in archives and museums and to conduct field research in remote areas of the Soviet Union. In doing so, it served both as a platform for exchange and as a starting point for some future professionals in Jewish studies.
В 1959–1961 гг. группа ученых из московской Академии наук проводила в Центрально-Черноземном реги... more В 1959–1961 гг. группа ученых из московской Академии наук проводила в Центрально-Черноземном регионе России полевые исследования по теме “религиозного сектантства” в контексте антирелигиозных кампаний Н.С. Хрущева. Перед учеными-атеистами, выполнявшими государственное задание под руководством историка, этнографа и религиоведа А.И. Клибанова, стояла непростая задача: получить информацию от представителей “сект”, считавшихся потенциально враждебными государству и в то же время укрепить научную основу пропаганды.
В статье рассматриваются вопросы методики научного исследования религиозных сообществ, “неудобных” для советского государства: характер политических и социокультурных условий для данных исследований; формулировки целей полевых
исследований; их роль в период антирелигиозной кампании 1960-х годов; воздействие определенных идеологических ожиданий на рабочие методы экспедиций; взаимодействие между учеными и различными государственными и партийными учреждениями.
https://www.geschichte.uni-bremen.de/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/JGO\_2017\_3\_362-400\_Huhn.pdf ... more https://www.geschichte.uni-bremen.de/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/JGO_2017_3_362-400_Huhn.pdf
The photographic inventory of the collectivized Soviet village during the Stalinist period mainly consisted of images of progress based on examples of technological modernization such as tractors and depictions of the villagers made happy by it. In the context of this " poverty of images " , a photo album with pictures taken during an ethnographic expedition under the aegis of the Moscow Academy of Science to the Russian Central Black Earth Region in 1952 provides a unique insight into everyday kolkhoz life and its hardships during the lean postwar years. Of course, the Moscow Institute of Ethnography's research project was framed by the norms and values of the late Stalinist period. The ethnographers were expected to reveal obstacles to socialist progress and thereby help overcome them. Therefore, they had to study a 'typical' (yet carefully chosen) village with an ordinary kol-khoz and all its real problems. The young amateur photographer Vladimir Gorlenko's photographs of this 'typical' kolkhoz life did not correspond to the published visual norms of " socialist realism ". At the same time, they did not comply with the standards of ethno-graphic photography as a mere means of documenting " material culture " such as clothing or housing. In the end, the research in Voronezh was dropped in favour of a more promising village in the neighbouring region of Tambov, which was presented in the famous monograph The Village of Viriatino. The article examines visual patterns in the depiction of kolkhoz life in a larger context, both within and beyond ethnographic photography and discusses the permissible visual narratives during late Stalinism and the " Thaw ". It shows how Gorlenko to a certain extent stretched the framework of ethnographic photography towards social documentary photography.
https://www.forschungsstelle.uni-bremen.de/UserFiles/file/03-Personen/JGO\_2016\_2\_260298\_Huhn.pdf ... more https://www.forschungsstelle.uni-bremen.de/UserFiles/file/03-Personen/JGO_2016_2_260298_Huhn.pdf
Abstract: The renaissance of Soviet ethnology in the spirit of atheism. Ethnographic research on “contemporary sectarianism” in the context of Khrushchev’s antireligious campaigns
In the summer of 1959, scientists belonging to the Academy of Sciences began to conduct field research in Russia’s Central Black Soil Area. They dedicated themselves to an issue that was for various reasons quite sensitive: “religious sectarianism”. In the context of the antireligious campaign launched by Nikita Khrushchev, this research was on the one hand intended to scientifically underscore state propaganda. On the other, the research team headed by the ethnographer and specialist of religion, Aleksandr Klibanov, had to deal with the problem of how – as atheists on a state mission – to attain reliable information from their interview partners. As members of “sects”, the latter were regarded as potentially “subversive” and thus subject to persecution. In the field, the researchers thus developed forms of participant observation whose results were greatly appreciated by the state, but methodologically criticized as extremely questionable and unworthy of party and Komsomol members. In this article, I explore the interplay between the various state, party and scientific institutions as well as the interaction between Moscow and the regions in which the research was conducted. This allows me to identify important elements in the political framework of scientific work and methodological self-reflection within Soviet ethnography during the Thaw period of the county’s history.
Journal of Modern European History, 2012
Call for Papers by Ulrike Huhn
Projects by Ulrike Huhn
by Magdalena Waligórska, etta grotrian, Stsiapan Stureika, Mindaugas Kelpša, Ulrike Huhn, S. Lawrence, Myriam Gerber, Mario Panico, Nadzeya Charapan, Uladzimir Valodzin, Tatsiana Kasataya, and Anastasiya Astapova
The idea for this summer school was to speak of “difficult heritage” that is both intangible, or... more The idea for this summer school was to speak of “difficult heritage” that is both intangible, or takes the form of an absence, and tangible, taking the form of spaces and objects that unsettle us, haunt us, pose a challenge to our memory. Its immediate goal was not only to explore the new methodological approaches to so-called “dissonant heritage”, but also to provide the young scholars with an interdisciplinary set of research tools and experience that would enhance and facilitate their further research.
It was our guiding principle to start this summer school in the so-called “periphery of Europe”, and try to export some of the lessons learned there into the much more theorized context of Western Europe. The German leg of the school was therefore to take place only after we had explored the Lithuanian-Belarusian borderlands.
See our blog and the documentation of our findings on our website: http://www.digitalhistory.uni-bremen.de/summerschool/wordpress/
Wie lebten orthodoxe Christen ihre Religiosität in der atheistischen Sowjetunion der Kriegs- und ... more Wie lebten orthodoxe Christen ihre Religiosität in der atheistischen Sowjetunion der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit, nachdem in den Jahren des Terrors die meisten Kirchen geschlossen und viele Priester verhaftet worden waren? Orthodoxer Glaube und religiöse Praktiken waren, anders als die Bolschewiki vorhergesagt hatten, nicht tot. Sie lebten nur unter anderen Bedingungen und jenseits der Kirchenräume fort. Wallfahrten, Andachten und religiöse Feste schufen eigene Zeiten und Räume, die dem Zugriff des Staates weitgehend entzogen waren.
Doch religiöses Leben und die atheistische Sowjetunion mussten nicht in einem Widerspruch stehen. Dies zeigte sich, nachdem die sowjetische Führung im Herbst 1943 eine scharfe Kehrtwende im Verhältnis zur Religion vollzogen hatte, u. a. um den westlichen Verbündeten entgegen zu kommen. Sie erlaubte die Wiederwahl eines Patriarchen und die Wiederherstellung der Kirchenstrukturen und schuf damit neue Bedingungen für orthodoxe Christen in der Sowjetunion. Damit vergrößerte sich der Spielraum für alle Akteure: Orthodoxe Gläubige bezogen in Abhängigkeit von ihrem Verhältnis zum sowjetischen Staat Stellung für oder gegen das nun von der Parteispitze unterstützte Moskauer Patriarchat; Priester gingen Allianzen mit staatlichen Vertretern ein und griffen mitunter auf die Ressourcen des Staates zurück; der Staat selbst schwankte zwischen Ablehnung und Duldung der Kirche und bestimmter kirchlicher Praktiken.
Doch dies erzeugte nicht nur neue Spannungen. Viele Christen in der Sowjetunion beanspruchten nunmehr gesellschaftliche Normalität und Akzeptanz. In der Folge entstand eine neue gesellschaftliche Gruppe, die man als „sowjetische Gläubige“ bezeichnen könnte.
Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas
Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West, 2020
Die Suche nach der "verlorenen Welt" der Schtetl in der Sowjetunion Auf der Suche nach ihrer jüdi... more Die Suche nach der "verlorenen Welt" der Schtetl in der Sowjetunion Auf der Suche nach ihrer jüdischen Identität unternahmen jüdische Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten in der späten Sowjetzeit Expeditionen an die Orte ihrer Vorfahren in die historischen jüdischen Siedlungsgebiete im heutigen Baltikum, in Belarus und in der Ukraine. Diese zunehmend wissenschaftlich orientierte Kultur-und Ausreisebewegung führte schließlich zur Etablierung mehrerer judaistischer Forschungseinrichtungen.
Dubnow Institute Yearbook, 2018
After years of difficult conditions for Jewish Studies in the Soviet Union, a new Jewish Historic... more After years of difficult conditions for Jewish Studies in the Soviet Union, a new Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Commission was founded in 1982. It was a daring undertaking, especially taking into account the fact that some of its members had applied for emigration to Israel and took part in the independent Jewish movement. However, other founding members were reputable colleagues of the Institute of Ethnography, the Soviet Academy of Sciences, who, in addition to their work for the Jewish commission, did research on other ethnographic subjects. In 1982, the Commission convinced the only Yiddish-language Soviet journal “Sovetish Heymland” to launch a special section on Jewish ethnography. “Sovetish Heymland” was originally meant to propagate USSR’s liberal attitude towards its Jews and thus to serve as a Soviet soft power tool. Despite the distrust of, and surveillance by, the state, Jewish commission’s members of the Jewish movement used the state’s official structures, such as “Sovetish Heymland” and the Academy of Sciences, to recover the heritage of its predecessor in archives and museums and to conduct field research in remote areas of the Soviet Union. In doing so, it served both as a platform for exchange and as a starting point for some future professionals in Jewish studies.
Этнографическое обозрение, 2019
After years of difficult conditions for Jewish Studies in the Soviet Union, a new Jewish Historic... more After years of difficult conditions for Jewish Studies in the Soviet Union, a new Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Commission was founded in 1982. It was a daring undertaking, especially taking into account the fact that some of its members had applied for emigration to Israel and took part in the independent Jewish movement. However, other founding members were reputable colleagues of the Institute of Ethnography, the Soviet Academy of Sciences, who, in addition to their work for the Jewish commission, did research on other ethnographic subjects. In 1982, the Commission convinced the only Yiddish-language Soviet journal “Sovetish Heymland” to launch a special section on Jewish ethnography. “Sovetish Heymland” was originally meant to propagate USSR’s liberal attitude towards its Jews and thus to serve as a Soviet soft power tool. Despite the distrust of, and surveillance by, the state, Jewish commission’s members of the Jewish movement used the state’s official structures, such as “Sovetish Heymland” and the Academy of Sciences, to recover the heritage of its predecessor in archives and museums and to conduct field research in remote areas of the Soviet Union. In doing so, it served both as a platform for exchange and as a starting point for some future professionals in Jewish studies.
В 1959–1961 гг. группа ученых из московской Академии наук проводила в Центрально-Черноземном реги... more В 1959–1961 гг. группа ученых из московской Академии наук проводила в Центрально-Черноземном регионе России полевые исследования по теме “религиозного сектантства” в контексте антирелигиозных кампаний Н.С. Хрущева. Перед учеными-атеистами, выполнявшими государственное задание под руководством историка, этнографа и религиоведа А.И. Клибанова, стояла непростая задача: получить информацию от представителей “сект”, считавшихся потенциально враждебными государству и в то же время укрепить научную основу пропаганды.
В статье рассматриваются вопросы методики научного исследования религиозных сообществ, “неудобных” для советского государства: характер политических и социокультурных условий для данных исследований; формулировки целей полевых
исследований; их роль в период антирелигиозной кампании 1960-х годов; воздействие определенных идеологических ожиданий на рабочие методы экспедиций; взаимодействие между учеными и различными государственными и партийными учреждениями.
https://www.geschichte.uni-bremen.de/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/JGO\_2017\_3\_362-400\_Huhn.pdf ... more https://www.geschichte.uni-bremen.de/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/JGO_2017_3_362-400_Huhn.pdf
The photographic inventory of the collectivized Soviet village during the Stalinist period mainly consisted of images of progress based on examples of technological modernization such as tractors and depictions of the villagers made happy by it. In the context of this " poverty of images " , a photo album with pictures taken during an ethnographic expedition under the aegis of the Moscow Academy of Science to the Russian Central Black Earth Region in 1952 provides a unique insight into everyday kolkhoz life and its hardships during the lean postwar years. Of course, the Moscow Institute of Ethnography's research project was framed by the norms and values of the late Stalinist period. The ethnographers were expected to reveal obstacles to socialist progress and thereby help overcome them. Therefore, they had to study a 'typical' (yet carefully chosen) village with an ordinary kol-khoz and all its real problems. The young amateur photographer Vladimir Gorlenko's photographs of this 'typical' kolkhoz life did not correspond to the published visual norms of " socialist realism ". At the same time, they did not comply with the standards of ethno-graphic photography as a mere means of documenting " material culture " such as clothing or housing. In the end, the research in Voronezh was dropped in favour of a more promising village in the neighbouring region of Tambov, which was presented in the famous monograph The Village of Viriatino. The article examines visual patterns in the depiction of kolkhoz life in a larger context, both within and beyond ethnographic photography and discusses the permissible visual narratives during late Stalinism and the " Thaw ". It shows how Gorlenko to a certain extent stretched the framework of ethnographic photography towards social documentary photography.
https://www.forschungsstelle.uni-bremen.de/UserFiles/file/03-Personen/JGO\_2016\_2\_260298\_Huhn.pdf ... more https://www.forschungsstelle.uni-bremen.de/UserFiles/file/03-Personen/JGO_2016_2_260298_Huhn.pdf
Abstract: The renaissance of Soviet ethnology in the spirit of atheism. Ethnographic research on “contemporary sectarianism” in the context of Khrushchev’s antireligious campaigns
In the summer of 1959, scientists belonging to the Academy of Sciences began to conduct field research in Russia’s Central Black Soil Area. They dedicated themselves to an issue that was for various reasons quite sensitive: “religious sectarianism”. In the context of the antireligious campaign launched by Nikita Khrushchev, this research was on the one hand intended to scientifically underscore state propaganda. On the other, the research team headed by the ethnographer and specialist of religion, Aleksandr Klibanov, had to deal with the problem of how – as atheists on a state mission – to attain reliable information from their interview partners. As members of “sects”, the latter were regarded as potentially “subversive” and thus subject to persecution. In the field, the researchers thus developed forms of participant observation whose results were greatly appreciated by the state, but methodologically criticized as extremely questionable and unworthy of party and Komsomol members. In this article, I explore the interplay between the various state, party and scientific institutions as well as the interaction between Moscow and the regions in which the research was conducted. This allows me to identify important elements in the political framework of scientific work and methodological self-reflection within Soviet ethnography during the Thaw period of the county’s history.
Journal of Modern European History, 2012
by Magdalena Waligórska, etta grotrian, Stsiapan Stureika, Mindaugas Kelpša, Ulrike Huhn, S. Lawrence, Myriam Gerber, Mario Panico, Nadzeya Charapan, Uladzimir Valodzin, Tatsiana Kasataya, and Anastasiya Astapova
The idea for this summer school was to speak of “difficult heritage” that is both intangible, or... more The idea for this summer school was to speak of “difficult heritage” that is both intangible, or takes the form of an absence, and tangible, taking the form of spaces and objects that unsettle us, haunt us, pose a challenge to our memory. Its immediate goal was not only to explore the new methodological approaches to so-called “dissonant heritage”, but also to provide the young scholars with an interdisciplinary set of research tools and experience that would enhance and facilitate their further research.
It was our guiding principle to start this summer school in the so-called “periphery of Europe”, and try to export some of the lessons learned there into the much more theorized context of Western Europe. The German leg of the school was therefore to take place only after we had explored the Lithuanian-Belarusian borderlands.
See our blog and the documentation of our findings on our website: http://www.digitalhistory.uni-bremen.de/summerschool/wordpress/