Local Communist Research Articles

Memorialization of the "liberators" in Transcarpathia during the period of preventive Sovietization (1944 – 1946)

In 1944 – 1946, during the preventive Sovietization of Transcarpathian Ukraine, the local communist authorities initiated radical changes in its symbolic landscape in order to influence the collective memory of the population. The result of this policy was the appearance in the region in 1945 of monuments in honor of the Heroes of the Carpathians (soldiers of the Red Army), who died as a result of active hostilities in October 1944. Officially, the perpetuation of the memory of the fallen Red Army soldiers took place as a manifestation of the people's initiative of the local population in gratitude for the liberation from fascism, including from the “centuries-old Hungarian slavery”. However, archival materials and oral historical research prove that this process was an element of the traditional Soviet policy of memory, initiated by the command of the 4th Ukrainian Front. As a result, a number of memorial resolutions of the People's Council of Transcarpathian Ukraine were adopted in a short time. As a result, the graves of the Red Army were enlarged, fundraising was organized among the population, and the construction of monuments to the fallen liberators was started and successfully completed in all regional centers of the region. The peculiarity was that the installation of monuments in honor of the Heroes of the Carpathians took place long before the end of the Great Patriotic War / World War II, which was not observed in other territories of the Ukrainian SSR. One of the other paradoxes was that, so, the representatives of the Hungarian minority of the region demonstrated their appreciation for their "liberation from Hungarian domination".

THE STRUGGLE OF THE SOVIET AUTHORITY AGAINST THE «REMNANTS OF UNIAT» IN THE UKRAINIAN SSR AT THE BREAK OF THE 1970s – 1980s

The key methods of the Ukrainian SSR party authorities to counter the attempts of reviving the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the western Ukrainian regions at the break of the 80s-90s of the XX century were considered. It was noted that in the late 1970s in this region, particularly in Galicia, Greek-Catholic believers and the clergy measurably intensified their activity, which was evident mainly in houses of worship attendance, traditional rites observance, letters issued to the Council for Religious Affairs of the Soviet Union Ministers with the requirement to register religious communities, clandestine ordination of the clergy, etc. It was stated that in order to counter the religious influence intensification of the Russian Orthodox Church on the population, as well as to prevent negative anti-social manifestations of «remnants of Uniat», local Communist Party committees and Soviet authorities carried out a number of propaganda and mass political events to expose anti-Soviet religious ideology, in particular, «the reactionary role of the Uniat Church in the history of the Ukrainian people». It was noted that the Communist Party of Ukraine took concrete measures to step up anti-religious propaganda in Western Ukrainian regions, as well as to promote the advantages of the Soviet mode of life. It was alleged that the activities of Greek Ca¬tholic believers were discussed at the Council for Religious Affairs of the Soviet Union Ministers sessions of the Ukrainian SSR in the regions of Western Ukraine, party rallies at different levels, meetings of the ideological activists of the regions, seminars of cultural and educational wor¬kers, district and regional atheist conferences. It was noted that the Communist Party of Ukraine paid considerable attention to the media, which should have covered the historical aspects of the «anti-popular backbone of Uniat Church».

Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty

It is hard to recover any sense of open-endedness and possibility in the early phase of the Cold War: the Red Army had its boots on the ground in Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, and Berlin, and Stalinist rhetoric rose to a new pitch of “anticosmopolitan” xenophobia. But Naimark, with great perspicacity, insists on a more complex picture. He draws a portrait of a “hyperrealist” Stalin, who had no interest in provoking the Western allies and declined to press the local communist cause in places (notably Greece) where it seemed to have chances of success. The ideological rigidity of the late Stalin era was belied by the flexibility and pragmatism Stalin showed in the international arena. He distinguished between core and peripheral areas of Soviet interest, and even in the core understood that it was preferable to bring about “people's democracy” by something other than naked violence. The Danish island of Bornholm offered the Soviets a potential “Gibraltar of the Baltic,” but their troops withdrew in 1946 after eleven months of occupation, securing handsome financial compensation but no territory. In Poland, the most important country in the Eastern bloc for Soviet geopolitical goals, Stalin was willing to tolerate Władysław Gomułka's indigenous (and anti-Semitic) version of communism up to a point. Gomułka was eventually arrested, but, as a relatively popular non-Jewish Polish communist, he was spared the show trial and execution that was meted out to communist leaders considerably less awkward than he.But Stalin does not deserve too much credit. He may have been more flexible than his doctrine implied, but he retained some ideological blinkers and was capable of serious errors of judgment, notably over the blockade of Berlin in 1948–49. The true heroes of Naimark's story are not the Bolshevik dictator and his plenipotentiaries but the local political elites who held their nerve and set their sights on regaining sovereignty, aiming neither to antagonize the Soviets nor to capitulate to them. The Danes mounted a charm offensive: the Soviet commander on Bornholm was treated to gracious hospitality by the royal couple in Copenhagen. At the other end of Europe, and in a very different political culture, the Albanian communist leader, Enver Hoxha, took advantage of the Soviet-Yugoslav split to achieve an improbable Cold War autonomy for his tiny country. Perhaps the most powerful of Naimark's seven case studies is Finland, exposed due to its long border with the USSR and its strategic importance, and subject to intense pressure from Stalin's henchman Andrei Zhdanov in the late 1940s. The Finns made concessions, providing large and punctual deliveries of agricultural produce and even putting wartime politicians on trial. Once again, though, they secured the main prize of sovereignty.These European elites were also, remarkably, able to revive representative democratic politics. Claims to sovereignty were far more compelling if they could be shown to have a popular mandate, and here European peoples played their part. The continent was hungry, devastated, and traumatized in the period 1945–48, but it was also eager for renewal and agency. Turnout at postwar elections was often astonishingly high. The politicians that people voted for were tough, often charismatic, but also mature, pragmatic, and nonpopulist: they were determined to recover sovereignty but understood that this goal was achievable only by careful maneuvering within the emerging geopolitical order. As Naimark suggests briefly in his conclusion, there are some lessons here for today's European elites.

Community pantries initiatives: community response to the deeper issue of poverty.

To the editor In a recently published correspondence, the author tries to understand the existence of community pantries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The program, according to the author not only builds a virtue of solidarity among its volunteers but also recognizes that the program can be tainted with the vice of laziness knowing that the recipients can become ‘too dependent and lazier’. A question, therefore, was posed by the author: ‘Should the community pantries cease to operate to avoid the poor/needy of having been engulfed with laziness, thus, encouraging idleness and tolerating their helplessness?’1 I wish to build further this discussion considering that there is already pressure coming from the government and the barangay to shut down the operation of community pantries due to various health and security measures being violated by the latter, or to consolidate pantries into a single one.2 Another reason was the violent measure of the government to red-tag organizers of community pantries, which led to temporarily halted operations and forcing residents dependent on the pantry to go home empty-handed.3 This move by the government caused an uproar among Filipinos and called the move ‘sickening’. One of the spokesperson of NTF-ELCAC (National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict) in his TV interview likened Ms, Non, an organizer of community pantry to Satan.4

Soviet Espionage in France between the Wars

After the Bolsheviks consolidated their newly won power, they looked toward the Western democracies to achieve additional victories. Under cover of diplomatic recognition, trade agreements, and local communist parties, Soviets sent numerous clandestine agents abroad to pursue national security objectives, including theft of military and industrial secrets on a large scale. France, Britain, and the United States were the main targets in which, organizationally, Soviet intelligence used a consistent pattern. As an existential threat, France was the first priority until displaced by the fear of German rearmament. France represented a rich resource for advanced military and industrial technology that the Soviets needed to transform Russia’s infrastructure. In 1935, France and Russia signed a mutual defense pact that effectively ended Soviet espionage in France.

Soviet Americanists, Academic Exchanges, the KGB and the Promotion of Video Media from Capitalist America during the Cold War

This essay is an attempt, made by using the personal stories of Soviet Americani-sts, to study the role of Soviet academic visitors, approved and supervised by the KGB, in promoting the cultural products from the USA - mainly such visual media as films and television - in the USSR during the period of academic exchanges after 1959. During their visits to the United States, Soviet Americanists used their leisure time not only for sightseeing, visiting museums and shopping, but also for various forms of cultural entertainment, from watching films and television shows to visiting concerts of classical and popular music. These experiences eventually affected the recommenda-tions about American cultural products, which Soviet visitors submitted to the KGB and their supervisors after their return home. During the 1970s and the 1980s, Soviet admi-nistration benefited from such useful advice about American popular films and televi-sion programs, which could be promoted in the USSR. Even the KGB administration in the Soviet Union studied the lists of recommendations made by those scholars, and used them for promoting the "progressive, humanistic" American cultural products among local Communist and Komsomol leaders for the education of Soviet audience.

Weiss-Wendt , Anton Putin's Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control over the Past (review)

SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 378 The treatment of the interview data thematically allows for a comparison of the variety of experiences in each of the subjects under review, but it also serves to obscure the single life story thread that might otherwise have been written. Helpful very brief biographical data on nine of the respondents, on whose testimony McKinney draws most regularly, is provided in the introductory chapter, but readers are left to piece together the remainder on their own. As is now becoming standard for academic texts, this book has clearly been produced with electronic access and distribution in mind, including the sale and download of individual chapters. Useful cross-references are included to direct the reader to related themes and areas of discussion in other sections of the book. One downside, however, is that whilst each of the chapters has its own short bibliography at the end, there is no overall comprehensive bibliography for the complete volume. Whilst the index provides an outline guide to specific topics discussed in the text, it is not particularly detailed. This volume is likely to find its place in Russian and Soviet women’s history and gender studies. As those of us who remain fascinated with Russian history will already be aware and as McKinney references the remark of one of her own respondents in the conclusion, ‘In Russia, everything changes in five years, but nothing changes in 200 years’ (p. 278). University of Gloucestershire Melanie Ilic Weiss-Wendt, Anton. Putin’s Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control over the Past. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2021. x + 326 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index.£85.00. The politics of history has become increasingly important for the current Russian regime. Anton Weiss-Wendt offers an extensive overview, covering all the central aspects — plus some rather peripheral ones. His account begins with the Commission against the falsification of history, established in 2005 by Dmitrii Medvedev and explicitly intended to combat what the Kremlin regarded as attacks on Russia. Instead of trying to ascertain the substance underlying such accusations against others, Weiss-Wendt immediately turns the tables on the Russians and argues that the Russian state is practising what it attributes to others: the falsification of history. Indeed, Russian officialdom often serves up dubious, one-sided, tendentious versions of historical events. Some statements made by former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinskii, for instance, are simply ludicrous. Also very disturbing are the many examples which Weiss-Wendt gives of how the authorities REVIEWS 379 attempt to muzzle critical voices, and even persecute them. Although most of what he documents here is known from other sources, this is in my view the most important and valuable part of the book. That being said, I must point out several problematic aspects. Weiss-Wendt claims that he ‘strives for objectivity’ and avoids ‘emotional language’ (p. 255). According to a scholar quoted on the back-cover blurb, the analysis is ‘objective and the tone courteous’. I beg to differ, on both counts. Rather, Weiss-Wendt seems to be on a crusade, seeking to indict more than to explain. The book abounds in sweeping generalizations supported by only weak documentation.History politics inRussia is presentedasacentrallyorganized, top–down enterprise: ‘what may appear as an exercise in pluralism is actually a massive operation rigidly coordinated from the top’ (p. 43), but this flies in the face of much of the material Weiss-Wendt presents. To give just one example, we are told that around one hundred Stalin statues have been erected in Russia under Putin. If this was a ‘massive operation rigidly coordinated from the top’, surely that would indicate a conscious and deliberate campaign of official re-Stalinization. Indeed, Weiss-Wendt maintains that Stalin is currently making a ‘rapid ascent’ in the Russian public sphere, and that Stalinism has ‘penetrated the state’s foundational myth’ (p. 119). In fact, however, the vast majority of these statues have been financed and built by local Communist Party organizations, or a quack Ossetian activist who believes that Stalin was a fellow Ossetian. Many initiatives have been stopped or obstructed by (local) authorities; and due to the difficulties in obtaining an official...

The policy of proletarisation of education based on the example of educational institutions of Moscow department of professional education

The article considers the process of proletarisation of secondary and lower vocational schools and their results. Certain methods of forming the social composition of students are highlighted and described n the example of admission campaigns to educational institutions of Moscow department of professional education. Concrete examples show the adoption of the principle of class selection for admission to technical schools, factory schools, and professional schools. The representatives of working and peasant youth took advantage of enrolling them to educational institutions. The features of the principle of sending students to educational institutions as a way to improve the social composition of students are revealed. Travel orders were issued by regional and local Communist Party and professional organisations. The presence of travel order increased the opportunity of admission, although that did not guarantee it. The article also shows the role of ideological upbringing of students in the context of the policy of proletarisation. Political and educational activities were carried out within the framework of teaching a course in social studies, extracurricular class activities, as well as the efforts of representatives of the Russian Communist Youth Union. In the course of the study the materials of reports on admission campaigns to vocational and technical educational institutions in Moscow and Moscow Province were analysed. In conclusion we note the progress in formation of the composition of students from the position of class selection.

Національна політика польських комуністів у 1943–1945 рр.

Introduction. The Polish state was multi-ethnic prior to its partition among Austria, Prussia and Russia. Its political goals did not require linguistic, religious, or ethnic homogeneity. This historical fact was perceived by part of the Polish political elite as one of the factors that led to the decline of the state. However, the interwar policy of the Second Rzeczpospolita was determined by individuals aimed at supporting ethnic diversity: thirty percent of the citizens of the Second Rzeczpospolita were national minorities - Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarusians, Germans, Slovaks, Jews, and others. Only after World War II the communist elites finally embodied the ideal of right-wing radicals, cleansing Poland of national minorities. The article considers the “third model” of the national policy of post-war Poland, which evolved towards forced evictions and violence against non-Poles. Purpose. The authors aim to identify the goals of the national policy of the Polish Communists in the USSR and in Poland, transformed into the purification of the state from nationalities that were considered hostile to their state. Results. The propaganda goals of the national policy of the Polish communists who spent the war years in the Soviet Union are clarified. Having formed the Union of Polish Patriots and founded weekly “Free Poland”, the leader of the Union, Wanda Vasylewska, and her immediate entourage began informational propaganda in order to convince compatriots of the need to get rid of the eastern voivodships and for the noble purposes of the Soviet leadership regarding the population of the annexed lands in 1939 and 1940. For this reason, a campaign was launched to discredit the pre-war governments and accuse them not only of enslaving national minorities but also of the fall of the Polish state in 1939. The Soviet leadership, for its part, implemented three strategic projects: the first persuaded the Poles to recognize the de facto borders of Poland after the Soviet invasion on September 17, 1939; the second imposed the need to form its own armed forces on the territory of the USSR as an opportunity to return to the homeland, and for Stalin as a way to control the armed forces that would liberate Poland from occupation and provide Stalin with control over the entire territory of Poland; the third project prepared public opinion for the perception of the USSR as an ally. Disagreements in the solution of the national question by local communists by 1945 evolved towards the forced eviction of the non-Polish population in the USSR, which indicates the Soviet factor as determining in the national policy of the communist government of post-war Poland. Originality. The text exposes the hidden goals of the national policy of the communist elites of the Polish state, which received power from the hands of the Soviet military command and special services and depended entirely on them. The propaganda slogans of “saving national minorities from the exploitation of bourgeois governments” proclaimed by the Soviet and Polish Communists concealed the irredentist goals of the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the nationalist goals, on the other. Conclusion. For the communist leadership of Poland, whose chances of seizing power were strengthened with the victorious offensive of the Red Army in 1944, resolving the issue of national minorities on the border was of political significance. One of the leading communist leaders, Boleslaw Bierut, considered the creation of a mono-ethnic state to be a happy solution to the problems of national minorities in Poland. The measures taken led to the desired result: within two years after the end of the war, the number of national minorities in Poland decreased by 60 percent. Most remained in the western (German) and south-eastern (Ukrainian) voivodships. The number of Jews decreased in all voivodships. In 2002, during the census, 96.7 percent of the population identified themselves as Poles.

Surrogate Infrastructure: The Noncommercial Circulation of Chinese Films in the Early Cold War

Abstract Recent scholarship elucidates the extent to which Chinese literary and film culture during the high socialist period (1949–1976) was engaged with the world. This article builds upon the literature by examining how Chinese films were distributed and exhibited in this period in nonsocialist countries. With Australia as my case study, I argue that China exported films to nonsocialist countries mainly noncommercially, that is, not for profit but for propaganda and diplomacy. Once there, Chinese films were disseminated and shown with the help of a variety of local communist, leftist, or otherwise People's Republic of China (PRC)—friendly individuals and organizations. The films, therefore, circulated in the world not just through the formal alliances among brother nations of the socialist bloc, but also because of what I term a “surrogate infrastructure” that bound various peoples and communities on the left at both the local and global levels. By consulting Chinese government documents as well as Australian newspapers, I demonstrate that, despite the language barrier, a didactic film art, and a Cold War geopolitical context that impeded the global flow of Chinese films, the noncommercial route nevertheless limned an alternative mapping of the 1950s.

Początki ruchu komunistycznego na Górnym Śląsku (1918–1924)

The defeat of the German Empire in World War I contributed to the radicalisation of social and political sentiment in Germany. In the territory of Upper Silesia, a borderland of the German Reich, these conflicts strengthened national antagonisms. In such a situation the Communist Party of Upper Silesia was created at the end of 1918, achieving serious organisational successes and greatly influencing the attitude of a large number of industrial workers. These local communists sought to channel radical social moods into a communist revolution, but they collided with and lost to Polish and German nationalism. At the time of the decisive battle for Upper Silesia’s nationalities, the communist movement was seriously weakened and did not matter in the struggle for the future of the region. After the division of Upper Silesia in 1922, the structures of the Communist Party of Upper Silesia were incorporated on a territorial basis into the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) or the Communist Party of Poland (KPP). The communists operating in the Polish Silesia (Silesian voivodship) region managed to take advantage of mass strikes in 1923 and led to civil unrest. An attempt to escalate this tension was hindered by the pacification action carried out by state authorities. The most important activists were imprisoned and the party itself had to go underground, sharing the fate of the KPP. The communists active in the KPD also tried to lead the population of the German part of Upper Silesia into revolt but, although they were close to success several times, did not manage to channel the strike into a communist revolution. However, they remained one of the three most influential political parties in the German Upper Silesian Province.

Apparatchiks and Enterprises: The Case of the Warsaw Region in 1950–1970

In the period 1950–1970, the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) managed the economy and all enterprises. However, the party central authorities were unable to manage every single plant directly. One of the most important elements of the governing system was the local communist party apparatus, which supervised factories in the regions. This article examines the strategies of local apparatchiks in their relations with the factory managers. Using archival documents of PUWP from the Warsaw area, this article identifies the prevailing behaviours of party actors and changes in their strategies over time.

Communism in Cold War Belfast, 1945–1962

This article traces the history of communism in Belfast during 1945-62. Beginning with an assessment of the local Communist Party’s strength and ambitions in the immediate post-war period, it examines rapid membership decline and deteriorating relations with the Northern Ireland Labour Party, suggesting these developments were exacerbated by the onset of the Cold War, internationally and domestically, and rising tensions relating to the Irish National Question in the late 1940s. It argues that communists were able to maintain their influence over industrial relations in Belfast, even as they adopted an increasingly anti-partitionist posture on the Irish ‘National Question’. Indeed, the article shows that the Cold War, particularly in its domestic manifestation, directly reinforced the Communist Party’s latent anti-partitionism.

The Israeli Peace Camp

75 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 43, No.3, Spring 2020 The Israeli Peace Camp Galia Golan* Israel has a very active civil society that includes quite a large array of peace organizations. In fact, the longer the occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip that began in 1967 lasts, the more such groups multiply. However, this is not a contradiction. Rather the growth of this sector of civil society is commensurate with the growing frustration and even despair of many in the Israeli public regarding the possibilities for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an end to the occupation. Therefore, individuals and groups have sought new, untried methods to promote the cause of peace, created new frameworks and the possibility of addressing more and different audiences. This article will try to address the various types of groups, their distinctive features, and their roles over the years with regard to this intractable conflict. What will be more difficult to ascertain is the efficacy of these groups.1 Indeed it is often impossible to judge the impact of civil society and social movement groups, especially those with the amorphous goal of peace. It is also almost impossible to draw a direct line of causality between groups’ actions and governmental decisions. Leaders are hesitant to credit a movement, or anyone but themselves, with the success of achieving peace. Moreover, many factors are at play in reaching a successful conclusion such as a peace agreement and end to the conflict. These might include the *Galia Golan is Darwin Professor emerita of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was chair of the Political Science Department. More recently, she was Head of the Program in Diplomacy and Conflict Studies at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. Golan has published 10 single-authored books, most recently Israeli Peacemaking Since 1967: Factors for the Breakthroughs and Failures. She has co-authored Non-state Actors in the Middle East: Factors for Peace and Democracy and co-edited Spoilers and Coping with Spoilers in the Israeli-Arab Conflict. Golan is the recipient of many honors, including the Israel Political Science Association 2007 Award for “Lifetime Contribution,” the 2019 Scholar/Activist Award from the International Studies Association, the International Studies Association “Distinguished Scholar” Award 2016, and the 1995 New Israel Fund “Alice Shalvi Women in Leadership” Award. 1 See Galia Golan, “The Impact of Peace and Human Rights NGOs on Israeli Policy,” in Galia Golan and Walid Salim (eds.), Non-State Actors in the Middle East for Peace and Democracy, Routledge, 2013, pp. 28-41. 76 parties themselves; third parties; the domestic, regional, and global environments; public opinion and public discourse; the media; and more. All this makes it difficult, if not impossible, to determine the contribution of peace groups in Israel, as well as anywhere else, to the end product. There were always peace groups in Israel, even in the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine before the United Nations granted statehood in 1948. The pre-state group, Brit Shalom, for example, was not an activist organization but, rather, a collection mainly of intellectuals (most notably, Martin Buber) who believed that Jews and Arabs could and should live together peacefully in a joint state. Intellectual groups like this were not uncommon while more activist peace organizations were often sponsored by local Communists.2 However, all of these, including the Communist groups, remained relatively limited in numbers. A virtually one-man peace protest appeared in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War: a lone reserve officer, Mottie Ashkenazi, stood outside the Prime Minister’s residence, accusing the government of having failed to provide readiness in case of an attack such as that which occurred on October 6, 1973 when Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked Israel. Although this protest contributed, at least in part, to the resignations of Prime Minister Golda Meir and key players in her government some months later, no movement developed or ensued. (See Tamar Hermann for a detailed study of the history of the peace camp in Israel.3 ) In fact, the first, and only mass peace organization, Peace Now, was not created until some...

„Na posterunku bojowym”. Wojska radzieckie w radzieckiej strefie okupacyjnej Niemiec/ Niemieckiej Republice Demokratycznej 1945–1954. Wybrane aspekty

The Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany was formed in June 1945. It consisted mainly of the troops of the 1st Belarusian Front with marshal Georgy Zhukov as the first commander-in-chief of the Group. The main task of these troops was to supervise the process of demilitarization and democratization of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. Occasionally, the Group also secured the process of dismantling a large part of the German industrial infrastructure. The cost of living of the Soviet troops was a major burden on the budget of this zone, which was transformed into the German Democratic Republic in 1949. The significant demobilization of the Red Army (the Soviet Army since 1946) also affected the units stationed in eastern Germany. Their numbers fell in 1947, but some of them were not disbanded or withdrawn to the USSR; they remained as so-called cadre units, with limited numbers, fully armed and equipped. It was their development in 1949 and 1950, in the face of the tightening international situation, that allowed to significantly increase the numbers of the Group’s troops, estimated in the mid-1950s at around 500 000. The Group consisted of the best equipped and trained units of the Soviet Army. These troops guaranteed the stability of local communist regimes (e.g. during the suppression of the East German uprising of 1953), as well as a potential instrument of aggression or defense in the event of war in Europe. In 1954, the Soviet Armed Forces stopped functioning as occupying forces in the GDR. Since then, they were only an element of the system of the mutual balance of forces between blocks competing in Europe. This was also the beginning of doctrinal changes in the Soviet Army. It had to adapt not only to the changed international situation, but above all to the completely different conditions of war on the atomic battlefield.

The Rise of Russian in the Cold War: How Three Worlds Made a World Language

The Rise of Russian in the Cold WarHow Three Worlds Made a World Language Rachel Applebaum (bio) A summer training institute for schoolteachers in Weimar. A suburban high school on Long Island. A bread factory in Kabul. During the Cold War, these seemingly disparate sites featured in an ambitious Soviet project to export the Russian language abroad. Soviet citizens traveled to these locations—which they understood as belonging to three ideologically distinct worlds—to teach Russian to locals and to promote the Soviet Union as a global power. Before World War II, French, English, and German were the most common languages employed by international organizations. They were also the most common living languages studied around the world. During the Cold War, Russian joined the ranks of world languages. It became an official language of global organizations such as the United Nations and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and an important language in international scientific research.1 Russian language programs proliferated on both sides of the Iron Curtain: by the early 1970s, children and adults in 83 countries were studying Russian, [End Page 347] including 11 million secondary school pupils from Poland to Great Britain to Senegal.2 Russian's development into a world language is a global story, involving a concerted Soviet effort to use the language to promote the USSR's politics and culture abroad and foreign programs that were variously designed to assimilate, contest, or engage Soviet power. The widespread study of Russian beyond the USSR began in the socialist countries in Eastern Europe and East Asia in the late 1940s, when local communist leaders made it an obligatory subject in schools and universities. Ten years later, following the launch of Sputnik, the study of Russian became popular on the other side of the Iron Curtain, as Westerners raced to compete with Soviet scientific achievements. Around the same time, decolonization created new opportunities in Asia and Africa for the study of Russian. In the first years after World War II, the Soviet government played a relatively minor role in the propagation of Russian abroad. By the late 1950s, however, officials in Soviet ministries and social organizations, along with philologists and pedagogues, began to promote Russian on the global stage. This shift was tied to the Khrushchev government's success in foreign affairs, including the cultural exchange agreements it signed with Western governments and the relations it established with newly decolonized countries. Yet Soviet efforts to advance Russian beyond the USSR also stemmed from anxieties about the potential hazards of becoming a superpower. Historically, states have launched campaigns to promote their languages around the world in response to apprehensions about their global power.3 The Soviet promotion of Russian was motivated by concern about rising Western influence in the Eastern bloc, fear that enemies of the USSR were commandeering the [End Page 348] teaching of Russian in the West, and anxiety about the development of a new, linguistic front in the Cold War in Africa and Asia. The global scope of the Soviet project to make Russian a world language invites a global approach. The project ultimately encompassed all three worlds of the Soviet geopolitical imagination: the socialist countries, the capitalist countries, and what Soviet officials referred to as the "developing" or "underdeveloped" countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.4 In recent years, historians of the Soviet Union have increasingly adopted transnational or international methodologies; the result has been a new field exploring the USSR in the world.5 These historians have succeeded in dispelling Cold War stereotypes about the Iron Curtain's rigidity and Soviet isolationism by highlighting a wide range of Soviet cultural and economic contacts across state borders. Yet historians of Soviet internationalism have tended to focus on specific geographic case studies that examine Soviet relations with the West, the Eastern bloc, or the "Global South" as distinct domains.6 The [End Page 349] drawback to these geopolitically specific studies is that they obscure the ways the three worlds of the Soviet imagination influenced one another. A global approach to Soviet history—one that draws on examples from all three worlds—is necessary for addressing important questions pertaining to the...

Medical Zoning of Kharkiv in 1945–91: Infrastructure Development and Accessibility of Care

The article studies the development of the Kharkiv medical infrastructure after the Second World War. The author argues that war destructions caused the disruption of medical network zoning as well as equal access of residents from different Kharkiv districts to health care, shortage of hospitals’ spaces, and difficulties in further modernization of medical facilities. Despite the intensive construction of hospitals since the 1960s, the situation had not changed significantly due to population growth and rapid industrial and housing construction that outstripped the medical infrastructure development. The article provides evidence that the main contributor to technological renovation of Kharkiv healthcare system were the local industrial enterprises. In the period of 1970-80s, the policy in development of medical infrastructure made an important turn: the local Communist Party executives had realized the need for advanced planning of the health care development in the city and oblast with the implementation of the best domestic and world experience. The priorities of the long-term development plan of the health facilities in Kharkiv were the creation of the ambulance system, large multi-profile medical complex, specialization, and proximity of the outpatient and polyclinic care to the population. Studying the history of plan development and implementation is vital for an understanding of the degree of freedom in actions of local authorities on the background of centralization and the Communist Party control in the late USSR. On the one hand, the history of the post-war Kharkiv medical infrastructure confirms the typical for large Soviet cities lagging of services behind industry and housing development. At the same time, the implementation of the long-term plan for the health care system development led to the creation of the integral, available, and modern healthcare system that is naturally included in the spatial configuration of Kharkiv.

АНТИРАДЯНСЬКІ НАСТРОЇ МІСЬКОГО НАСЕЛЕННЯ ІЗМАЇЛЬСЬКОЇ ОБЛАСТІ УРСР У ПОВОЄННИЙ ПЕРІОД (1944–1954)

The work researches essential reasons for spreading anti-Soviet public sentiments among local inhabitants of Izmail Region, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the post-war period, describes their specific features and forms of counteraction to Soviet reformation and Communist totalitarian regime. Source basis of the said research is represented by documents of the Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine and the State Archives of Odessa Region. General reports and statements of activities from Regional Attorney Office Fund, SAOR, as well, as statistics data, reports and accounts in cases of special jurisdiction of Regional Attorney Office. Furthermore, reports of Soviet Administration and Communist Party figures, special notifications referring to armed force censorship, reports by PCHA about local inhabitants' sentiments, documentation describing the course of operation of kulaks' deportation. Documentation of Organization and Instruction Section of Communist Party of Ukraine Central Committee, CSAPO fund was also used: reports about the activities of military section of Communist Party Regional Committee, internal memoranda, statements of completed work. Special attention has been paid to review of display of discontent in matters of religious policy, particularly, activities of underground religious associations. Author also describes resistance of the local population to mobilization to Soviet industrial enterprises, specified number of deserters from enterprises of military industry. Author also revealed and described social and political sentiments in the first months of Soviet power implementation and changes in such sentiments which occurred due to drop in social standards and housing problems. It was discovered also that illegal actions of local Communist Party and Soviet Administration and individual public figures formed additional factors, which contributed to popular discontent.

Sovet Azərbaycanında milli dil məsələsi (1920-ci illər)

On April 28, 1920, the Peoples Republic of Azerbaijan was overthrown as a result of the intrusion of the military forces of Russia and the support of the local communists, the Soviet power was established in Azerbaijan. The Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan and the Council of Peoples Commissars continued the language policy of the Peoples Republic of Azerbaijan. On February 28, 1921, the Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan issued an instruction on the application of Russian and Turkish as languages for correspondences in the government offices. On June 27, 1924, the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic executed the resolution of the second session of the Central Executive Committee of Transcaucasia and issued a decree “on the application of the official language, of the language of the majority and minority of the population in the government offices of the republic”. Article 1 of the said decree declared that the official language in the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic was Turkish.

Disturbing secrets: US-Costa Rican relations during the Nixon administration

ABSTRACT Friendly relations between the United States and Costa Rica were strained during the early 1970s as the latter sought the recall of the US ambassador and CIA station chief amidst rumours of coup plots against influential social democratic president José Figueres. Figueres’s efforts to normalise relations with the Soviet bloc while legalising the Communist Party at home provided the broader context. Secret US intelligence about a pact between Figueres, local communists, and the Soviet Union drove the conflict. Drawing on declassified US documents, this study seeks the right balance between Latin American agency and US hegemony during the Cold War.