History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | Russian Revolution

Poster from the Alexander Korda filk Knight without Armour

“There are no revolutions in well-governed countries” – British film and the Russian Revolution

In this blog, Rob James explores how the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution impacted British film production in the mid-twentieth century. Rob tells us that the chance of a film being made depicting those tumultuous events depended on how they were presented. If the film demonstrated any sympathy towards the revolutionaries, then a ban was inevitable. Rob’s research covers society’s leisure activities and how they were shaped and controlled from both within and outside the entertainment industry. His research feeds into a number of optional and specialist modules that he teaches in the second and third year. In the 1934 film Princess Charming, produced by Michael Balcon, one of […]

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“One of the Spaniards Fighting Their Own Battles: A Nationalist Soldier on the Santander Front in a Captured Concrete Dug-Out with ‘Marxist’ Inscriptions—’Death to Spain! ‘ and ‘Long Live Russia’.” Illustrated London News, 20 Nov. 1937, p. 893. The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/6YJha8.

Soviets and the Spanish Civil War

Rory Herbert, final year History student and President of the History Society at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog on Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Rory is Gale Ambassador at the university and contributes to The Gale Review Blog. The role of the Gale Ambassador is to increase awareness of the Gale primary source collections available to students at their university. The University of Portsmouth Library hosts a large collection of Gale primary sources which History students can use when undertaking archival research for their dissertations and other research projects. Rafael Merry del Val (1865-1930) remarked in his manuscript on the Spanish Situation, written for […]

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Russian_revolutionary_plate_designed_by_Mikhail_Adamovich

Using Material Culture: The Russian Revolutionary Plate

Cameron Meeten, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on a plate produced in revolutionary Russia for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. Cameron demonstrates how the plate gives us an insight into the ways in which the Soviets tried to steer and influence ideological thinking in the Soviet Union. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.  Material culture is the use of objects created or modified by people which directly or indirectly reflect the ideology of those involved with their creation, as well as the beliefs of the society in which they were created. […]

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