The Between 1921 And 1940 As An Alleged Counter Revolutionary

To Squeeze a Lemon Dry: How Princess Dashkova’s Memoir Reveals Common Themes Among Russia’s History

When Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente begins, Marya Morevna is a child at the window, watching as birds fall miraculously out of a tree only to turn into husbands for her sisters and carry them off on the eve of revolution. When Deathless ends, Marya Morevna has given birth to a child of her own, whose entry cracks open the egg of safety she has been concealed in and foreshadows the onset of another impossible war, an age where “‘we are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive’” (Valente 343). Deathless, however, is not simply the story of one woman’s suffering and survival—indeed, Valente portrays Marya as Russia itself, a nation whose historical and cultural cycle and identity is paralleled by Marya’s own journey.

Less than three months later, Ivinskaya and her daughter were sentenced to a Siberian labor camp again” (Mitzi par. 13). The comparison between the events in Doctor Zhivago and the impossible to predict events documented by history are uncanny and suggests Boris Pasternak wrote Doctor Zhivago to accurately represent a life in Soviet Russia.

Socialist Realism, being the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism, demands from the artist a truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic depiction of reality must coexist with the goal of ideological change and education of the workers in the spirit of socialism.

December 10, 2010, a Tunisian produce seller sets himself on fire in protest of the government’s extreme repression while under the leadership of the country’s former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The prolonged frustrations lead Tunisia into revolution, provoking the already corrupt and violent security forces to counteract in bloodshed. Still, and utilizing the Internet and social media, the revolutionaries reached out to global communities to depict the horror, in hope for help. Consequently and with success, Tunisians’ gained the sympathy they were seeking, while also inspiring the Arab Spring to ignite, a mass of revolutions across Arab nations.

As Crime and Punishment comes to a conclusion, the author illustrates Raskolnikov’s sentence in prison and how his blinding superiority causes him inner turmoil more than his punishment does. After having confessed in a moment of weakness, Raskolnikov now spends his days in a prison in Siberia. The author’s language reveals Raskolnikov’s continued suffering by showing his desperation to regain his pride and how it affects him by displaying his resulting resurrection.

It is his education in the Soviet boarding school that introduces Sabitzhan to the idea of controlling people via radio waves to create what Coombs calls a “dystopian, thoroughly deracinated modernity” (52). Aitmatov’s protagonist, by comparison, is shown to hold the true spiritualistic values of his ancestors. Coombs parallels Aitmatov’s text to Russian village prose, in its “narratives of nostalgia [which] rehearsed the trauma of Soviet modernization, whose manifestations were typically cast as the large-scale construction projects entailed in the NTR (scientific-technical revolution) and the GES (hydroelectric station) program” (51). Thus, following the tradition of Russian village prose, Aitmatov, through a portrayal of the extreme modernization

In 1849, he was arrested for his “involvement in the radical intellectual Petrashevsky Circle,” a group chiefly interested in the reformation of Russian society (Thomas, 8). He was arrested and sentenced to death, however, at the last moment, he was pardoned and sentenced instead to four years of hard labor in Siberia (Thomas, 8). This experience altered Dostoevsky’s outlook on life and his personal philosophies. In a letter to his brother, Mikhail, Dostoevsky expressed that his close encounter with death on the day of his supposed execution taught him what was truly important in life, his loved ones, and how much he valued it (Thomas, 9). His four years in Siberia gave his a certain appreciation for “the common people of Russia” that is prominent in many of his works, especially The Brothers Karamazov (Thomas, 9).

Like many works of literature, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich may be seen as a social commentary on the Soviet Union. The

The first type of movement would be revolutionary movements. It is a movement that looks to overthrow existing institutions and stratification in order to replace them with new ones. The communist party was a revolutionary social movement who was founded by the Russian Bolsheviks. There is institutions of capitalism, the private property and the market who must be replaced with soviets or democratic worker groups. These efforts must be directed by a central committee. For now, other existing institutions, like the family and the religion, were drastically altered or eliminated. An example would be the communist revolution of China.

Throughout Russian literature authors are often found to portray both Russian men and women in an idealised manner, as heroes. The line between heroism and self-sacrifice is often blurred. This often leads to having strong and beautiful female characters with characteristics of power and presence. These characteristics are used to contradict the traditional view of ‘damsel in distress’. Alternatively the men are traditionally depicted as classical heroes. They are powerful men whom are ready to sacrifice themselves in order to defend their family, country and their personal beliefs, no matter the cost. These two portrayals of Russian people throughout 19th Century literature show that both genders tend to be heroic. Self-sacrifice is very often

Olkhovsky dramatically claims — without a primary source as evidence — that as a result of Shostakovich’s victimization, “something in his soul [. . .] had been silenced forever.” Given that Olkhovsky assesses the denunciation’s effect without evidence from a primary source, he falls into Smrž’s category of researchers who failed to “give a comprehensive close reading of what was actually written about music in the Stalin era,” but write nonetheless about Shostakovich with “great personal involvement, often bordering on missionary zeal.” Although, in this case, Olkhovsky’s failure to look at what was written during the Stalin era can at least in part be blamed on his lack of access to the

The Soviet gulag system was notorious for the highly unethical procedures that took place within them and the obscure sentences that prisoners faced. The novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich gives readers a first-person view of the bleak daily events of the prisoners and even shares some of the absurd “crimes” they have committed. Some of the crimes include Shukhov, who was imprisoned on the idea that he was a spy representing the Germans and Buynovsky, a Navy captain that is imprisoned for befriending an English Admiral and receiving a gift from him. These sentences fit into the existential framework through the themes of absurdity and existence precedes essence; the prisoners are searching for answers to questions about why and

In 19th century Russian literature there was often a gender inequality depicted between the male and female characters. Women were expected to get married, start a family, and obey their husbands. Women often made sacrifices and married men they weren’t fond of in order to support their families. Anton Chekhov’s writing questions these gender relationships. The female characters have a strong presence within Chekhov’s works, and they transcend typical gender roles.

There are two historical event scholars believes can be treated as milestone: 1911 revolution, which brings an end to the two thousand year of monarchy and the May fourth movement which were carried out by students in Beijing protesting against the unfair treatment. This paper will make the argument that the May fourth movement was more important than the 1911 revolution. The May fourth movement is the defining event that marked the passage from a tradition based society to modernity in twentieth century Chinese history. The May Fourth Movements was a significant turning point in Chinese history challenging traditional Chinese values.