Friendship Of Peoples Research Articles

A New Song for a New Motherland: Eurovision and the Rhetoric of Post‐Soviet National Identity

In March 2009 Russia's Channel One aired a live competition to choose Russia's entry for the 2009 Eurovision Song Competition, which was scheduled to be held in Moscow in two months time. The results were scandalous: Anastasia Prikhod'ko, a former participant in Russia's equivalent to the American Idol competition, Fabrika zvezd, who was Ukrainian in both citizenship and nationality, won with “Mamo” (Mother) an emotional ballad on the pain of love and female suffering that she performed half in Ukrainian and half in Russian. This article considers what Prikhod'ko's selection as Russia's national entry for Eurovision and the ensuing scandal tell us about the construction of Russian national identity in the post‐Soviet era and about Russia's attitude to its closest geographic neighbors. The author argues that Prikhod'ko's performance can best be understood as part of the larger phenomenon of post‐Soviet nostalgia: both the way “Mamo” was staged for the Eurovision international competition in Moscow and public statements made by a variety of cultural figures in defense of the song evoked Soviet aesthetics and Soviet rhetoric about the “friendship of peoples” (Druzhba narodov). In the context of Russia's on‐going quarrels with other former Soviet Republics, the presence of these nostalgic elements in “Mamo” inevitably seemed politically freighted: the song effectively juxtaposed to present tensions Soviet style “ethnic harmony” and hence, depending on one's point of view, either read as a touching appeal for peace and tolerance or as an veiled threat that hinted at the possible renewal of Russia's cultural dominance over the other former Soviet republics.

Young People's Friendship and Love Relationships and Technology: New Practices of Intimacy and Rethinking Feminism

For this study, I adopted a qualitative research design and did semi-structured in-depth interviews with 14 university students regarding their experiences of friendship and love to investigate how new technologies have affected their intimate relationship practices. I found that my respondents employed connectivity technology to control the extent to which they invested financial, time-based, and emotional costs in friendships. They maintained a “thin and simple’ emotional connection, which is also a type of intimacy, with most of their friends. In social networks, demonstrating “who I am’ and categorizing of friends, has comprised a digital life strategy necessary for controlling emotional costs. Furthermore, digital connections satisfied these students' needs for and imaginings regarding friendship and love and they performed caring or other types of close associations through the characteristics of “connected presence.” Finally, students employed digital writing to announce their love or relationship statuses, confess or profess their feelings, communicate, follow others, and repel pursuit from third parties. In particular, the female students adopted connectivity technology to create a personal erotic space and used Facebook as a platform for interacting with third parties, thereby enhancing their negotiation abilities. However, regarding love relationships, issues related to privacy rights and relationship boundary control, engendered by connectivity technology, are new topics that young students face, negotiate, and contemplate seriously. The findings of this study provided further insight into and reflection on discourse regarding feminism and intimate relationships.

‘Walking … just walking’: how children and young people's everyday pedestrian practices matter

This paper considers the importance of walking for many children and young people's everyday lives, experiences and friendships. Drawing upon research with 175 9- to 16-year-olds living in new urban developments in south-east England, we highlight key characteristics of (daily, taken-for-granted, ostensibly aimless) walking practices, which were of constitutive importance in children and young people's friendships, communities and geographies. These practices were characteristically bounded, yet intense and circuitous. They were vivid, vital, loved, playful, social experiences yet also dismissed, with a shrug, as ‘just walking’. We argue that ‘everyday pedestrian practices’ (after Middleton 2010, 2011) like these require critical reflection upon chief social scientific theorisations of walking, particularly the large body of literature on children's independent mobility and the rich, multi-disciplinary line of work known as ‘new walking studies’. In arguing that these lines of work could be productively interrelated, we propound ‘just walking’—particularly the often-unremarked way it matters—as a kind of phenomenon which is sometimes done a disservice by chief lines of theory and practice in social and cultural geography.

Expose of a Breakdown

Expose of a Breakdown Ingrid Hindell Iregard my pension as a social wage, and even though I wish it took my disability and the extra costs that brings into consideration, eighteen years ago, I felt privileged to be able to work in the community, not in a sheltered workshop. At this time, a number of us worked voluntarily for numerous little organizations when the government cut their funding and in effect, took away our jobs. It was around this time that I started a “stress cough.” Foolishly, I didn’t take much notice. I was enjoying “life”—studying, working, taking part in a documentary called “Untold Desires” and being a member of the “Friendship Group”—in which a group of us tackled the subject and nature of friendship for people with and without disabilities. . . . The processes and the cohesion of the group brought up a lot of “stuff” for me that I wasn’t able to articulate. It made me question the wisdom of my lifestyle up to then—of marrying a person without a physical disability, for example. My mother used to tell me to tell him to tidy the flat, not in the least realizing that: i) it was distressing that I couldn’t do this; ii) that given all our interests it was difficult to tidy up. (This situation was also not helped, I now realize, by us trying to live and run home businesses from my small three–roomed accommodation behind my parent’s home, without enough support worker hours. . . .) The flat was always cluttered, not conducive to encouraging a feeling of ease in us bringing clients onto the premises. As Robert’s massage workload grew, so did our underlying tension, I see now. And when I was starting to counsel other people with disabilities the situation was made worse. . . . Added to this, my mother had, just prior to this period in our lives, stopped giving us our main meal because we were becoming more and more interested in eating organic and vegetarian food. At the same time, listening to other group members’ stories made me realize how “undervalued” people with disabilities are in society as I had been brought up in a loving extended family and had not long been “out.” It made me realize how much people with disabilities were constrained by lack of governmental funding for recreational—especially relationship options—with each other and with able–bodied people. The government was trying to close down little advocacy organizations that could keep this issue in the forefront of policy makers’ minds. No wonder I was getting close to breaking point! [End Page E1] When I got really bad, my husband almost went mad himself trying to cope with me. I had been the outgoing partner in the relationship for the past 12 years. Now I was getting panic attacks and clinging like poison ivy. . . . And the therapists I went to at that stage didn’t help. The Naturopath was so expensive she made me much worse. She had told a “friend” of Rob’s that she would treat me for $30.00 a time. She did not say that she would present me with an ever– increasing bill every time I had an appointment—to pay her back when I could! And that her admin assistant would keep commenting, in my hearing, that people wouldn’t pay their bills on time. . . . At last, when the amount got to $450.00, I paid her all my savings, and managed to quit. I now also believe she treated me with a totally inappropriate therapy—colonic irrigation—for far too long, any natural therapist would say nowadays—five weeks! I believe it made my mental state worse. People say that an unquiet mind can stress the body into illness but I believe losing too much weight too fast as I certainly did, stressed my mind, instead of other way around. By this time I wasn’t only having panic attacks. I had slipped into, what I recently discovered, was a clinical depression. This brought in its wake, a terror so real, so all encompassing that I wonder I lived through a day of it—much less four...

Russian Empire of Pop: Post‐Socialist Nostalgia and Soviet Retro at the “New Wave” Competition

The article is an analysis of the “New Wave International Competition of Young Performers of Popular Music,” a televised spectacle in the music format of “estrada” (“stage song”), that has been held in Jurmala, Latvia, since 2002. The competition is discussed in terms of the history of its Soviet predecessor, the “Jurmala” competition that was held from 1985–1989 in the same concert hall, involving many of the same figures who organized “New Wave.” Originally a showcase for “all‐union” culture and interethnic relations in the mode of the “friendship of peoples,” in its last two years, that earlier competition became a stage for agitation in connection with national independence movements. In this light, the contemporary “New Wave” competition may be seen as a form of memory project. Eliding the separatist politics of the last years of “Jurmala,”“New Wave” reconstitutes the “friendship of peoples” model of multiethnic Russophone culture in which Russians are first among equals, for a television audience that encompasses not only Russia but many of the former Soviet and former socialist states. In some ways, this is a form of cultural imperialism, a projection of Russian soft power that matches projections of hard power into the ostensible Russian “sphere of influence.” Yet despite the aspiration to unification of the post‐Soviet and post‐Socialist audience, the competition may take on distinct political and cultural significance in various locations. In Latvia, it may represent a clever marketing move, taking advantage of the demand for ironically inflected “Soviet nostalgia.” In Russia, the project should be viewed not as “nostalgia,” a term that may properly be applied to projects relating to scenes of cultural life that are truly past, but rather as “soviet retro”–dedicated to the recovery of modes of political and cultural life that are still meaningful and subject to revival.

Longterm effects of compression method in the surgical treatment of bleeding haemorrhoids

Objective: Present study was undertaken to find out the long term effect of application of compression probe after haemorrhoidectomy in the treatment of bleeding haemorrhoids. Materials and methods: They study was carried out in the Department of Clinical Surgery, Russian People's Friendship University, Moscow, Russia, from January 1992 to December 2001, on 80 patients, equally divided into two groups, case (haemorrhoidectomy plus application of compression probe) and control (haemorrhoidectomy only). Results: Long term follow up showed higher good outcome in case group (82.1%) compared to control (53.8%) (P<0.05), satisfactory and unsatisfactory outcome was higher in control group (17.9% and 28.2%) compared to case group (12.8% and 5.1%). Conclusion: Application of compression problem after haemorrhoidectomy in patients with bleeding haemorrhoids gives better long term results. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol. 12 No. 02 April’13 Page 129-132 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjms.v12i2.14939

Dementia and Friendship: The Quality and Nature of the Relationships That Remain

Friendships are an integral part of the human experience. Yet, dementia often takes a toll on social relationships, and many friends withdraw. This research, however, focuses on friendships that remain, despite a diagnosis of dementia. It examines the quality of the friendships of people with dementia and long-term friendships. Data were collected through focus group interviews with people with early stage dementia and their care partners, and through interviews with designated friends. The findings show that people with dementia do have friends that remain and they have a wide variety of friendships, from those based on one shared activity to those of multifaceted deep relationships. The long-term friendships, which last across the various stages of dementia, appear to fall into two types: one, where the person with dementia has become more like a family member than a friend (suffusion); and the other where the diagnosis of dementia was the impetus for the relationship to become closer (progressive friendship).

BACTERIAL AND VIRAL DISEASES OF CROPS: DISTRIBUTION AND DIAGNOSTICS

A workshop devoted to «Problems of bacterial and viral plant diseases in agriculture and development of integrated plant protection» was held at April; 24 t h 2013 at Russian University of People's Friendship.

Parent–child relationships, friendship networks, and developmental outcomes of economically disadvantaged youth in Hong Kong

Abstract This research investigates factors conducive to the thriving of economically disadvantaged young people in Hong Kong. In particular, we examine ways in which the parent–child relationship and friendship networks, as the principal sources of support during the transition from childhood to adulthood, influence the developmental outcomes of this group of young people with regard to their mental health, positive identity, behavioral adjustment, resilience and academic achievement. Based on a survey of 479 young people recruited from community-based youth-service centers located in different districts of Hong Kong, the results of the present research support the hypotheses that parent–child relationships and friendship networks have significant positive effects on youth development among low-income young people. Our results also show that, when compared with friendship networks, the parent–child relationship is a stronger predictor of youth development, that is, a stronger parent–child relationship tends to correspond to a better developmental outcome. Moreover, our research provides empirical evidence regarding the influence that parents can have on shaping the quality of young people's friendship networks. The implications of our findings, both for future research and for service delivery to promote the well-being of economically disadvantaged young people, are discussed.

Internationalisation with the use of Arctic indigeneity: the case of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia

ABSTRACTOver a period of 70 years, the lifestyles and belief systems of indigenous Siberian peoples were transformed by Soviet policy, based on the idea of assimilation and homogenisation of the peoples in its territory, in compliance with the idea of a ‘people's friendship’. The fall of the Soviet Union has given people the opportunity to rebuild their identity, as well as to provide a means of cultural revival for each ethnic community. The case study of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in northern Siberia shows a new relationship, already started during perestroika and developing between the Russian Federation and its peoples. This relationship favours the development of each people's culture within the broader context of their integration into Russian society. The issue of the instrumentalisation of indigenous peoples’ cultural and religious heritage is part of a broader picture of a global affirmation of peoples’ indigenousness. The identification of ethnic Sakha (Yakuts) with other northern peoples is a means of entering the international political arena, pushing far away the geopolitical and cultural boundaries imposed by the Russian Federation and highlighting the idea of a circumpolar civilisation.

Local meanings and lived experiences of citizenship: voices from a women's organization in South Korea

This article examines how urban middle-class women in contemporary Korea understand the idea of citizenship and experience it in their lives. Focusing on the discourse of citizenship narrated by members of the People's Friendship Society (PFS), a leading women's organization with local branches, the article illuminates local meanings of citizenship and how gender and class inflect women's lived experiences of it. The analysis of the citizenship discourse shows the bottom-up process in the development of citizenship as a social status that binds individuals to a community. First, the PFS women's understanding of citizenship reveals the centrality, to citizenship, of their sense of belonging to a society where their lives are intermingled with those of others. Second, there is internal class differentiation among the PFS women in terms of how they relate to the category of citizen. Third, ambiguity shared by these women in their identification with citizen is intimately connected to the normalized view of private and public as oppositional spheres. On the basis of these findings, this article suggests that the expansion of citizenship to marginalized social groups, including but not limited to women, requires societal recognition of unpaid or underpaid reproductive labor as being critical to the maintenance of society.

Supporting the friendships of people with dementia

Using illustrative case examples, in this paper we explore the friendships of people with dementia in the early stages of the condition and the benefits of looking beyond the family as the ‘go to’ support network that practitioners tend to focus on in their work with people with dementia. The importance of participatory approaches in both research and practice for understanding the friendship experiences of people with dementia is highlighted. The case studies include a personal narrative on friendships from one of the authors, a person living with dementia. This is followed by an account of a peer support group for people with dementia where the interactions in the group are explored alongside consideration of the significance and outcomes of creating such social spaces for people with dementia. We pay particular attention to the emerging phenomenon of ‘facilitated friendships’ as practitioners work to support collective agency on the part of people with dementia.

Urban Residents' Movements and the Settlement of Foreigners in Japan: Activities of the Asian People's Friendship Society

Urban Residents' Movements and the Settlement of Foreigners in Japan: Activities of the Asian People's Friendship Society

Reconstructing Zhou Enlai's Escape from Shanghai in 1931: A Research Note

Reconstructing Zhou Enlai's Escape from Shanghai in 1931:A Research Note Lawrence Kessler (bio) More than thirty years ago, Norman Watts (1907- ?), an Englishman temporarily residing in the United States, spoke to a US-China People's Friendship Association audience about the role he played in helping Zhou Enlai (周恩來 1898-1976) escape Shanghai when Guomindang (國民黨 Nationalist Party, or GMD) agents were hunting him down in the 1930s.1 This proved to be a remarkable claim that at the time could not be substantiated. Several years ago, however, Roy Rowan (1920- ) published an account of his time in revolutionary China as an American reporter. He recounted how in August 1947 Zhou Enlai came to United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) headquarters in Kaifeng (開封) in Henan Province to complain that its supplies were not getting to the Communist-led "liberated areas" as promised. After finishing his official business, Zhou had dinner with UNRRA staff and reporters and talked with them into the night. At one point Zhou indicated that Norman Watts, a British businessman, had saved his life years earlier by helping him escape from Shanghai.2 Zhou's public acknowledgement of Watts's help, as recorded by Rowan, seemed to confirm what Watts had claimed many years before and led me to investigate the circumstances of Zhou's escape. Although these accounts link Watts to Zhou's escape from Shanghai, there are many problematical issues surrounding the event. First of all, Rowan's work implied that Zhou was referring to his leaving Shanghai after Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石 1887-1975]) staged his coup in April 1927, and that Watts smuggled Zhou out aboard a freighter bound for Wuhan. Zhou did in fact escape to Wuhan aboard a [End Page 112] British freighter in late May 1927,3 but Watts did not arrive in China until 1929. As for Watts, he thought-although he could not be certain since it had happened nearly fifty years earlier-that his aid to Zhou came after the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in January 1932.4 That could not be possible either, because Zhou was already in the Soviet Central Base Area (蘇區中央 Suqu zhongyang) in South China at that point. I argue that the escape from Shanghai to which Zhou and Watts referred occurred in neither 1927 nor 1932 but at the end of 1931. Beyond this confusion, there are far greater puzzling aspects of the story. The fact of Zhou's escape is widely known, but to my knowledge there is no careful study of exactly how and when he escaped and the route he took to reach the Central Soviet area. Although many of the sources differ substantially, it is still possible to reconstruct this critical time in Zhou's revolutionary career. And the story of his escape, when pieced together, throws new light on the political factionalism and fluidity of party politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Zhou and the CCP in Shanghai, 1927-1931 Before examining his escape, it might be helpful to describe briefly the situation facing Zhou and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in this period. After Jiang's coup in Shanghai and after the failure of various Communist uprisings in the countryside during the remainder of 1927, the CCP underwent successive policy and leadership changes from 1928 to 1931. Through it all, Zhou skillfully protected his position,5 and by the spring of 1931 he was in effect the actual leader of the Party even though he did not hold the position of general secretary. He was in charge, however, of military and soviet affairs and also directed the CCP secret service, which gave him a key position in the affairs of the underground party in Shanghai and other urban areas controlled by the GMD, and it is this role that is most germane to our story. In November 1928, Zhou Enlai set up and directed a Special Section of the Central Committee (中央特科 Zhongyang teke), whose tasks were twofold: build a [End Page 113] security network to protect the underground party and its members, and infiltrate the GMD's operations.6 In the latter task, Zhou had remarkable success. One of his subordinates, Gu Shunzhang (顧順章 1903...

Die erfundene Freundschaft: Propaganda für die Sowjetunion in Polen und in der DDR [The Invented Friendship: Propaganda for the Soviet Union in Poland and the GDR], and: Das sowjetische Massenfest [The Soviet Mass Festival] (review)

Reviewed by: Die erfundene Freundschaft: Propaganda für die Sowjetunion in Polen und in der DDR [The Invented Friendship: Propaganda for the Soviet Union in Poland and the GDR], and: Das sowjetische Massenfest [The Soviet Mass Festival] Balázs Apor Jan C. Behrends , Die erfundene Freundschaft: Propaganda für die Sowjetunion in Polen und in der DDR [The Invented Friendship: Propaganda for the Soviet Union in Poland and the GDR]. 438 pp. Cologne: Böhlau, 2006. 9783412230050. €49.90. Malte Rolf , Das sowjetische Massenfest [The Soviet Mass Festival]. 454 pp. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006. ISBN 9783936096637. €35.00. Interest in symbolic politics and political symbolism in the Soviet Union and Soviet-type regimes in Eastern and Central Eastern Europe has boomed over the last few years. A growing number of scholars have decided to study the symbolic side of such regimes and the way these polities relied on symbolic weaponry to advance their utopian goals. Apart from now-classic studies on communist propaganda, an increasing number of works focus on the symbolic building blocks of socialist regimes and the symbolic policies pursued by the leading political elites.1 More specifically, the topics of these recent publications include political rituals, the culture of heroism, strategies of myth creation, political iconography, and so on.2 Moreover, there is a pronounced tendency to associate Soviet-type regimes and communist ideology [End Page 472] with political religions.3 The two German-language books under review here also belong to the field of symbolic politics and political symbolism in the Soviet Union under Stalin's rule and on the peripheries of the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Jan Behrends's intriguing study, based on his 2005 Potsdam dissertation, concentrates on "friendship propaganda" in East Germany and in Poland between 1945 and 1956. The book focuses on how the political elites in East Germany and Poland tried to overcome the traditionally antagonistic cultural relationship with Soviet Russia by promoting the idea of the friendship of peoples. The popularization of friendship with the Soviet Union in these two war-stricken countries, where historical hostility toward Russia and the Soviet Union was remarkable, was meant to create a sense of fraternity and unity of the peoples under Soviet rule. Behrends provides an interesting analysis of the amount of effort invested in the promotion of the idea of friendship, the range of institutions and party functionaries who were involved in the construction of such an illusion, and the means that were used by the party apparatus in the popularization process. The author puts special emphasis on the discursive features of the friendship propaganda and the way the friendship discourse was invented and shaped by various institutions and individuals according to Soviet expectations. Behrends generally interprets the creation of symbolic ties among Moscow, Poland, and East Germany in the context of Sovietization. He argues that the cult of the Soviet Union was introduced in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe with the aim of consolidating Soviet rule in the region and advancing the utopian ideological goals of Stalin's regime. On the basis of his case studies, the author makes a distinction between different phases of Sovietization: pragmatic and utopian. According to Behrends, during the phase of pragmatic Sovietization (before the takeover of communist parties) the policies pursued by the East German and Polish regimes took into consideration popular political beliefs and expectations (i.e., an appeal to national traditions), whereas in the phase of utopian Sovietization the regime's ideological concerns enjoyed priority, and the populations under control were mobilized accordingly. Without questioning the claim that Sovietization had two distinct phases in Poland as well as in East Germany, it is important to highlight the problems that arise from a collision of the semantic fields of the concepts "pragmatic" and "Sovietization." One is tempted to claim that utopianism is an inherent element of the concept "Sovietization" and thus the phrase "pragmatic Sovietization" is difficult to interpret. It is beyond doubt that the communist parties of Eastern Europe [End Page 473] pursued pragmatic policies with the aim of strengthening their social base, and it is also true that the Red Army often acted in favor of local...

Borat, Multiculturalism,Mnogonatsional'nost

In this article, Sacha Baron Cohen'sBoratappears as just the latest in a decades- long exchange between American and Soviet models of minority uplift: on the one side, civil rights and multiculturalism; on the other,druzhba narodov(the friendship of peoples) andmnogonatsional'nost’(multi-national- ness). Steven S. Lee argues diat, with Borat, multiculturalism seems to have emerged as the victor in this exchange, but that the film also hearkens to a not-too-distant Soviet alternative. Part 1 shows how Borat gels with recent leftist critiques of multiculturalism, spearheaded by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj żižek. Part 2 relates Borat to a largely submerged history of American minorities drawing hope from mnogonatsional'nost', as celebrated in Grigorii Aleksandrov's 1936 filmCircus.The final part presents Borat as choosing neither multiculturalism nor mnogonatsional'nost', but rather the continued opposition of the two, if not a “third way.” For a glimpse of what this might look like, the paper concludes with a discussion ofAbsurdistan(2006) by Soviet Jewish American novelist Gary Shteyngart.

Druzhba Narodov or second-class citizenship? Soviet Asian migrants in a post-colonial world

Increasing numbers of citizens from the eastern and southern regions of the USSR sought and obtained residence in the ‘two capitals’ of Leningrad and Moscow following the Second World War. This article exposes the uniqueness of late Soviet periphery to core migration, all the while placing it within a global post-colonial framework. Soviet policies that promoted the ‘friendship of peoples’ spared migrants from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Asian regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic the ethnic violence and ghettoization that accompanied parallel movements to Western industrial capitals. Most appreciated the opportunities that awaited them, even as social spending on the periphery forestalled substantial economic migration. This paper argues nonetheless that subtle tensions existed on official and unofficial levels. Oral histories as well as sociological surveys demonstrate that nationalist and racist ideas and encounters challenged the friendship of peoples. Migration emerges as a complex and personal process as Asian residents of Leningrad and Moscow weighed possibilities, benefits, and risks of integration or separation.

The Russian Roots of National Socialism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945 by Michael s> Kellogg (review)

358 SEER, 85, 2, 2007 Kostyrchenkohas interestingclaims to make about the notorious Doctors' Plot. He believes it to have grown out of Stalin's long-standing concern about his health and the belief that medical advice for him to cut down on his work load was actuallypart of a plot to undermine his authority.These fears merged with broader concerns about state security, into which his minions dragged the Jews. While Stalin certainly allowed the case to go forward, Kostyrchenkoclaims that the impact of the Doctors' Plot, and the antisemitic hysteriawhich it generated,was alreadybeing muted on ordersfrom the top when Stalin sufferedhis fatalstrokein March of I953.This was because Stalin recognized that the releaseof untrammelledinter-ethnichostilitywould wreck the Soviet system which at least theoretically stood for the 'friendship of peoples'. He also feared that such naked chauvinism would discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of 'progressivecircles' abroad. These claims, while very interesting,demand more evidence than Kostyrchenkopresentshere. He is on firmergroundwhen he arguesagainstthe assumption,widely-held both at the time and since, that the frenzy surroundingthe Doctors' Plot was being manipulated by the NKVD to provoke anti-Jewishpogroms. These planned disorderswould have been used as an excuse to resettle the Jewish populationsof large cities such as Moscow or Leningradin Siberiaor Central Asia. Kostyrchenkosupportshis claim by noting the absence in the archives of the lists that would have been necessaryto identify and removeJews. The mere resortto the notorious article5 of the passportwould not have sufficed, given the high rate of Jewish assimilation,exemplified by mixed marriages, whose offspringcould hide theirJewish origins. Kostyrchenko's work is essential reading for an understanding of t.he policies of late Stalinism,and notjust in the realm of SovietJewry. As regards the latter, he has unearthed an enormous amount of material about the way in which anti-Jewishprejudices were integrated into the broadler Soviet worldview, ironically against one of the most 'Soviet' sections of t-he population. He does a superbjob of putting it into a wider context. Department ofHebrew andJewishStudies JOHN D. KLIER University College London Kellogg, Michael. TheRussianRootsofNationalSocialism: W'hite Emigres andthe MakingofNationalSocialism, I9I7-I945. New Studiesin European History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2005. xiii + 327 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. f48.oo: $8o.oo. MICHAEL KELLOGG was clearly 'onto something' when he chose to write his PhD on the role of the German-Whiteemigre organization'Aufbau'.'Reconstruction :Economic-PoliticalOrganizationfor the East', to give it its full title, flourishedin the formativestage of Nazism's developmentboth as an ideology and as a revolutionary nationalist organization between I9I7 and 1923. Its neglect by scholars hitherto is curious given that it hosted virulent forms of anti-Bolshevismand antisemitism, actively pursued the policy of destroying and occupying Soviet Russia, and one of its members, Alfred Rosenberg, REVIEWS 359 became, after Goebbels and Hitler, the most prominent Nazi ideologue and self-styledexpert on culturalpolicy. Kellogg's reconstruction of the historical background to Aufbau provides valuable insights into the maelstrom of counter-revolutionaryultranationalismand racismstirredup by the Russian Revolution, and the organizational history has been carried out with impressive scholarly verve. The resultinganalysissuccessfullyfillsthe lacuna pointed out by WalterLaqueurin his RussiaandGermany: A Centu?y of Conflict (Boston, MA, I965) when he commented on the lack of works assessingthe 'tangibleand substantialimpact of refugees from Russia' on the origins of National Socialism. Any Slavonicist whose research concerns the inter-warperiod and the complex relationship between Nazism and Soviet Russia will have to take this book into account. Nevertheless, it betraysa weaknesstypical of monographsbased on PhDs, the most notorious example of which is William Goldhagen's Hitler'sWilling Executioners (London, I996). This is to overestimatethe importanceof the topic under investigation within the greater scheme of things to the point where it becomes the 'key' to a phenomenon which is in fact multifaceted and complex. Occultist schools of 'alternative'Nazi theory habituallycommit the same error. For example, Kellogg drastically overstates his case when he argues that Aufbau played 'a pivotal role in guiding National Socialistsand White emigres in a joint anti-Entente,anti-WeimarRepublic, anti-Bolshevik, and anti-Semitic struggle' (p. 6). Whatever role Aufbau propaganda and members might have had in crystallizingHitler's policy towards Russia, his imperialism,racialtheory of the...

The friendships of people with a learning disability

What do friendships mean to people with learning disabilities? Rachel Brackenridge and Karen McKenzie describe a study designed to explore the qualities that individuals look for in their friends

Best Friends of People With Mental Illness and Mental Retardation

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article LettersFull AccessBest Friends of People With Mental Illness and Mental RetardationJames R. Dudley, Ph.D., M.S.W.James R. DudleySearch for more papers by this author, Ph.D., M.S.W.Published Online:1 May 2005https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.56.5.610-aAboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail To the Editor: Research that focuses on the friendships of people with a dual diagnosis of mental illness and mental retardation is not evident in the literature. Virtually all of the friendship literature has focused on people with a single diagnosis of either mental illness or mental retardation. The findings of published studies largely suggest that people with a single diagnosis tend to look to primarily staff members and to other clients with similar diagnoses to be their friends (1). Studies also reveal that people outside the service system are sometimes identified as friends, however challenging these relationships may be (2). Issues related to stigma are among the major obstacles to making friends, according to the reports of people with mental retardation (3).In an interview study conducted in 2001, a total of 90 people with a dual diagnosis were asked about their friendships. Responses to questions about the person whom they identified as their "best friend" are reported here. Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and the study was approved by the institutional review board of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Participants were asked to name the attribute that they like the most about their best friend, what they do together, and what they wish they could do. Responses were compared among four types of friends—other clients, staff members, relatives, and outside friends.The 90 participants were former class members of a federal lawsuit in North Carolina (4). Although they had formerly lived in institutional settings, almost all lived in the community when the study was conducted. The sample included 51 men (57 percent) and 39 women (43 percent). They ranged in age from 26 to 74 years (mean age, 47±12 years). Forty-five (50 percent) were white, 44 (49 percent) were African American, and one was a Native American. Information on diagnoses was obtained from case records. Seventy-nine (88 percent) had a psychiatric diagnosis, including schizophrenia (32 participants, or 36 percent), affective disorder (32 participants, or 36 percent), and impulse control disorder (15 participants, or 17 percent). All had a diagnosis of mental retardation, either mild or moderate.Participants most often identified either another client or a staff member as their best friend (55 participants, or 61 percent). Best friends with whom they had the most frequent contact were also clients or staff members. Best friends who were known the longest were more likely to be family members or outside friends. The preferred attributes of a best friend seemed most varied for outside friends. A few best friends were spouses, were members of the same church, or shared an activity like sports. However, more than a fourth of the outside friendships were inactive.Participants who identified staff members as their best friends (27 participants, or 30 percent) often indicated that the friendship was mutual, but the staff members who were involved usually did not agree. Also, many who identified staff members as friends expressed no desire for help in finding other friendships. This finding suggests that many staff could focus more on teaching friendship skills and facilitating opportunities to develop other friendships. Several projects across the country have extensive experience in helping people with disabilities build and sustain friendships in the community (5). Agencies that serve people with disabilities could also focus staff training on some of the issues that emerge from this study. Follow-up research might consider such questions as what factors best predict the formation and stability of outside friendships, and how the friendships of people with dual diagnoses are similar and different from those of people with a single diagnosis.AcknowledgmentThis study was supported through a contract with the division of mental health, developmental disabilities, and substance abuse services of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.Dr. Dudley is affiliated with the department of Social Work in the College of Health and Human Services at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.