Two Affairs Flanking a Larger Complex

Golson, Richard J. Memory, The Holocaust and French Justice: The Bousquet and Touvier Affairs. University Press of New England, Hanover and London. 1996.

Two Affairs Flanking a Larger Complex

The compartmentalization in Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice by Richard Golsan is commendable. Complicity of the French with the Germans in the prosecution of the Jewish is referred to as affairs, and the book culminates in the trial of Paul Touvier. This is particularly intriguing because he was among the last of the men who tortured and persecuted the Jews of France to be tried. He was ultimately freed.

It is useful to look for comparisons in his trial to that of René Bousequet. He died due to his involvement as the head of Vichy police. The argument he attempted to run was that he was unaware of the actions of the Germans in exterminating those who were deported (127). Touvier had a role more distinctly personal to the Jewish question.

As the head of the Milice, in trial a great part of the discussion lies on the veracity of the claims made against Touvier. Reminiscent of the larger question that lingers among all French, is the role assassinations and political repression enacted by this branch of Vichy enforcement played in German success. While France appears to be laudable in obstruction of justice, as Touvier argues in his specific case, the reality is that a rigorous contextualization of the domestic military conflict between the Gestapo, the Jews, and the Resistance shows a higher level of cooperation than in other nations. The question of justice further complicates this relationship, as an inferred interpretation from inconclusive statements leaves the danger of deeming the actions of the Gestapo in prosecution of the Resistance as illegal, some of which were not, and the actions of the Milice enacting brutality in its own name a legal act.

Golsan flanks this argument with two supplementary points. Firstly, in Holland, one of the highest rates of Jewish extermination in Europe was perpetrated by the Nazism (82). The nation was heavily occupied, and included some of the only public demonstrations against Germann treatment of Jews, as late as 1941, though. Secondly, in Hungary the Admiral Horthy refused to deport any Jews out of the nation for two years during the extermination. The Germans subsequently carried out among their most brutal operations in Hungary.

It can be seen to be apparent that results do not always imply effort. In the case of Touvier, one main argument for his release is that many of the times he killed Jews, he had saved others. There is a young jeweler who worked for the underground. Without other trouble, Touvier returns him safely home and does not raid the shop despite his economic incentive to do so (131). These are stories that obfuscate the full severity of his actions as an interrogatory function of German repression.

Golson does not attempt to tackle the question of the German occupation simply as a single historian, but draws on the work of others in order to create a tangible web at through which a single thesis is explored and reinforced. More importantly, analysis of the court documents releasing one guilty party and convicting another provide contrasting perspectives contemporary to the progression of the understanding of the war. In the trial of Bousquet, in addition to the plea of ignorance and perhaps contradictorily, the high survival rates of Jews in France is portrayed as a solvent to the edge of accusatory agents (81).

Finally, as with the larger movement in France regarding the French role in the Holocaust, Touvier relies in his argument on plain and simple denial. When faced with the accusations of a survivor, Louis Goudard, he simply claims they did not occur (139). As a prisoner with seven Jews, Goudard survived because he was not one and because they were. He also witnessed the torture of prisoners with cattle prods. Here the denial is not complete. “At first I was interrogated without the ‘machine’. Just blows everywhere. After that, there was the tub of water, the electric prods, then more blows, the needles under the fingernails.” Faced with this, Touvier replies in a quavering voice that there were no electric prods. There can be little doubt that had he been tried during the war a guilty verdict would have been reached.

Reflexivity of Analysis in the Events of World War II in France and their Commemoration

Paul Fischer

10/20/2017

Professor Zdatny

Word Count: 705

Rousso, Henry. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Cambridge and London, Harvard University Press, 1991.

Reflexivity of Analysis in the Events of World War II in France and their Commemoration

The Occupation of France in World War II represents a chronological web because while 10,000 collaborators were summarily shot or hanged after liberation, those responsible for deportations were not tried for decades. Even functionary trials extended into the fifties and beyond. Each of these subsequent developments had their roots firmly in the final years of World War II and especially the events that passed during that cold winter. Henry Rousso navigates this web masterfully in The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944.

There is a functional chronology as the primary thesis of the book is to analyze the historical commemoration of the occupation and liberation. Rousso believes the actions of Vichy France to play a greater role in French reconciliation of the memory of the war than other factors. This is due to the “prism of Vichy” through which the people of France perceive the war even today (10). It should be noted that this is an evolving prism, an example can be seen as the liberal reversal in the view of the Israeli state to a symbol of Western colonialism and return to support (81). Such developments in political analysis match the timeline proposed by Rousso precisely.

First came the period of repression marked by pardons and clemency. Then came a short but turpitudinous “broken mirror” period followed by two overlapping periods of obsession. With the trial of Klaus Barbie and the death of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix in the 1980s, it is only during the period of obsession that the final solution returned as a primary focus of historians and in the public eye from the period. The progression in public opinion is matched and supported with evidentiary analysis of laws, films, and publications (222)

There are three structural factors of the Vichy syndrome identified by Rousso. Catholicism played a fundamental role in Pétainism and contributed to the scandals and is argued to continue to play a political role after 1940 in France (299). Left-right political differences drew on the resistance in the aftermath of the war, and it was the decision to pursue Gaullo-Pétainism by liberals that allowed the right to rehabilitate itself from being a purely fascist entity in Europe. Finally anti-semitism plays a critical role in the Vichy syndrome, returning to the public eye in the 1960s and climaxing by 1980.

He draws a hard line between functional historical analysis and that of memory. This definition aids the reader throughout the book to identify with the considerable job of narrowing down an enormous body of knowledge and to understand his decision making process in doing so. Memory is cast as a reflexive action, only a repercussion to an event (2). Historical analysis should be a reconstruction of events and deconstruction of biases and motivating factors.

This hard line creates the basis for a scientific evaluation of the stages through which decades of domestic and geopolitical politics took remembrance of the liberation. In doing so, Rousso uses moments in the war to illustrate contemporary developments in the press and film of the portrayal as well as their convergence and divergence. These developments allow the proof of three structural facets to the Vichy Syndrome. Combined with a timeline of the history of the history of the Resistance, two vectors of analysis are then created that allow for a diagnosis of the “syndrome” represented by Vichy encroachment on public consciousness.

The extent of the malady is then approached, estimated, and through work like that of Rousso’s is treated. There are multiple novel historical concepts introduced and defined in this work, including extended redefinitions of functional terms. This does not clutter the work, but instead allows a certain genius of clarity to glimmer forth. A quick summary of these three structural factors as well as a chronological sketch is provided above though it is certainly worth cracking the book to flesh out the specific examples.

The allusions to primary sources are abundant and well cited. Some of the work is popular literature and cinema in addition to historical writing and documentary work; Rousso gives the reader a hand by offering a clear division in definition between the two. To do otherwise would be hypocritical at the least.

Rags to Strikes to Blood: Confusions Coalesce in Liberation

Paul Fischer

10/2/2017

Professor Zdatny

Gildea, Robert. Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance. Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015.

Rags to Strikes to Blood: Confusions Coalesce in Liberation

Resistance had an unsure beginning in the humiliation of the defeat of 1940. False starts plagued a crisis in command and in terms of tangible resources to bog the French resistance to German occupation down. Fighters in the Shadows by Robert Gildea details the brave leaders in France and abroad who initiated and carried out the fight for liberation as well as the distinct sequence of events that brought many early Pétainists from Vichy collaborationist policies to outright guerilla warfare. Three critical developments through the war are discussed in the book that will be highlighted in this review. Together these describe how France fell out of favor with the occupying Fatherland and instead subsumed a sort of “shadowland fraught with danger and often reality struck back with brutal effect” (157).

Early in the war, a popular way of demonstrating opposition to the Germans was to publish “rags” or a newssheet such as Défense de la France (71). Among the dozen or so pictures in the book is a sequence of four pictures contrasting wartime and peacetime among the French, including the young flyboy Jean Cavailles. These are demonstrative of the progression of French resistance presented in the book.

“Resistance activity was structured, above all, through writing, printing and distribution of underground newspapers,” an undertaking that allowed greater involvement of French women in addition to increasing the breadth of appeal to the general public (143). A snapshot of the larger resistance is provided in the work of Sabine Zlatin, who saved over five hundred Jewish children from camps during the war through the organization of religious youth workers who stayed in camps, often only as teens, and offered services (203). Decades after the war, Serge Klarsfeld would challenge the resistance narrative by declaring during the Barbie trial of 1987, “the fact of being a Jewish child condemned you to death more surely than any act of resistance” (465). Ultimately, it would turn out, the fate of both were hand in hand.

While female involvement in the war took many forms, including extraction of both Protestants and Jews from internment camps once deportations began, one of the ubiquitous forms of heroism and sacrifice was in the common strikes undertaken, with encouragement of the Communist Party. The sources of such demonstrations of solidarity with the Allies were many, but all carried the similarity of virtually unprecedented brutality in official response. This in turn created a “cult of martyrs, which served the growing legend of communist heroism and self-sacrifice”; more importantly such strikes initiated the provocation of Germans to deport French men to work camps (175). This action of German belligerence, calling 75,000 young men to work and demanding three workers for every POW returned, did as much as, perhaps more than, any amount of propaganda or even antisemitic actions to stoke the flames of resistance (139).

Brutality and execution of striking workers were not the only reason the Germans failed, nor were they limited to France (428). Just as the Nazis spread across Europe, so too did the anti-fascist network of spies and fighters. With American entry in the war, Germany took another action to cement the opposition against them: the occupation of all of France in 1944 and disregard for the Armistice (262). Vichy was finally at war with the Nazis. Not all Vichy were united in resistance, nor were the resisters united. Two newly distinct forms of resistance emerged and were in competition.

While some officers in the 100,000 strong Armistice Army formed a secret society, French hopes for liberation lay in the arms of DeGaulle in London and General Giraud, the future commander-in- chief of the reformed French Army. Giraud’s motto: ‘A single goal, Victory’ was appealing to the United States, who did not see Vichy as an inoperable state as the British believed (277). Giraud’s Free French would come to a head when Moulin, who convened the National Council of Resistance in 1943, was arrested (286). Metropolitan resistance and the Free French Army would remain at conflict in interest throughout Operation African Torch, as European resisters felt abandoned.

Supply drops at the time were intermittent, and relief or escape infrequent, though groups such as the Shelburn Network did provide some avenues for both (312). One of the most visually gripping points in the book is the meeting of two very different types of guerrilla following the march across Tunisia. Paul’s plan, intended to slow German counter-movements, resulted in a maximum slow-down of guerrilla movements, and the Free-French army was dirty, disheveled and rugged upon meeting their Vichy counterparts who would now join them, even though they had previously fought one another. In a manner symbolic of the general resistance, however, that army had won the coherent respect of Allied commanders and their vanquished foes alike. The brutality of Nazism not only served to sharpen the Allied identity, but also forged new patriotism amongst Frenchmen from the ashes of humiliation.

Three Distinct Antisemitic Trends in Vichy France

Paul Fischer

9/20/2017

Professor Zdatny

Marrus, Michael R. Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France and the Jews. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1981.

Word Count: 752

Three distinct antisemitic trends in Vichy France

Vichy France and the Jews is research that has been done rereading evidence, correspondence, and documents from the persecution of the Jews in France during World War II. It is worthwhile to highlight some of the critical trends of antisemitism at the time, as well as that which separates French racism from other national discriminatory natures.

Some background is provided into the history of anti-racist measures, helping to establish the surprise with which the French encountered the success of racist movements (25-71). Foremost, loi Marchandeau prohibited antisemitism in the press and had been passed shortly before the invasion. It would be replaced with the Statut des juifs, legislation updated during the war (3). In the first statute effects were primarily felt by civil servants, but as the war drew on, its goals would be expanded in revisions to include mandatory identification, property sequestration, and ultimately death for all Jews in Occupied France. Other empirical restrictions on the activities of Jewish communities included race-exclusive leagues such as l’Ordre des Médecins established August 10, 1940 that effectively excluded Jews from medical practice (160). A similar measure was taken shortly afterwards for lawyers.

Reconciliation of trending French sympathies for the Allies that grew through the war and simultaneously increasing sanctioned persecution of the Jews can be difficult (201, 210). Three examples are useful in addressing this: that of Theodore Dannecker, SS judenreferat, of Xavier Vallat, Commissioner-General of the Jewish Question (CGJQ), and of Ambassador Otto Abetz.

Upon arrival August 12, 1940, Theodore Dannecker, a young officer of the SS, was tasked with bringing the “‘gut antisemitism’ - a visceral hatred undisciplined by reason, patriotism, or a sense of public order” of Germany to France (89). At the time, this proved complicated; even the Marshall Pétain had friends in his inner circle that he wished to ensure were exempted from early legislation (207). Dozens of property crimes and other violence had been directed against Jews in the countryside of France before German invasion, to be sure, but officially these had been hitherto rightly viewed as illegal acts (34, 182). The nature of these crimes were personal rather than organized, and did not near the level of the atrocities experienced during the war. Marrus and Paxton even point to the irony that legislation preventing refugees from getting jobs or obtaining worthwhile occupations created the very conditions of criminality that they were explicitly charged with preventing.

The invasion of France also saw antisemitism drift into the sphere of politics and diplomacy. For one powerful figure, the Ambassador Abetz, “antisemitism [was] one of the levers to replace the reactionary grip of the Church and Army in Vichy France by a popular, anticlerical, pro-European … mass-movement” (78). The use of antisemitism as a tangent factor in contingent political battles directed mass opinion in a manner uncharacteristic of the liberal or communist antisemitism extant in France before occupation.

Xavier Vallat was the Commissioner-General of Jewish Questions in France. Original enthusiasm led to his public admission that “aryanization had produced an unleashing of greed’” (156). He “proclaimed himself a champion of ‘state antisemitism,’ the regulation of Jewish existence by state agencies for the benefit of all Frenchmen” (89). The position was offensive to the Germans, though not entirely out of step with the general strategies that they employed, because the French created the position independently of Germany and without forewarning. While for some, it could be seen as a way of heading off some of the more strict German rules for Jews, it also behaved more harshly towards certain groups of Jews as well (83). Arguably, it is the deviation from German guidelines that may have led to his dismissal.

The successor of Vallat, Louis Darquier, would be a complete contradiction in terms to the first Commisioner-General. With three arrests, he took the level of antisemitism to another level (283). By the time he was appointed in 1942, Laval had taken office and persecution of the Jews already well outside the legal bounds of French sovereignty, began to escalate well out of all legal and moral bounds (251). While the Germans influenced Vichy France greatly, it is a tragedy that such a high level of complicity existed, and co-operation was present even outside of the specifically antisemitic departments, “it was not the PQJ who conducted the arrests and guarded the trains, but regular police” (294).

Technics of France in Crisis: Two Defeats in Strange Defeat

Paul Fischer

9/18/2017

Professor Zdatny

Bloch, Marc. Strange defeat: A statement of evidence written in 1940. No. 371. WW Norton & Company, New York, 1968.

France in Crisis: Two Defeats in Strange Defeat

At the time Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat, France had lost territory and its political status was reduced to that of a puppet empire. 1940 was a dark year, and the coming years would force the French to lose hope in the goodness of their national Marseilles, motto, or constituent ideals as a competent force for good. The technics of war, from the point of view of a supply line Intelligence officer creates a distinct prism of analysis for historians that appropriately conveys the logistical predecessors of contingent and subsequent complete defeat at the hands of the Germans. That is, the two intertwining communications stressed in this book are the military losses during the rapid advance of Nazi Germany through France and the cultural capitulation spreading throughout France and the Allies like a disease under the stress of starvation, hardship, and absence of adequate leadership.

The importance of the Maginot line cannot be stressed enough in French plans. Like the Titanic, a great ship so formidably designed no one thought to include life boats except for cosmetic purposes, the French investment in concrete believed to stop a German incursion substituted for proper evacuation and withdrawal plans (52). The French hoped to avoid a war with Germany first through diplomatic means and if all else failed to repulse her by utilization of near limitless resources invested soundly in the same mechanics of warfare found in the First World War.

Germany correctly anticipated the French attachment to a static defensive structure (73). Engines had grown in size, and motorized transports, armored divisions, and even motorcycles traversed the countryside, sowing uncontrollable panic without even confronting the fortifications of the military (51). Bloch hypothesizes that if such an outcome were possible there may have been a path to victory in this early war with full and vigorous retreats to bring the French military together and to make a unified assault on German targets (40). Improper planning led to isolated units, without water or other necessary supplies, that Bloch was personally acquainted with as an officer of the fuel depots (38).

Hitler met with psychologists in the development of the Blitzkrieg in order to ensure that the war would exert the maximum effect on civilian and military populations possible. Mechanical means were used to boost the screech of dive-bombers, for example (54).  The Battle of London showed the Luftwaffe capable of a good deal more than was deployed into France. The French likely would have required more than simple modifications to withdrawals to counter German invasion forces, should such an outcome be conceivable without dramatically changing the fundamental makeup of the French Army. Only half of the battle was lost on the field, however.

By the conclusion of military operations dramatic social class differences in France were extant, and the occupiers sought to exploit these as liberators or bringers of a new form of government: the tyrant or dictator. In the process of authoritarianism, the French would lose hope in their national Marseilles (138). For the first time, the Germans began to fail. Where the military had instilled fear in the mind of France, appropriately enough, intelligence operatives from Germany were thugs. Improper targets were chased, and fifth columnists inappropriately exploited, becoming one of the targets of blame (25). As a consequence, the Resistance lived on.

At the time Marc Bloch wrote, the France that De Gaulle described in London was a fairy tale. Even among the regular French population, “the Germany of Hitler aroused certain sympathies the Germany of Ebert could never have hoped to appeal” and the war seemed lost for the French people as well as the military (150). To Bloch, the political right had sold out to fascists and vassalized France while detracting their political opponents as warmongers. These were elements of a social class conflict with the bourgeoisie as their target. They had “refused to take the masses seriously, or they trembled before their implied threat. What they did not realize was that, by so doing, they were separating themselves effectively from France” (167).

One Thousand Pieces of a National Drama in the Unfree French

Paul Fischer

9/10/2017

Professor Zdatny

One Thousand Pieces of a National Drama in The Unfree French

Contemporary historians struggle to piece together the dramatic events that unfolded in France during the German occupation of World War II. There are a number of grounded facts that make analysis difficult, even contradictory, in practice. Ranging from former occupation to censorship such empirically founded agents of complexity are disambiguated in The Unfree French by Richard Vinen from the distinctly political and deliberate upheaval of institutions, persons, and property in France that occurred. Rather than dwelling on the tragedies in the course of war or the jubilation of victory and resistance, Vinen successfully navigates the integral developments through the war making a perplexing narrative tangible to modern historians.

The presence and widespread impact of prisoners of war in Germany and France blurs the lines between these two narratives; a political narrative was initiated in the hearts of every Frenchman, and stuck in the gut of the Frenchwoman as well (373-5). Uncertainty became a critical theme in this narrative early in the war, and though “it was probably in the bitter cold of January of 1941 that most prisoners finally accepted there was not going to be a large scale release” and that no orders to escape existed as for British soldiers, massive numbers managed to escape from early internment camps (157). On the countryside, both the confusion and the determination to serve France manifested in the panic of the exode.

While a popular film depicting the era, The Last Metro, includes a dialogue in which a woman refuses the implications of an agent of the censor by excusing herself as non-political to which he replies, “but you are wrong, everything is political,” the integral nature of politics to the era is matched by social considerations. Integrity of cached events deliberated through subsequent hunting is best reflected by the opinions of the survivors: “French people recalled the period in terms of what happened to them and those around them, the idea that these multitudes of individual dramas were part of a broader national drama only developed later” (16). The Unfree French succeeds in bringing this social collection of considerable import to political immediacy.

Intractability of the course of action of Vichy France cannot be dismissed as in the words of Bénoit-Méchin “the crowd possesses no organ for thought. Victim of its mental hallucinations and its nervous reactions, it is without defence against rumours and delirious dreams” (94). As much as silence defined the government of Pétain, and the subsequent Pétainism that dominated the colonies, circumstance dictated the actions of the individual French (31, 75). This occurred heroically, as one woman pinned a yellow star to her dog and others donned the symbol in protest though “gentiles who wore the yellow star were often themselves in some doubt about the precise significance of their act” (140). Even Marshall Pétain used the murky nature of the Franco-German occupation in a manner bordering on heroism, declaring to the Germans “if it would take you five days to invade France, it would take me five minutes to deliver my colonies and ships to Great Britain” (81).

The tale is not only one of gangsters and murder, of treaties and betrayal. There is also the final defeat of Germany, and the restoration of France. With the exception of some of the bourgeouisie, almost none found German occupation preferable to the Allied invasion: “Where the Germans had been systematically ruthless with the population, the Allies were confused and tactless” (331). Exposing the system of agents, censorship, and oppression that were in play in occupied territories through World War II helps an understanding of the formal initiation of military operations and of the subsequent blood bath to be formulated. 250,000 Gypsies in France were killed, as were 75,000 Jews. While death camp activity was lower among French citizens than many parts of Europe, and “Vichy aimed to exclude Jews from public life rather than to kill,” foreign born Jews in France suffered near complete extermination, and the highest kill rates of any civilian population in Europe was seen there (136).

History of Musical Trends in the 1850s to 1900

Paul Fischer

4/3/2017

History of Musical Trends in the 1850s to 1900

The 1850s saw the burgeoning classical music industry ripen with an almost pungent odor of success. While new musical forms such as jazz, salsa, and eventually pop would shock and invigorate listeners across the globe within a century, this final stage of classical dominance heardsome of the most technically proficient and abundant masterpieces. The romantic period saw the ripening of the careers of traditional musicians exemplified in Brahms' Liebslieder (1869) and Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (1892). Both of these works equate the joys of childhood and innocence with the themes of romanticism already latent in European painting and literature. As perhaps an example of the only time period in which the profits and yields of industrialization could be focused on one set of objectives, the development of a Euro-centric romanticism, the work not only eclipsed but surpassed the work of innovators in the field in a definitive manner.

Expansion of the railroads during this period is evident in the music of the artists such as Josef Anton Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony and the manner in which brassy sections open and present mark a rivalrous departure from other choral and religious composers of the time, despite the common musical ancestry of Mozart and, more recently, even Beethoven. Many different themes are inherent in the incredible development of classical music in Europe at the time. These include the religious grounding and explosion of fervor seemingly justified by not only the discovery but the realization of riches, populations, wars, emotions and tragedy on a scale not only previously unimaginable, but unimaginable from any scale previously imaginable.

Not all music of the period, however, was limited to the realm of classical work and opera houses. Home on the Range is provided as an example of tune composed in 1871 by Daniel Kelly to a poem written by Brewster Higley. In addition to the European infrastructural inward expansion allowing a greater proliferation of musical geniuses than in all the history of mankind prior to that point, American railroads were redefining the perceptions of peripheries as social and cultural constructs. A melting pot of Irish-American, African-American, European and other counter-cultures were all at the cusp of recognition, a throbbing hub of innovation just under the surface of the frontier lifestyle. By the 1900s, the music industry had dramatically changed and perhaps the most important aspect of this was the move from live audiences to gramophones and rags, both of which were finally commercially available to the masses by virtue of mass production and assembly-line factories.

Latin Jazz and the End of an Era

The end of the period saw the musical industry begin chugging as steadily as the steam engines, and Scott Joplin’s Solace (1909) will be included as an example of the developing Latin Jazz genre. While it was only published in 1909, a combination of musical and racial discrimination meant that habanera music had been popular in America for decades before any “rags” were published. By the 1940s this would become an entire genre and produce award-winning albums through the 1970s with broad popular appeal. For listeners in the late 1800s, though, the clave-style beat and off-center gathering of instrumental acoustic devices created a whirlwind of counter-cultural production right in the middle of urban areas.

Unity, Expansion, and Rate of Change in Stylistic Interpretation from Baroque to Classical Artwork

Paul Andreas Fischer

11/15/2016

Professor Kelsey Brosnan

Unity, Expansion, and Rate of Change in Stylistic Interpretation from Baroque to Classical Artwork

The place of unity in the stylistic representation of space frontiers without a time period from which to operate is also lacking movement in this placement, conceivably speaking throughout the appropriate conceptualization of the comfort of that artistic form and representation. Connotation of belief in the fluidity of artistic difference can be felt within the artistic devices of expansion (Wöllflin, 164) and is found in the artistic work of Dirk Vellert. A genuine departure from the pioneering provincialism is found as the Reconquista is effectively discarded and the focus of artistic work begins to develop into a united demonstration of piety combined and bound to ungodly wealth.

Style is not neither logical nor is it itemizable (Schapiro, 2) and the transition from the primitive art form is one which finds direct loss of contact with the rational as a result of social unity and coherence in artistic expression. The expansion of such a development indicates a cognitive disregard for the reality of a material expansion into artistic form. This cognitive disregard both hinders the expansion of the singularity, preserving the local multitude as well as ensures that such an expansion must occur.

What style can be directly seen as is the Baroque development from classic art of the 15th century. As a constant form, this is definitely implied as a community singularity, which is seen in the art of newly relaxed artists in their approach to the expression of their work (Wöllflin, 156). The gradual change of artwork from Classical to Baroque in style is marked by the limitation to specific fields of development, as defined by the refinement of materials, procedures, and investment behind artistic endeavors. Finally, it should be seen in both unity and expansion that a greater singularity in style is found.

The concentration of wealth created a unique system of complexity in artistic style that found itself without a direction and yielded a yearning or longing for a return to simplicity of primitive art forms by the modern era (Schapiro, 4). Other factors which played a role included a spiritual communality which could not be experienced during the massive onslaught of death and poverty which marked European art forms in the centuries preceding that new era. Lack of style, then, as well as the primitive art form can be seen to be logical in nature. This brings a new meaning to the joke from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, “if it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it!”

In artistic expression, unlike architecture, for example, the illogical can be seen to have a positive attribution of form and projection in its appeal to both the audience and the social tapestry for which the artwork provides a distinct and complete excitement in form. The domination of unity can be seen in the lighting as well (Wöfflin, 162). This is the sort of individualistic conceptualization of the development of style which was singular across the artistic world at the time. There is a use for such an analysis, as it affects modern painters such as Escher who attempt to increase their artistic tension by disregarding the rigidity of logic in their painting or drawing almost to an extreme to achieve a level of modernity in style.

References:

Meyer Schapiro (1904-1996), “Style,” 1953 [Excerpt, pp. 1-4]

Jonathon Blower H. Wölfflin, translator, & Evonne Anita Levy, editor, writer of essay. (2015). Principles of art history : The problem of the development of style in early modern art / Heinrich Wölfflin ; a new translation by Jonathan Blower ; edited and with essays by Evonne Levy and Tristan Weddigen. (Texts & documents).

Crusades in the New World

  A lecture was given recently by former History professor Alfred Andrea, of the University of Vermont at the Waterman Lounge. The presentation was well-sourced, and he has certainly kept a speaking capability which has not suffered after 15 years in retirement. One thesis was included, that the conquest of the New World could be termed as a Crusade.

  It is an interesting point, and one which has been explored in the past. One question which arose and was acknowledged in questioning as a good point was about the Treaty of Tordesillas. There must have been included among some primary sources discussion of calling this conquest a Crusade as Spanish conquistadors and royalty alike wished to prevent the double-entry into the New World by Britain and France. 

  Portuguese encroachment upon the perceived divine entitlement of Spain to the New World could be acknowledged as long as similar deferment to the superior naval capabilities of the Spanish Imperial Navy. Unfortunately, these other potential players who had not proven effective in the Middle East or in the Spice Islands yet, and had little bargaining position with which to enter the New World. Whether there will be an attempt to reclassify greater parts of the period of colonization in the New World as a crusade remains to be seen.

The Russia of V. V. Putin

Paul Andreas Fischer

6/16/2016

Shirley Gedeon

The Russia of V. V. Putin

Centrally administered socialist states replaced democratic divisions for regional conflicts. Ultimately it was seen as a failure, with GNP across Eastern Europe dropping below that of the United States, though it did allow some substantial growth. The reasons for this failure will be seen as a combination of the motivations and consequences of such an economic system in Soviet Russia.

There were multiple debates which preceded decision making, and which later bound the workers to their decisions. Most frequently these would take the form of five-year plans and determined important factors such as the rate of growth and technological investment. While some sectors, such as mining, did keep up with the United States, the reality of the Soviet failure to provide for citizens can be found across the economy. Japan and America combined had a fifty times greater hold on science and academic intensive industries.

Stalin believed that the internal logic of capitalism would exploit labor. This drove the attempt to mirror growth in capitalistic countries. Inevitability of communism played a key role in this belief, and the losses which were incurred by forcibly or prematurely establishing a command economy would be offset by greater losses if this were not preconceived. The paradox of how to create an industrial technologically advanced economy became a question for Soviet leaders.

New economic policies also focused on collectivization of land. The goals of the Party could not be achieved under post-war circumstances, operating at 5% pre-war levels, and so denationalization of small scale production occurred in a series of decisions known as New Economic Policies (NEP). This was effective and saw the rapid expansion of production. It was not as effective as the command economies which saw 50 years of technological progress attained in a decade within the Soviet Union, a fact proven by the defeat of as well as by virtue of invasion by Nazi Germany, among the leading capitalist nations in the world, a couple decades later.

A grain supply crisis by 1928 followed expulsion of the left, the Trotskyists, and foreign relations deteriorated. Success of nationalization efforts under those dire consequences lead to a great realignment. This lead to the year of the Great Break, in 1929. This was the source of Stalin’s emphasis on increasing the scope of five-year plans dramatically. His emphasis on command economies would be combined with fear of war, which was dramatically foreseen.

Soviet planning was successful in its creation of technological and industrial growth amongst an era of crisis. A long-term period of peace, embodied in the Cold War, however, saw the expansion of a shadow or black market amongst industrial goods. Since liberalization of price markets, the Russian shadow economy has grown from 15% to a quarter or perhaps as much as 40% of the overall economy. It is not, as was the case during command economic eras, concentrated in industrial sectors. Deep problems with Stalinist economic systems began to emerge after the war period, and one of these was removal of k/n ratios meaning that normally benign corruption struck into military or industrial bases upon which the Russian economy was dependent.

A break in this rule was found in the aggressive campaign in Afghanistan. With troops only coming home in 1988, the drawn out war nearly exhausted the superpower’s capability to succeed. It is ironical to watch the dominance espoused by Kruschev among third world countries to have crumbled to this point. After years of funerals for leadership, the Soviet Union’s last “strong man” dissolved the union following secession of the Ukraine and worldwide velvet revolutions. This is a second point, that communism, which appeared to be successful in the threat or reality of war but lost ground during peacetime, would also crumble partially as a consequence of military operations.

The Helsinky conference is perhaps the beginning of the manifestation of what some saw as the end of the Soviet Union as early as Hungarian protests in 1968. In 1975 the agreement signed there forced recognition of human rights violations and ensured prevention of exploitation of workers through political dictatorship throughout member states. The way that the Russian economy was prevented from continuing the unbridled success that lead to the rise of the Soviet Union is the cause of this symptom of political malaise.

When Marango described the fall of the Soviet Union later, reference is made to the fundamental issues with communism as an economic system and the inconsistencies it creates. The same argument for the existence of government among economic systems also defeats efficiency of communism except in very particular circumstances. This argument will be summarized shortly.

Certain freedoms exist which the government has neither the capability nor the interest in being involved in. On another end of the spectrum, there are industries which undertake to provide services in which government presence is necessitated. Within this spectrum, every industry requires different levels of government involvement. This is represented by the fact that not all taxes are excise taxes, but vary based on income or revenue both in total amounts and proportions of income paid.

Communism was successful in the face of a total war, because in that economic period, with a grain shortage, the involvement of the government in every industry became necessitated. Micromanagement was an asset, and while a free market may have succeeded as well, even the option of failure in any of the industries would have represented a destabilizing impact on political and social structures. During the Afghanistan war as in the post-war period there was a greater need to emphasize government control of certain modes of production.

This risk of shadow market equality can still be seen today, but it should be argued that growth of the shadow market in Russia is healthy because it represents a movement from industries critical to health and security such as food production and industry into those less critical. In other words, it is not that there was too much waste occurring, but more that it occurred in areas where such waste could not occur. During a period of crisis, the government could ask for near complete obedience, outside of those conditions such a request lead to uprisings. Finally, as with any such capitalist economy, incentivizing the movement of the shadow economy requires an incentive, traditionally reflected in interest which banks offer to firms in order to invest their profits in other industries and here seen in the overall growth of such an industry.

A new form of leadership has arisen in Russia, and with it have come a resurgent emphasis on some very old traditional values. The siloviki are those with security backgrounds, which include V. V. Putin. These are supporters generally who share belief in persistent existence of hierarchy. As Russia’s equipment ages and the share of GDP devoted to the military has dropped, it is important to understand this terminology as a manifestation of the re-emphasis of political goals. Rather than losing importance, removing control from regional governors was critical to siloviki as well as Putin’s early agenda.

One interesting aspect of the siloviki is whether the eight-fold increase among political elites of this group is in spite of, because of, or causal to the rise of cronyism and oligarchy in Russia. Cronyism is the use of nepotism or familiar ties beyond quid pro quo into the realm of fraud. Oligarchy seeks to justify these objectives by establishing this method of control as the political status quo. “Taming” these forces have made the tools, such as export revenue taxes, of soft authoritarianism usable.

Soft authoritarianism has arisen in Russia as a reaction to these two forces coming in conflict with strong nationalism. One tool which was used to concretely describe this change was the Gref Plan, already in place prior to Putin’s election. Redefining fiscal federalism only went so far, though, and relative control or stabilization of industries through the Gref Plan promised to destabilize the economy. The answer appeared in the United Energy Systems reform and dissolution.

The targeting of natural monopolies in the electricity sector remains among the longest standing successes of Putin’s presidencies, and the market was liberalized in 2011. Creation of competition in markets has been seen in dominant industries such as the railways as well. Ending cronyism among the Gazprom and Rosneft oil and gas industries has become a dominant feature of the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev.

After eight years of Putin’s leadership, the constitution necessitated leadership change. At a critical juncture for many political goals, and unwilling to see those goals go unfulfilled, Medvedev was found to allow Putin to retain a position of leadership without breaking his norms of soft authoritarianism. With public support in excess of 80% for most of his presidency, it would have been hard to find any suitable candidate outside of the president himself.

The most important aspects of his administration also build on Putin’s own goals. Russia was once the IMF’s greatest debtor, and during the period was able to pay back all foreign debt. Foreign currency reserves, the warchest of a modern economy, had dropped to levels similar to a large corporation and have now been buttressed. Despite economic gains, the statement that presidency left was dominantly a political one, demonstrating soft authoritarian principles that would not give way to dictatorship.

Dual economic functions arose in many industries as an inheritance from the Soviet Union, and original liberalization of markets, including the oil industry, has given way to nationalization. Those responsible include Yegor Gaidar, one of the liberal technocrat from Moscow or, like Putin, St. Petersburg. Selections of such geographically and politically oriented individuals are an example of cronyism despite the resurgent siloviki class and reaction to Yeltsin era cronyism.

The bribe tax is a concept which has arisen under various conditions. Sutela points to abuses of market liberalization as impeding the stabilization which would have been the second step in the political transformation in the resurgent democracy expected from Russia. These include health hazards of dropping alcohol taxes and rule breaking in the corporate field. Others would point to the gutting of educational and healthcare expenses as a consequence of massive expenditures in waging war against Afghanistan.

The Russian economy is underdeveloped as a result of dramatic losses in the realm of intellectual property, as stated above. Even within the production efficiency frontier, however, there remains a dramatic discrepancy in levels of output. This is due partially to cronyism and pursuant economic policies. It is also a relative indicator of the cost of fighting the expansion of the systems of oligarchy which have become entrenched. The inefficient small-scale factories which are left over from the Soviet era are also fingered as a causal factor.

The bottom line, however, is that the massive credit which Putin’s regime won great acclaim, and rightfully so, for paying back was misappropriated. While the rating of Russia has increased by around 9 levels due to this progress in repayment, the fact still remains that the funds available were neither sufficient nor appropriately used to employ the full capacity of productive force, which could be massive. The majority of the factories are Soviet-era remnants, and frequently one factory cities dominate, with a quarter or a third of factories being built after 1992. This creates a picture of success, but obsoletion of manufacturing machinery has erased the gains of more efficient modern construction.

Russia’s primary source of revenue, as Europe’s gaspump, fails in contradiction to the primary sources of employment in the country. Because much of the product is prepared for export, the domestic market actually reduces income. That creates a unique economic situation. When employment rises, revenue falls and unemployment or lower levels of economic activity in various sectors of the Russian economy means a greater cash flow for the largest corporations, which are now publicly owned.

There is not a full explanation in the rise of corruption in the post-Soviet era which can be found there, and this should be considered the least of the symptoms of this critical paradigm. Failure to expand markets appropriately has other consequences, which one should look to China as a method of comparison. The excess of labor in China is a result of a different set of priorities. Wages there cannot go any lower and the price demanded can vary almost completely, this means that an increase or decrease in the population has virtually no impact on the function of the economy within practical limits, while every good consumed domestically will provide dividends abroad.

In Russia, it can be seen that conversely, wages and domestic consumption may vary greatly while increases or decreases in the price of oil have widespread repercussions throughout the world. Every barrel extra which can be exported increases the Russian importance in the world while the marginal price of oil is difficult to increase as a result of domestic consumption increases. This creates an incentive in Russian economics which may date back to Soviet era relationships with client states in Eastern Europe to eliminate domestic consumption by distribution of rent across populations. This economic anomaly or irregularity may also help to explain how the Soviet Union was able to maintain competitiveness for such an extended period of time.

Rosneft is the Russian oil producer which has become the subject of scrutiny and nationalization in recent history. It is an oil giant, and has a history with partners such as Norway’s Statoil and England’s British Petroleum. They are frequently the subject of political thrusts, and this can be seen in a recent press release that features a picture of Vladimir Putin in which concerns for global oil reserves are made clear.

While the Italian interview details a recent potential discovery of 100 million tons of oil equivalent, a finger is pointed at the United States for dropping oil production, which has lead to the recent report estimating expiration of oil supplies in the near future. Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, announces pleasure in the oil discovery but is concerned about the future. He is a prime example of the expansion of the siloviki class among business and political elites. This can be seen in his position in Moscow under Putin.

The alternative to this source of oil, both politically and mechanically, would be Gazprom. Efforts to subdue the giant, founded in 1989, found themselves in a greater quagmire of issues for various reasons including those political. The bias in political stories around the company also varies dramatically from that authorized by the nationalized Rosneft. In one article from the New York Times, European nations are depicted as standing firm against bullying efforts from Russian firms, including Gazprom. Proposals included in consideration are limiting supplier shares to 40% and establishing a Nordstream pipeline to bypass the Ukraine.

The purpose of such legislation would be to avoid a repeat of the Gas Wars of 2006 and 2009. Today Gazprom provides ⅓ of the gas to the European Union. This brings parallels to regulatory action in the news from the Gas Wars in which titans of Russian industry were actually incarcerated, frontlining some newspapers with mug shots or photos of the executives in prison garb.

Finally, there is the future which is seen perpetually in uranium. While the world’s largest producer of the energy is Khazakstan, Russia remains a premier supplier of the product. Nations such as France depend nearly entirely on atomic power for energy concerns. Along with coal and hydro power, uranium represents a reserve of energy which is substantial beyond the economic capability of the Russian state.

Some of this is left over specialization from the Cold War and client states, but most of this reserve is unique to Russia’s situation. The reserves and production are augmented by decommissioning nuclear weapons, which should be finished by 2030, and provide further sources of supply. With his master’s in mining, these are concerns which Putin is specifically able to address, and he has used his expertise to win big political victories in these economic fields. If his goals are attained, the massive increase in nuclear power generation may be the greatest and most dramatic legacy of a Russian leader since the remilitarization efforts which supported the Vietcong in Southeast Asia.