End Of War Research Articles

Indigenous Internationalism and the Art of Recognition: A Soviet Trace on a Global Stage

ABSTRACT This article explores the contributions of Soviet writers to global discourses of Indigenous rights. The author focuses on the work of three writers, Yeremei Aipin (Khanty, b. 1948), Vladimir Sangi (Nivkh, b. 1935), and Yury Vella (Nenets, 1948–2013), as they entered into transnational Indigenous movements and navigated a rapidly changing political landscape in the final years of the Soviet Union. The author argues that they engaged in a complex “art of recognition,” working across genres and modalities in order to reckon with legacies of colonialism and usher in new visions of identity and political sovereignty. This approach highlights the Soviet Union as a locus for international congresses and solidarity movements, such as the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement, the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders, and the 1990 Sacred Run for Land and Life, led by American Indian Movement cofounder Dennis Banks. Ultimately, an Indigenous-centered approach to the end of the Cold War provides a counterbalance to prevailing narratives of this era, which cast the ascendance of a Western-dominated capitalist world order as an inevitable conclusion.

Cold War Austria and Migration from Eastern Europe: Refugees and Labor Migrants

Abstract This article revisits Austria's migration history from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War. Recent research has challenged the persistently commemorated welcoming Austrian attitude toward refugees who had been living under communism. The initial humanitarian efforts in 1956 and 1968, respectively, were remarkable. However, an analysis beyond the first weeks of both events reveals that (though to different degrees) public and political attitudes toward refugees took a negative turn. Throughout the 1970s, asylum for dissidents was portrayed as a continuation of the country's humanitarian tradition. However, in 1981, refugees from Poland were immediately perceived as unwanted labor migrants. In 1989/90, the scenario was similar: while the transiting East German refugees were welcomed, migrants from other countries (like Romania) were not. In the early 1990s, Austria decided on a reform of its asylum and foreigner policies. But when and why did the (supposedly welcome) refugees from countries under communist rule turn into unwelcome labor migrants? The analysis in this article explores the potential impact of the age of détente and the repercussions of the 1970s economic crises and the resulting end to active recruitment of foreign workers.

Engaging women, peace, and security in defence: the role of the NATO committee on gender perspectives

ABSTRACT As NATO marks its 75th anniversary it is facing a future more uncertain than at any point since the end of the Cold War. The European security environment is changed and challenged by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, while the Israel-Gaza war poses further challenges. Given this critical moment, this article offers a strategic intervention to highlight and reinforce the essential role of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda in defence and deterrence, including through the integration of a gender perspective, for NATO members and partners. It does so by bringing together former Chairs of the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP) into conversation about the continued importance of NATO’s oldest committee in ensuring NATO’s future approach to WPS is fit for purpose. Drawing upon their reflections and insights, we recommend policy points to embed and advance WPS and the gender perspective in NATO’s response to this new security environment.

Az európai regionális integráció jövője. Kormányzási és elosztási dilemmák

The cornerstone of the global system, as well as the EU, is the principle of the sovereign equality of states. However, states are far from being equal. This paradox is one of the main obstacles to the smooth functioning of international organisations, including the EU. Sovereigntist critics of the EU pretend that national competencies are sacrificed in exchange for co-operation and joint governance at a larger scale. In reality, EU membership has widened the scope of member states’ sovereignty: they are better informed and can take part in decision-making at the European level. However, the EU’s decision-making power has weakened for two main reasons. First, EU competencies have been watered down: exclusive union competencies exist only in five sectors, in parallel with a large and growing number of mixed and shared competencies. As a result, EU decision-making tends towards intergovernmental methods, and consensus seeking opens the way for veto players. Second, after the end of the Cold War, in the 1990s, many new states were formed because of the dissolution of former federal structures. In place of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia 24 new states have taken form so far, 19 out of them Europeans, and the majority is attracted by the EU. The EU member states from the former eastern bloc which have Soviet-type political, economic, and social heritage, have ‘imported’ their unsolved – internal and external – conflicts into the EU. After the European elections in 2024 and the renewal of the European Parliament and the European Commission, those institution should undergo a ‘slimming diet’ and speed up decision-making by extending qualified majority voting. This is an absolute precondition of further enlargements.

The Velvet Revolution's Best Supporting Actors: Shirley Temple Black and U.S. Embassy Prague, 19891

Abstract This article discusses the contours of U.S. diplomacy in Czechoslovakia before and during the Velvet Revolution of 1989, showing how the U.S. embassy in Prague, in collaboration with the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) and State Department, crafted U.S. policy. Drawing on recently available primary materials (including declassified U.S. telegrams, Czechoslovak archival documents, unpublished memoirs, and original interviews), this article highlights the role of the U.S. embassy during the period from August to November 1989, including how key officials, above all Ambassador Shirley Temple Black, analyzed political developments, assisted Czechoslovak dissidents, and pursued extensive engagement with the Communist government. The article provides the first scholarly, granular account of U.S. diplomacy in Czechoslovakia during the November 1989 upheavals and contributes to the historiography on U.S. foreign policy and the end of the Cold War.

Freeports, elites, and loopholes

The globalized trade in artworks has undergone significant changes since the end of the Cold War: While its former Western centres, such as New York and London, continue to dominate the discourse on high price segments with well-attended art fairs and influential auction houses, new actors challenge these former major players, new customers push into the market, and inflationary price increases have been recorded in recent years. From the perspective of systematic geographical research, however, this field of economically globalized trade has been largely neglected so far. With the help of a systematic literature analysis, this article examines the existing knowledge on the globalized art market across disciplines and systematises it with the help of the so-called TPSN model along the spatial categories of territory, place, scale, and network. Based on this analysis, we developed five core findings of the globalized art market that can serve as a foundation for future geographical research projects.

Рецензия на монографию: Животич А. «Балканский фронт» холодной войны: СССР и югославско-албанские отношения. 1945-1968 гг. / отв. ред. А. Б. Едемский. М. – СПб.: Институт славяноведения РАН; Нестор-История, 2022. 288 с.

The reviewed publication sheds light on the history of interstate relations between the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Albania in the postwar period. The author presents these relations in the context of the broad geopolitical changes that the world underwent after the end of World War II. This monograph will be useful for specialists in the modern history of the 20th century, Slavic studies, Balkan studies, as well as all those interested in these areas of historical research.

Connecting the dots – poverty, marginality, and the production of aggression and violence in post-war Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT A good collection of existing literature provides limited reflection on classifying post-conflict countries as being ‘peaceful’. This is especially so, as the period following the end of a civil war is normally characterised, as a period of ‘peace’, thereby equating peace to the silence of the guns. Such an understanding of what constitutes peace in post-conflict settings is problematic. This is because, societies in transition, are usually plagued with a plethora of challenges, with the legacies of war normally shaping the resurgence of violence in other forms. Additionally, complex transitions of violence and aggression, which reflect the socio-economic and political gyrations of a society redefining itself, and reconstructing its values are seen in most post-conflict contexts. Thus, using the case of Sierra Leone, this paper argues that some post-conflict settings experience negative peace, and diverse forms of violence that usually render communities unsafe, insecure and not peaceful. Thus, boxing societies in a bracket of being peaceful, because of the end of a violent civil war, limits what peace means in a specific contextual sense. It even undermines the potential for a broader approach towards understanding how the emerging forms of violence and aggression could be addressed.

State school catering in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study

The complex value of school meals for children and families is well documented. In Italy, school cafeterias have been an instrument of social policy since the end of the Second World War. Thereafter, school cafeterias have acquired several functions in the areas of children's health and wellbeing, education, social inclusion, support to local and quality agriculture, and environmental sustainability. In particular, the goal of a nutritious and balanced diet has been emphasized in recent decades, since malnutrition and food insecurity have been increasing in Italian society. During the pandemic, Italy was the first European country to implement a nationwide lockdown and one of the high-income countries where schools closed for the longest period. In this work, we use in-depth interviews with representatives of the school catering service, both from the major catering companies and the biggest municipalities, to analyze what happened in the management of the Italian school catering service during the pandemic crisis. In addition, a review of public recommendations issued during the pandemic has made it possible to analyze their compliance with the state guidelines for school catering and food education. The results highlight how the system reacted extremely slowly to the crisis and how the measures taken led to a deterioration of the value that has always been attributed to state school cafeterias, especially in terms of children's food security and environmental sustainability.

The Radical Left and the Movement in Australia against the First Gulf War, 1990–91: Anti-Imperialism at the End of the Cold War

The Gulf War in 1990–91 came at the end of the Cold War and at a time when the Left across the globe was reassessing itself as the Soviet Bloc collapsed. In this period of flux, the Australian Radical Left had also experienced a series of debates about its configuration, with several different attempts at unity, as well as reconsiderations about the relationship between the extra-parliamentary Left, the trade unions and the Australian Labor Party. After Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and several Western powers, led by the USA and Britain, sought to intervene, Bob Hawke’s Labor government supported the coalition against Iraq. A movement against Western intervention in the Gulf and Australia’s involvement in the coalition was built, including sections of the Labor Left, the trade unions, the peace movement, students and the organisations of the Far Left. Most looked back to the decade-long movement against the Vietnam War for the framework for the anti-war campaign, but the Left, in all its guises, had faded in influence since the 1970s. This article will look at how the movement against the First Gulf War developed between August 1990 and March 1991 and how it reflected a fractured and weakened Left in Australia in the dying days of the Cold War.

АНАЛІЗ ПОТОЧНОГО СТАНУ ЕНЕРГОСИСТЕМИ ТА СТРАТЕГІЇ РОЗВИТКУ РОЗОСЕРЕДЖЕНОЇ ГЕНЕРАЦІЇ В УКРАЇНІ

The article analyzes the state of the Unified Energy System (UES) of Ukraine as of the beginning of 2023. The main focus of the article is on the issue of energy security and the consequences for the UES of Ukraine after mass attacks on energy facilities from the beginning of a full-scale invasion until the beginning of 2023. The assessment of the main shortcomings of the current model of the operation of the power system was carried out and the current short-term strategies for its modernization were considered in order to prepare for the heating season of 2023-2024. During the analysis of potentially possible short-term strategies, the main attention was paid to the recovery plan of Ukraine, available capacities of the Gas Transport System (GTS) of Ukraine, potential of using "Floating Power Plants", poten-tial possibilities of the operation of distribution networks (DM) in the "island mode" and stimulating an increase in the share of distributed sources generation (DSG) and energy storage systems (ESS). The current results of the implemen-tation of the above-mentioned strategies and the potential of their development after the end of a full-scale war in ac-cordance with the energy strategy of Ukraine until 2035 and the main theses of the energy strategy of Ukraine until 2050 were presented. Based on the results of the analysis, the recommendation regarding the implementation of the preparation of the UES of Ukraine for the next heating season were formed. Bibl. 10, fig. 2.

Narativi o Holokaustu i komemoracije u Srbiji i Španiji, s posebnim osvrtom na 2005. godinu

This paper aims to analyze the approach of Serbian and Spanish authorities towards Holocaust commemoration during the year 2005. During the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, there was further institutionalization of Holocaust memory by designating January 27 as the official day of remembrance on a global and European level. Adapting old forms of commemoration to new transnational frameworks brought other issues to the forefront – the memory of wars, the question of suffering of the Serbian/Spanish and Jewish people and the interpretation of the role of local fascist forces in the Holocaust.

The Evolution of Cinemas in Prague from the Second Half of the Twentieth Century: A Contemporary Perspective

The article approaches the situation of Prague cinemas in the second half of the 20th century from the end of the Second World War to the Velvet Revolution within the socio-historical background from the point of view of an architect and a cinephile. The entire text is arranged chronologically in four paragraphs reflecting the contemporary political and social situation. It approximates the post-war period full of ideological ideals, when the construction of a dense network of cinemas became a key element of national renewal, not only in large cities but also in the regions. The following decade brought a paradigmatic shift, when local single-screen cinemas gave way to large cultural houses with multifunctional use (film, theatre, gallery, restaurant, sports facilities, etc.). It deals with the socially relaxed sixties, reflecting the synergy of various artistic disciplines, thanks to which Czechoslovakia presented to the world new artistic disciplines based precisely on film projection – “polyekran” (polyscreen) and “laterna magika” (a combination of projection and performance with live actors). The imaginary culmination of the new wave period was the opening of the luxury cinema 64 U Hradeb, which is given more attention in the text below. Furthermore, the text outlines the situation of cinemas in large Prague housing estates and deals with Czech brutalism in the context of foreign architecture and with the only brutalist cinema still operating today – the Dlabačov cinema. The final part of this article gives a brief overview of the total number of cinemas established in this period in the territory of Prague and a comparison with other European metropolises with a similar socio-cultural background. The research has the ambition to understand and approach how to integrate valuable cinema buildings on the territory of Prague into the daily life of contemporary Prague residents through the investigation of the cinema phenomenon, and the development of cinematography and cinema architecture as such, from its inception to the present day. The general logical processing methods are historical and socio-cultural analysis, architectural and urban research including architectural drawings, photographic documentation and a study of the urban development of the appearance of individual cinemas, comparison and deduction.

EU Membership of Western Balkan Countries and Digital Citizenship Practices

Following the end of the Cold War, the European Union's interest in the Western Balkans intensified, driven by geopolitical and geostrategic considerations. Moreover, the region holds significance as a transit route for energy lines supplying EU member states. Encompassing a diverse geographical expanse, the Western Balkans includes Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, North Macedonia, Romania, Greece, and Slovenia. While the EU’s perspectives on the Balkan countries, situated in a geopolitically crucial position, became clearer following the Thessaloniki Summit 2003, they are currently grappling with various challenges. Within the EU, enlargement fatigue has emerged following the enlargements in 2007 and 2013. Concurrently, economic and political crises within the union have prompted restructuring efforts. These reforms, encompassing areas such as the “Rule of Law”, “Functioning Market Economy” and “Democratization and Transparency of Public Administration”, have become imperative amid the evolving global order and globalization trends. Consequently, reforms in digital citizenship have also become inevitable. This study examines the EU membership and digital citizenship practices of the Western Balkan countries.

Apropiación Nacional de las Nociones de Ciudadanía y Paz a la Luz de la Agenda Internacional en el Contexto de la Posguerra Civil en Angola

This study, which has as its problematic the repoliticization of the concepts of citizenship and peace and their joint analytical use, aims to show to what extent the national appropriation of the notions of “citizenship” and “peace” is conditioned by the international agenda, after the end of the civil war in Angola in 2002. This study is a qualitative approach, of a theoretical nature, developed through exploratory bibliographic research. The results indicate that, in Angola, the appropriation of the term “peace” is associated with the appropriation of the term “citizenship” only after the end of the civil war and, from an instrumental point of view, gains some importance following the birth of a new constitutional jurisdiction that changes several of the country's political rules and positions the citizen in an immense sphere of public spaces, but conditioned by the international agenda. From these results, we conclude that, in the post-war context, there are more continuities than ruptures in relation to the need for endogenous appropriation of the concepts of citizenship and peace and the deepening of the positioning of national and local actors within the dimension of the nation-state.

El Nacionalismo en la Lucha por la Independencia de las Colonias en África (Angola)

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of Nationalism on the struggle for Independence in the colonies in Africa, with particular emphasis on the case of Angola. The objective of this work is to assess the changes that took place on the Continent from 1888 to 1910, marked by the conquest and occupation of almost the entire African Continent by Western imperialist powers; followed by the effective implementation and installation of the colonial system as an administrative system in the second half of the century. XIX, division and definition of geographic spaces. In fact, the year 1910 was essentially characterized by the consolidation and exploitation of that system, causing major distortions in the economic, social and cultural structures of the dominated territories. The appeal written at the Manchester Congress (1945) to the colonized peoples, expressly advised that all colonies should be freed from foreign imperialist control, both political and economic, and fight by all means to achieve these objectives. The use of qualitative research based on bibliography related to these themes, the inductive-deductive method allowed the (construction) of ideas of a passive Africa, embodied in the emergence of movements that aimed at the overthrow of the colonial system. In effect, with the end of World War II, the process of decolonization began, resulting in a more reinvigorated, radical and consequential African nationalism. This means a more conscious, enlightened and enlightening continental nationalism, better structured and politically framed and represented internationally and with qualitatively higher levels of political and cultural organization, with the year 1960 being marked as the year of Africa, with the outbreak of the various independence of respective African countries and consequent recovery and affirmation of socio-historical, political and cultural identity, hidden by colonization.

Walker’s Appeal... is the main manifesto of radical African-American abolitionism

This work is about one of the key episodes of African-American history and the history of American abolitionism associated with the publication in September 1829 in Boston of Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World. The appearance of this “revolutionary appeal” undoubtedly marked a new milestone in the development of the anti-slavery movement and the actual emergence of such a trend as radical African-American abolitionism. The reaction to the release of this document by the authorities of the Southern States can be called unprecedented in its scale and consequences. It found expression in the adoption of a number of repressive laws, which, in turn, marked the beginning of a period of prolonged reaction in the American South, which would end only after the end of the Civil War of 1861–1865. The significance of this event is difficult to overestimate. After almost two centuries, the figure of David Walker and his Appeal still arouse increased interest from Western researchers and not only. However, no serious works on this topic have been published in Russian historiography up to the present moment. This study aims to identify and examine the causes and circumstances of the writing of the Walker’s Appeal…, to analyze the main provisions of this document and the consequences caused by its dissemination. In addition, the author pays special attention to the review of the historiography of this issue. The source base is newspaper publications, letters and bills of the period under review, as well as the text of the Appeal. The methodological basis of the research consists of causal, historical-descriptive, historical-genetic, historical-typological, retrospective, and comparative-historical methods. The materialistic dialectic plays the main role, showing the development of the abolitionist movement in dynamics and the influence of related factors. The author concludes that Walker’s Appeal… became an expression of the most important trend in the development of American abolitionism at the end of the first third of the nineteenth century. The appearance of this document clearly demonstrated the radicalization of the African-American community itself and its willingness to join the struggle for the abolition of slavery and its rights.

Searching for the Missing Graves of PoWs from the Second World War—an Example of Research Conducted in the Area of ⁣⁣Stalag VIII B (344) Lamsdorf

ABSTRACT The Site of National Remembrance in Łambinowice, Poland is a complex of former prisoner of war (PoW) and resettlement camps that operated near the village from the time of the Prussian-French War (1870–1871) through the First and Second World Wars, including the interwar period, until the liquidation of the labor camp established by the Polish communist authorities in 1945–1946. Since June 2022, The Central Museum of Prisoners of War has been carrying out a project, a key part of which is the integration of various archaeological research methods for mapping the material remains of the camps that have been preserved until the present day in the local, mostly forested, landscape. Among the most important research problems was the issue of unknown and unmarked PoW burial sites and mass graves. The applied research methodology allowed, among other things, the locating of 60 structures, which can currently be interpreted as the quarters of Italian PoWs interned in Stalag VIII B (344) Lamsdorf at the end of the Second World War. The excavations ended with the identification by name of the first two Italian soldiers.

The Perception of Fascist and National Socialist Ideologies During the Second World War in Albania

The Albanian Communist Party was born as a Bolshevik-style party, endowed with a non-Bolshevik but social democratic program, such as popular democracy. To shed light on the factors that determined the arrival of the communist regime in Albania, it is necessary to start the analysis from its roots, that is, since the establishment of the communist regime in Albania. For his part, although the communist regime was established in Albania immediately after the end of World War II, the roots of the phenomenon must be sought from the beginning of the war, even a few months earlier when Albania was invaded on April 7, 1939, by fascist Italy. When Albania was invaded by fascist Italy, no one inside or outside the country predicted, nor could have predicted, that at the end of World War II, the Albanian Communist Party would take power into its own hands. There were subjective and objective reasons for this. First of all, when World War II broke out, Albania was the only country in the Balkans that did not have a Communist Party. However, the absence of the Communist Party was largely a subjective factor. The establishment of the communist regime in Albania was for objective reasons a completely paradoxical phenomenon. Albania, the youngest state in Europe, at the same time its most backward state, with a population of one million and forty thousand inhabitants, had no developed industry, ie no working class in the eyes of the proletariat, as conceived by Marxist doctrine. According to Marxist definitions, Albania was a micro-bourgeois country, that is, without capitalist owners and capitalist institutions, to the extent that they justified the socialist revolution. In addition, the Albanian population was overwhelmingly still illiterate. There were only a few isolated nuclei or communist groups with few members composed mainly of artisans and students, who were further characterized by ideological perversion and worse still by political rivalries between them. The question before historians is this: How can it be explained that despite all these disadvantages, the Albanian Communist Party, which was founded two and a half years after the occupation of the country by fascist Italy, on November 8, 1941, managed to face the war against the occupiers within three years. Nazi fascists and against internal nationalist factors, to take political power in Albania at the end of the Second World War? In addition, how is it that the Albanian Communist Party, unlike its Eastern European counterparts, seized political power on its own, without the presence of Soviet armies, which are not known to have invaded Albania? Albania's position during the Second World War and especially the National Liberation War must be judged by ourselves, regardless of who led it. We must judge it as we do in every historical event. The communist dictatorship that was established in Albania should not blind us to the judgment we give in the national liberation war. The communist regime is not a necessary offspring of the National Liberation War. In my opinion, the establishment of the communist regime is the result of mistakes made during the national liberation war, it is a consequence of the poverty of the political culture of the Albanian people, the lack of traditional political parties, the naivety of the Communist Party leaders, the illusions of united nationalists with the National Liberation Front, of myopia, of the leaders of the National Front, which were used by Enver Hoxha to realize under the umbrella of patriotic war his dictatorial ambitions.   Received: 25 December 2023 / Accepted: 25 February 2024 / Published: 23 April 2024

Internationalism of the Post-Cold War World: Clinton’s Foreign Policy for the Global Age

The end of the Cold War prompted a critical reassessment of America’s global role, particularly during the post-Cold War era led by the Clinton administration. Faced with a shifting geopolitical landscape, President Bill Clinton addressed challenges and opportunities, seeking to define America’s role in this transformed international arena. As the bipolar structure of the Cold War dissolved, geo-economics took precedence over geopolitics. The ‘end of history’ narrative signaled a departure from traditional boundaries, and Clinton grappled with the choice of maintaining leadership through global engagement and internationalism. This study analyzes Clinton’s foreign policy throughout his presidency, emphasizing key issues like terrorism and the Balkans. It explores how perceptions of American decline, both economically and militarily, influenced internationalist policies. Additionally, it delves into the impact of conceptual frameworks such as ‘democratic peace,’ ‘unipolar moment,’ and ‘soft power’ on Clinton’s decisions. Drawing on primary sources and influential literature, the research suggests that Clinton’s foreign policy represented a strategic blend of internationalism and pragmatism, addressing the complexities of the post-Cold War world. To conclude, this research contributes to understanding how the end of the Cold War reshaped the global geopolitical landscape and explores the ideological underpinnings guiding the United States in the post-Cold War international arena.   Received: 25 December 2023 / Accepted: 25 February 2024 / Published: 23 April 2024