Staff Articles

I. Sarah Lage- Return of the Russians

II. Maggie Coffey- Architectural Constructions of a Soviet Utopia

III. Carina Shalkivski- Khrystos Voskres! Voistinu Voskres!

IV. William Walton- Chiune Sugihara: An Unsung Hero

Return of the Russians

Sarah Lage

In late January, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in its “Statement on solidarity with Ukraine, sanctions against Russia and Belarus, and the status of athletes from these countries” that Russian and Belarusian athletes will now be allowed to participate in the Olympics, with the next Olympic games being scheduled for the summer of 2024 in Paris, France. The International Olympic Committee’s main argument for their lifting on the total ban of Russian and Belarusian athletes in international competitions is quite simple, and a lot of people certainly agree with it (and I myself sympathize): “No athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport.” In my commentary, I will focus mainly on how this news impacts figure skating, as this is the sport I am most knowledgeable and passionate about.

The stipulations of the lifted ban include reaffirmations of sanctions already in place, such as:

No international sport events shall be hosted in or sponsored by an International Federation or National Olympic Committee in either Russia or Belarus
No flags, national colors, or anthems of Russia or Belarus may be displayed or played at international competition venues
No government officials from either Russia or Belarus may be invited to or be credited for any international sport events

New requirements for Russian and Belarusian athletes include that these “neutral” athletes may not represent their state or country’s government in any manner while competing internationally, as well as that athletes from Russia or Belarus who have taken any pro-war action may not compete.

On the surface, these requirements seem very reasonable, but it’s hard to imagine how an elite-level Russian figure skater could possibly distance themselves sufficiently from their country’s government in order to truly meet these standards, especially given how sports are funded by the Russian government and serve as a livelihood and means of survival for many.

For example, over the summer, many elite and Olympic-level Russian skaters, including Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, Mikhail Kolyada, Aliona Kostornaya, and Aleksandra Trusova, signed binding contracts for participation in an ice show orchestrated by Evgeniy Plushenko, entitled “Сою Чемпионов” (Union of Champions). Plushenko, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and ten-time Russian national champion, is a staunch Putinist. At the show, there were many subtle pro-war and pro-Russian symbols. For example, the trademark pro-war “Z” was snuck into the signage of the show all over the arenas where the show toured, and all of the athletes who performed wore black shirts that read “НАС НЕ ДОГОНЯТ” (Not gonna catch us). It is worth mentioning that Plushenko received a grant of 50 million rubles from the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives for this event, as it counted as “support for groups and cultural figures who have become objects of sanctions for their patriotism and devotion to the country.”

There were rumors that the skaters who participated in the show did not know there would be pro-war signage and decorations before signing the participation contracts, and it was said that some skaters, namely Mikhail Kolyada, refused to enter the rink until eventually conceding and performing despite moral objections. Elizaveta Tuktamysheva posted an apology of sorts on Instagram following the show, hinting that she did not agree with the pro-invasion twist on a wholesome skating exhibition and that she wished for peace.

Does what I described above count as “act[ing]” against the peace mission of the IOC by actively supporting the war in Ukraine?” Although it is unfortunate that many skaters may have been duped into participating in the show and couldn’t really back out due to the nature of the contracts signed, I would say that it does. I won’t play armchair quarterback and describe what these athletes possibly could have or should have done, but I will say that events like Plushenko’s ice show, I feel, are perfect examples of what the IOC should punish.

However, I am not confident that the International Olympic Committee will choose to bar all of the Russian athletes who have participated in such shows from competing in the next Olympics. If they were to strictly, fairly, and rigidly enforce the requirements I listed above, I am not sure if there would actually be any Russian skaters eligible to compete. I would be willing to bet that since prohibiting Russian skaters from international competitions (and since Yuzuru Hanyu retired), the International Skating Union has lost a lot of money.

Take a look at any celebratory ISU post for a winner of an international competition post-invasion and you’ll find multiple comments from angry fans disparaging the non-Russian winner and arguing that the athletes who are successful now wouldn’t even be on the podiums had Russians been allowed to compete against them. You’ll also find comments from bored fans who express how not being able to watch 13-year-old Russian girls jump quads has made the sport comparable to watching paint dry. If I had to guess, I would say the skating world is definitely hurting financially without the appeal of the Russian skaters.

I feel that this is the motive for the lifting of the ban despite the war in Ukraine raging on. I worry that this decision will lead to even more complacency and indifference when it comes to the genocide being perpetrated against the Ukrainian people. It’s been over a year now and unfortunately, the international audience may not have the attention span necessary to continue being okay with sanctions affecting sources of fun and entertainment. I am concerned that without the absence of some of the most powerful forces on the international stage, ordinary people – many of whom have never had to worry about war in their life – will no longer be forced to stop and think about what caused these sanctions.

Citations:

Fang, Valerie. “In the Loop: The IOC Is Allowing the Russians to Compete Internationally Again. What Does It Mean for Figure Skating?” USC Annenberg Media, 7 Feb. 2023, https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2023/02/07/in-the-loop-the-ioc-is-allowing-the-russians-to-compete-internationally-again-what-does-it-mean-for-figure-skating/.

International Olympic Committee. “Statement on Solidarity with Ukraine, Sanctions against Russia and Belarus, and the Status of Athletes from These Countries.” Olympics, 25 Jan. 2023, https://olympics.com/ioc/news/statement-on-solidarity-with-ukraine-sanctions-against-russia-and-belarus-and-the-status-of-athletes.

Wikimedia Commons. “File:2019 Russian Figure Skating Championships Anna Shcherbakova 2018-12-21 15-18-52 (2).Jpg.” Wikimedia Commons, 21 Dec. 2018, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2019_Russian_Figure_Skating_Championships_Anna_Shcherbakova_2018-12-21_15-18-52_(2).jpg.

Wikimedia Commons. “File:Alexandra Trusova - 2020 Russian Cup - 01.Jpg.” Wikimedia Commons, 8 Nov. 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexandra_Trusova_-_2020_Russian_Cup_-_01.jpg.

Comments on an ISU Instagram post celebrating the victory of Kaori Sakamoto (JPN) at the 2023 World Figure Skating Championships– my response to @gabir9: it’s not “politics,” it’s a genocide!

Left: Anna Shcherbakova (RUS), the current Olympic gold medalist. She is one of the few Russian skaters who has not taken any pro-war action.

Right: Aleksandra Trusova (RUS), the current Olympic silver medalist. She participated in Evgeniy Plushenko’s pro-invasion ice show in the summer of 2022.

Architectural Constructions of a Soviet Utopia

Maggie Coffey

One of the many riveting courses I have taken in the Russian & Post-Soviet Studies program at William & Mary was on the subject of material culture in Eastern Europe. Never before have I been a student in a course that focuses on the material aspects of history. Through a study of objects and their meanings, I have found myself more connected to history and eager to understand the lived experiences of people and their conceptions of Soviet life. For example, reading about the importance of wooden spoons for Red Army soldiers in World War II, in both their practical usage as utensils in a time of food scarcity as well as soldiers’ personal engravings as sole markers of identity on the battlefield, provides a more comprehensive portrait of life as a Soviet soldier that may not typically be included in the official historical record and in textbooks. However, the most interesting aspect of Soviet material culture I have studied in this course so far has been the idea of Soviet utopias represented in architecture.

While reading one of our course texts, Russian Utopia: A Century of Revolutionary Possibilities, various conceptions of socialist ideals are represented by means of different architectural plans. I found it so fascinating that the vast differences in design plans for Soviet cities and monuments reflected diverging interpretations and expectations of the ideal Soviet society can be rooted physically in architectural designs for Soviet urban centers. To me, this was most interestingly highlighted by these vastly different architectural interpretations of what the “socialist city of the future” should look like, with socialist architects conceiving this ideal city in diverging ways.

For instance, the design entries for a skyscraper in the center of the “new Moscow” was both perceived in avant-garde constructivist form symbolizing the end of tsarist rule over the masses and a new promising future of equality, as well as a seemingly opposite design that emphasized “monumental grandeur, hierarchical order, and the authority of tradition” (Steinberg 68). It is intriguing that these two designs interpreting a socialist utopian city should be so contradictory, illustrating the actual intricacies of the perceptions of Soviet utopia.

Interestingly, in a similar fashion to the latter skyscraper design that represented this idea of Soviet utopia through decadence and grandiosity, the idea for a “Palace of Soviets” to be constructed in the Stalinist era epitomized utopian aesthetic in a very public way by architect Boris Iofan. “The Palace of the Soviets” was never completed despite its extensive planning, groundbreaking, and partial construction. The cathedral of Christ the Savior was demolished in order to serve as the site for the palace. After economic, resource, and labor strains during World War II, the project to build the Palace was halted and instead, transformed into one of the world’s largest outdoor swimming pools. The Moskva Swimming Pool served Moscow residents for 37 years before the cathedral was reconstructed in 1995. The differing ideas concretized in architectural plans and construction decisions evoke nuance rather than informing a single Soviet identity and idea of socialist utopia.

Citations:

Brandon M. Schechter, The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 2019, chapter three, “The State’s Pot and the Soldier’s Spoon: Rations in the Red Army,” 79-103.

Mark D. Steinberg, Russian Utopia: A Century of Revolutionary Possibilities (London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), chapter three, “The New City,” 49-73.

Image Citations:

Vladimir Tatlin, Design for the Monument to the Third International, 1920, in Russian Utopia, by Mark D. Steinberg, (London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 51.

Boris Iofman, Vladimir Shchuko, and Vladimir Gel’freikh, Final Design for the Palace of Soviets, 1934, in Russian Utopia, by Mark D. Steinberg, (London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 71.

Andris Malygin, Moskva Pool, 1969, in “Moskva Pool,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskva_Pool

Top: Palace of Soviets Design

Left: Skyscraper Design

Moskva Swimming Pool

Khrystos Voskres! Voistinu Voskres!

Carina Shalkivski

This year’s Orthodox Easter is celebrated on April 16, 2023. In many Eastern European Slavic countries, Easter begins with a Paschal greeting “Khrystos Voskres” to which the other person responds with “Voistinu Voskres!” – “Christ is risen!” In Ukrainian tradition, the greeting is an ancient and obligatory custom that is also followed by kissing three times on the cheek while pronouncing the phrase.

Like in many other parts of the world, Easter is incomplete without eggs. In Ukraine, Easter eggs are called pysanky. For centuries, pysanky have been made all over Ukraine, running in different colors, patterns, and images on eggs. This tradition is unique to each Ukrainian region as many families have their own recipes and ways of painting the eggs. There are many ways to decorate an egg in Ukraine, some people use a small needle called a dryapanka to apply paint on the egg, some people paint with wax using a device called pusachok, others paste cut-out images and boil the eggs in onion shells to give it a red look. Red is also one of the most popular colors to use as it symbolizes the blood of Jesus Christ.

Where do Ukrainians put the eggs? As per tradition, on Easter Ukrainians bring out their Easter baskets which are decorated with many symbolic items including pysanky eggs, willow branches, candles, an embroidered rushnyk, Paska bread or kulich, sometimes wine, and other foods. This whole basket full of spiritual items gets taken to church and blessed with holy water on that day.

As mentioned before, the Paska bread is one of the key components of the Ukrainian Easter basket. The bread itself is usually made on Thursday, a few days prior to Easter Sunday. It is a staple dish on the Ukrainian Easter table. The Paska itself is made up of simple ingredients such as milk, butter, flour, eggs, and sugar and is usually topped with a sweet white glaze. The higher the paska rises the better as it symbolizes more prosperity.

Like many other Christians, Ukrainians follow the tradition of fasting for a certain period of time before Easter Sunday. For Easter breakfast, the whole family gathers together around the table filled with many Ukrainian dishes. After a long period of fasting, on this day Ukrainians are allowed to feast on all the extravagant meals prepared and set out on the table. Candles are usually put into the Paska and lit up for a divine atmosphere at the table. Per tradition, people cut the paska and play a game of egg tapping against one another; whoever’s egg doesn't crack, wins and is said to have luck for the rest of the year.

Chiune Sugihara: An Unsung Hero

William Walton

This semester, I have been writing my International Relations capstone paper on the heavy topic of the German occupation of Eastern European countries during the Second World War, and the response of Allied countries to the atrocities committed there. While this topic is replete with tales of atrocities and heinous crimes against humanity, my research has also highlighted the actions of those heroic individuals who worked to save countless lives at significant personal risk to life and livelihood. One of the most fascinating figures I have encountered thus far has been Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat appointed as consul general to Lithuania in the turbulent period between 1939 and 1940, who used his position to issue thousands of visas to refugees from Lithuania and recently invaded Poland, saving an estimated 2,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution.

Sugihara was born in 1900 to an upper middle-class family in the city of Mino, eventually studying English and Russian at Waseda University, achieving fluency in both languages. After a brief period of service in the Imperial Japanese Army from 1920 to 1922, Sugihara joined the Foreign Ministry and was assigned to the annexed city of Harbin in northern China to continue his study of Russian and become an expert in Soviet affairs. Sugihara spent over ten years working in the Manchurian Foreign Office, during which he engaged deeply with the local community of Russian expatriates and exiles and converted to Orthodox Christianity. In 1934, Sugihara resigned from his post as Deputy Foreign Minister due to objections against the Japanese government’s treatment of Chinese civilians and was reassigned to Eastern Europe.

In 1939, due to his fluency in Russian and considerable expertise in Soviet policy, Sugihara was stationed as consul in Kaunas, Lithuania to gather information on German and Soviet actions in Poland and the Baltic. In 1940, Sugihara contacted members of the Polish underground movement in Lithuania resisting the German-Soviet occupation of Poland. After the Soviet Union invaded and annexed the Baltic states, Sugihara granted Japanese visas to Polish resistance members to escape Soviet authorities. From German-occupied western Poland, thousands of Polish Jews fled Nazi persecution into Lithuania, seeking to escape the region. The refugees and the local Jewish community in Kaunas informed Sugihara of the Nazi threat, and despite increasing pressure from the Soviet government to close the consulate, Sugihara decided independently from his superiors to begin issuing visas to Jewish refugees, allowing them to freely travel eastward across the Soviet Union to Japanese territory. In 1940, the consulate in Lithuania was closed, and Sugihara was reassigned to other postings in Nazi-occupied territories for the rest of the war, before finally being captured and interned by Soviet forces in Romania.

After the war, Sugihara was released from internment to return to Japan, whereupon he was fired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his actions in Lithuania. He proceeded to live a quiet and anonymous life until 1968, when he was contacted by an official at the Israeli embassy in Tokyo, Yehoshua Nisri, a former refugee who had received a visa from Sugihara as a child. In 1986, the official Israeli Holocaust memorial organization Yad Vashem recognized Sugihara as Righteous Among the Nations, an honor shared by others who had helped Jewish refugees survive the Holocaust, including the famous German recipient Oskar Schindler. In 1991, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally apologized to Sugihara’s family for unfair treatment of him, and in 2000, the centennial anniversary of his birth, had his honor officially restored. While not as publicized as other figures who saved lives during the Holocaust, Sugihara’s compassion and humanity deserves recognition and remembrance.

Sources:

Brockell, Gillian. “'A Japanese Schindler': The Remarkable Diplomat Who Saved Thousands of Jews During WWII.” The Washington Post. WP Company, January 27, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/01/27/chiune-sugihara-jews-holocaust-japanese-schindler/.

“Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed April 7, 2023. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/chiune-sempo-sugihara.

Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010.

“Story of a Courageous Diplomat of Humanity, Mr. Chiune Sugihara.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. Accessed April 6, 2023. https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/middle_e/israel/sugihara.html.

“Who Was Chiune Sugihara?” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, 2005. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sugihara/readings/sugihara.html.