East-West Relations Research Articles

Russia-Ukraine War and Implications of Finland’s Membership of NATO

This study examines how the war between Russia and Ukraine has tilted Finland into the orbit of NATO. Therefore, the research approach is a qualitative systematic literature review, and it examines scholarly papers, foreign policy reports, and websites like Carnegie Europe and the Atlantic Council that deal with international relations. In addition, the study examines what this milestone poses for East-West relations within the international system going-forward. The study as a concluding remark indicated that the war between Russia and Ukraine has significant geo-political ramifications which are discussed in this study. Likewise, Ukraine's struggles on the battlefields are still raging, while neighbouring nations like Finland and Sweden have sought stronger ties with both of them making connections with NATO for increased security in response to the crisis. Similarly, the defection of Finland into the NATO alliance is of consequential impact on global dynamics. As a result, insightful information on the changing dynamics of the area and the difficulties of post-conflict international cooperation and security are gleaned from the comprehensive literature research.

Atomic Art Around a Hot Bikini Cloud, 1946

The nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. on Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946 marked the advent of the Atomic Age. The fascination with the Bomb and the fears of its destructive potential were processed and often trivialized in American visual culture and entertainment. The anxieties over nuclear power alongside the breakdown of East-West relations in 1946 also impacted on art. This article explores some of the consequences of the events of 1946 for art exhibitions, critics, and artists, such as Newman and Pollock. Their work responded both to the new nuclear reality and the desire to forge a modern American art and identity, distinct from European, especially French models. Their assertive approaches contrast with the strategies by Wols and Bram Van Velde in Paris, who insisted on the derisory importance of their project in light of atomic power and the Cold War.

Управление инфраструктурным обеспечением развития арктических территорий

The article considers global and regional levels of management of infrastructure support for the development of Arctic territories. It reveals the most pressing issues of joint exploitation of the Arctic territories in the interests of the Arctic Council countries. The Arctic Council, as a representative body at the international level of economic relations, acts as a management entity declaring the boundaries and priorities of the use of resources, opportunities and immediate territories of the Arctic zones. The presented article reflects the main priorities of the development of the Arctic regions at the international level. The priorities of management and individual management functions in the development of business relations in the Arctic Zone are determined. The article systematizes a number of scientific and practical tasks, the solution of which is necessary for the development of transport channels, but somehow affects the conservation of marine ecosystems of the Arctic seas. Priorities have been set in the use of marine resources, based on the systematization of international proposals for the joint use of Arctic territories. The method of induction is used to classify the subjects of management in the study. Management entities at the international level have been grouped. The international priorities of cooperation research at the macroeconomic level have been determined. The key results of international cooperation of states in the Arctic are presented. Possible sectors of combining domestic and foreign interests in the development of Arctic territories are identified. The difficulties in the implementation of management of the Arctic regions on the territory of the Russian Federation are substantiated. The key differences between the Southern Sea and Northern Sea transport infrastructures serving the development of East–West relations are identified. Priorities in the use of the Northern Sea Route are identified. The prospects of integration of Russian economic activities into promising directions of international transport communication development in the Arctic territories are revealed.

Uwarunkowania rozwoju stosunków finansowo-kredytowych krajów bloku radzieckiego z Zachodem w latach 80. XX wieku

Economic relations between Comecon countries led by the Soviet Union (communist bloc) and OECD countries (Western Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan) in the 1980s were characterized by deep stagnation in all areas of mutual cooperation. This was due to many negative factors interconnected in a short time. They were very diverse in terms of nature, range and durability of impact. The article contains an analysis of the development of the financial and credit relations of the Soviet bloc countries with the West in the 1980s in the existing political and economic conditions of East-West relations. The financial and credit dependence of the socialist countries was very clear and intense at that time. Its elimination or reduction as a result of the development of connections in other directions was only partially possible. Its negative impact also covered areas vital for individual economies. In addition, it was of a long-term nature, which made this type of dependence useful as an economic instrument for political purposes, both in the aspect of short-term and long-term pressure on the implementation of political intentions. When analyzing the entirety of East-West economic contacts, one cannot omit the problem of the debt of the Comecon countries, which largely determines the development of all areas of cooperation. In the 1980s, in Comecon-OECD credit relations, two trends clearly intersected: negative and positive. A negative trend was manifested in the increase in debt burdening the economies of many Central and Eastern European countries. This was caused by an increase in payment liabilities for servicing debts resulting from the postponement of loan repayment dates.

It Takes Three to Tango: How a Cuban Ballerina Interpreted for Castro and Khrushchev

This text launches a series of articles under the image-based project 'With the Aid of an Unidentified Interpreter: Putting Names to Faces on Historical Photos' dedicated to the history of high-level interpreting. Here, the quest is to identify the interpreter at the two encounters between Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro at Harlem's Hotel Theresa and at the Soviet Mission in New York on 20 and 23 September 1960 based on a photo from the personal archive of Khrushchev's assistant Vladimir Lebedev. This interpreter turned out to be Menia Martínez, a historic figure in Cuban ballet. Educated at the Vaganova School in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), she was proficient in Russian. The text looks at other professional and unprofessional interpreters who worked with the two leaders before, on, and after this trip to New York and whose work contributed to the development of Cuban-Soviet and East-West relations. The discussion draws on available visuals, memoirs, newspaper sources, and unclassified documents placing the discussion in the wider context of international relations at the time. The author is grateful to Menia Martínez, who, in a telephone conversation, has helped in clarifying some of the aspects of the matter under investigation.

Fire, Beards, and Bread: Exploring Christian East–West Relations à Propos of Edward Siecienski’s (Latest) Work

The debate on Christian East–West relations usually centres on the “usual suspects”: papal primacy, the filioque and core doctrine in general, the interpretation of Scripture, ecclesiology, and so on. This review article of Edward Siecienski’s Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory explores other issues that divide East and West, particularly those that may be approached via material ecologies: Fire, Beards, and Bread. “Bread” as in the debate on the Azymes, following Siecienski’s 2023 book; “Beards” as in the beardfullness or beardlessness of clerics; and “Fire” as in ignis purgatorius, yet at an even wider scale, the very fire of Gehenna: the question of the hereafter and the location of the dividing line between doctrine and theologoumena. Thus, a wider spectrum of the debate emerges, with which the present review article aspires to familiarize its readers.

Doing Business across the Iron Curtain: Trade and Financial Relations between the United Kingdom and Hungary, 1945–1956

Abstract This article explores economic relations between the United Kingdom and Hungary between 1944 and 1956. After the Second World War, the UK attempted to maintain some of its influence in Soviet-occupied Hungary by resuming trade relations with the country as early as 1946. Financial discussions around settling Hungary’s debts began a year later, but they ended abruptly in December 1949. British-Hungarian trade and financial talks resumed only in 1953, and a trade agreement was not signed until June 1956. In addition to providing an outline of British-Hungarian economic relations, this article also assesses the relationship between a relatively small country in the Soviet sphere of influence and the United Kingdom, as well as the role of economic diplomacy in East-West relations in the first decade of the Cold War.

Transforming Attitudes Towards the Turk in Edward Ravenscroft’s Mamamouchi, or The citizen turn’d gentleman (1672) and Molière’s Le bourgeois Gentilhomme (1668)

When Edward Ravenscroft approached the polarising figure of the Turk in The citizen turn’d gentleman (1672), an adaptation of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1668), he inherited certain structures and motivations that stem out of very specific attitudes towards the Ottomans that were not easily transposed onto the English context. This did not stop him from penning one of the most successful plays of his time, but it also did not stop the critics from deeming his adaptation a cheap knock-off that hardly altered the original and was closer to a translation than to any exercise of real talent. His adaptation, however, builds on the expectations of his London audiences and the trends on narrative-building regarding East–West relations to cleverly alter the reception of the play rather than the execution thereof, resulting in a minimal style of adaptation that produced a profound outcome. This study explores Ravenscroft’s way of dealing with the very central figure of the Turk in The citizen turn’d gentleman and the relation to the original source material in order to prove that his decision was a conscious act, part of a much more complex adaptative procedure than he is given credit for.

East-West Relations: A New Cold War?

The Cold War bipolar order was characterized by two camps isolated from each other, competing along four dimensions: global governance, security, economics, and ideology. The end of the Cold War, with the Soviet Bloc collapsing, did not produce a U.S.-dominated unipolar but a multi-centered world. The Americans, losing power and influence and the Russians to restore their superpower status have been trying to reconstruct bipolarity. If reconstructed China, not Russia, would likely constitute the other pole, an outcome Russia does not want. Economic relations and Chinese disinterest currently prevent a bipolar world like the one we have left behind. We may be moving toward a multi-centered world with many unpredictable aspects, including armed conflicts such an order may entail.

‘Eternal convivencia’: From Madrid’s Painters of Africa to the School of Tetouan

The annual Pintores de África exhibitions, organised by Franco’s colonial administration in mid-twentieth-century Madrid, offered audiences a colourful feast of artistic representations of Spain’s colonial territories in Africa, and of Spain’s architectural legacy of al-Andalus. Foregrounding the ideological issues underpinning these exhibitions, this article evaluates the selection of artworks, the programme of events, exhibition catalogues, and reviews. Many writers discussed the artworks with reference to al-Andalus, echoing colonial propaganda. After Moroccan independence (1956), the exhibitions partly lost their purpose, but the memory of al-Andalus was repurposed by Moroccan cultural brokers for the fashioning of their post-colonial artistic identity. The last part of this article reveals the relations between the Painters of Africa exhibitions and the birth of the School of Tetouan. The article not only sheds light on the art, curation, and art writing that took place in the interstices between Spain and Morocco at the end of colonialism, but also illuminates the paradoxical processes underpinning the formation of artistic identity in post-independence northern Morocco. The case study is relevant to global perspectives in History of Art and refigures understandings of East–West relations with which we have become so familiar since Said’s Orientalism of 1978.

Racialisation of Polish migrants in the UK and in Spain (Catalonia)

ABSTRACT The European Union expansion in 2004 resulted in a large-scale migration from less ethnically diverse Poland to multicultural societies. Many Polish migrants have become conscious of being white due to contact with people of colour, and at times, not-quite-white through encounters with the local white population. The presumed whiteness has not protected them from racialisation in the UK, especially in the context of Brexit. In contrast, in the Spanish context they have often been privileged by whiteness and Europeanness, although they have also been categorised as Eastern European Others. This paper illustrates how Polish migrants are racialised in relation to their ambiguous position linked to the construction of ‘Eastern Europeans’. It does so by drawing on narrative interviews with Polish women in Manchester and Barcelona based on the fieldwork conducted in 2012–2013 and interviews in Manchester in 2017–2018. The central argument is that racialisation of Polish migrants is influenced by the history and present of East–West relations. The peripheral condition shared by Spain and Poland helps to explain the differences in racialisation of Polish migrants in Britain and Spain.

From Defiance to Civilizationalism

Abstract Russia’s complex relationship with the West is the result of a long history of frustration and a perception of humiliation. The Russian empire, Soviet Union and the Russian Federation all have perceived the West alternately as a touchstone and a threat. This article assesses how discourses of humiliation and historical greatness intersect in Russian foreign policy. A first section explains how the discourse of humiliation has always been present Russia’s discourse on East-West relations. The second part of the article discusses how critical junctures in its relations with the west affected Russia’s foreign policy since 1991. As a consequence, Russia’s reactive frustration turned into defiance and a proactive discourse of humiliation, which became strongly intertwined with the legitimation for its attacks on the territorial integrity of sovereign states like Ukraine. Countries warning not to further antagonize or humiliate Russia with an eye on diplomacy and negotiations risk to mainstream this Russian discourse. This would enable Russia to successfully “securitize” humiliation by making the narrative of humiliation an object of security through discursive actions. It is therefore crucial not to perceive Russia’s humiliation rhetoric apart from the internal legitimation of its military invasion of Ukraine.

Global Sustainability and Structural Power: The Case of Bioeconomy in a Transitional World

This article studies the incidence of the bioeconomic agenda within the ongoing technological and scientific revolution and its link with inter-regional relations, in the framework of an international system in transition. In this sense, the theory of structural power is proposed as an analytical tool to observe the power relations that can emerge in relation with the development cooperation processes and the consequent configuration of new governance articulations related to sustainable development. It also reflects on the opportunities and challenges concerning this productive paradigm and it focuses on the upcoming relevance of its agenda for the east-west relations between Russia and the European Union. The article argues that although Russia is not among the most important global competitors in the field of bioeconomy, its structural qualities gives the country an important relational power in its connections with other countries/regional configurations. Within the framework of its relations with the European Union, the development of the bioeconomy emerges as a possible scenario of negotiation and dialogue that may renew the currently conflicted bilateral agenda in the face of future development challenges. That would create possibilities to boost confidence in the sharing of scientific and technological information, and also to forge mutually beneficial inter-dependencies. Regarding the methodological strategy, the general approach consists of the premise that global systemic changes generate either incentives or restrictions for technical cooperation around scientific and technological innovation. In this framework, global changes refer both to globalization, as well as to the technological revolution and the urgency around contemporary socio-ecological challenges, and the growing importance of the bioeconomic paradigm in the multilateral spheres of international cooperation. The methodological design is based on a qualitative-exploratory case study, with an explanatory aim.

The Security Landscape from the International Law Perspectives on the New-Taliban-Afghanistan State

Post-cold war security in international relations is identified as security in the global contemporary. Contemporary global issues are closely related to issues that are no longer dominated by East-West relations, such as the threat of nuclear war, ideological competition between Liberal-Democracy and Marxism-Leninism, crisis diplomacy, and so on. In the perspective of liberalism, peace and security are important for the international system, being considered by international law and organizations. However, recent developments in Afghanistan and Ukraine mark a challenge to this idea and challenge the consistency of peace and security under international law. This study uses a qualitative method by using secondary sources and classifying the data into two, namely security and international law to investigate the situation in Afghanistan. The method of analysis of the Taliban regime in international law uses a juridical-normative approach. The results of the juridical-normative research to describe the situation in Afghanistan are then correlated with the security aspects of the security situation. It is in the case of the new-Taliban state that the situation of the "vacuum" of international law in terms of government recognition can be hijacked to obtain the "approval" of the new regime. The security landscape in the perspective of International Law is fragile against minorities and the vulnerable which can create an unstable international system and encourage the possibility of certain powers to take action to take the opportunity given under the doctrine of effective control. Where must pay attention to aspects of human security, which are related to the obligation to fulfill, respect, and protect human rights recognized in International Human Rights Law. This shows the consistency of actions by member states at the UN, especially big powers like the US and its allies, otherwise similar problems will happen again in the future and weaken the international system as already started in Ukraine.

Frankfurt Stories: Narrative Economics and West German Lending to Socialist Poland, 1969–1989

This article explores Polish-West German financial relations in the 1970s and 1980s. Engaging with Robert Shiller's idea of narrative economics, it argues that West German lending to socialist Poland was driven by stories that circulated among Frankfurt bankers as Warsaw kept financial information typically used for credit risk assessments secret. The optimistic future of East-West relations that bankers imagined in the atmosphere of 1970s détente created the very real material conditions—mounting hard currency debt in Poland—that forced individuals and institutions to continue cooperating across the Iron Curtain during the resurfacing Cold War tensions of the early 1980s.

From the Normalization of Relations to Dwindling Interest and Indifference

Abstract This article offers an overview of the political, economic, and cultural aspects of Hungarian–Mexican relations during the last 15 years of the Cold War. After a more than 30-year interruption, the normalization of diplomatic relations (1974) was made possible by a change in the foreign policy orientation of Mexico, in the context of improving East–West relations, in particular an improvement of US–Hungarian relations. Both sides planned to intensify ties, and signed various documents to this end, but the early impetus soon deflated. This investigation explores the development of the bilateral nexus and the complex reasons behind its low intensity, related to the asymmetries between the two countries as well as to the differences between their foreign policy objectives and possibilities of maneuver.

‘And never the twain shall meet’? The Western other in the Saudi novel and the contrastive construction of Saudi identity

ABSTRACT This article examines the issue of the ‘other’ in the Saudi novel from the 1980s to 2000 against the background of the social changes taking place in Saudi Arabia. It is based on the reading of some thirty Saudi novels and offers a critical analysis of selected novels, based on the assumption that fictional-literary texts can serve as a valuable source for the understanding of various social processes. My main contention is that at the beginning of the period, the discourse towards the Western ‘other’ was very dichotomous and stereotypical, but over time changes in discourse could be identified that indicate developments in the perception of the ‘self’ versus the ‘other’ that reflected a dynamic dialogue between Saudi society and Western society. Later novels presented a more complex and genuine picture of East-West relations, and even served as a platform for internal criticism.

Intelligence, Ignorance, and Diplomacy in the Cold War: The UK Reaction to the Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak

Drawing on perspectives from “ignorance studies,” this article examines a case of multiple types of expertise and ignorance within the geo-political context of the Cold War. It revisits a suspected breach of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). In 1979, an outbreak of anthrax occurred in the Russian city of Sverdlovsk, killing numerous people; Sverdlovsk was also the site of a military facility suspected by the West of undertaking biological weapons research. As news of the outbreak reached the West, first the USA, then the UK approached the USSR seeking clarification. The diplomatic path followed by the two nations involved a tricky balancing act, requiring attention to the souring of East-West relations following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the integrity of the BWC, and the remote possibility of ratifying the SALT II nuclear negotiations. Diplomatic tactics depended on epistemic issues: How to tell whether the disease outbreak was natural or a military accident, how to decide what evidence was needed? I argue that although officials and scientists did not welcome ignorance and uncertainty, they recognized it as an inevitable and highly problematic epistemological issue (can we know what happened?) and tempered it into a less problematic, or at least more manageable, pragmatic issue (is there sufficient evidence to follow a particular course of action?). This article is part of a special issue entitled “Histories of Ignorance,” edited by Lukas M. Verburgt and Peter Burke.

Christian Unity in the Middle East

AbstractThe Orthodox Metropolitan of Mount Lebanon, George Khodr, born in 1923, has played an important role in ecumenism and the ecumenical movement since the 1st Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam in 1948, where he was made a member of the WCC youth commission. He is particularly remembered for his keynote address to the WCC central committee meeting in Addis Ababa in 1971 on “Christianity in a Pluralistic World: The Economy of the Holy Spirit,” at a time when the WCC was embarking on its programme of dialogue with peoples of living faiths and ideologies. This article explores the theological foundations of ecumenism in Khodr’s thought and theology, before turning to how he addresses the theological differences and the historical dilemmas that accompanied the history of the church and impaired East–West relations. In conclusion, the article argues that the model of “unity in diversity” as intended and conceived by Khodr best meets the conditions, the challenges, and the requirements for ecumenism in the contemporary Middle East.

5. Figure de l’accusé en témoin de l’accusation

In March 1945, Pejo Peev Draganov, a former official with the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (Komisarstvo po evrejskite vuprosi—KEV) in Bulgaria, appeared before Chamber 7 of the People’s Courts, an emergency court established in the fall of 1944 by the coalition of the predominantly Communist Patriotic Front for the purpose of bringing to justice the alleged perpetrators of anti-Jewish crimes in Bulgaria. As the head of the Skopje transit camp, where Macedonian Jews from Vardar, a Yugoslavian province occupied by Bulgaria during the war, were imprisoned before being deported to Poland, Draganov was accused of participating in Jewish persecutions. He left the courthouse a free man. Twenty-three years later, in 1968, Draganov once again appeared before a court of justice, specifically the Hesse District (RFA) Courthouse, in response to the lawsuit brought against the former minister plenipotentiary of the Reich in Sofia during the Second World War, Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, who had negotiated the deportation of Jews from the occupied territories with the Bulgarian authorities. This time, he testified as a witness for the prosecution. This arrangement was the result of a complex negotiation between the Prosecutor’s Office of Communist Bulgaria in Sofia and the West German prosecution.By taking as an entry point the career of this former defendant (in the sense of Howard Becker), the changes in his positioning on the chessboard of justice, and his movement within the space of East-West relations, the aim of this article is to question the production of post-war justice for war crimes in Europe from a transnational perspective, with a focus on its shifts over space and time. The research is based on an extensive examination of the archives of the trials held in 1944-1945 (in Bulgaria) and 1967-1968 (in the Federal Republic of Germany) regarding the judicial systems of these two states and their troubled collaboration during the Cold War.