Revolutionary Government Research Articles

Fields of Revolution: Agrarian Reform and Rural State Formation in Bolivia, 1935–1964

Fields of Revolution represents a significant advance in the literature on agrarian reform, revolutionary Bolivia, and the political power of peasants. Scholars have long agreed that control of land has played a central role in wealth and power; however, the use of historical methods to analyze Cold War–era land reform is still nascent. Along with universal suffrage and the nationalization of the principal tin mines, the transformation of the countryside developed into one of the three pillars of Bolivia's 1952 revolution, which was led by the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR). Carmen Soliz's extensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of land tenure in three provinces at the core of Bolivia's hacienda system explains not only the mechanics and shape of land reform but also its profound effects on society and politics. Outlining the MNR's pivot from its vision of wage labor and modernization through mechanized farming, Soliz persuasively argues that wide-scale expropriations were determined from below and thus varied widely based on local practice, power brokers, and geography.Soliz draws on agrarian court cases, prefecture records, newspapers, politicians' papers, and social science research to paint a vivid picture of land tenure and rural power relations before and after 1952. This detailed research undermines many oft-cited facts and statistics about land tenure and rural labor in Bolivia. Complicating the landlord/peasant dichotomy, she reveals details of specific cases and disputes to explain the hierarchies among peasants and often-surprising alliances with particular landlords. In addition to the 1953 decree governing redistribution, this monograph highlights the less-understood restitution decree of 1954 that generated conflicts between Indigenous community members and hacienda workers (colonos).This book contributes to a larger rethinking of Bolivia's revolutionary period. Initial appraisals heralded the MNR for profoundly changing Bolivian society, but by the 1970s Indianist scholars in Bolivia and social scientists in the global North judged it a failure or at least incomplete. Both groups described land reform as a top-down clientelist process that created a passive peasantry. Carmen Soliz forcefully argues against this view. Her analysis depicts an MNR that came to depend on rural support and thus worked to accommodate local demands, even if they ran counter to the letter of the land reform law. Far from manipulated clients, the peasant unions in this book remade the countryside in their own image and won for themselves a powerful role in society.This research resonates with recent scholarship that has emphasized how a weak state apparatus and dependency on a diverse coalition made the MNR quite responsive to pressure from below. Future appraisals of the 1952 revolution should reflect Soliz's argument that the ultimate shape of land reform was not what the MNR envisioned and that it fundamentally changed landholding in the countryside, facilitating the rise of the peasantry as a powerful force in Bolivian politics. Analysis showing 1960–64 to be the most radical era for expropriations challenges the prevailing periodization of the MNR as becoming more conservative after 1955 and should prompt scholars to question how they are defining conservative.Soliz's portrayal of the MNR acquiescing to a relatively independent countryside does not erase the prevailing racism of the revolutionary period. On the contrary, the text astutely demonstrates how shared prejudice against Indigenous cultural practices bridged divides of race, class, ideology, and political party. Yet Soliz argues that despite the MNR's explicitly assimilationist discourse, the implementation of its policies unintentionally strengthened Andean practices by giving unprecedented control to relatively independent peasant unions. Soliz makes a strong case that peasant unions mapped onto existing communal structures and became a vehicle for collective negotiation with the state.Fields of Revolution is an important contribution to the literature on revolutionary Bolivia. It is a clearly written and accessible text that assumes an audience unfamiliar with Bolivian society and history. Soliz draws astute comparisons to land reforms and revolutionary regimes in Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, and Peru that help readers understand Bolivia as part of larger Latin American trends. The book includes a wealth of concrete data that is both analyzed in the text and presented in informative tables and appendixes. Yet Soliz also discusses the skepticism with which scholars must treat statistics and certain sources, such as press accounts of rural violence and MNR reports on land reform. This methodological clarity, comparative framework, and engagement with a complex historiography make this text teachable at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Analysis of the Legal and Institutional Frameworks Regulating Oil and Gas Resources in Tanzania

This study examines the legal and institutional framework regulating oil and gas sector in Tanzania. Oil and gas resources have been considered as the world’s valuable resource. For countries to benefit from these resources, the presence of adequate laws and institutions is of a paramount importance. The analysis on whether or not Tanzania has adequate laws and institutions that regulate oil and gas resources entail thorough review of all necessary legal documents including: statutes, legal books, journal articles and policies relating to oil and gas resources in Tanzania. The data were collected through documentary review and interview from informants working in institutions established by the petroleum laws for the respective union and Zanzibar Revolutionary Governments. The findings show that legal and institutional frameworks regulating oil and gas in Tanzania suffer from practical challenges such as: separate governing laws, lack of coordination for established institutions and overlapping powers among institutions governing oil and gas between Union and Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. The study recommends that laws should be amendment to provide for independent and autonomous institutions, to establish coordinating unit among institutions, harmonization of oil and gas governing laws and instituting transparent and accountable decision-making bodies.

Republic of Fiji v Prasad: revolutionary legality and the taxonomy of legal change

ABSTRACT Hans Kelsen's theory of the nature of legal systems—and how legal systems are changed—has been endorsed in a series of cases in which courts have adjudicated the legality of a revolution. In all of these cases except one, courts have validated the revolutionary regime. This article focuses on the sole case that stands against this jurisprudential tide: Republic of Fiji v Prasad. In Prasad, the Court explicitly criticised Kelsen's influence on the jurisprudence of revolution and, remarkably, declared the coup in question unlawful. Commentators have received the case positively, arguing that the court's eschewal of Kelsen was instrumental to the result in the case. I seek to rebut this received view. I show that the Kelsenian view is alive and well in the Court's method and result. I conclude with broader reflections on the very coherence of a jurisprudence of revolution itself.

ПОЛЕМИКА ЭРНСТА ЮНГЕРА С НАЦИОНАЛ-СОЦИАЛИЗМОМ В ГОДЫ ВЕЙМАРСКОЙ РЕСПУБЛИКИ

The article examines the problems of political journalism of the German right in the years of the Weimar Republic as an example of the analysis of the place, interpretation and significance of the Jewish question in the creative heritage of Ernst Junger. In the conditions of post-war Germany, anti-Semitism acquired a political sound due to the fact that a significant percentage of German Jews were represented in the revolutionary government, the Social Democratic and radical left parties, who turned into the face of the Weimar Republic. Antisemitismus became an important domestic political component of the struggle against the Weimar political system, which allowed reducing political controversy to racial and national components. The unity and difference between the political journalism of the Nazis and E. Junger as the leader of the "new nationalism" is analyzed. The place of the Jewish question as a political problem is considered in the context of the nationalist ideas of the Weimar right. The study of the peculiarities of the understanding of Jewry in the ideas of E. Junger and its difference from the Nazi interpretation is being carried out. The desire of National Socialism to turn anti-Semitism into one of the structural components of ideology and political journalism made it possible to group political opponents into a single racially defined whole and concentrate the entire range of political means of struggle against it. The political divergence of E. Junger and National Socialism was based in addition to political divergences and on the fact that the place of the Jewish question in his ideas did not occupy any significant place, not in terms of ideological or personal.

Indian Ocean Trade and Emerging Pathways of Mobility in Neoliberal Zanzibar


 
 
 Indian Ocean trade historically directed ‘routes’ for merchants and traders to frame their ‘roots’ in Zanzibar. It facilitated access to different forms of social capital for imagining new trajectories of hope and constructing more meaningful futures. However, colonial rule and subsequent policies of the socialist revolutionary government severely restricted the mobility of Zanzibaris and their engagement in Indian Ocean trade, initiating a new era of uncertainty. As free-market policies have revived since the mid-1980s under a renewed framework of neoliberalism, this article examines how Zanzibaris, increasingly finding themselves in conditions of involuntary immobility, are trying to participate today in mercantile activities that brought prosperity in the past in hopes of securing a brighter future. The article explores how the efforts of Zanzibari merchants and traders to engage in trans- national Indian Ocean trade provides, for these limited groups of individuals, access to envisioning different pathways of socioeconomic mobility in the neoliberal era. The article contends that engagement in Indian Ocean trade, through support from transnational and diasporic networks, facilitates access to new routes of mobility to situate one’s roots in Zanzibar, while the situation for the majority of Zanzibaris continues to deteriorate under neoliberalism today.
 
 

Introduction

Introduction Aisha Z. Cort (bio) The articles and interviews of this Close-Up interrogate the numerous dimensions of Contemporary Cuban cinema. The pieces included endeavor to explore the use of film not only as a narrative mode for the official voice of the Cuban nation but also a narrative tool for counterhistories. The authors of the investigations that follow have centered their projects around an exploration of major sociohistoric and sociopolitical developments in the revolution and their intersection with themes of identity politics, counternarratives, and techniques of film production. The cultural currency of film in Cuban revolutionary society has provided for a uniquely crafted and skilled film culture in Cuba. It is rich in not only nuance, but also inventiveness and interpretational innovation. Nationalized in 1959 with the formation of Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos, commonly referred to as ICAIC, through over sixty years of the revolution, Cuba's film industry has long held a privileged position within Cuban and also global society, serving as an informal measuring stick for the nation's progress. The early years of the revolution produced seminal films from directors such as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Humberto Solás, and Julio García Espinosa who inserted themes of race, class, and gender into the revolutionary dialogue. Alternative voices such as Nicolás Guillén Landrián, Sergio Giral, and Sara Gómez served as a warning to those who would posit in their works serious questions regarding the incongruities that existed between the tenets of the Cuban Revolution and artistic and racial dialogue and expression. Contemporary directors such as Gloria Rolando, Eric Corvalán Pelle, Miguel Coyula, and Damián Sainz utilize a variety of genres, embrace new filmic techniques and resources such as international partnerships to develop and distribute their films globally and also to more freely interrogate the themes in their films that might have been considered controversial and antirevolutionary within contemporary Cuban society, which, coupled with various [End Page 174] instances of sociohistorical and political change in Cuba, has furthered the evolution of Cuban cinema in more recent years. Within the context of debates around the relationship between art and revolution, it is critical to examine Fidel Castro's 1961 meeting with intellectuals, during which he launched a phrase that defined Cuban cultural policy for years to come, "Dentro de la Revolución todo; contra la Revolución nada" (Within the Revolution everything, against the Revolution, nothing). "Palabras a los Intelectuales" (Words to the Intellectuals) (as they have been known from then on) was an intervention delivered at the conclusion of three days of meetings whose goal was to discuss and define the boundaries of artistic creation within the Cuban Revolution. They were inspired by the tensions between two artistic organizations of the early years of the Cuban Revolution, Lunes de Revolución and the ICAIC.1 In this speech Castro not only laid the groundwork for the cultural aesthetics of the revolution, but also set the precedent for future conflicts, which would inevitably arise between the tenets of the Cuban Revolution and Cuban artistic expression. The tensions between Lunes de Revolución and the ICAIC originated largely from the censoring of the 1961 film P.M. and, on a smaller scale, from debates over which organization should be entrusted with disseminating cinematographic criticism. P.M. was a short film directed by Saba Cabrera Infante (brother of Lunes de Revolución's editor, Guillermo Cabrera Infante) and Orlando Jiménez-Leal. In this film, the directors portrayed Havana's nightlife from the point of view of the city's Afro-Cuban population.2 ICAIC, the official organization of Cuban film workers, supported the revolutionary government's decision to ban the film, while Lunes de Revolución did not. The positioning of these two groups on opposite sides of the fence with regards to the issue of artistic censorship helped to transform Lunes de Revolución, previously an ally of the revolution, into an enemy. Pitted against each other in this manner, the tensions between ICAIC and Lunes de Revolución brought to a head the previously veiled issue of the limits of artistic expression within the Cuban Revolution...

Jules Guérin and social medicine in 1848.

The significance of Social Medicine in France in 1848 as a movement led by doctor Jules Guérin is not adequately documented. Why would an orthopedist write the call to doctors in Paris proposing a union around Social Medicine? What is the meaning of the formulation on Social Medicine made by Jules Guérin in 1848? An analysis of Jules Guérin's trajectory supported by primary and bibliographic sources was made to answer these questions. The material analyzed allows us to conclude that there was no movement around Social Medicine, unlike hygiene, and closer to the revolutionary proposals of 1848. Jules Guérin was a liberal doctor who aimed to have a place in the new revolutionary government for the medical corporation. His scientific and professional work was fundamentally related to orthopedics, and the paper on Social Medicine was a circumstantial essay with liberal content.

Expropriation and consequence: Peru-United States relations (1963–1975)

This article studies the nature of Peru-United States relations during the period 1963–1975 through an analysis of the dispute over the potential expropriation of the US-owned International Petroleum Company. The United States government implemented a tough policy towards the first government of Fernando Belaúnde – who sough a “special” relation with the Unites States –characterized by the threat of economic sanctions if the Peruvian government did not solve the issue in favor of the company. The threat of the Hickenlooper Amendment, which sought to penalize countries that expropriated American owned businesses, was a clear sign of this. Once the company was expropriated by the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces in 1968 the American government was ironically forced to follow a more flexible approach, as the new military regime sought to diversify its bilateral relations in the bipolar context of the Cold War. The American policy of supporting the IPC had negative long-term effects fo American interests in the region, as it accelerated the overthrown of Belaúnde and ushered in the arrival of a military junta which sought a more independent foreign policy. A country that had been solid American ally camp since the end of World War II had become a nonaligned nation.

‘A Man Who Has Both Arms’: Arthur Griffith, the Economy and the Anglo-Irish Treaty Agreement 1921

Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Féin. From 1899 onwards, through detailed articles in his weekly papers and otherwise, he strongly advocated the economic development of Ireland and the adoption of qualified protectionism to achieve it. As minister for foreign affairs in the revolutionary government of Ireland in 1921, he chaired the Irish delegation that negotiated with Lloyd George's government articles of agreement for an Anglo-Irish Treaty. In January 1922 he was elected president of Dáil Éireann, the revolutionary Irish parliament, but died suddenly in August 1922 before the new Irish Free State formally came into existence. This essay underlines the importance that he attached to economic affairs, not least in making fiscal autonomy a central ambition of his negotiations with the British. The author concludes that Griffith was far-sighted, and calls for a discrete and empathetic study of his economic ideas.

위기에서의 선택 — 한국전쟁에 대한 중국의 정책 결정 논평 —

During the Korean War, the Chinese leadership made significant policy decisions. This paper provided a detailed description of this process and outcome: under the circumstances in which the Soviet Union and North Korea decided to launch a military attack on South Korea, China reluctantly supported the initiation of the war. Under extremely difficult conditions as the UN forces broke through the 38th parallel, Mao Zedong decided to leave the majority opinion behind and fight. The purpose of the dispatch Chinese troops to Korea was to secure the safety of China and solidify the new revolutionary regime by gaining Stalin’s trust and relying on the deterrence of the Sino-Soviet alliance and the support of the Soviet Union. Subsequent historical developments show that these goals have been realized. This article reviewed a series of policy decisions by the Chinese leadership to deal with the first surrounding crisis since its foundation.

Қазақ АКСР-ның құрылуы — республиканың тұтастығын қалыптастырудағы алғашқы қадамдар

The article analyzes the complex historical events of the 20s of the XX century associated with the annexation of Akmola and Semipalatinsk regions to collect Kazakh historical sites around the newly formed Kazakh ASSR. From the middle of the XVIII century, the tsarist government showed interest in the Kazakh land and began to actively pursue a policy of colonial seizure of Kazakh lands. In parallel with the annexation of the Kazakh lands, it gradually began to pursue a policy of settlement in the Akmola and Semipalatinsk regions. The settlement movement had been especially intense since the 80s of the XIX century when the indigenous Kazakh names in the north and east of the Kazakh land began to change into Russian. For example, historically, it would be fair for Omsk County to fully enter the Kazakh state, although, during the previous colonial policy of resettlement, the tsarist government contributed to an increase in the share of Russians in the northern part of this region. The consequences of this policy of the tsarist government led to the unification of the Kazakh lands around Kazakh autonomy in the 20s of the twentieth century. The Soviet Bolshevik government, taking as a basis the priority of the people living in the region when surveying the border, led to the transition to the Kazakh land only of the southern part of the Omsk land, which became a major historical triumph of the Kazakh intelligentsia, the result of many disagreements and disagreements between the Kazakh autonomy and the Siberian Revolutionary government. The Kazakh people proving their belonging to historical territories returned to themselves. In the article, the path to the removal of the Akmola and Semey regions from the composition of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee and transfer to the composition of the KazASSR is considered. At the same time, the works of Kazakh figures were revealed, which proved that the land belongs to Kazakhs in historical, economic, and political terms. Generalized and differentiated prerequisites for the formation of the unity of the Kazakh land, after comparison, the results of the discussion are presented.

Fascists, Nazis, orSomethingElse?: Mexico's Unión Nacional Sinarquista in the US Media, 1937–1945

AbstractThis paper examines the public relations battles in the US media over Mexico's Unión Nacional Sinarquista (UNS), an explicitly Catholic social movement founded in 1937 that aimed to restore the Church to its traditional role in Mexican society and to reject the reforms of the revolutionary government. Thesinarquistasshared many of the features of fascism and Nazism, the major global antidemocratic movements of the time, including a strident nationalism, authoritarian leanings, an emphasis on martial discipline and strict organizational structure, and a militant aesthetic. Both its ideological leanings and rapid growth (as many as 500,000 members by the early 1940s) led many US writers to suggest that the UNS represented a dangerous fifth-column threat to both Mexico and the United States. Others, particularly in the Catholic press, saw the UNS as an anticommunist organization that could actually help foster democracy in Mexico. For their part, UNS leaders defended themselves vociferously and sought to build relationships with influential US Catholics who could advocate for them in the press. By analyzing this debate, this paper both underscores the transnational characteristics of the UNS and highlights the crucial role of US public opinion in Mexican politics during the 1940s.

Hollywood’s Embassies

Hollywood’s Embassies

Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965

Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965

Grenada Revolution: Investigating the Ambitions and Shortcomings of a Radical Caribbean Political Experiment

In March 1979, the New Jewel Movement (NJM) transitioned into the People’s Revolu- tionary Government (PRG) through a bloodless coup that for a time revolutionized the structure of governments in the Com- mon-law Caribbean. This policy review seeks to consider the success of the revolution based on: its aim of developing and sustaining a grassroots democracy, emphasis on mass education and its expansion of agribusiness initiatives as a part of broader industrialization efforts. Through an investigation of some of the critical events, ideological frameworks and ambitious political objectives that briefly transformed Grenadian society from 1979 to 1983 this review illustrates the complexity of the political experiment undertaken by the People’s Revolutionary Government and argues that despite its short time span, the Grenada Revolution remains one of the most critical examples of revolutionary potential and radical self-rule in the twentieth-century Caribbean.

RESISTANCE ON THE SEA BOUNDARIES: SMUGGLING IN THE EASTERN WATERS OF SUMATRA DURING UPHEAVAL TIMES 1946 – 1961

Smuggling through the sea between Sumatra, Singapore, and the Malay Peninsula became a problem for the Indonesian government. This issue has a clash between informal and formal political forces so that claimed status of trade can be label as 'legal' or 'illegal' depending on the capacity and presence of the applicable law. Moreover, smuggling could be considered as a resistance effort during the war and conflict periods. This problem can be seen in upheaval times, such as the independence revolution and regional uprising around the eastern waters of Sumatra. These waters became the gateway for the Republic of Indonesia to penetrate the Dutch blockade and smuggled weapons supplies along with international support. However, when there were rebellions by Darul Islam in Aceh and Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia (PRRI) in North Sumatra and Central Sumatra, smuggling was also used against the central government in Jakarta. This study uses the historical method, so after collecting historical facts related to smuggling through newspapers, books, and journals, and then interprets them from the perspective of legal anthropology to analyze smuggling during upheaval times as a resistance act to those who oppose politics and economics pressure.KEYWORDS: Smuggler, Sumatra, Revolution of Independence, Regional Uprising.

The historical case of discussion on sanitary anti-epidemic activities during period of revolutionary events of 1917 in Irkutsk

The article presents analysis of historical case of discussion about organization of anti-epidemic measures needed because of one-time arrival of large number of wounded and killed in consequence of counter-revolutionary mutiny in Irkutsk during defense of the White House country-house in December 1917. The problem of burial of fallen soldiers and Red Army men was determined during extraordinary session of the City Duma of Irkutsk with further publication of open letter to the Irkutsk Presidium of the Soviets. The well-reasoned positions expressed by physicians and engineers against burial of the killed in common grave on the banks of the Angara River received no support from the revolutionary government. The chronology of the decision taking had political character.

The Socialist Revolution in Yucatán and the resolution of the agrarian issue the 1910s and 1920s

One of the central themes of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) was an agrarian question. The request for the restitution of land and the return of ground parcel to the indigenous peasants reflected ideas of social justice. The state of Yucatan, located on the self-tilted peninsula in southeastern Mexico, was a region characterized by the presence of enormous plantations and the difficult working conditions of the indigenous population. However, in Yucatan, social tensions did not turn into the revolutionary movement, and revolutionary ideas were introduced from outside, since coming to power of Salvador Alvarado. This article will consider the main directions of the agrarian policy of the revolutionary governments in Yucatan, primarily reflected in the legislative work of the governors of Salvador Alvarado (1915-1917) and Felipe Carrillo Puerto (1922-1924), as well as the reaction of indigenous population to this policy. As a result of research, has been demonstrated that the agrarian policy of the 20s. generally did not affect the economic structure of Yucatan. Henequen plantations did not fall into the category of land for redistribution, the land-owners retained their economic and political influence, and the production of henequen until the end of the 20s continued to be the main economic activity for most of the rural population.

"The People Live Practically Like Beasts": Informal Housing and Local Government in Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba, 1959–1965

This article draws from local government documents and a private archive to examine housing policy and daily life in 1960s Santiago de las Vegas, now part of Havana, but then a separate municipality with its own government. There, local officials sought radical solutions to the city's housing crisis but, faced with intractable resistance from national government officials, were ultimately unable to enact meaningful reform. As a result, many residents who would otherwise have been able to acquire new homes, many of them of African descent, remained trapped in substandard housing. This speaks to the possibilities and limits of local control after 1959, as well as new forms of vulnerability that were created as the revolutionary government consolidated its power.

Political and Social Struggle of Ghazi-e-Millat Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan Freedom of Kashmir

Although a few research studies are available on the Kashmir, Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, Freedom Movement of Kashmir and the establishment of Azad Kashmir Government. In this paper, an attempt has made to study and analyze the role of Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan in the Freedom Movement of Kashmir, especially in the Establishment of Azad Kashmir Government. Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan led the country during an era when the entire subcontinent was enslave by the British Empire. He has emerged as a national leader who has brought the nation together. On 19 July 1947, he passed a resolution of Accession with Pakistan. Because of his political and social struggle on 24 October 1947 a massive area became independent and announce the revolutionary government of Azad Kashmir.