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Abstract
The history of communist crimes in the USSR has been well elucidated. Nonetheless, a still under-investigated group of archival materials are files of the Soviet counterintelligence. One of its tasks was the surveillance of the foreign diplomats and consular representatives operating on the territory of the USRR. Even after the fall of the USSR and the opening of the archives, access to the materials of the communist special services was and is very difficult. The situation changed not very long ago. Open access to materials of the former GPU/NKVD/KGB was possible in Ukraine. In the Branch State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv is a file continuing materials from the surveillance by the Soviet counterintelligence of the Polish diplomat Jan Karszo-Siedlewski, who was among others the head of the Polish consulates general in Kharkiv and Kyiv in 1932–1937. In this way, material that had been entirely inaccessible for researchers will be discussed in the present article.
Abstract
This essay examines the life and career of famed Russian geologist, geographer, and academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences V. A. Obruchev. By emphasizing Obruchev’s commitment to popular enlightenment within and beyond his scientific disciplines, a clearer portrait of Obruchev’s lasting influence in Soviet science and literature emerges. Over the course of his career, Obruchev devised an original model of public science, one that renegotiated the traditional boundaries between science fiction, popular science, and academic discourse. As a result, Obruchev’s scientific research granted form and function to his popular fiction and his fiction, in turn, provided a space to explore the possibilities of scientific hypotheses and promote the active research of the scientific phenomena Obruchev considered significant. By the time of Obruchev’s death in 1956, other natural scientists, especially geoscientists, and science fiction authors had coopted Obruchev’s approach to popular enlightenment, cementing his legacy.
Abstract
The article focuses on Aleksei Mikhailovich Kremkov (1898-1948), graduate of the St. Petersburg Naval Corps, who received his military education—and baptism of fire—during the First World War and Civil War, and who, in emigration, worked as caricaturist in France and USA under the pseudonym Alex Gard. Gard collaborated with The New York Herald Tribune and many other serials, his cartoons graced the walls of the prestigious Sardi’s Restaurant in New York, and he published several albums of caricatures (including skits on military service, the Russian ballet, and the cream of America’s theater and cinema bohemia in the 1930s and 1940s). True, his cartoons brought tears to many an eye, but they also inspired people to understand themselves better and even to bolster self-confidence. Little has been written about Gard and biographical data are often contradictory. This article publishes vintage photographs and inscriptions, including a drawing from the collection of the author, whose great-uncle—the Russian ballet dancer in exile—Dimitri Rostoff (D.N. Kulchitsky), was one of Gard’s closest friends.
Abstract
The subject of this article is the evolution of Soviet political caricature as reflected in the work of artist Boris Efimov. The article focuses on the post-revolutionary period of Efimov’s career up to the eve of World War II, with particular attention to changes in his work following Stalin’s consolidation of dictatorial power by the early 1930s. While examining the nature of several key political caricatures by Efimov of the 1920s and 1930s, the article also considers the political context and circumstances surrounding Efimov’s work, especially the dramatic reversal of the official Communist Party attitude toward one of the Revolution’s principal leaders and heroes, Lev Trotsky. Based mainly on testimony in Efimov’s later memoirs, as well as two contemporaneous reviews of Efimov’s work by Trotsky and critic Viacheslav Polonsky, the article aims to demonstrate how political expediency compelled Efimov, who had received the support and patronage of these two influential figures, to alter both the content and style of his political caricatures for the purpose of attacking new imaginary enemies in Stalin’s Russia.
Abstract
Caricature became entrenched as a common form of social commentary in Russian visual culture in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Four prominent humor magazines: Iskra (Spark, 1859–1873), Budil’nik (Alarm Clock, 1865–1918), Strekoza (Dragonfly, 1875–1908), and Oskolki (Splinters, 1881–1916) promoted caricatures and built success largely on the public’s appetite for them. The editors and staff of these humor magazines made caricature a ready and effective tool of social criticism and helped develop a critical public familiar enough with the form to appreciate it. The rather gentle caricature of the early period and its benign social criticism established a foundation for a harsher partisan form of caricature as political advocacy during the revolution of 1905–1906.