History and Medieval Studies

Among the genres of classical Persian poetry, the prison poem (ḥabsīyyāt) arguably exhibits the most complex relation to the political and historical circumstances within which it was generated. This lecture explores the many factors that contributed to the emergence of this genre in the poetry of Mas’ūd Sa’d Salmān and Khāqānī Shirvānī, and to its rapid dissemination across the Persianate world during the sixth/twelfth century.

"Prepare for the winter… Refresh your wardrobe!", Poster by Sándor Lengyel, 1963

The recent surge of scholarly interest in the consumption history of communist East Central Europe generated a considerable number of articles and collected volumes. However, hardly any attempts have been made to synthesize the fairly unsystematic knowledge about the topic. Moreover, most of the relevant scholarly contributions reflect a propensity or even bias for cultural approaches, although consumption history is a field that invites interdisciplinarity and offers ample opportunities for it.     

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the history of newspapers was written from national perspectives, reflecting national concerns. In the twenty-first century, historians have broadened their scope, recognising the interplay between newspapers and other media, and recognising the importance of international flow of news. But once we broaden our scope, how can we possibly manage the quantities of evidence available in order to move beyond case studies to a new story? Is a new bigger picture possible?

Soviet socialism stood in close contact with the West via Central European allies in 1945, a distance narrowed further by the extended reach of transnational media like radio and television. In my talk I draw attention to one channel for transnational communication and influence that the Eastern bloc relied on more than the Western one: the world event. World conferences and festivals served the Soviet state and its allies as inspirations and reference points for other export-oriented media (e.g. documentary films, books, etc). They also served as lures for the foreign press.

In his 1962 memoir “How I Painted Felix Dzerzhinskii,” the realist painter Evgenii Katsman recounted the experience of the production of the first official portrait of the head of the Bolshevik secret police for the Soviet public. Like the painting itself, Katsman’s text is infused with both raw fear, bordering on terror, and respectful admiration. This paper describes the impact of this attitude toward the Bolshevik leadership, which I argue was a direct consequence of political violence, on Soviet visual culture.