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Prof. Dr. Frithjof Benjamin Schenk

Department of History
Profiles & Affiliations

Projects & Collaborations

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Gender and nation in the biographical interpretations of Lesya Ukrainka's life and works: Ukraine-Russian Empire-USSR, 1898-2022

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913) is undoubtedly the most significant figure in Ukrainian women's literature: her works are full of both mythical and historical heroines torn between tradition and modernity; she wrote comparative studies on the European women's literature of her time; and she has played (and still plays) a major role in feminine and Ukrainian emancipations. Due to her emancipatory ideas, Ukrainka's works enjoyed unparalleled popularity during the Russian Empire, in the USSR and in post-1991 Ukraine. But they have been the subject of contradictory interpretations. The aim of this project is therefore to understand how biographical studies of Ukrainka have transformed her into a mythical figure who is a projection of the dominant ideologies of the three aforementioned eras. The project has three aims: 1) to improve the analysis of the status of gender and national issues in biographical studies of Ukrainka; 2) to build a classification of the types of biographical interpretations and the rhetorical, comparative and intertextual tools used to construct them; 3) to make our analytical models applicable to other writers. We will use a methodology at the crossroads of three disciplines (comparative literature; Eastern European history; Slavistics) and two transdisciplinary fields (women's/gender studies; post-imperial studies). The project will raise awareness of Ukrainian literature and the works of Ukrainka, which continue to have a significant impact on the development of the idea of the emancipation of women and "small" nations.

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Staatliche Erinnerung an den Großen Vaterländischen Krieg und die Oktoberrevolution am sowjetischen Staatsfeiertag (1945-1987). Verschränkte Narrative und Aussenkommunikation im Kalten Krieg

PhD Project  | 2 Project Members

Das Dissertationsprojekt widmet sich der Geschichte sowjetischer Staatsfeiertage in der Nachkriegszeit. Am Beispiel der Feiertage der Großen Sozialistischen Oktoberrevolution (7. November) und des Sieges im „Großen Vaterländischen Krieg“ (9. Mai) soll gezeigt werden, wie die sowjetische politische Führung die Erinnerung an diese beiden für das sowjetische Projekt wichtigen Ereignisse konstruierte und versuchte, den Staatsfeiertag zur Lösung eigener, überwiegend außenpolitischer Probleme zu nutzen. Ziel des Projektes ist es, anhand der Analyse der beiden Erinnerungsprojekte zu zeigen, wie sich der Charakter des Staatsfeiertages nach dem Krieg veränderte. Der Fokus wird dabei auf die Analyse der Feierlichkeiten, insbesondere der Militärparaden auf dem Roten Platz, zwischen Mitte der 1940er Jahre und Ende der 1980er gelegt. Das Projekt befindet sich an der Schnittstelle von politischer Geschichte und Geschichtspolitik und konzentriert sich auf die Erforschung der Bemühungen des Staates, Feiertage und staatliche Gedenkprojekte zu gestalten und zu nutzen.

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Bicycle Mobility in Ukraine (1890-1990)

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

Cycling has played an essential role in daily life, commute, and material culture of Ukraine. In many of its areas, this has been the only affordable means of mechanical transport throughout the XX century. With a bike, people traveled to work, transported goods, and made new contacts in distant areas. The state managed the distribution of bicycles and used it at war. Nevertheless, the visions of modernizing the country focused on motorized vehicles. Despite its ubiquity, the bicycle got often discarded as a childish toy. First of all, my book project aims at making visible diverse historical experiences of using the bike for transport. From the time when bicycles appeared on the streets of Eastern Europe, the social profile of cycling and its intended use had changed dramatically. In my book, I would like to show how cycling originated as an act of conspicuous consumption by the Imperial elites in the Habsburg Monarchy and Russian Empire, and then gradually turned into a tool to make ends meet in the Socialist economy of peasants and workers. The book will be sensitive to gender, age, and ethnic aspects of cycling, trying to answer the critical questions of who cycled and for what purposes. Second, I would like to present cycling as a social construction . State authorities and political activists, traders, and consumers engaged in the process of debating aspects of cycling far before the local society learned to produce it. Although the first bicycles were imported together with new ideas of bodily conduct and culture of leisure, the local community appropriated the new commodity in its own ways. The state regulated traffic, taxed the cyclists, and regulated activities of the cycling associations. In turn, the users of the bicycles lobbied their own solutions for the set-up of public space. Using examples from the wartime and interwar period, I will show how the bicycle was put into the service by the Soviet State. In particular, I will show how the bicycle was regarded to be a public good, not a means for use in private purposes. Signed by Stalin's top-managers, Molotov and Kuybyshev, the state plans for production and distribution of bicycles reflected the idea that the bicycle should have been used primarily by party activists, administrative officials, military, customs control, doctors, mail carriers, and athletes. Moreover, the meager offer of bicycles for sale was open primarily to industrial regions and big cities, discriminating republics like Belarus or Tadzhikistan. Meant for the state, the bikes were mobilized to the Red Army twice in 1919 and 1939. Limiting cycling mobility has also been one of the aspects of Nazi terror in the occupied territories. The Nazi administration issued own rules about registration of bicycles and traffic, and eventually confiscated the bikes in most areas of today's Ukraine. At the same time, the bicycle appeared as a propagandist image for potential Ostarbeiters. The latter were encouraged to go to Germany, learn to cycle, and use the bike for everyday life together with the rest of Germans. After the end of World War II, the Soviet Union turned the production of bicycles to over 1 million per year. That meant that workers and peasants could finally afford the tool. Despite the ubiquity of the bicycle 1950-1980s, the official press did not cover the phenomenon of cycling in small cities and villages very much. Instead, the media focused on providing public transport, developing new models of motorized vehicles, etc. The local communities in areas outside large urban centers developed their own scenarios of cycling. The bicycle was a tool to broaden their mobility patterns so that one could reach neighboring settlements for business and private purposes, deliver deficit goods, attend a dance club, or find a spouse. Using the tools of oral history, I plan to describe the everyday practices and conceptions of cycling in areas with sparse connections of public transport. Last, but not least, I plan to present cycling in Ukraine as part of global phenomena . Several cases would exemplify connections between cycling cultures internationally. I will use an example of Columbia bicycles, manufactured in the late XIX century in Connecticut, USA, to show how the producers, agents, and consumers engaged in promoting a new practice of cycling. I will compare the numbers of production and distribution of bicycles in the Soviet Union to those in the USA, Western Europe, and China. I will show how the German equipment for bicycle production, paid as war reparations in 1947, stimulated new turn in Soviet bicycle production and use. In terms of cycling, Ukraine historically has had similarities to other parts of the world. Therefore I see this research as a way to produce a better understanding of micromobility worldwide.

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Schweizer Sowjetunion-Reiseberichte und ihre Rezeption in der Schweiz, 1929-1939

PhD Project  | 2 Project Members

In der Zwischenkriegszeit wurde die Sowjetunion zu einem beliebten Reiseziel westlicher «Revolutionstouristen». Die Auswirkungen der Oktoberrevolution und der Aufbau des ersten sozialistischen Staates zogen Sympathisant*innen sowie Gegner*innen des neuen Systems an. Gefördert wurde das ausländische Interesse durch die sowjetische Kulturdiplomatie und Institutionen zur Betreuung von ausländischen Reisenden. In den 1930er Jahren waren Reiseberichte, Presseberichte und Vortragsreihen in der Schweiz die wichtigsten Quellen, um sich über die Geschehnisse in der UdSSR zu informieren. In der Schweizer Bevölkerung wie auch in Regierungskreisen herrschte eine starke antikommunistische Grundstimmung, was sich auch in der Politik der Nichtanerkennung der Sowjetunion ausdrückte. Der Sowjetunion-Diskurs in der Schweiz war stark polarisiert und die Rezeption der Reiseberichte oft von politischen Kontroversen geprägt. Das vorliegende Forschungsvorhaben setzt an diesem Moment der Interaktion zwischen Sowjetunionreisenden, ihren Reiseberichten und der Schweizer Öffentlichkeit an. Es richtet den Blick auf Schweizer Sowjetunionreisende, die für sich und ihre Berichterstattung eine gewisse Objektivität beanspruchten und versuchten, die politischen Kontroversen zu umgehen. Das Forschungsprojekt analysiert, welche Erzählungen in diesem Kontext entstanden und wie der Objektivitätsanspruch in den Texten umgesetzt wurde. In einem zweiten Schritt wird diskursanalytisch die Rezeptionsgeschichte der Berichte in der Schweiz und ihre Einbettung in den polarisierten Schweizer Sowjetunion-Diskurs untersucht. Das Dissertationsprojekt verspricht damit, einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Geschichte der schweizerisch-sowjetischen Beziehungen in der Zwischenkriegszeit zu leisten.

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Auf der Suche nach Fritz Platten, Die Schweiz und der Kommunismus im 20. Jahrhundert.

Research Project  | 3 Project Members

The objective of the present proposal is to promote public engagement with the relationship of Switzerland to Communism in the 'short twentieth century'. The Chair of Eastern European and Russian History at the University of Basel, Basel University Library, the Swiss Social Archives in Zürich and further partner organisations intend to achieve this aim by creating an exhibition to be shown in the autumn of 2021 in Basel University Library and accompanied by a programme of public events. The exhibition focuses on the history of Fritz Platten (1883-1942), one of the best-known and most radical Swiss Communists of his era, and on his son's search for a complete picture of his father's life. Its content will draw on currently ongoing research from the Chair of Eastern European and Russian History at the University of Basel, involving the applicant alongside postdocs, doctoral researchers and advanced undergraduates. True to its title, "In Search of Fritz Platten: Switzerland and Communism in the Twentieth Century", the exhibition will take as its starting point the decades-long historical and biographical research on Fritz Platten conducted by his second son, Fritz Nicolaus Platten (1918-2004). For over fifty years, Fritz N. Platten, working towards the ultimate end of writing his father's biography, compiled an extensive archive of documents, incorporating original and archive materials, photographs and innumerable newspaper cuttings. Both the exhibition and the accompanying programme of events will engage a broad audience of people in dialogue at guided tours of the exhibits, talks and panel discussions.The ultimate aim of the exhibition, and of the choice of an actor-centred approach to the topic, is to promote discussion and dialogue within society on the tensions and controversies surrounding Swiss history in the Cold War era and to encourage our audiences to reflect on 'doing history' and on the importance of archives in sustaining collective memory in modern societies.