ASEEES panel "On Returns and Resurrections: Soviet Culture in the Aftermath of the Great Patriotic War"

[/Elena Baraban/]

Dear colleagues,

If someone is interested in chairing the panel I am organizing (please see a detailed description below), please e-mail be off-list: baraban at cc.umanitoba.ca

Thank you,

Elena Baraban

ASEEES 2011 PANEL  
  
/ON RETURNS AND RESURRECTIONS: SOVIET CULTURE IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR/ 
   
In the paper "Gods, Ghouls, and Ghosts: Postwar Rhetoric of Resurrection in /Pravda/ and /Izvestiia/, 1945-1946," OLGA VORONINA (BARD COLLEGE) examines the representations of WWII and its atrocities in the Soviet mass media in the months that immediately followed the Victory day. The essays and editorials to /Pravda/ and /Izvestiia/, contributed by such writers as Ehrenburg, Polevoi, and Leonov, contained a number of recurrent tropes, most of which had a strong metaphysical component. Life and death, light and darkness ("utro Pobedy" and "mrak voiny"), etc., come forth in these texts as the two intricately interwoven sides of the Soviet mythology of sacrifice and resurrection. This complex system of political and spiritual belief came into being in the 1920s and became set into stone after Lenin's death; in the late 1940s, it acquired new features (such as references to the "satanic beastliness" of the enemy) and gained new dimensions (the struggle between good and evil became Eurocentric, with the USA and the USSR joining in the battle as the forces representing either the divine order or its nemesis, depending on who was doing the attribution). A key component of the postwar memory construction, the discourse of resurrection went against the official secular ideology. 

ELENA BARABAN (UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA) will present the paper: “‘This Film May Be /Useful/’: Soviet Films about the Great Patriotic War in 1945-1953.” The paper examines how the language of war representations in film changed the years following the war. In particular, Baraban explores the ways in which the party-state's efforts at 'rebuilding the country' interfered into the creative process and channeled the more informal remembrance practices, howmemory about the war was put to 'good use'  in view of the pragmatic tasks of rebuilding the country after the war and of consolidating and legitimizing the country’s new superpower status. Baraban discusses films such as /Blue Paths/ (1947) by Vladimir Braun, /The Third Blow/ (1948) by Igor Savchenko, and /Cavalier of the Golden Star/ (1950) by Iulii Raizman as well as thematic plans of different film studios which were to accommodate the new material particularly ‘useful’ for fulfilling the postwar period’s political and social tasks. 
  
EMILY VAN BUSKIRK (RUTGERS) will present the paper “Anxieties at the War’s End: the Return in Platonov, Grossman, and Ginzburg” which examines the return home from war, both as a figurative moment and as a concept, in works by Platonov, Grossman, and Ginzburg. For survivors, the end (or anticipated end) of the Second World War brought new anxieties about one’s personal and professional future, in the face of expected social change. Those returning home after long separations confronted anxieties over reinserting themselves into families, careers, and civilian life. Those who never left felt threatened by the arrival of virtual strangers who may have elevated themselves as individuals by visiting foreign lands, by participating in battle, or by assuming different group identities. What are the metaphors for this transition from wartime to peacetime? Are wartime identities consolidated, or quickly abandoned for peacetime ones? How does everyday life (in the family, the lab, the editorial office) interact with the sense of a great historical turning point? Van Buskirk examines texts from three different periods – from 1943-4, as evacuees were returning to Leningrad (in Ginzburg), from 1946, the moment just following the end of the War (Platonov), and from 1960 (Grossman), when the tragic turn taken by Stalinist society had become clear and could be assessed. Across time, the return was conceived of as a traumatic event, because a different culture had formed during the war, which made a true “return” (and, perhaps, a positive “turn”) impossible. 
  
JOSHUA FIRST (UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI): discussant

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