Restorative Nostalgia In The Post-Russian Fashion Analysis

Throughout its long history, Russia has been trapped in a continuous cycle of authoritarian regimes; only interrupted briefly with periods of tumultuous democratic transitions that were plagued by poor bureaucracy and weak institutions. Therefore, time and time again, Russia has turned towards authoritarianism. In the late 1900’s to early 2000’s, Russia again saw the fall of democracy coincide with the rise of a competitive authoritarian regime. This rise of competitive authoritarianism in Russia in the late 1900’s to early 2000’s was largely the result of the resource curse which granted Putin’s Administration false economic performance legitimacy. This in turn reinvigorated past strongman ideals, while at the same time solidified negative

The December of 1991 marked the end of the Soviet Union—and with it, an entire era. Like the February Revolution of 1917 that ended tsardom, the events leading up to August 1991 took place in rapid succession, with both spontaneity and, to some degree, retrospective inevitability. To understand the demise of Soviet Union is to understand the communist party-state system itself. Although the particular happenings of the Gorbachev years undoubtedly accelerated its ruin, there existed fundamental flaws within the Soviet system that would be had been proven ultimately fatal. The USSR became a past chapter of history because it was impossible to significantly reform the administrative

Russia, as a country, has had a long and proud history. However, for a small time starting in 1917, things started to take a turn for the worse. There was widespread famine, disease, and killing by the instituted government. There was also no Russia. Instead, there was the glorious United Soviet Socialist Republics, or the USSR. This new country did not come around peacefully, but instead under the 1917 Russian Revolution and the revolting communist Bolsheviks. The Russian people were not in a better condition after the Russian revolution due to Stalin’s leadership of his country; the reason being the GULAGs that Stalin was sending his people to, the communes that the peasants were sent to, and the disastrous effects of his five year plans.

19). That begin said, Russian politics have always governed around protecting themselves from threats inside and outside their boundaries both economical and militarily. In addition, Lynch elaborates that the capability of a state is so important in developing; in order to form a democracy since having been a built on post communist and Imperial auspices (Lynch, p. 5). In other words, a democracy does not merely come out of nowhere in a civil society, unless there is a capable national service where a political authority may draft, pass and enforce legislation. Furthermore, it is the neopatrimonial model that best describes the functioning of the Russian state that took hold in post communist Russia ruled by Yeltsin and Putin (Lynch, pp. 128-30). To clarify, it was significant that Russia established itself in a liberal economy, which was mostly supported by Western states, however the emergence and eventual consolidation under Putin established a neopatrmonial Political system.

During the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union, life was very difficult. The people who lived within the countries controlled by the Soviet government experienced levels of oppression akin to slavery. They could not express themselves through any means and had to conform both body and soul to the views of the Communist Party. People could be arrested, imprisoned, shipped off to exile or executed often without trial. Some twenty million people died while Joseph Stalin led the USSR and for many years after his death it was still dangerous to dare criticize his regime, although some scholars put that number closer to forty million people who died. Now that the Soviet Union has broken up and Russia is its own country there is more freedom, but the people still live under the yoke of an oppressive leader who does not tolerate political or social challenges. The people do nothing to stand up to this government because they have all been scarred by the decades they lived under Stalin. In the book The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin, author Adam Hochschild entered Russia an interviewed people who had survived Stalinism. What he found was that despite the fact that Stalin has been dead for decades, he still lives as a tangible presence within the country. His memory functions as a reminder to all those who dare to criticize President Putin or other members of the current government about how bad things could be and this fear pushes them into

Moscow, U.S.S.R. 19 September, 2020. Instead of in our world when it collapsed in 1989, the Soviet Union managed to pull through the tough time, but now it couldn’t. Rioters crowded the streets, attempting to penetrate the defenses of the buildings holding state officials. Only the KGB remained loyal to its government, while the U.S.S.R.’s enemies watched smugly, and the Warsaw Pact Nations defected to NATO. A civil war in Cuba ended communism there, and Anti-Communist factions in all nations were at strong points.

It has been twenty-five years since the fall of the Soviet Union; a communist nation that was once the mighty opponent of the United States, but over the course of time it ceased to exists. Without a doubt, the Soviet Union has been the subject of many historical works that primarily focused on political issues and government officials, but what about the average people, particularly women? Above any political ideology, Russia remained a patriarchal society before and after the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union hope to attain the “New Soviet Man”, but in their attempts only made their state situation much more dreadful by causing severe fragmentation within several ethnic groups, politics, as well as the army. This cast upon the Soviets a very bad image, which when the Soviet Union applied more tension, made their situation only worse. The Soviet Union became such a fragmented Union that Gorbachev could no longer control the power of the population and was forced to resign, and hence the fall of the Soviet Union. Political and Ethnic fragmentation contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union by causing division in leadership, “This division within the Soviet leadership weakened its ability to respond to centrifugal forces and contributed to the central authorities erratic response to them”(Hunter et.al, 212), as well as prove that the “New Soviet Man” was socially untenable, “The notion that nationalities would willingly give up their cultural identities for the common good, and that a unique soviet man would emerge- was socially untenable.”(Xenakis,

Khrushchev’s 1956 Secret Speech was one of the most important moments in Soviet history. It was the beginning of the permanent divided within the party between reformists and hardliners. This divide created a new type of informal political norm for both the Soviet System and the Soviet Leader- I will call this the ‘rollback effect.’ This rollback effect influenced every Soviet leader’s view on problems in Soviet society, and thus, their policy preferences. Furthermore, the remnants of the rollback effect can still be seen in contemporary Russian politics, and can help explain Putin’s aggressive policy measures.

In the eyes of an overwhelming majority of mankind, freedom is an irrefutable right. An unmeasurable amount of people has chosen to potentially sacrifice their lives if only for the off-chance of being freed. At the dawn of the 20th century, Russia had finally slipped through the shackles put forth by the czarist autocracy. The feeling of liberation brought a spark in what appeared to be a labyrinthine tunnel invariably plagued with darkness. However, this spark was unable to be kindled into a fire as Vladimir Lenin of the Bolshevik Party quickly extinguished what could have been a democracy.

The Russian Revolution is a widely studied and seemingly well understood time in modern, European history, boasting a vast wealth of texts and information from those of the likes of Robert Service, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Allan Bullock, Robert Conquest and Jonathan Reed, to name a few, but none is so widely sourced and so heavily relied upon than that of the account of Leon Trotsky, his book “History of the Russian Revolution” a somewhat firsthand account of the events leading up to the formation of the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that Trotsky’s book, among others, has played a pivotal role in shaping our understanding of the events of The Revolution; but have his personal predilections altered how he portrayed such paramount

The social-political status of contemporary Russia is quite the mixed bag. While you have Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party with a vast majority of the vote in nearly every election, there is a large variety of groups who speak out against him. In the days following the recent presidential election, where Putin was elected for a third term, tens of thousands of Russians protested the results of the election. Several different political and social groups make up these kind of protests, but what is interesting that most of these group’s ideologies have one thing in common—Nationalism. Nationalism come in various forms, but the three that are going to be discussed are Social, Imperial, and Radical Nationalists. Some argue that these groups hold dangerous ideologies, especially the militia-like groups. These groups are a part of these Putin protests in such large numbers because Putin is cited as the obstacle preventing the solving of Russia’s “problems. While these Communist, Imperialist, and Neo-Fascist groups may have generally unfavorable ideologies, much of what they cite as problems in Russia have some validity to them, and that together they can pose a serious threat to the established regime of United Russia.

This assignment aims to establish the foundation for the understanding of how history has played a role in defining and redefining the Russian society. By looking at the general history and the political systems of the past, this assignment will highlight events that influenced the emergence of these systems and the current government systems instated. This assignment will examine the way in which the Russian government operates and will therefore highlight the political ideologies of the country in order to provide a basis for educated recommendations to be formulated. The benefit of being aware of the above mentioned topic is that it allows for a better understanding of our world history thus broadening and expanding

This essay aims to analyse the key role that the surrealist movement has played on fashion and the fashion industry. Both from a historical point of view, as well as its continued impact on fashion today, as a source of inspiration for contemporary fashion designers.

Russia’s Return as a Superpower. There are concerns that Russia may once again “reassert itself militarily” (Wood 7). After the original fall of communism in 1991, Russia seemed to be on a path to democracy. Currently the notion of a democratic Russia seems to be fading as Russia “has been centralizing more and more power in the Kremlin” (Putin 2). Regional governors, who were once elected by the people, are now being appointed by Moscow.