CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Maksimishina, Natalia |
|---|---|
| Title | "Never mind the sun, comrade, it`s we who are the bosses": Time and temporality in the Soviet Arctic in the 1930s |
| Summary | My thesis examines the Soviet Union’s conquest of its northernmost territories, which reached its full capacity during the 1930s, with a special interest in the temporality of the Soviet Arctic, the relationship between Moscow and the Soviet Arctic territories, the pioneers of the Arctic and the Arctic nature and the role of the modern technologies. I argue that the development of the Soviet Arctic was accompanied and even overshadowed by its image as created in the Soviet press. Using a variety of related sources, such as the Soviet journals Sovetskaya Arktika and the Bulletin of the Arctic Institute, I investigate the major attributes that were established for the mythology of the Soviet Arctic. I contrast this with how the Soviet Arctic was portrayed in western sources (i.e. from outside the USSR), namely contemporary travelogues of journalists and international scholars’ works. My analysis will show that the myth of the Soviet Arctic constructed by the Soviet press had several functions. One was to maintain a stronger connection between the Far North and the capital. In addition, the Arctic myth was meant to diminish the perceived difference between the living standards in Moscow and that of the pioneers in their remote settlements up north. In the context of perennial labour shortage, the positive portrayal of life in the Soviet Arctic was also aimed at increasing internal migration into the region. Modern technologies such as the radio and aviation let the distance to the country’s northern frontier vanish and further strengthened the mental connection of the Soviet Arctic with the capital. I will explore how the conjoint effects of the various elements of the myth of the Soviet Arctic affected the everyday routine of the Soviet Arctic pioneers. The regular radio broadcasts transmitted from Moscow organized the daily regime of the Arctic inhabitants and were meant to abolish the time gap between the two places. The image of the ideal Soviet Arctic pioneer was part of the larger Arctic mythology. I challenge the expression ‘struggle with nature’ that is omnipresent in the secondary literature on the Soviet Arctic. Aiming for a more nuanced view, I investigate the meaning of the word ‘nature’ in the sources, developing a different reading of the term. I will argue that it referred to human internal qualities in the process of interaction with the external world or environment. I find out that the relationship between Moscow and the Soviet Arctic does not fit the center-periphery binary opposition, as it was argued by the scholars before. The previous politics of exoticizing the Arctic changed in the 1930s, so the Arctic myth was created in response to the problem of the labour shortage in the Arctic region and was aimed to the normalization of the image of the Arctic in public perception. |
| Supervisor | Hall, Karl |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/maksimishina_natalia.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2025, Central European University