Military Government Research Articles

Thingyan Is Here! We Will Fight! Burmese Popular Sounds and Protest Verses for H5K’s “Revolutionary Thingyan Anyeint ”

Abstract: Traditionally performed during the water festival ( Thingyan ) for the celebration of the Burmese New Year in April, than gyat verses, accompanied by music, dance, and songs, often address social injustice and political issues. As a response to the February 2021 military coup d’état, a “boycott Thingyan ” movement emerged in April 2022. People chose not to participate in the celebrations in urban centers and the countryside, leaving the streets dry and quiet. To support this boycott movement, the exiled comedy group Har Nga Kaung (H5K), from a concealed location on the Thailand–Burma border, broadcast a Facebook performance titled “Revolutionary Thingyan Anyeint .” The performance criticized the military regime and encouraged people to stay home. After introducing the tradition of than gyat protest verses and other subversive theatrical traditions in Burma/Myanmar, this article describes the context of the H5K’s “Revolutionary Thingyan ” performance and the sociopolitical messages it conveys. Drawing from online interviews with the performers and digital ethnography, it explores the life stories that compelled the five comedians to perform in exile. The article examines how the comedy group employs protest verses, performative gestures, and references to Burmese popular culture (popular songs, poetry, and Buddhist prayers) as strategies that aim to support the revolutionary cause.

Fight of the Lithuanian Partisans against Collaboration in 1949–1953

The last period of resistance (1949–1953) is characterized by the extenuation of the underground forces and weakening of the struggle against collaboration. Even though the number of treasons and a scale of collaboration increased, support of the public to the partisans decreased significantly. Sentiments of the adaptation to the existing situation encompassed the broad layers of society, therefore the methods and measures of the partisan fights became mitigated. Verbal and written warnings prevailed. Death penalties most often were imposed on the most ardent helpers of authorities. Collectivization and Sovietization was nearing completion at the end of 1951; repressions against the collaborators with authorities lost importance and meaning. In 1949, LLKS (Lithuanian Fight for Freedom Movement), as the supreme political and military government of Lithuania, made acts, which regulated public relations, uniform, and finally legally enforced the procedure of execution of penalties on the persons accused of collaboration. In judging the persons, suspected of collaboration and criminal crimes, all districts had to be strictly guided by the LLKS Penal Statute. Data identified during investigation and provided in tables reveal that in the last years of resistance, the fight in the essence was directed against party and Soviet activists as well as civil people accused of collaboration. Attacks against MGB officials, MGB Army military men, MVD employees and “stribai” became a matter of minor importance. Analysis of new historical sources does not confirm the version which is imprinted in the historic consciousness of the public about the degeneration of the resistance in the last years because of the more frequent senseless massacre of civil people and their families. On the contrary, it is possible to speak about the considerably softer tactic of the fight against collaborators, as compared to the years 1946–1948. The terrorist actions (family massacre) and excesses against civil and Soviet activists reduced in number. At the last stage of the fight, the underground almost did not exercise broad-scale punitive actions not only because the ranks of partisans became less, but also owing to the changes in the punitive policy in respect of the collaborators.

UNVEILING BRAZIL: SOCIOECONOMIC AND POLITICAL REALITIES OF THE LATE '80S THROUGH BRÁULIO TAVARES' STUNTMIND

The present article aims to show how Brazilian Science Fiction provides an interesting reading of Brazil’s economic and political context and its social and cultural disturbances in the late 80s. With the end of the military regime, writers tended to explore the social context focusing on the contradictions of the process of modernization and its negative results for Brazilian society. In this context, writers did not hesitate to combine technology and cultural alienation in a Third World political perspective. By analyzing Bráulio Tavares’ “Stuntmind” it is possible to see his critique to the effects of globalization toward Brazilian culture, as well as toward Brazil’s political and economic development.

Military censorship in Russia in 1914‒1918: structure, features of work, documentary legacy

The relevance of the research topic is related to the continuing problems of control and access to information in the modern information society.The purpose of the study is to provide a systematic understanding of military censorship in Russia in 1914-1918 in the context of the development of the late Imperial state mechanism. Objectives analysis of the structure, activities, and personnel of military censorship in Russia during the First World War; concentration of currently available information on documents of military censorship stored in various Russian and foreign archives.Methodology. The historical and typological method was used to analyze the structure and functions of military censorship, and the historical and genetic method was used to study its development during the First World War. The study of the personnel, the peculiarities of the work of different areas of censorship was carried out using the historical and comparative method.Results. The paper analyzes the legislative framework, structure and directions of military censorship in Russia during the First World War. It is shown that military censorship was a complex, multi-level structure that had no unity of command and included representatives of different, sometimes conflicting departments. These features led to the «scattering» of the documentary heritage of the military censorship authorities in numerous collections of Russian and foreign archives.Conclusions. The complexity of the structure of military censorship created numerous difficulties in the practice of censorship control. The chronic disadvantages of Russian censorship during the First world war years were contradictory decisions, inconsistency and insufficient elaboration of the regulatory framework, which often led to the use of military censorship for purely political purposes (for example, to censor speeches by opposition Duma deputies). The problems of military censorship were aggravated by a chronic shortage of funding, shortage and high turn-over of personnel. As a result, instead of becoming an effective tool in the hands of the government, military censor-ship became one of the factors of the political crisis in Russia on the eve of the Russian revolution.

“We Were the Army in the Shadows”: The Dynamics of Military Rule and Experiences of Black Women in the South African Defence Force 32 Battalion Military Community

Abstract In this article, we demystify the South African Defence Force’s 32 Battalion and de-exceptionalize the apartheid military by connecting it to other colonial military communities, and apartheid governance more broadly. Drawing on oral history, autoethnography, and archival documents, we demonstrate the highly unequal, yet mutual, reliance of white authorities and elite Black women in the haphazard and improvised nature of apartheid military rule. Most women arrived at the unit's base, Buffalo, as Angolan refugees, where white military authorities fixated on their domestic and family lives. We examine the practical workings of military rule by considering three nodes of social surveillance and control. Elite Black women, known as “block leaders,” served as intermediaries, actively participating in the mechanics of military rule while also using their position to advocate for their community. Finally, we consider the ingrained violent patriarchal nature of life in the community by highlighting the nature of women's precariousness and labor.

Looking into the Future: the Spread and Realization of Guerrilla Warfare Tactics in Lithuania in 1944–1953

The post-war guerrilla warfare in Lithuania was nothing new since the traditions of the guerrilla movement dated back to the 1919–1923 battles for independence and confrontations with Polish forces in the neutral territory. In the interwar period, the Lithuanian military authorities did not discard guerrilla warfare tactics, and this form of warfare was essentially legitimised by the Hague Convention on Warfare of 1907. In 1935, upon the militarisation of the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union and its integration in the regular army structures, the training of riflemen for the eventual occupation of the country’s territory by the enemy was rather intensive. The ideas of partisan warfare were promoted by means of the periodical Trimitas (The Trumpet) and incorporated in the documents of the General Staff, which provided for the action of partisans in small units on well-known territory by using light armament and setting the objective of continuous assaults on the enemy, thereby demoralising him. In 1940, following the Soviet occupation and liquidation of the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, the structure, after its development for two decades, remained, and the personal contacts of riflemen were quite intensive. A network of riflemen units, the locally operating unit serving as the main tactical and administrative entity of the union, covered the entire territory of Lithuania and was a suitable basis for the organisation of post-war guerrilla warfare, while the former riflemen and officers acted as organisers and leaders of the resistance movement. The above facts allow us to conclude that the guerrilla warfare waged against the Soviet forces of repressions and military units in Lithuania in 1944 to 1953 was influenced by pre-war Lithuanian military plans, while the warfare itself was a legitimate defence of the nation’s sovereignty with respect to international military law and should be regarded as pre-planned resistance to eventual occupation.

Holocaust in Alytus County in 1941

Like other counties in Lithuania, the persecution and extermination of Jews in Alytus county can be divided into two phases. The first (the end of June–mid-July 1941) was dominated by political motives of persecution. Jews were often arrested, imprisoned, and shot to death, as were other former Communists, members of Komsomol, Soviet government officials or supporters. People of non- Jewish nationality (Lithuanians, Russians, Poles) were also persecuted for the same reason. The surviving lists of people detained and wanted by police show that in the first weeks of the Nazi occupation, the majority of people arrested in Alytus county because of pro-Soviet activities were, however, of Lithuanian ethnicity. What is particular about Alytus county is the more intense and wider persecution of Communists and Soviet activists than in other counties in Lithuania. By mid July 1941, 82 people in this category were shot in Alytus county under orders of the German military authority. Specific discriminatory measures applicable only to Jews included marking of the Jews (by making them wear the compulsory Star of David), prohibition to perform their religious rites publicly, provision of smaller food rations, prohibition to buy food products, and seizure of radio transmitters, motorcycles and bicycles. In the first phase, no massive or total Jewish genocide was enforced – women, children and old people were usually not arrested or shot. In the second phase (mid-July–mid-September 1941) the Jewish situation deteriorated. In the centres of rural districts where the numbers in the Jewish communities were large (for example, in Butrimonys), ghettos were set up and all Jews of the area were driven into the ghettos. This was when they started sending the detained groups of Jews to Alytus to be shot. In the middle of August 1941, the number of massacres of Jews increased considerably and by mid-September 1941, almost all of the Jews of Alytus county had been killed (except for the Jews of the Marcinkonys ghetto who were killed in November 1942 and individual Jews who managed to hide before shooting). On the basis of documents dated 1941, at least 6,165 Jews were murdered. Most of those who carried out the massacres were members of Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann’s ‘flying squad’ from Kaunas, local policemen and members of the auxiliary police, the so-called baltaraiščiai (they wore white armbands). More valuable items of Jewish property (golden jewellery, clocks, etc.) were appropriated by various German authorities, some of the property was appropriated by participants in the massacre, and what was left was sold to local inhabitants.

The Development of the Structure of Feeling in the Brazilian Liberation Theology Movement

Raymond Williams’s concept of the “structure of feeling” aims to describe the shared experiences, attitudes, and emotions of social groups at specific historical moments. However, this theory has been criticized for lacking a rigorous theoretical framework, clear definitions, and boundaries, as well as for failing to adequately explain its interaction with mainstream ideology. This paper attempts to address these issues through the lens of the Brazilian Liberation Theology movement. The “structure of feeling” established by Brazilian Liberation Theology departed from the traditional hierarchical system of the Church, aligning itself instead with emerging cultures and the practices of grassroots church communities. Under the repression of the military government, the mainstream Church began to accept certain aspects of Liberation Theology rather than viewing it solely as radical and threatening. Although Liberation Theology gradually waned after the fall of the military regime, its adjusted “structure of feeling”—devoid of its radical elements but still focused on social justice and poverty—profoundly impacted the global Catholic Church. The experience of the Brazilian Liberation Theology movement illustrates that a “structure of feeling” can transcend the dichotomy between consciousness and materiality and the crux lies in individuals discovering and asserting their own existence; such a “structure of feeling” can either emerge from within existing ideologies or challenge them directly; its relationship with mainstream ideology is significantly shaped by specific historical contexts; certain facets of emerging emotions are selectively incorporated into mainstream ideology, typically in ways that mitigate their more radical implications.

A decolonial approach to Brazilian environmental policy since 1972

The aim of this article is to discuss the neoliberal project as a colonial determinant of the environmental policy in Brazil since 1972. The 1972 Stockholm Conference is used as a milestone for analysis. The results show that, since the military regime in the 1970s and through successive elected governments, whether right- or left-wing, federal policies have consistently aimed to boost the country’s economic growth. Even the few socio-environmental advances identified during the first administrations of the Labour Party (2003–2010) resulted from processes focused on the ‘deterritorialisation’ of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities. The ultra-liberal project adopted by the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022) accelerated these processes and promoted an aggressive denialist, anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous agenda. Given the current political scenario (Lula administration 2023–2026), this study makes the following main contributions: it offers a new orientation for the environmental and Indigenous agendas developed by the progressive sector in Brazil and advocates for a science orientated towards contributing to a new environmental and Indigenous agenda in the country.

Security or Democracy?

For much of the modern history of U.S.-Thai relations, the United States has tried to balance democracy and security, with the latter mostly taking precedence. During the Cold War, the United States sought to keep Thailand anti-communist by supporting various military governments. Democracy was an afterthought, though the United States purported to promote it. After the Cold War, other strategic concerns replaced the fear of communism, specifically the rise of China. By examining the Cold War period in comparison to the years 2014 to the present, we can see a pattern in U.S. foreign policy toward Thailand. This article draws on archival work in the United States and Thailand, along with recently published sources to focus on U.S. policy during the Cold War and the 2014 to the present. Drawing parallels between challenges the U.S. government faced during the Cold War and recent events, I argue that the United States has pursued an unbalanced policy between security and democracy and will continue to do so to protect its interests.

The Impact of Political Interference on the Judiciary: India Vs. Pakistan

This paper investigates the significant effects of political interference on the judiciary in India and Pakistan, two countries with a common colonial history but differing paths since gaining independence. The judiciary serves as a fundamental pillar of democratic governance, designed to function independently while protecting the rule of law and upholding constitutional rights. Nevertheless, in both nations, political influences have notably affected judicial operations, compromised judicial independence and eroding public confidence. Through a comparative examination, this study highlights important historical moments, landmark rulings, and constitutional frameworks that demonstrate the degree and nature of political interference within both judicial systems. In India, such interference has emerged through executive control over judicial appointments and crises, notably during the Emergency period from 1975 to 1977. In contrast, Pakistan's judiciary has experienced direct meddling from military governments and political authorities, frequently rationalized by the contentious Doctrine of Necessity. Additionally, the paper investigates how the judiciary has responded to these interferences, including instances of judicial activism and civil society initiatives that promote judicial independence, such as the Lawyers' Movement in Pakistan. Ultimately, this research emphasizes the urgent need for strong protections to ensure judicial independence, bolster public trust in the judiciary, and maintain democratic principles in both countries. By highlighting the comparative experiences of India and Pakistan, this study aims to enrich the broader discussion on judicial independence in South Asia.

The politics of medical expertise and substance control: WHO consultants for addiction rehabilitation and pharmacy education in Thailand and India during the Cold War.

This paper explores the role of World Health Organization (WHO) medical experts in ambitious projects for substance control during the Cold War in Thailand and India. The circumstances surrounding opium production in these two nations were very different, as were the reasons for requesting expert assistance from the United Nations. Whereas the Thai military regime was concerned with controlling illicit traffic to secure its borders, the Indian government wanted to direct its opium raw materials towards domestic pharmaceutical production. Overlapping and sometimes competing agendas of country governments and international agencies converged upon each project, complicating the consultants' work and requiring careful navigation. In both cases, medicine as a science concerned with human health and well-being was subordinated to more pressing agendas. At the same time, the article argues that WHO consultants left an important impact, though not necessarily due to their skills and training in medicine. Instead, they provided exemplars of sound governance and delivery of public health in a politically stable and economically developed country.

Beyond Order and Progress: Legitimacy and Nation-Building in Military Brazil

Abstract Between 1964 and 1985, a military dictatorship in Brazil combined an arsenal of political instruments—surveillance, violent repression, and propaganda, among others—to justify its illegal rule. How did the Brazilian military regime attempt to justify its claim to power for more than two decades? What discursive strategies did it use to win popular support, despite the violence it perpetrated? This paper investigates how discourse is used to legitimize power and create meaning in authoritarian regimes. Using ethnographic content analysis of archival materials, I pinpoint and analyze three key discursive frames employed in regime propaganda: “defenders of democracy,” “Great Brazil” and “model citizenship.” I argue that the Brazilian military regime used these frames to justify its authority, forge national values and social norms, and redefine the boundaries of the national community. These findings not only contribute to our understanding of authoritarian power that is wielded and legitimized through discourse, but also speak to the enduring consequences of authoritarianism in sociopolitical subjects.

Whispers of genocide: racist and colonial legal practices of the Brazilian dictatorship towards Indigenous peoples

ABSTRACT Towards the end of the 1960s, as accusations of genocide against Brazil appeared in several national and international newspapers, a sense of growing unrest crept into the military dictatorship. In 1968, the United Nations organised the First International Conference on Human Rights in Tehran. The dictatorship’s legal argumentation was based on an assimilationist orientation directed at ‘civilizing’ the Indigenous population and ignoring genocide allegations. The military regime intertwined a tradition of civilising mission with an authoritarian ideology of national unity to produce racist and colonial legal practices towards Indigenous peoples in Brazil. Reports of genocide caused quite a stir among activists and academics, but the Tehran episode also illustrates how events unfolding in international arenas such as the Conference did not substantially vex the Brazilian dictatorship. Exactly seven months after the meeting, the regime passed the Institutional Act 5, which inaugurated the most repressive years of its history. To subsidise such points, we review documents found in the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Reflecting on Democratic and Economic Experiences in sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Analysis of the First 3 Decades vs. the Second 3 Decades under Ghana’s Republics

This study sought to juxtapose Ghana’s first three decades [1960s-1980s] of democratic and military regimes with its second three decades [the 1990s-2010s] of only democratic regimes to understand its political and economic trajectories and dynamics. Drawing on the Mandate Theory and leveraging on the interpretivist paradigm, the study adopted a qualitative content analysis and in-depth interviews to collect and analyze the views and opinions of respondents in Accra. The findings show that (a) The 1992 constitution has effectively halted Ghana’s 1960s and 80s cyclical political turmoil, ushering in ‘Pax Ghanaianica’, (b) There is a correlation between campaign promises and real GDP growth under the Fourth Republic, and (c) There is no correlation between a stable democracy and a stable real GDP growth under the Fourth Republic [i.e., The political campaign promises relative to power/electrification/energy have been unable to sustain production in Industry, Agriculture, Commerce, and Services]. The study concludes that Ghana’s roller coaster economic development may re-trigger ‘alien’ incursions into contemporary Ghanaian politics. It recommends that the political economy of Ghana should be structured to propel sustainable production in Industry, Agriculture, Commerce, and Services.

The side effects of a big push growth strategy: export incentives and primary education under military rule in Brazil, 1967–1985

Abstract During the military regime in Brazil (1964–1985), enrollment ratios in primary education grew substantially in the first decade under dictatorship, but stagnated in the mid-1970s. This paper shows that education spending might depend on the levels of centralisation in tax matters. Using panel data regressions and qualitative evidence, we argue that a massive big push industrialisation programme increased the pressure on external accounts, leading the government to intensify an export incentive policy based on tax subsidies that decreased the income of subnational governments. As a result, the capacity of funding mass education was compromised in the second half of the 1970s.

Cry with the Promised Land: singing for nationalist and religious environmentalism amid Burma’s war

ABSTRACT As the planet’s ecological crisis deepens, what can music reveal about the shapes that environmentalism is taking across the world? This article shows that music is a sensory pathway into notions of nature and of saving nature in repressed and marginalised places. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork since 2010 in the war-torn Burma–China–India borderlands, I explore a dissident rock band’s pioneering environmentalist song. The song’s Kachin Jinghpaw language lyrics talk of ecological destruction through a worldwide trope—‘nature is crying’—but express more specifically a nationalist and religious environmentalism. The song calls on Christian Kachin people to rescue a God-given national homeland, amid the broader album’s call for ethnonational resistance against a ‘colonising’ military regime in Burma (Myanmar). I explore the song’s lyrics and karaoke music video—line-by-line and scene-by-scene—as a way to sense both the logic and feeling of environmentalism emerging amid war.

The Ismail quarantine and its role in the Danube sanitary cordon (1813-1856)

In the present study, we aim to establish how the Ismail quarantine was established and functioned and how its role evolved within the sanitary cordon at the mouth of the Danube in the period 1813-1856. Our research is based on the critical study of new archival sources, from the Bessarabian Governor’s Chancellery Fund (National Archives of the Republic of Moldova), representing in particular various reports addressed by the quarantine bodies to the military governor of Bessarabia, as well as orders that the latter received from the governor general of Novorossia and Bessarabia regarding the activity of the Danube quarantines in Bessarabia. As a result of studying the archival documentary sources, we can conclude that in the evolution of the quarantine in Ismail during the reference period, two stages can be distinguished, separated by the year 1830. In the first stage, it led a precarious existence, without investments and being reserved a secondary role within the Danube sanitary corridor. In the second stage, it regains its role as a central quarantine, and the government invests massively to build a quarantine that would meet the demands of the development of international trade.

Science, health and the military dictatorship in Brazil: the Integrated Endemic Disease Program (PIDE) of CNPq (1973-1987)

This article analyzes the Integrated Endemic Disease Program (PIDE), which was established in 1973 by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development CNPq, financed by the Brazilian Funding Authority for Studies and Projects FINEP. The program was established to finance research on diseases considered strategic to the economic development plans of the military regime (1964-1985). Acknowledged to be a landmark program in the history of Brazilian parasitology, PIDE was set up during a period when the dictatorship was both violently repressing scholars and investing heavily in science and technology (S&T). The article examines the context in which the program was implemented and analyzes what it signified for planners in the S&T field and for the scientists who coordinated it. The contention is that PIDE was an example of how the scientific community managed to use financial and institutional resources available under the S&T policy in the 1970s to advance research on parasitic diseases and update its agenda. This analysis contributes to recent historiography that, based on specific historical cases, reflects on the paradoxical nature of a regime that, in its authoritarian modernization project, simultaneously persecuted scientists and supported science.

Civilian Control, Civil–Military Friction, and Foreign Military Intervention

The relationship between domestic civil–military relations and the use of foreign military force has been long debated. The two primary perspectives on the issue, civilian conservatism and military conservatism, are antithetical. The former maintains that military authorities are more likely to advocate for the use of military force than civilian counterparts, while the latter advances the opposite argument. Empirical research to date has added little clarity to the relationship. We shed new light on this long running controversy through analyses of a different, and arguably more appropriate, set of measures for the key variables of concern: civilian control, civil–military conflict, and the use of foreign military force. In zero-inflated negative binomial estimates of 165 countries from 1946 to 2010, we find consistent support for civilian conservatism. More specifically, when civilian control erodes or civil–military conflict reaches particularly high levels, the likelihood that a state will launch a foreign military intervention increases.