Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
4,597
result(s) for
"Sowjetunion"
Sort by:
The reaction of Soviet palaeontologists to the August 1948 Session of VASKhNIL (journal discussion in 1952/1953)
Unlike the phenomenon of Lysenkoism that has been extensively covered in the history of science, the palaeontological discussion on the state of Soviet palaeontology in the wake of the notorious August 1948 Session of VASKhNIL that demolished Soviet genetics has remained overlooked so far. This paper describes the situation in Soviet palaeontology before this discussion and the role of Academician Borisyak in the development of palaeontology in the Soviet Union, and names the initiators, participants, and goals of the palaeontological discussion. The role of Davitashvili in the attempt to tarnish the name and scientific legacy of Borisyak is discussed in detail. However, despite overall atmosphere of despondency that reigned in Soviet biology at the time, the palaeontologists, overall, managed to assert both the priority and the value of their works and avoid administrative and physical repressions. This paper suggests the reasons why they succeeded.
Journal Article
Between truth and time : a history of Soviet Central Television
In the first full-length study of Soviet Central Television to draw extensively on archival sources, interviews, and television recordings, Evans challenges the idea that Soviet mass culture in the Brezhnev era was dull and formulaic. Tracing the emergence of play, conflict, and competition on Soviet news programs, serial films, and variety and game shows, Evans shows that Soviet Central Television's most popular shows were experimental and creative, laying the groundwork for Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and the post-Soviet media system. -- Provided by publisher.
Book
Empire of Nations
When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state.
InEmpire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers-who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context-produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study \"the human being as a productive force,\" and created ethnographic exhibits about the \"Peoples of the USSR.\" In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union,Empire of Nationsalso offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.
eBook
Long-term agricultural land-cover change and potential for cropland expansion in the former Virgin Lands area of Kazakhstan
During the Soviet Virgin Lands Campaign, approximately 23 million hectares (Mha) of Eurasian steppe grassland were converted into cropland in Northern Kazakhstan from 1954 to 1963. As a result Kazakhstan became an important breadbasket of the former Soviet Union. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 triggered widespread agricultural abandonment, and much cropland reverted to grasslands. Our goal in this study was to reconstruct and analyze agricultural land-cover change since the eve of the Virgin Lands Campaign, from 1953 to 2010 in Kostanay Province, a region that is representative of Northern Kazakhstan. Further, we assessed the potential of currently idle cropland for re-cultivation. We reconstructed the cropland extent before and after the Virgin Lands Campaign using archival maps, and we mapped the agricultural land cover in the late Soviet and post-Soviet period using multi-seasonal Landsat TM/ETM+ images from circa 1990, 2000 and 2010. Cropland extent peaked at approximately 3.1 Mha in our study area in 1990, 38% of which had been converted from grasslands from 1954 to 1961. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 45% of the Soviet cropland was abandoned and had reverted to grassland by 2000. After 2000, cropland contraction and re-cultivation were balanced. Using spatial logistic regressions we found that cropland expansion during the Virgin Lands Campaign was significantly associated with favorable agro-environmental conditions. In contrast, cropland expansion after the Campaign until 1990, as well as cropland contraction after 1990, occurred mainly in areas that were less favorable for agriculture. Cropland re-cultivation after 2000 was occurring on lands with relatively favorable agro-environmental conditions in comparison to remaining idle croplands, albeit with much lower agro-environmental endowment compared to stable croplands from 1990 to 2010. In sum, we found that cropland production potentials of the currently uncultivated areas are much lower than commonly believed, and further cropland expansion is only possible at the expense of marginal lands. Our results suggest if increasing production is a goal, improving crop yields in currently cultivated lands should be a focus, whereas extensive livestock grazing as well as the conservation of non-provisioning ecosystem services and biodiversity should be priority on more marginal lands.
Journal Article
THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PRODUCTIVITY OF AMERICAN MATHEMATICIANS
It has been difficult to open up the black box of knowledge production. We use unique international data on the publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians to examine the impact of a large, post-1992 influx of Soviet mathematicians on the productivity of their U.S. counterparts. We find a negative productivity effect on those mathematicians whose research overlapped with that of the Soviets. We also document an increased mobility rate (to lower quality institutions and out of active publishing) and a reduced likelihood of producing \"home run\" papers. Although the total product of the preexisting American mathematicians shrank, the Soviet contribution to American mathematics filled in the gap. However, there is no evidence that the Soviets greatly increased the size of the \"mathematics pie.\" Finally, we find that there are significant international differences in the productivity effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and these international differences can be explained by both differences in the size of the émigré flow into the various countries and in how connected each country is to the global market for mathematical publications.
Journal Article
Moscow has ears everywhere : new investigations on Pasternak and Ivinskaya
The conflict between Soviet Communists and Boris Pasternak over the publication of Doctor Zhivago did not end when he won the Nobel Prize, or even when the author died. Paolo Mancosu tells how Pasternak's expulsion from the Soviet Writers' Union left him in financial difficulty. Milan publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and Sergio d'Angelo, who had brought the typescript of Doctor Zhivago to Feltrinelli, were among those who arranged a smuggling operation to help him.After Pasternak's death, Olga Ivinskaya, his companion, literary assistant, and the inspiration for Zhivago's Lara, also received some of the Zhivago royalties. After the KGB intercepted Pasternak's will on her behalf, the Soviets arrested and sentenced her and her daughter, Irina Emelianova, to eight years and three years of labor camp, respectively. The ensuing international outrage inspired a secret campaign in the West to win their freedom.Mancosu's new book-the first to explore the post-Nobel history of Pasternak and Ivinskaya-provides extraordinary detail on these events, in a thrilling account that involves KGB interceptions, fabricated documents, smugglers, and much more. While a general reader will respond to the dramatic human story, specialists will be rewarded with a rich assemblage of new archival material, especially letters of Pasternak, Ivinskaya, Feltrinelli, and d'Angelo from the Hoover Institution Library and Archives and the Feltrinelli Archives in Milan.
Book
Russia in the Context of Global Transformations
In Russia in the Context of Global Transformations (Capitalism and Communism, Culture and Revolution), the authors address the dramatic changes in the Russian socio-economic system over the past century from a Critical Marxist viewpoint.
Book