REE Test 1
17. How is cuisine related to national identity? In what ways do typical foods in the region line up (or not line up) with national borders? (1-2 paragraphs)
- Cuisine is representation and expression of culture. It is a connect to one's homeland. Can be representative of religion. - Study specific foods - Each nation tends to have its own variation of a food. For example, Balkan foods like the burek/banitsa or baked vegetable and meat stew tend to differ across the region, but their general concepts are the same. Typical foods tend to cross national borders due to shared histories created by the conquest of empires and close geographic proximity. Foods like stuffed cabbage and grape leaves can be found throughout the region, symbolizing centuries of shared experiences. - Tend to line up with former empires
34. What is The Communist Manifesto ? Who is its author? When was it published?
- Described evolutionary revolution of the working class or proletariat in which they seize the means of production, arises out of societal ills created by the greed and inequitable conditions of capitalism - Karl Marx - 1848
61. Describe Tatlin's design for a Monument to the Third International , state its significance in the history of Constructivism.
- Designed to be headquarters for the Comintern, or the international organization coordinating the international proletariat revolution - Four large geometric structures that would rotate at different rates - Cube (lecture venue), pyramid (executive activities), cylinder (information center), hemisphere (radio equipment) - Most basic geometric forms - Represent bottom-up structure of communism - Ideal for constructivism, representation of its ideology
9. In a few sentences, summarize the argument in Wolff 's Introduction to Inventing Eastern Europe.
- Eastern Europe is a cultural construct, not a naturally occurring entity. - Created by the philosophes of the Enlightenment emphasizing the barbarity and backwardness of the East in comparison to the "evolved, civilized" society of the West. - Potential buffer separating the West from the Far East (Asia) - Used as justification for conquest and maltreatment - Foil - Eastern Europe is in truth diverse in culture and language, cannot be characterized as one group - "to preserve the distinction that nourishes our own identity"
69. What were some of the conservative social policies Stalin introduced during the 1930s?
- Emphasis on family stability and parental responsibility - banned abortions - Tightened divorce proceedings - Strengthened women's primary responsibility for family - Clamped down on alimony payments - Concept of illegitimate childbirth resurfaced
3. Identify the countries of Central/Eastern Europe whose main religion is Protestant Christianity.
- Estonia, Latvia
65. What were the causes of the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine ?
- Exportation of grain forced under collectivization - Refusal of foreign aid by Stalin
10. List 5 historical factors that, according to Ivan T. Berend, were responsible for the delayed/incomplete development of the region or Central-Eastern Europe.
- Failure to create nation-states - Establishment of parliamentary democracies slow in occurring due to failed revolutions and in turn extremist ideologies like socialism and fascism - No industrialization with the rise of modern bourgeois society and sharply declining peasantry, no rapidly increasing working and middle class with middle class become dominant - Mass illiteracy, no enlightenment or education - Late history, Christianization
50. Who was Vladimir I. Lenin ? Provide 3 significant facts about him.
- Founder of the Bolsheviks - Wrote "What is to be done?", believing party of vanguard should guide peasants - Convinces Bolsheviks to rally against Provisional Government and give all power to the Soviet - Exiled, lived in Western Europe, returned through Germany
56. What was Stalin's idea of "socialism in one country"?
- Goal of worldwide socialist revolution was abandoned - Instead, Soviet Union would become its own successful socialist state
5. Identify the countries of Central/Eastern Europe that once made part of the Habsburg Empire.
- Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland
48. What were the main factors that contributed to the rise of the Bolsheviks in 1917?
- Indecision of the Provisional Government - Unrest among peasants and soldiers - Return of Lenin from Western Europe - Hyperinflation, poverty
25. What was the Russian intelligentsia? How did it emerge and define itself as a social group?
- Initially members of nobility, but later from mixed class - Main intelligentsia are the children of the nobility freed by Catherine II sent abroad to study - Devote life to the mission of serving the people and opposing the regime in their name, must forsake the idea of career - Were educated and "enlightened" - Emerged with the liberation of nobility of Catherine II - Nobility and their children were able to travel and study different ideologies and philosophies, began to feel alienated from the state and the imperial court - "Men of ideas" who were unable to apply their skills and knowledge - Nurtured by progressive ideas, began to become increasingly politicized and radicalized
18. How does language line up with national identity and state borders? (1 paragraph)
- Languages are considered to be intrinsic to national identity, as shown in the case of Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian. Although they are mutually intelligible, they are considered to be separate languages simply because the nations say they are. Languages roughly align with state borders, although they do tend to cross them due to geographic proximity. - Want to make stake in identity, language as own
13. What does it mean for languages to be genetically related?
- Languages have common "ancestry" in that they are derived from the same mother language over time. Like humans, they have a lineage.
15. Which languages of the region use the Latin alphabet and which use Cyrillic? What was the major influencing factor in the choice of script for these languages?
- Latin: Czech, Slovak, Polish, Bosnian, Croatian, Slovenian - Cryllic: Russian, Ukrainian, Belorusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian - Influencing factor: Roman Catholic led to Latin, Eastern Orthodox led to Cryllic
51. Who was Leon (Lev) Trotsky ? Provide 3 significant facts about him.
- Leader of the Left Opposition against Stalin - Expelled from Communist Party, exiled from Russia - Revolutionary close to Lenin, helped to lead October Revolution
45. Who were the Bolsheviks ?
- Led by Vladimir Lenin - Against the Provisional Government (when Lenin returned) - Smaller faction than Mensheviks of the Social Democratic Party - Violent revolution - Highly disciplined organization of professional revolutionaries - Vanguard leaders of revolutionary working class (proletariat) - Took power in 1917
73. What is "socialist realism" ? What are some of the doctrine's main ideas/principles?
- Literary movement and then expanded to other arts under Stalin - Must be ideal representation of life of common man, the soviet worker, "what ought to be" - Accessible to the common man or the common Soviet worker
49. What is a "soviet" ?
- Meaning council - A lot of workers formed themselves into councils, vied for political power - Emerged throughout Russia, coalition representing the interests of workers, soldiers, and peasants - Claimed to be fundamental institution of the revolutionary order
36. What is Zionism?
- Nationalist movement of the Jewish people to re-establish and develop a Jewish state in the Land of Israel
46. Give the name of Russia's last Tsar .
- Nicholas II, Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov
74. What was the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers? Give the year in which it was held and briefly state its significance.
- No more independent artistic organizations - Celebrated unity of writes under Stalin and party, laid down main principles of socialist realism by Zhdanov and Gorky - Artists united on a single aesthetic-political platform - August 8, 1934
20. In a couple of paragraphs, discuss the difficulties scholars have encountered in seeking to define what a "nation" is.
- Objective criteria: language, territory, history, material culture - However these are imposed and constructed - Subjective criteria: nation is formed from the imagination and the will of a group - Socially constructed - Abstract concept, no set factors of identification, - Historically, objective criteria has been used to define, but reality is nations have been socially constructed - Many of the concepts overlap
53. What is Lenin's most important (and controversial) contribution to Marxism?
- Organization of revolutionary vanguard party to guide the proletariat in forming a dictatorship of the proletariat to preclude socialism - Instead of waiting for evolutionary process that Marx argues
38. In a few sentences, summarize how World War I redrew the map Central and Eastern Europe.
- Ottoman and Austrian-Hungarian empires fell, Russia lost significant territory in withdrawing from war and to subsequent independence movements - Creation of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia (federations) - Nation-states arise
24. Name the two Russian rulers of the eighteenth century who profoundly influenced the course of Russian history.
- Peter I (1682-1725) - Great Reformer, St Petersburg as window to the west, nobility able to be earned through service, creation of industry, subordination of church, Russia became military force - Catherine II (1762-1796) - Enlarged Russian empire, pro-West, presented herself as the enlightened sovereign, freed nobility from compulsory state service
14. What is the Balkan Sprachbund ? Why is it important?
- Postposed definite article, future based on to want, lack of infinitive - Important because it emphasizes that languages in the same area have similar grammatical structures and a shared history and background deriving from the region. Idea of descendents of same ancestors. - Means you can intercommunicate between the languages
42. What happened on "Bloody Sunday" in 1905?
- Procession of workers coming towards the city - Marching towards the center, demanding that the desires set forth by petition of Father Gapon be met - Human rights like freedom of speech - Labor regulations for wages and working conditions - Political representation of people - Nicholas II orders the crowd to be fired upon and the notion of the good tsar is destroyed
44. What is the "October Manifesto" ?
- Proclamation by Nicholas II - Authorized elections to a state legislature, Duma
33. What was the Spring of Nations ? Provide the year, give brief explanation.
- Revolutions of 1848 in Europe - Within Habsburg empire relatively unsuccessful but formed the foundation for nationalist identities and gave new freedoms to Hungarians
41. Who was Father Gapon ? Provide 3 significant facts about him.
- Russian Orthodox priest - Led demonstration that triggered Bloody Sunday - Helped write the worker's petition reflecting their desire for a life of dignity and freedom from need
72. What was the NKVD ?
- Secret police under Stalin - People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs - Campaign to arrest, incarcerate, exile, and execute any suspected opponent of regime - Forced confessions, relied on manufactured evidence and torture
6. Identify the countries of Central/Eastern Europe that once made part of the Ottoman Empire.
- Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova
12. Identify which languages are Slavic, Romance, Baltic, non-Indo-European?
- Slavic - East: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian - West: Czech, Slovak, Polish, Serbian, Sorbian - South: Slovenian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian - Romance - Romanian - Ladino (Sephardic Jews) - Baltic - Latvian - Lithuanian - Non-Indo European - Finno-Ugric: Hungarian, Estonian - Turkic languages - Kartvelian: Georgian, Laz, Megrelian, Svan - Albanian
2. Identify the countries of Central/Eastern Europe whose main religion is Catholic Christianity.
- Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia
71. What was the GULAG ?
- State-run labor camps throughout Russia - Imprisonment of any who (supposedly) opposed Stalin or posed a threat to the regime - Horrible conditions, abusive environments
29. What underground organization carried out assassination of Alexander II. In what year?
- The People's Will - March 13 1881
43. Describe briefly the revolution of 1905 and its immediate consequences.
- Triggered by Bloody Sunday, ended with October Manifesto - Country paralyzed by strikes - "Explosion" of peasant activism and civil unrest - Petitions for rights and land - Peasants coordinated lootings of manor houses of landlords, mob violence
47. What were the two main problems which the Provisional Government in Russia was unable to resolve?
- Unable to address concerns of peasants in face of upper classes, difficulty in granting land reform - Delayed Constituent Assembly elections - Continued to support war - Unable to deal with ethnic nationalist factions (ex Ukraine) - Unable to end general food and fuel shortages
30. What was the millet system ? What is its significance in the history of Balkan nations?
- Under the Ottoman empire - non-Muslims able to have court of law related to their own religious beliefs - Non-Muslim Balkan nations were able to have some degree of autonomy, which contributed to the development of independent nation-state movements - Identified based on your millet
58. Identify three leading figures of the Constructivist movement in the Soviet Union (first and last names).
- Vladimir Tatlin - Aleksandr Rodchenko - Varvara Stepanova
64. Who were the kulaks ?
- Wealthy peasants who owned more resources than other peasants, may have had more land or cattle - Stalin believed that they would be most resistant to collectivization, forced to leave the countryside during dekulakization
32. What was the Eastern Question ? Explain in 1-2 sentences.
- What is to be done with the Ottoman Empire? - Segment of Ottoman Empire (Macedonia) left unoccupied, Balkan countries fight to occupy it against Ottomans and then themselves - Movement for Macedonian state but movement from other states claiming ownership - Had been based on religious rule in Ottoman, identified as Orthodox - Power beginning to decline, revolts occurring, European powers had to figure out strategically what to do - Solved by being split between Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece
40. Who was Grigorii Rasputin ? Provide 3 significant facts about him.
- "Mystical" healer for Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia - Rumored to have had affair with Alexandra, tsar's wife - Believed to have connection with God and the mystical - Rasputin gained confidence of Romanovs, able to appoint court figures
31. What was the Tolerance Patent ? Give the year and briefly state its significance.
- 1781 - Religious tolerance in Habsburg Empire for all non-Catholic Christians - Along with Edict of Tolerance, provided religious tolerance for Judaism, Jewish people began to flourish in empire - Nations began to emerge - During a period when Hungarians were attempting to distinguish themselves, religion assisted in that
28. What was the Liberation of the serfs in Russia? When did it happen, and what were its social and political consequences?
- 1861 by Alexander II in an attempt to power industrialization - Peasants were allowed to own land but they have to compensate their former masters with money/redemption payments - Some peasants begin to migrate to cities to work after suffering under redemption dues, slowly forming Russia's proletariat - Populist movement begins to grow in reaction to Emancipation,
27. What does "going to the people" refer to?
- 1864 - Activists from cities began to settle in villages and attempt to show peasants that they did not want the chains of capitalism - Tried to merge with the common people and eventually agitate a social revolution - However, Russian peasants did not trust or care due to more pressing concerns like poverty and starvation - Utter failure
67. Give the years of the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union.
- 1928-1932
63. What were the objectives of Soviet collectivization ? When did it take place and what did it involve?
- 1929-1940 - All farmers pool tools and livestock and work together, consolidation of all land - Goal to increase food production, supply resources to feed industrial workforce - Grain used as payment for machinery and tech from abroad - Led to famine and food rationing
68. Give the year of Hitler's coming to power in Germany.
- 1933, appointed chancellor
70. Give the years of the Great Purges in Stalinist Russia.
- 1936-1938
75. Give the year of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union.
- 1941
8. Give the year and place of Winston Churchill's "iron curtain" speech .
- 1946 in Fulton, Missouri
Discuss the tenets of Soviet Constructivism . Explain the significance of the opposition "composition" vs. "construction , " the point of departure for Constructivist theory.
- Abolish traditional concern with composition, construction: organization of material for given purpose - Fundamental analysis of materials, let materials speak for themselves - Functionality - Tektonika: Anti-representationalism, socially and politically appropriate use for industrial material - Fraktura: handling and manipulating - Composition (elitist/bourgeois): traditional, beauty, subjective, intention, representation - Construction (proletariat): overcoming of art, utility, objective, dictated by properties of material, design for actual object
4. Identify the countries of Central/Eastern Europe which are predominantly Muslim.
- Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo
- Alexander Herzen
- Alexander Herzen - Father of Russian socialism - Supported abolishing serfdom - Thought that peasants should lead revolution, rejected elite and middle-class values, peasant socialism based on village communes and egalitarianism - What народники attempted to pursue
55. What problems/contradictions of the New Economic Policy led to its abandonment?
- Allowed for mixed economy, many Bolsheviks angered - Ideologically in competition with Marxism and socialist revolution - Was a compromise with capitalism - Wrath of working class and party, greatly favored enrichment of peasants
59. What is "modernism" ?
- Art's modernity - Style of art that aims to break with classical and traditional form
52. Who was Maksim Gorky ? Provide 3 significant facts about him.
- Author, led and set boundaries for socialist realism movement - Invited back to Soviet Union by Stalin after exile - Wrote that Bolshevik seizure of power was premature - Was not involved in the overthrow of the Provisional Government
16. What does the documentary Whose is this song? reveal about the Balkan region? (1 paragraph)
- Balkans have shared history and background that account for cultural similarities - However, ethnic and national identity are deeply rooted and firmly established, which leads people to refuse to acknowledge those similarities and emphasize their differences - Shows strong nationalism in that many turned to threats of violence when identity threatened - Continued resentment due to historical events, particularly in the case of Bosnia and Serbia
39. In a short essay, describe the major social, political, and economic developments in the region of Central and Eastern Europe between the two world wars.
- Collapse of Habsburg and Ottoman empires - Revolutions on the left (Bolsheviks interpreted as time of revolution) - Reaction on the right begins to succeed and appear as mode (fascism)l - Failure of democracy - Too many clashing ideologies - War-torn makes difficult for the economy to grow - Many ethnic groups
62. What were the two major economic initiatives of Stalin's "Revolution from Above" ?
- Collectivization - Rapid industrialization
60. What were the artistic avant-gardes ? Provide a brief definition and cite 2 avant-garde movements other than Constructivism.
- Comes from "vanguard" - Currents of modernism representing the most radical claims about art - Aim to revolutionize the meaning and function of art, or even abolish it all together - Cubism, futurism, expressionism, dadaism
66. What are the defining features of the economic model Stalin introduced? Which economic sectors were prioritized? Which sectors were under-emphasized or neglected?
- Command economy with central state planning (Five Year Plans) - Dekulakization - Collectivization - Heavy industry emphasized, intensified production of steel, iron, coal, and electricity - Light industry neglected, less focus on quality, lacking in consumer goods like textiles
19. What are the "fault lines" that, according to Gale Stokes, define the region of Eastern Europe?
- Conception of Eastern Europe already existed due to indigenous fault lines - Religious: Orthodox vs Catholic & Protestant Christianity - Geo-political: Ottoman vs European empires - Economic: Capitalist development vs under-development
1. Identify the countries of Central/Eastern Europe whose main religion is Orthodox Christianity.
Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Belarus, Montenegro, Moldova
21. Write a short reflection essay (2-3 paragraphs) on the question of whether Eastern Europe is a culturally constructed notion or historically determined reality.
- Wolff: constructed, based on perception and creation by Western intellectuals, artifice - Berend: historically determined, shares important characteristics in delayed development, continues to try and escape from "backwardness" and underdevelopment - Contingent on accepting Western Europe as model trajectory - 1) no nation state - 2) no parliamentary democracy - 3) no industrialization creating middle class - 4) late history/christianization - 5) no literacy/education/enlightenment - Stokes: defined by historical fault lines - Religion (orth vs cath) - Econ (capitalist vs underdev) - Geopolitical (ottoman vs european) - I personally believe it is a culturally constructed notion used to solidify the identify of the West through "us" vs "them" and justify European superiority
54. What developments prompted the introduction of Lenin's New Economic Policy ?
- economic devastation of world war, revolution, and civil war - Revolution required an industrial society
35. What is the significance of the year 1867 in the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire?
- establishment of dual monarchy of Austria and Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire - Two states joined in personal union by a common monarch
7. Identify on a map the individual countries of Central/Eastern Europe.
- https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/165114/eastern-europe-map-quiz
11. Give the year of the Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
1054
23. Give the year of the Fall of Constantinople.
1453
37. Give the years of World War I.
1914-1918
22. What distinguishes a nation from an ethnie (according to Smith)?
What distinguishes a nation from an ethnie (according to Smith)? - Nation: "named human community residing in a perceived homeland, and having common myths and a shared history, a distinct public cultures, and common laws and customs for all members" - Relates back to the idea of a political community - Ethnie: "named human community connected to a homeland, possessing common myths of ancestry, shared memories, one or more elements of shared culture, and a measure of solidarity, at least among the elites" - Ethnie does not necessarily reside in homeland, defined by ancestry and not necessarily history, and unlike a nation, does not have common laws and customs for all members, just a somewhat shared culture - Ethnie is less politically grounded or charged than a nation, possible basis for a nation, not politically salient - Page 7 of Smith
