Podcasts about after stalin

“We mustn't forget that some of greatest [mass] murderers of modern times were Jewish.” Again Plocker (a Jew) writes: “And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name “Genrikh Yagoda,” the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the “bloodthirsty dwarf.” Fritz Berggren, PhD bloodandfaith.com 1 October 2024 A.D.

On February 16, 2024 Russian dissident Alexei Navalny died under unexplained circumstances in a penal colony in the Russian Arctic just weeks before the election that enthroned Vladimir Putin for another six years of near-absolute power. Within days of Navalny's death his wife Yulia Navalnaya rose up, spoke out and vowed to continue her husband's struggle. A decade ago The Kitchen Sisters were in Moscow reporting for our NPR series Hidden Kitchens: War and Peace and Food. We were at lunch with writer, television journalist and government critic, Victor Erofeyev and asked what his hidden kitchen was. “Dissident Kitchens,” he said. “The Soviet Union fell apart because of the kitchen.” We started digging. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, millions of people poured into Moscow from the countryside, many living crammed together in the appropriated grand apartments of the wealthy — a single, communal kitchen shared by the ten or so families squeezed together under one roof. Spaces were crowded, food scarce, privacy nonexistent. After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev came to power. His new Soviet government built hundreds of huge standardized apartment buildings with single family units, each with their own kitchen. These new, private kitchens became hotbeds of politics, forbidden music, literature – "dissident kitchens" where the seeds of ending the Soviet Union were sewn. Just as Victor Erofeyev told us over lunch. Today, in honor of Alexei Navalny and in honor of Victor Erofeyev, who fled Russia with his family after the invasion of Ukraine, The Kitchen Sisters Present: Dissident Kitchens.

Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina, the most famous defector of the cold war, was born in luxury, in the Kremlin and led an extraordinary, tumultuous life. She died destitute at a care home in Wisconsin.In this episode we tell the incredible story of Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, born Stalina and later known as Lana Peters. If you like our content, please become a patron to receive our two exclusive premium episodes each month, as well as our public episodes ad-free. Born on February 28, 1926, in Moscow, Svetlana was Stalin's favorite child and The Princess in The Kremlin. Her mother Nadezhda was a secretary for Lenin and played an important role in Stalin's rise to power. She committed suicide when Svetlana was just 6 years old. Her brother Vasily was 11 and her half brother Yakov was 25. Artyom, her adopted brother and the only one of her siblings who reached old age, was already a young man. Svetlana had a lonely childhood, very few friends and was interested in literature and poetry. She was the only one that could influence Joseph Stalin. During the Great Purge, she managed to save the lives of many people just by pleading with her father to commute their sentences. She was 10 years old at the time. As a 16 yo teenager, she fell in love with filmmaker Aleksei Kapler, who was 20 years older. Stalin sends him to the Gulag because he was Jewish. Joseph Stalin himself married Nadezhda when she was just 16 years old and he was 39. Svetlana rebelled and married another Jewish man, but their union was short lived. Her first son Josef was born. Her second marriage disintegrates just as fast, but now Svetlana had a daughter too, Yekaterina. During WW2, Her brother Yakov was captured by the Nazis and Stalin refused to exchange him for Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus. Yakov commits suicide by throwing himself on an electrified fence. Vasili dies of alcoholism induced cirrhosis at just 41. After Stalin's death, Svetlana, now a single mother of two, fell in love with Indian translator Kunwar Brajesh Singh. When he dies, she traveled to Delhi to pour his ashes in the Ganges. In Delhi, Svetlana walked into the US Embassy and defected, bringing her first manuscript– 20 Letters to A Friend – to America. She publishes it and earns almost $1M. Most of her money was spent by William Wesley Peters, the world famous architect and vice president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation after their marriage and years living together at the Taliesin Fellowship. Her marriage to Peters ended, but they had a daughter together, Olga. She now goes by the name of  Chrese Evans and lives in Portland Oregon. 1 In 1978, Svetlana, now Lana Peters became a US citizen. 2 Her older daughter, Yekaterina, is a volcanologist in Kamchatka Penninsula in Siberia. Her firstborn son Iosef, a cardiologist, died in Russia in 2008. She was never able to see them again after she fled from Russia. On November 22, 2011, Svetlana died of colon cancer, at the Richland center, a care home in Wisconsin. 3 Episode #Dubimeter: 20 1. Nicholas Thompson. My Friend, Stalin's Daughter. The New Yorker. March 2014. ⇤2. Steven V. Roberts. Stalin's Dauhter Confirms Marriaje to Architect. The New York Times. April 1970. ⇤3. Get.factual youtube channel. Stalin's Daughter - Escaping the Shadow. Youtube. July 2022. ⇤

Hello Interactors,We’re staying in Russia this week because the United States sticks with Russia. At least they used to. And boy did they need it. The famines that have swept through that region over the years have taken the lives of tens of millions of people. Even though Russia was home to the world’s leading seed expert. But the U.S. was always there to bail them out. If the U.S. fell into a food crisis, would Russia return the favor?As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…SEEDS OF CHANGE YIELDS DEEDS OF THE DERANGEDJoseph Stalin liked Trofim Lysenko. He grew up poor far away from Moscow just like him. Stalin was from Georgia and Lysenko Ukraine. Both identified as proletariats. They despised the bourgeoisie imperialistic West. Including highly educated and trained scientists. Lysenko was a horticulturist, studied agricultural, and then worked in the department of physiology at the Ukrainian Genetics Laboratory. But he wasn’t like other scientists. He devised his own homegrown, unproven experiments. He invented theories with pseudo-scientific names like “jarovization” or “vernalization” from Latin’s ‘vernum’ or spring. His claims became known as “Lysenkoism.” Other Russian scientists looked the other way. Russia’s most respected biologist, geneticist, and geographer, Nikolai Vavilov, thought Stalin’s new friend was a crackpot. It wouldn’t end well.Lysenko got lucky with ‘vernalization’. He tricked wheat seeds into blooming early by treating them with moisture in cold temperatures as a way to produce yields in the spring. The trick had already been performed by American John Hancock Klippart in 1857, but Lysenko gave it a name. He also believed the deceived seeds from these plants would magically inherit the ability to do the same on their own. His theory ran counter to empirical evidence and to the knowledge and experience of Vavilov. Vavilov worried Lysenko’s tricks, unproven theories, and over promises to Stalin and the Soviet government could lead to catastrophic errors and the worsening of the routine famines Russia was trying to escape.But Stalin embraced Lysenko’s folksy and unorthodox ways. He believed in his salt-of-the-earth intuition and grew suspicious of the world-renowned and respected science of Nikolai Vavilov. Vavilov was the winner of the Lenin Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in science, and was respected worldwide. He traveled the globe successfully identifying the geographic genetic origins of cultivated plants. He guest-lectured and rubbed elbows with those Western imperialists Stalin despised. Vavilov also spoke poorly of the former Ukrainian peasant come pseudo-scientist Stalin had grown fond of.In 1936 Stalin replaced Vavilov with Lysenko as the head of the Soviet Academy of Agriculture. Six years later, in 1941, Stalin sentenced Vavilov to execution on claims he was trying sabotage Stalin’s agricultural plans. His sentence was then reduced to a prison term. Vavilov, who grew up fearful of starvation in a village prone to crop failures and food rationing – a scientist who dedicated his life to eradicating famine – died in prison in 1943 of starvation. Famines had been ravishing Russia for a century already. The large-scale farm practices of today started in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But missteps led to widespread famine, displacement, and environmental damage. Technological advancements allowed expansive grasslands to be converted to cropland around the world, including Russia, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, Canada, and the United States. An explosion of European immigrants to the United States in the mid 1800s, together with The Homestead Act of 1862, pushed immigrants into prairies to the West and North. Some ventured into Canada. The Civil War ended in 1865 and four years later the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. Both increased the number of agrarian colonizers to the Great Plains.But the climatic patterns in these areas played a role in the evolution of these plains. The grasslands are arid with periods of intense rainfall followed by drought. Settlers could be deceived into believing these rainfalls were routine only to witness periods of extreme drought. Farmers in the 1870s and 1880s witnessed regular rainfall only to see it disappear in the 1890s. Instead of consulting with Indigenous farmers on how they farmed the land for millennia, the colonists instead expanded area croplands and intensity to make up for short yields. Some used the land to graze cattle leading to even more elimination of the natural grasses needed to nourish and sustain the soil. The U.S. government accelerated farm expansion by altering the Homestead Act to include larger plots of land. The rain returned in the 1920s which attracted another wave of farmers. Farmland in a section of northwestern Texas and eastern New Mexico doubled in the two decades between 1900 and 1920 and tripled in just five years between 1925 and 1930.  Russia saw similar expansions of large-scale agriculture. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, groundbreaking research by soil scientist and geographer Vasilii Dokuchaev, the father of soil science, revealed for the first time the role climate and topography play in soil health. He went on to develop the world’s first soil classification system. Some farmers, including immigrant German Mennonites, adopted drought tolerant farming practices Dokuchaev recommended.Meanwhile, most of Russia, like the United States, continued large-scale overly intensive farming techniques – though Russia lagged in mechanization. Both the United States and Russia, set on expansion, growth, and domination, gambled with the climate, soil, plants, and the crops they yielded. They ignored both emerging science and age-old sustainable practice that likely would have mitigated inevitable crop failure, famine, and long-lasting and long-ranging environmental and social devastation. Destruction so severe they compounded the effects of natural disasters.Between 1921 and 1923 extreme droughts and winters led to plant disease, insect infestation, and soil erosion throughout the converted grasslands of Russia, Ukraine, and surrounding regions. Famine ensued causing millions to die of starvation. Ravaged by WWI and the Russian Civil War, the Soviet government, then under Vladimir Lenin, was forced to import food and organize relief efforts. In 1921 Lenin called on the United States to help. The American Relief Administration, headed by future President Herbert Hoover, employed 300 Americans and a 120,000 Russians to provide relief. It was an extension to European relief from WWI. They provided daily meals for over 10.5 million people while also administering medical aid to typhus sufferers – a feverish epidemic claiming even more Russian lives.GO GREENThe relief from America worked. By 1923 the Soviet government was able to stockpile enough grain to organize their own relief efforts and the U.S. stepped away. But Russia continued to be hit with episodes of drought. In 1924 another wave hit and the Soviets were once again forced to organize relief efforts. Again, they stockpiled enough to make it through 1925 and 1926 only to be hit again in 1928. Convinced traditional farming techniques were unsustainable, the Soviet government initiated programs that mimicked industrialized farming techniques in the United States.Another drought came in 1931 and 1932 and with it more famine. Joseph Stalin had risen to power amidst the Russian Revolution. Unlike Lenin, he refused support from the outside. By 1933, when food stocks began to rise again four million more people had died from famine. But the United States would have been in no position to help this time anyway. In 1930, widespread drought spread through the Great Plains stretching from Canada to Mexico. The natural grasses that once protected soil from blowing away had either been tilled for crops or consumed by cattle. The Industrial Age had given way to industrial farming. A substantial gamble with colossal consequences. The Dust Bowl, or Dirty Thirties, a natural disaster compounded by poor agricultural practices and imperialist hubris, impacted over 100 million acres. It intensified the Great Depression. If the dust storms didn’t destroy homes and farms, failed mortgages and loans did. Between 1930 and 1940 nearly 3.5 million people evacuated the lands they had only recently colonized and practically destroyed. Including their native inhabitants.Meanwhile, back in Russia, Stalin made another gamble in 1936. He bet on “Lysenkoism”. He believed it would solve the Soviet agricultural malaise sending the one man capable of potentially solving the region’s, maybe the world’s, agricultural problems to starve to death – Nikolai Vavilov. But soon came WWII and more geopolitical disruption in a Soviet Union still trying to figure itself out. And then, in 1946 and 1947, another Russian famine emerged. Again, Stalin refused aid and two million more died of starvation.But little did Stalin know, many of the scientists that worked under Vavilov had hidden his seed collection and continued to conduct experiments in private. One esteemed plant breeder, Pavel Luk’ianenko, drafted off the work of Vavilov and bred a variety of semi-dwarf wheat seeds in 1950 that would change the course of Russian agriculture forever. By the time of his death in 1972 he was credited with breeding or co-breeding 15 different varieties of regionalized winter wheat seeds.            His work was Russia’s contribution to a larger global Green Revolution, a systematic and coordinated effort in the 1950s and 1960s between genetically modified seed breeding, chemical fertilizers, land use policy, public and private capital, and mechanized technology that massively increased crop yields. The American scientist and Nobel Prize winner credited with birthing this revolution, Norman Borlaug, said in 2000 that “Had the global cereal yields of 1950 still prevailed in 1999, we would have needed nearly 1.8 billion hectares of additional land of the same quality – instead of the 600 million that was used – to equal the current global harvest".After Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev rose to power. Khrushchev was Russian but had ruled Ukraine for a decade. He witnessed struggling farmers endure famine and invented what he called “agro-towns” – small villages in remote rural areas with a library and stores where farmers could live and be better supported. But during the drought of 1946, he had to beg Stalin for aid after over-estimating Ukrainian crop yields. It was a fissure that cost him his post in Ukraine. However, his dismissal led to a position in Moscow closer to Stalin that surely cemented his rise to power seven years later.One of Khrushchev’s first programs was “Virgin Lands”. He proposed the conversion of 25 million hectares of arid grasslands to croplands in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Within a year this region became a significant contributor to Soviet grain yields. But they soon diminished and in 1962 and 1963 came another drought. In an echo of the Dust Bowl, winds picked up and blew away most of the topsoil that had previously been secured by grassland. Again, a massive shortfall of wheat forced Khrushchev to seek foreign aid. Ten million tons of grain were imported from Canada and the United States. Quantities of this magnitude were likely the result of the crop yield successes of the Green Revolution. But they were also making up for the environmental failings of the Green Revolution.NUT JOBIt can be hard accepting curses that can come with blessings. Such is the damaging and delicious duality of modern agriculture. We can’t seem to live with it, and we don’t dare try to live without it. But we do have a choice over how large-scale agriculture is implemented. This is unlike the effects of climate change where we can’t live with them, and we don’t have a choice to live with out them. These historical environmental extremes that plagued the former Soviet agricultural lands continue to this day. In 2009, Russia was on course to export record amounts of grain. Then, in 2010, a wildfire brought on by severe drought turned acres of golden grain to ash. Vladimir Putin was forced to cancel exports. And like those before him, was forced to import food to stave off widespread famine.Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other surrounding countries continue to adjust to extreme weather patterns. Still, much of that ‘Virgin Land’ once converted to cropland over the past 50-60 years has been abandoned due to soil depletion brought on by large-scale intensive factory farming. Just a small fraction of the original ‘Virgin Lands’ are farmed in Kazakhstan today. But they continue to learn and adjust…as we all must.The effects of climate change are global in scale, but differ in variety, intensity, and regularity at a regional and local level. So does the impact on people and place. As a result, responses to these effects must also differ in variety, intensity, and regularity. But intent matters. I’m convinced scientists like Vavilov, Lysenko, Luk’ianenko, and Borlaug were intent on saving people from starvation. They all witnessed firsthand real suffering of starving individuals and the loss of entire populations.But I’m less convinced of the intentions of politicians like Stalin and Putin. I’m also skeptical of the intentions of Western coalitions backed by corporations who prioritize capital, political control, and short-term quarterly earnings. They seem more intent on feeding growing GDP figures than the starving figures of the emaciated. Stuff pockets of greed over hungry mouths to feed. Let the soils blow away, so long as the board boosts my pay. Shrink operating expenditures amidst rising temperatures. Large-scale government schemes feed delusional utopian dreams. Avoid political disruption by funding criminal corruption. Intention matters.As an example, in 1947 the British Government wanted to increase peanut production to sell as oil on the world market. So, together with Unilever, then went to the East Africa territory of Tanganyika to convert the wooded plains to peanut farms. An area England had militarily occupied since 1916. No one involved in the project bothered to study the soil and topography. They had to remove Mvule trees to make way for croplands, but they didn’t account for their deep, stubborn, thirsty roots. Their tractors were ruined in the process. New tractors damaged the soil with their weight. Their engines were too weak to churn the hard soils. In two years, they had only cultivated 16% of what they had planned. By 1951 the British government called it quits. They had spent six times the value of the crops they had grown. The director of the program was a former Russian who applied techniques of his communist past. Leaders at Unilever demanded immediate results to fit their revenue goals. Both of their approaches were insensitive to local people and place leaving it ravaged as they wrote off the loss and flew away amidst the arid soil they had unearthed. They abandoned the people and place most impacted by their imperialistic Groundnut Scheme.A railroad was constructed to ship the elusive nuts to a harbor the British had built so they could float nut oil around the world. The port remains, but the rail was dismantled. The global transportation network is what allows those locally impacted by natural disasters to receive aid. Parts of Africa continue to be cut off from these networks. But it were not for these networks, millions more would have died of starvation over the past 200 years. The U.S. and Ukraine blame Russia for clogging those very networks today. Meanwhile, Putin blames the West for blocking fertilizer and grain imports into Russia. Both are true. And it’s also true that Russian wheat exports were up 80% in April over last year and rose 27% in May. They just may be the winner in Wheat sales this year, unless another drought hits and the fields turn to fire. But if Russia was hit with a famine inducing drought, would Putin ask Ukraine and the West for relief? Would America offer relief? What if America is hit with a famine inducing drought? Would China and Russia come to our aid?On June 27th, President Biden and members of the G-7 met in Austria to discuss a plan to massively invest in infrastructure throughout the developing world. They aim to thwart nonmembers like China and Russia from introducing future disruptions by controlling more infrastructure, like transportation. It’s a response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Biden said, “This isn’t aid or charity, it’s a chance for us to share our positive vision for the future…because when democracies demonstrate what we can do, all that we have to offer, I have no doubt that we will win the competition.” That hubris reminds me of the British Groundnut Scheme. Will the West be applying lessons learned from the devastating and deleterious effects of centuries of colonization? Are leaders any more sensitive to the needs and desires of the local people and places these schemes are sure to impact? These investments are long overdue, and China has a head start, but they must be done with the right intentions.Lack of adequate adoption of agricultural practice and needed infrastructure is what leaves regions most vulnerable to the negative agricultural effects of climate change. The way our food is produced, distributed, and sold heavily relies on transportation networks. The millions of people who were saved from starvation in the former Soviet Union is testimony to this fact. But responses also require acknowledgment, understanding, and support of local people and place…and their governments. Whether they share a common vision with the West or not.People situated in their places possess the necessary local and practical knowledge and ingenuity needed to augment the abundance of science that rests on centuries of historical successes and failures. Capital investment from the West is needed and necessary, but not sufficient or welcomed should the intent be to strengthen power, bolster profits, and exploit people and land. In other words, to repeat history. To learn the lesson, past sins must not be repeated. Instead of killing people, animals, and plants in the interest of political ideology, we should seek their engagement and invest in their ecology. In the words of Nikolai Vavilov in 1932, nine years before Stalin issued his execution sentence: “Many historical problems can be understood only because of the interaction between man, animals and plants.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

It may be hard to believe, but when Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski started playing music, jazz was censored in Poland. As a result of Stalin's cultural politics that governed what kinds of art and culture could be consumed in the country,  anything that may have been associated with western imperialism was formally excluded from public life. However, these rigid policies only made jazz more appealing, leading many young people across the country, like Ptaszyn, to fall in love with it. After Stalin's death in 1953, Ptaszyn entered the newly re-born jazz scene with a bang and quickly became the epitome of the genre. Not only one of Polish jazz's most brilliant musicians, Ptaszyn is also seen by many as its voice. For over 50 years he's hosted  “45 Minutes of Jazz” a Polish radio show dedicated to jazz that continues to inspire several new generations of musicians and jazz aficionados. Time stamps [01:11] Outlawed music [03:36] Forbidden love [04:21] Willis Conover [06:53] First jazz events [09:19] Sopot Jazz Festival [12:54] Warsaw - Newport [17:26] Polish Jazz records [20:01] What is Polish jazz? [21:03] Polish Jazz Quartet [22:37] The Polish Radio Jazz Studio Orchestra [24:48] 45 minutes of jazz [26:28] Cruise ships [28:05] The end of the communist regime [28:43] The nineties Music from the episode [06:53] Composition: Memory of Bach Artist: Sextet Komedy Album: Jazz 56. I Ogólnopolski Festiwal muzyki jazzowej  [19:42] Composition: One Step Nearer You Artist: Kurylewicz Quintet Album: Go Right [28:33] Composition: Czarownica   Artist: Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski Sextet Album: Komeda. Moja słodka europejska ojczyzna Further reading Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski // on Culture.pl 'Birds Of A Feather...' The Godfather Of Polish Jazz, Jan 'Birdman' Wroblewski, At Birdland // on top40-charts.com Watch more Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski performing in Poland in 1981 Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski performing at the Sibiu Jazz Festival in 2009 Credits This episode of Rebel Spirits was hosted by Paweł Brodowski. The show is brought to you by Culture.pl, the flagship brand of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Written by Bartosz Borowiec & Jan Burzyński Produced by Move Me Media Hosted by Paweł Brodowski Edited by Wojciech Oleksiak Proofread by Adam Żuławski Translated by Mateusz Schmidt Design by Dawid Ryski Scoring & sound design by Wojciech Oleksiak Copyrights The publisher would like to thank all copyright owners for their kind permission to reproduce their material. Should, despite our intensive research, any person entitled to rights have been overlooked, legitimate claims shall be compensated within the usual provisions.

It may be hard to believe, but when Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski started playing music, jazz was censored in Poland. As a result of Stalin's cultural politics that governed what kinds of art and culture could be consumed in the country,  anything that may have been associated with western imperialism was formally excluded from public life. However, these rigid policies only made jazz more appealing, leading many young people across the country, like Ptaszyn, to fall in love with it. After Stalin's death in 1953, Ptaszyn entered the newly re-born jazz scene with a bang and quickly became the epitome of the genre. Not only one of Polish jazz's most brilliant musicians, Ptaszyn is also seen by many as its voice. For over 50 years he's hosted  “45 Minutes of Jazz” a Polish radio show dedicated to jazz that continues to inspire several new generations of musicians and jazz aficionados. Time stamps [01:11] Outlawed music [03:36] Forbidden love [04:21] Willis Conover [06:53] First jazz events [09:19] Sopot Jazz Festival [12:54] Warsaw - Newport [17:26] Polish Jazz records [20:01] What is Polish jazz? [21:03] Polish Jazz Quartet [22:37] The Polish Radio Jazz Studio Orchestra [24:48] 45 minutes of jazz [26:28] Cruise ships [28:05] The end of the communist regime [28:43] The nineties Music from the episode [06:53] Composition: Memory of Bach Artist: Sextet Komedy Album: Jazz 56. I Ogólnopolski Festiwal muzyki jazzowej  [19:42] Composition: One Step Nearer You Artist: Kurylewicz Quintet Album: Go Right [28:33] Composition: Czarownica   Artist: Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski Sextet Album: Komeda. Moja słodka europejska ojczyzna Further reading Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski // on Culture.pl 'Birds Of A Feather...' The Godfather Of Polish Jazz, Jan 'Birdman' Wroblewski, At Birdland // on top40-charts.com Watch more Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski performing in Poland in 1981 Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski performing at the Sibiu Jazz Festival in 2009 Credits This episode of Rebel Spirits was hosted by Paweł Brodowski. The show is brought to you by Culture.pl, the flagship brand of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Written by Bartosz Borowiec & Jan Burzyński Produced by Move Me Media Hosted by Paweł Brodowski Edited by Wojciech Oleksiak Proofread by Adam Żuławski Translated by Mateusz Schmidt Design by Dawid Ryski Scoring & sound design by Wojciech Oleksiak Copyrights The publisher would like to thank all copyright owners for their kind permission to reproduce their material. Should, despite our intensive research, any person entitled to rights have been overlooked, legitimate claims shall be compensated within the usual provisions.Meet the godfather and voice of Polish jazz.

After Stalin's death in 1953, the thawing of totalitarian policies allowed Soviet filmmakers like Mikhail Kalatozov to break new ground and explore the war, society, and gender in films like The Cranes Are Flying. In addition to the societal context that makes this film feel so incredible coming from the USSR, we dive into the gorgeous cinematography that makes The Cranes Are Flying feel so fresh for 1957.Where to watch The Cranes Are FlyingNYT Bosley Crowther Review of The Cranes Are FlyingWhere to watch Invention for Destruction (1958)

From Erie Philharmonic Marketing Manager Brigit Stack Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) The term “protest music” typically conjures images and sounds of the 60’s folk and rock music that we come to associate with counter-culture and social movements of that era. But to anyone who’s ever listened to Dmitri Shostakovich’s music, the term applies to many pieces of orchestral music as well. In the orchestral world, in fact, there’s many instances of radical music – oftentimes without words – that spoke to political movements, uprisings, tragedies and more. Sometimes the music was composed posthumously, but it was nevertheless revolutionary and sometimes dangerous to publish or perform. Throughout the history of classical music, there is no better example of this than composer Dmitri Shostakovich. So much of what he wrote spoke to Joseph Stalin’s regime in what we now know as Russia and criticized it, even when the focus of his music was not outwardly named to be referencing that environment. Below I want to recommend some of what I believe to be the most powerful and daring music Shostakovich composed to protest the morally corrupt and apprehensible things he lived through. Much of Shostakovich’s music becomes clearly more relevant today and underscores how some of Russia’s history is playing out again in our current moment, standing as “protest music.” His music showcases that in times of strife and despair at a larger, governmental level, there are two types of this protest music: covert themes and musical styles and overt protest through topics and dedications. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 When Joseph Stalin was still reigning over the Soviet Union, Shostakovich often tried to hide his protests as hidden “covert” messages and themes in his music. One of the pieces that illustrated this was his Symphony No. 5. The piece was written after a newspaper article condemned his opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. His opera was denounced in the newspaper Pravda, in an article titled “Muddle Instead of Music.” Solomon Volkov wrote, “the Party newspaper…carried out a sentence that was to be final (and not subject to appeal): ‘This is music intentionally made inside out…This is leftist muddle.’ As will be shown, these angry opinions belonged personally to Stalin, the country’s main cultural arbiter” (34). Shostakovich immediately began to fear for his life and his family’s safety, sleeping in the stairwell in case Stalin’s police came to take him away in the middle of the night. To illustrate the fear of dying in Stalin’s Soviet Union, “Someone said then ‘it used to be a lottery now it’s a queue’” (Volkov 213). Before his composition of the 5th Symphony, his older sister had been arrested and his mother-in-law sent to a concentration camp. His music was too vulgar and dark and Stalin wanted the Soviet Union and its history to remain in a positive light – whether it meant glorifying its heroes or more “optimistic” sounding music. Although the music has its darker moments, it ends with a triumphant and more positive tone/major key (the same key as Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”), keeping the overall message of the symphony tongue in cheek. This interpretation is depicted especially in the audience’s response to its premiere. “By the end of the symphony, the entire audience was standing, applauding wildly through their tears” (Volkov 150). The standing ovation was said to last for more than 30 minutes. The apparent “joyful” final movement of the piece turns around, however, and mocks the very thing Shostakovich was trying to save himself from. The terror felt by many under Stalin was so profound that even the joy and appreciation felt towards their leaders and country was often forced out of necessity and not true patriotism. Shostakovich later said, “I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth [Symphony]. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Gudunov. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying. ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,’ and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering. ‘Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.’” (qtd. in Volkov 183). News had also reached Stalin that Shostakovich was depressed and contemplating suicide after the Pravda article, which made him consider taking further action against him. Volkov wrote, “Shostakovich’s suicide could turn into an international scandal with unpredictable ramifications” (117). Shostakovich’s new symphony gave Stalin the chance to keep the composer around and still maintain his cultural authority – to praise the piece and set all back to normal, however terrifying that might still be for Shostakovich.Shostakovich plays a fragment of Symphony No. 7 on pianoAnother composition of Shostakovich’s that illustrates his covert protests of his government is Symphony No. 7, dubbed “Leningrad” and linked with the Siege of Leningrad by Hitler’s forces. Although the piece was mobilized as propaganda to bolster the war effort, it was composed under different intentions and still qualifies as protest music. The onset of the siege of Leningrad allowed him to hide his intentions even more, and Shostakovich also smuggled the piece outside of the country to be performed in the United States and England. Arturo Toscanini – an anti-fascist himself – premiered the piece with the NBC Radio Orchestra. The enemy within their own country was disguised as the enemy outside – the Axis powers now invading and terrorizing the Soviet Union. Due to Shostakovich’s son’s confirmation of events and the practice of “glasnost” (openness about Russia’s history) under Mikhail Gorbachev, much was revealed about the motives and messages behind Symphony No. 7. Testimony by Solomon Volkov was a contested source on so much of Shostakovich’s intentions behind his works, disputed by some to be Volkov’s words more than the late composer’s. Later, however, Maxim Shostakovich (his son) confirmed that many of the political views detailed were indeed his father’s. Musicologist Ludmila Mikheyeva claimed that the themes of this symphony were played for his students before the war with Germany even began. Later, Shostakovich said, “Even before the war, there probably wasn't a single family who hadn't lost someone, a father, a brother, or if not a relative, then a close friend. Everyone had someone to cry over, but you had to cry silently, under the blanket, so no one would see. Everyone feared everyone else, and the sorrow oppressed and suffocated us. It suffocated me, too. I had to write about it, I felt it was my responsibility, my duty. I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. I had to describe the horrible extermination machine and express protest against it” (qtd. in Volkov 172). The actual siege by outside forces simply gave the piece a disguise to wear as it expressed so much of the loss all, including Shostakovich, had felt. Shostakovich on the cover of TIME magazine - the composer was used as wartime propaganda in Russia. Shostakovich dressed and posed on a roof as a firefighter for after bombing raids, although he never served in the war After Stalin’s death in 1953, Shostakovich began using more overt methods to protest the brutality and mistreatment of people under Stalin and fascism. One of the most overt representations of this was his String Quartet No. 8., written and finished in 1960 in only 3 days. The dedication made his intentions clear: it was dedicated to “the victims of fascism and war,” and composed shortly after the composer reluctantly joined the Communist Party. His son, Maxim, claims the dedication was for all victims of totalitarian, fascist regimes while his daughter Galina claims that Shostakovich meant it for himself. Both interpretations have merit; many of the melodies of the string quartet were taken from Jewish folk tradition and although we often learn of the anti-Semitism in Hitler’s Germany, it was far more rampant than we think. It permeated the United States as well as Stalin’s Soviet Union. As Shostakovich had said, “Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it. It can appear to be happy while it is tragic. It’s almost always laughter through tears. Jews became a symbol for me. I tried to convey that feeling in my music. It was a bad time for Jews then. In fact, it’s always a bad time for them” (qtd. in Civetta). His daughter’s interpretation carries the same merit because Shostakovich’s musical motif is repeated in every movement of this string quartet. This motif is known as the DSCH motif, standing for the notes of D, E flat, C, and B natural. In German musical notation this would be written as D, Es, C, and H, resembling D. Sch, or Dmitri Shostakovich. He often added it to his music to represent himself and it is no coincidence that he would be frequently represented in a piece dedicated to the victims of fascism and war: he himself was one. Since Stalin upheld these policies of anti-Semitism and often singled out Shostakovich’s music for its vulgar, dark nature, this composition after the ruler’s death was a breath of fresh air. It stands as a true protest against the pressures and sorrows Shostakovich had felt his whole life, feelings he often felt mutually expressed in Jewish music. The second movement especially mobilizes one to stand up for what is right, to take down that which oppresses and hurts and to perhaps understand through music other’s lived experiences. “Bloody Sunday” at the Winter Palace in Russia, 1905 Perhaps the most relevant and protest-oriented composition of Dmitri Shostakovich’s is his Symphony No. 11, “The Year 1905.” The historic events that inspired it conjure images of the last few weeks of protests across our country and the world. The dedication of the piece is a telling enough introduction, with movements titled after the events of the 1905 protests and rebellion against the Tsar and the Russian monarchy. These protests proceeded the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin’s rise to power and the eventual leadership under Joseph Stalin. 1905 was a time of unrest involving everyone from the peasant to the working class, the military and more. One of the main events of this revolution was “Bloody Sunday,” where protestors led a march to the Winter Palace to deliver a petition to the Tsar. As they advanced, guards fired upon them, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Protests, strikes, and looting erupted once again in response. Tens of thousands of people would die as the government attempted to restore peace. The opening movement of Symphony No. 11 is titled “The Palace Square,” and introduces the foreboding sense of calm before the violence, which is depicted so well in the second movement, called “The 9th of January,” titled so after the event’s date. The third movement pays homage to those who perished as a result of Bloody Sunday, using the funeral march “You fell as victims,” while the final movement foreshadows that the seeds of the 1917 revolution have been sown. The ending is both foreboding and yet triumphant – a warning and a rallying cry. Revolutionary texts were also heavily cited in the melodies of the movements, not lyrically, but the melodies were known by many as most people grew up singing or hearing those songs. One such song was the march “You fell as victims.” Another was “Rage, Tyrants,” which tolls, “Let our call thunder like a thunderbolt, […] As the sun of freedom will look from behind a cloud, - To death! To death! To your death, tyrants!” Symphony No. 11 was often called a “film score without a film,” because it so aptly and tangibly expresses through music the fear, violence, and oppression of the events on January 9. One could argue that so much of Dmitri Shostakovich’s music does. These overt protestations after Stalin’s death came as protests to his memory – to the history and glorification he wanted so much for the Soviet Union and himself. Shostakovich and his music outlived the cruel ruler, and helped to rewrite his image in the eyes of his countrymen and the world. These symphonies and string quartets certainly connect to the many things we see protested and mourned today. Though we may not have Russia’s history, we have our own. We have the Boston Massacre, the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, the Freedom Rides, the Farmworker’s Union strikes, the March on Washington and many other events, including today’s protests. Although most of us might not live in fear of disappearing from our homes in the night, we still find ourselves fighting for some of the same liberties, freedoms, and comforts. Stalin saw arts and culture as an integral tool in emboldening and influencing the society around him – and he was right. At the same time that a piece of music could claim to bow its head respectfully towards a leader, it could also mock and hide its meaning in subtle ways and key signatures. We can mobilize music again to share our feelings and look ahead towards a time where we no longer feel the constant barrage of these negativities. Perhaps most important of all, we can sympathize with and try to understand the pain and oppression of others. As conductor Kurt Sanderling said, “The quartets are messages to all his friends. The symphonies are messages to mankind” (qtd. in Anderson 374). Shostakovich managed to bottle up the visceral feelings of fear, pain, injustice, anger and sorrow and express them so often wordlessly through music. Music can once again be a revolutionary act to stand up, stand out and express things we often cannot put into words or share plainly and openly.Want to hear more about music history and what we’re performing next? Sign up for our email list: Sign up

This coffee break ventures back into the stressful world of music composition under the political oppression of Stalin's Soviet Union. We listen to Prokofiev's Zdravitsa (A Toast in Honour of Stalin's 60th Birthday), which rides the boundary between great music and political pandering. Shostakovitch gets out of the political doghouse by writing a tribute to reforestation in a Song About Trees. After Stalin died, Shostakovitch was able to tell the truth about the horrors of Babi Yar in his Symphony #13. We close the coffee break with the compositions of Georgi Sviridov who could seemed to be able to be true to his style throughout the regime. contact the show at yccb@mauriceriverpress.com

This coffee break begins our investigation of music composed under Russia's Soviet regime beginning with a piece by Kabalevsky, a simple, open composition which might be the Soviet ideal. We battle on the ice with Prokofiev's composition for Alexander Nevsky, the epic movie by Sergei Eisenstein--another piece vaunted by the Kremlin. But Prokofiev ran afoul of Premier Stalin with the sometimes dissonant, ethereal Cantata on the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution. Shostakovitch, too, was chastised by Stalin for his opera Lady Macbeth, which lacked simplicity and was immoral, not up to Soviet standards, according to the Kremlin. After Stalin's death, Shostakovitch composed String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110 which memorialized the terror under the Stalin regime. Listen to the full piece here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41HIXtBElH4 Contact the show at YCCB@mauriceriverpress.com

After Stalin's death in 1953, successive leaders tried to find ways to revitalise the Soviet regime and rethink its promises to the Soviet people. Life within a system no longer based on terror and intense industrial transformation (yet still striving to reach communism) offered citizens strange alternatives. The commemoration of Bolshevism hampered attempts to enthuse the population about the Soviet future. Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev tried to re-infuse the spirit of revolution as well as to stave off disillusionment with Soviet ideology, demonstrating the complex legacy of the Russian Revolution.The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-ussr-in-the-cold-war-yearsGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

On March 4, 1953, Soviet citizens woke up to an unthinkable announcement: Joseph Stalin, the country’s all-powerful leader, had died of a stroke. In The Last Days of Stalin (Yale University Press, 2016), Joshua Rubenstein recounts the events surrounding the dictator’s death and the sociopolitical vacuum it opened up at home and abroad. After Stalin did not emerge from his room on the morning of March 1, a maid who was sent into his room found him lying in his own urine; doctors’ efforts to save him, including the application of leeches, proved hopeless. The following weeks brought mass grief and halting attempts at reform, including a mass amnesty of Gulag prisoners. Rubenstein argues that the months following Stalin’s death were a missed opportunity for a de-escalation of the Cold War. While Pravda published Eisenhower’s famous chance for peace speech and Soviet officials expressed willingness to negotiate, the State Department under John Foster Dulles viewed Soviet concessions as a moral challenge to resist rather than an opportunity to explore. While Khrushchev went on to denounce Stalin’s cult and relax political controls, a chance for the peaceful reunification of Germany and relaxation of tensions across Europe was lost. Joy Neumeyer is a journalist and PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation project explores the role of death in Soviet culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On March 4, 1953, Soviet citizens woke up to an unthinkable announcement: Joseph Stalin, the country’s all-powerful leader, had died of a stroke. In The Last Days of Stalin (Yale University Press, 2016), Joshua Rubenstein recounts the events surrounding the dictator’s death and the sociopolitical vacuum it opened up at home and abroad. After Stalin did not emerge from his room on the morning of March 1, a maid who was sent into his room found him lying in his own urine; doctors’ efforts to save him, including the application of leeches, proved hopeless. The following weeks brought mass grief and halting attempts at reform, including a mass amnesty of Gulag prisoners. Rubenstein argues that the months following Stalin’s death were a missed opportunity for a de-escalation of the Cold War. While Pravda published Eisenhower’s famous chance for peace speech and Soviet officials expressed willingness to negotiate, the State Department under John Foster Dulles viewed Soviet concessions as a moral challenge to resist rather than an opportunity to explore. While Khrushchev went on to denounce Stalin’s cult and relax political controls, a chance for the peaceful reunification of Germany and relaxation of tensions across Europe was lost. Joy Neumeyer is a journalist and PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation project explores the role of death in Soviet culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On March 4, 1953, Soviet citizens woke up to an unthinkable announcement: Joseph Stalin, the country’s all-powerful leader, had died of a stroke. In The Last Days of Stalin (Yale University Press, 2016), Joshua Rubenstein recounts the events surrounding the dictator’s death and the sociopolitical vacuum it opened up at home and abroad. After Stalin did not emerge from his room on the morning of March 1, a maid who was sent into his room found him lying in his own urine; doctors’ efforts to save him, including the application of leeches, proved hopeless. The following weeks brought mass grief and halting attempts at reform, including a mass amnesty of Gulag prisoners. Rubenstein argues that the months following Stalin’s death were a missed opportunity for a de-escalation of the Cold War. While Pravda published Eisenhower’s famous chance for peace speech and Soviet officials expressed willingness to negotiate, the State Department under John Foster Dulles viewed Soviet concessions as a moral challenge to resist rather than an opportunity to explore. While Khrushchev went on to denounce Stalin’s cult and relax political controls, a chance for the peaceful reunification of Germany and relaxation of tensions across Europe was lost. Joy Neumeyer is a journalist and PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation project explores the role of death in Soviet culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On March 4, 1953, Soviet citizens woke up to an unthinkable announcement: Joseph Stalin, the country’s all-powerful leader, had died of a stroke. In The Last Days of Stalin (Yale University Press, 2016), Joshua Rubenstein recounts the events surrounding the dictator’s death and the sociopolitical vacuum it opened up at home and abroad. After Stalin did not emerge from his room on the morning of March 1, a maid who was sent into his room found him lying in his own urine; doctors’ efforts to save him, including the application of leeches, proved hopeless. The following weeks brought mass grief and halting attempts at reform, including a mass amnesty of Gulag prisoners. Rubenstein argues that the months following Stalin’s death were a missed opportunity for a de-escalation of the Cold War. While Pravda published Eisenhower’s famous chance for peace speech and Soviet officials expressed willingness to negotiate, the State Department under John Foster Dulles viewed Soviet concessions as a moral challenge to resist rather than an opportunity to explore. While Khrushchev went on to denounce Stalin’s cult and relax political controls, a chance for the peaceful reunification of Germany and relaxation of tensions across Europe was lost. Joy Neumeyer is a journalist and PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation project explores the role of death in Soviet culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices