Socialist Orientation Research Articles

Підготовка афганських студентів у навчальних закладах Української РСР у 1980-х рр. (на прикладі м. Кіровограда)

Introduction. Within the framework of the “socialist orientation” policy, pursued by the USSR in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s, an important place was given to the reorganization of the system of education due to the Soviet model. An important role in the education of Afghan youth in the spirit of the “ideals of the April Revolution” was given to the education of Afghans in educational institutions of the Soviet Union. The purpose of this article is to study the issue of training Afghan students in the Ukrainian SSR on the example of educational institutions in Kirovograd and to clarify its place in the structure of the socialist transformation of Afghanistan in the 1980-s. The research methodology is based on content analysis of historical sources, problem-chronological, typological, retrospective methods. Main results and conclusions. During the Cold War the education of citizens of “third world” countries in Soviet educational institutions was an effective element of policy aimed at promoting the interests of the USSR in the world. During the years of such purposeful work, thousands of qualified specialists of various specialties for Afghanistan have been trained in Soviet higher and vocational schools. At the same time, a whole generation of Afghans had been brought up and who, after studying in the Soviet Union, became the bearers of the “Marxist-Leninist worldview,” sincerely admired the Soviet reality and wanted to transfer at least some elements of it to their homeland. Studying in the USSR in the 1960’s and 1970’s contributed to the spread of Marxist ideas in Afghanistan, which was embodied in the “April Revolution” of 1978. In the next decade the training of Afghans in the USSR was a means of forming a large pro-Soviet stratum of Afghan society under Soviet occupation, Scientific novelty of research results. For the first time in Ukrainian historiography, the problem of educating the citizens of Afghanistan in educational institutions of the Ukrainian SSR in the 1980s as a component of the policy of “socialist orientation” has been studied. Based on a study of a wide documentary base, it was established that ideological and political education, instilling in them “Marxist-Leninist worldview” and “ideals of the April Revolution” was the main component of working with Afghan students.

At the Origin of African Studies in Ural: Valentina Grak and Her Role in Deepening and Spreading Knowledge about Africa in Sverdlovsk, 1960s — 1980s

The article is devoted to the popularization of knowledge about Africa in Sverdlovsk in 1960—1980s. The author focuses on the role of Valentina Grak – Associate Professor of the Faculty of History of the Ural State University named after A. M. Gorky – in deepening and spreading knowledge about Africa in Ural. This article is based on the interviews conducted by the author with Valentina Grak and Vadim Kuzmin — former department chair at the Sverdlovsk Higher Party School. The author also uses some local media materials. This article proves that the “Year of Africa” and the formation of independent states in the continent failed to attract much attention of the people in Ural in 1960s. Formation of Africa’s image among Ural students began in 1970s, when the phenomenon of African states of “socialist orientation” emerged and these states began to cooperate with the Soviet Union. This interest to Africa was rather high until the middle of 1980s. In the following years the Soviet people were mainly interested in domestic problems of their country.

Benin: political metamorphoses (on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of independence)

The Republic of Benin, which at the time was called Dahomey, gained independence on 1 August 1960. Over its 60-year history, the country has experienced several military coups and non-violent regime changes, the turbulent first post-colonial years, and the periods of “socialist orientation” and “democratization”. However, despite frequent political transformations, for decades Benin has remained an “island of stability” in West Africa, where most states over the same time have routinely underwent wars or military-political conflicts.

Soviet Researchers on the Middle East: Ahead of Their Time

In the mid-1950s-1960s the Soviet Orientalists were facing serious challenges. The collapse of the colonial system, the growth of national liberation movements, the entry of new forces that did not fit into the rigid framework of the Communist ideas about the revolutionary process, demanded realistic explanations of what was happening. The article attempts to consider some breakthrough ideas and assessments of historical events in the Middle East put forward by the Soviet experts. The review is primarily based on the publications of Soviet specialists published in the 1970’s. Among those who studied the new trends and tried to explain their further development were Soviet Arabists. At that time their circle was small. Among those who were engaged in political problems of the Arab world, one can name I.P. Belyaev, E.M. Primakov, G.I. Mirsky, A.M. Vasilyev. They had different backgrounds, but all had managed to form in their studies a fairly complete picture of political trends and state-building in the Arab world. Despite the domination of the official dogmas the leading Soviet researchers were able to present a realistic picture of the region, although their «untimely meditations» were presented in a form acceptable to the Communist ideology.The primitive division of society into the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, peasantry and landlords and the hopes for eventual development of communist parties worldwide both did not reflect the realities in the Third World countries and did not leave room for the Soviet Union there. Due to ideological reasons the USSR could not support nationalist movements abroad. Nevertheless, the Soviet leadership passed the first test for the ability to reassess their ideological stereotypes in the early 1950s, when the leaders of the Egyptian revolution turned to the USSR for military assistance. In order to justify the pragmatic choice in favor of supporting the new Arab nationalist leaders, the Soviet scholars developed the concept of three consecutive and co-dependent revolutionary flows: first, the national liberation movement overthrowing the colonial system; second, the world labor movement overthrowing the capitalist system politically; and, third, the world communist movement overthrowing the capitalist system in economic terms.It was also important for the Soviet leaders to explain the orientation of the young decolonized nationalist regimes towards the USSR, without using the argument of just political expediency. Such an explanation was the theory of the non-capitalist path of development or socialist orientation. It posed that capitalism cannot solve any of the problems of developing countries. Their interest in rapid overcoming of backwardness and maintaining national sovereignty cannot be combined with the choice of a capitalist development model. The theory of socialist orientation was based on original ideas of Marxism founders and further developed by Lenin who insisted that economically underdeveloped countries can with the help of the proletariat from advanced countries go directly to socialism bypassing capitalism.The reality of revolutions without the proletariat and the desire to take advantage of the anti-colonial struggle to establish full-scale presence of the USSR in the Middle Eats made the Soviet leadership more tolerant of scientists' attempts to realistically analyze regional trends and developments.For instance, in the Soviet era, politicians were tempted to explain all conflicts in the regions of the Third world, and particularly in the Middle East exclusively by the workings of imperialism. However, Soviet scholars, E.M. Primakov among them, warned in their studies of the dangers of such simplified estimates. Still relevant today also is G. Mirsky’s explanation of the major role the army plays in the politics of the Middle East. He argued that in the traditional societies of the region the army was the only modern, nationwide institution.The works of the Soviet scholars can help better understand contemporary trends. Their studies of driving forces of the revolutions in the Arab world, of the nationalistic regimes, of regional conflicts have not lost their relevance today. They warn the modern generation of researchers against simplistic conclusions, a temptation of politicized assessments and of ignoring the complexity of regional issues.

Forcing change from the outside? The role of trade-labour linkages in transforming Vietnam's labour regime

Do trade-labour linkages improve the conditions and rights of workers in low-wage countries? We consider this question in Vietnam, a market economy with socialist orientation that has seen rapid gr...

As autoridades tradicionais e a guerra civil moçambicana em <i>Ventos do apocalipse</i>, de Paulina Chiziane

Ventos do apocalipse, de Paulina Chiziane, trata da guerra civil em Moçambique. Depois da independência moçambicana, o partido-estado Frelimo adotou um governo de orientações socialistas, espelhando um aparato organizacional e político europeu. Acontece que antigas lideranças locais, insatisfeitas com a perda de poder e com abandono de tradições, tiram proveito do despreparo da Frelimo para governar as comunidades locais e se organizam em torno da Renamo, tornando aguda a crise social que se seguiu à independência. O confronto entre o projeto de nação do partido-estado Frelimo e as lideranças tradicionais delineiam um panorama apocalíptico dentro do romance. Chiziane discute o papel e lugar da tradição no contexto de criação de uma identidade nacional que desconsiderava a organização política, econômica e cultural preexistente

RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM

The article examines the modern economic development of Vietnam in relation to the resource security of the country. The economy of Vietnam is currently at the stage of transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. The centrally-administrative economy of Vietnam all socio-economic functions are implemented in the planning process at the national level. According to the decision of the Party of the Republic of 1986 is on the path of modernization and striving to develop innovation. The country is gradually shifting to a market economy with a socialist orientation. Thus, socialist consciousness is a significant impact on all aspects of public life. Government task in the modernization process of industrialization to go According to the economic development plan it should be restructured, each sector and the entire national economy as a whole in the direction of engineering and advanced technology. The energy security for the national industrialization and modernization a key role for the oil and gas industry. The development of the oil and gas industry priority is to attract foreign investors, as the country with the historical agricultural economy there are no conditions for self rapid rise of the oil industry. Today in the Republic operates the largest state company Petrovietnam, synchronize the oil and gas industry. The company comprises the parent company and 32 branches with more than 42.000 employees. Foreign companies have the right to develop deposits subject Vietnamese joint venture with the state company Petrovietnam. Participation of foreign companies provided the Socialist Vietnam foreign investment and technologies in oil production. This fact allowed to start mining at a high technical level and increase production. Russian companies now occupy key positions in the oil industry of Vietnam. At present the main direction of development of the oil industry is creating its own oil refinery.

The process of economic transformation in Ho Chi Minh City in the first 20 years of innovation (1986-2006)

The process of economic transformation in Ho Chi Minh City in the first 20 years of innovation is the process of converting the economy from a centrally planned bureaucracy into market economy with socialist orientation, from two economic sectors into six conomic sectors, from allocating-handing relations to market relations. The process of change did unblock resources thanks to which Ho Chi Minh City has achieved many positive changes in terms of market operation, economic sectors, economic structure and growth rate of GDP.

Children’s rights in Algeria: History, achievements and research evidence

This article sought to analyse the implementation and promotion of children’s rights in Algeria from a historical and contextual perspective. This analysis was backed with legislative texts and research evidence. The results indicate that during the colonial era (1830–1962), no tangible policies were sought to protect the people and their children from poverty and ignorance. But the post-colonial era witnessed a beginning of interest in the status of the children and their needs within a socialist orientation. However, the democratic shift of 1989 was accompanied with social turmoil for about 10 years. During these tragic events, the country started to adapt its national child legislation to the requirements of the international legislation since some successes have been achieved in the areas of registering new births and providing education and health-care opportunities for children. But a great deal of work is yet to be done in the areas of ensuring quality education; quality health care; efficient protection from abuse and violence in families, schools and public spaces; enhancing participation in family and school decision-making; and provisions for leisure and culture opportunities. Recommendations include the call for the Algerian government to appoint an official body to provide indicators to evaluate and monitor the protection, respect and promotion of the rights of the child nationwide and collect and combine research data. Leisure and culture opportunities and child’s participation should also be prioritised. Furthermore, the Ministry of Education should reinforce the teaching of child’s rights in official curricula, use modern information technologies and should issue compulsory measures to publicise Convention on the Rights of the Child in school spaces. The role of scientific research, mass media, non-governmental organisations and youth organisations should also be further supported.

Reframing the Question of Whether Education Can Change Society

Among the most important questions critical educators can ask today are the following: Can schools play a role in making a more just society possible? If not, why not? If so, what can they do? These questions provide the basis for this article by Michael Apple, as well as for the books under discussion here. The books by David Blacker, John Marsh, Mike Cole, and Pauline Lipman discussed in this essay are either Marxist, have been influenced by Marxist and socialist ideas, or are published by presses that have a long history of publishing material with a Marxist and/or socialist orientation. In order to adequately deal with them, Apple devotes much of this essay to a set of arguments about the possibilities and limits of these ideas. After specifying those arguments, he discusses how they are developed in the books themselves. He grounds this discussion in a call for creating a broader “we” that is based on a more historically grounded understanding of the ways in which struggles over schooling actually can make a difference.

Rubber plantations in the Northwest: rethinking the concept of land grabs in Vietnam

At first glance, rubber plantations in the Northwest of Vietnam do not appear so different from ‘large-scale land acquisition’, which is quite common in the Global South. However, when we closely examine how many processes in plantations work, we can see that there are many different processes at work besides those that take place in other countries where transnational or domestic corporations purchase or lease land for growing food, fibre or fuel crops. Rubber plantations have been strongly supported by the government and promoted as a way to industrialize and modernize the uplands, while claiming to narrow the economic gap between the uplands and lowlands. Drawing on fieldwork in two villages in Son La, and on a review of policy papers and documents, this paper identifies the political mechanisms and policies that have emerged as critical factors enabling the dispossession of land for the development of a market economy with a socialist orientation in Vietnam. The paper seeks to understand how institutional control over land and over the discussion of political subjects produces control. It argues that land grabs for rubber plantations in Northwest Vietnam are moves to strengthen state sovereignty. This land seizure has indeed created a new way of land governance that hitherto did not exist in Vietnam.

Social Exclusion: The European Concept for Indian Social Reality

Social exclusion, a European concept that has been inducted into the Indian social research domain, is the core area of inquiry in this article. It is argued that the concept of social exclusion needs to play a crucial role in Indian society in terms of handling multiple deprivations experienced by different social groups. This article aims to comprehend the trends of social exclusion and further examines its significance in Indian policy discourse. Further, it analyses the transformation that Indian state has undergone, having socialist orientation earlier and the neoliberal phase recently. The article has been divided into two sections. While the first section provides theoretical analysis of the concept and the second section studies purview of the new concept in Indian context and discusses some policy implications.

SMEs in their Own Right: The Views of Managers and Workers in Vietnamese Textiles, Garment, and Footwear Companies

This article contributes to the limited literatures on small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using an institutional theoretical framework, we analyzed fieldwork interviews with twenty SMEs and perspectives of 165 SME managers and workers in textiles, garment, and footwear industries, the most important wage-earning sector in Vietnam. Having understood in the context of a developing “market economy with socialist orientation” (thus a “Southern perspective”), we find that socially responsible practices and expectations developed long before the arrival of CSR as a western concept and an MNC agenda. While identifying and contributing ideas concerning forms of “informal” CSR practices—influenced by social and cultural expectations—to the CSR/SME literature, we are conscious of the mixed effects of these practices and the ongoing nuanced negotiations between workers and managers in these SMEs. In our research, we found that it takes both domestic and international stakeholders to improve labor conditions in Vietnam under the banner of CSR.

Lessons for Last Comers from Vietnam’s Transition

What lessons can last comers, like North Korea and Myanmar, and the aid community that stands ready to assist them, learn from the experience of Vietnam? What motivated Vietnam to abandon Soviet-style central planning for a market economy (albeit one with a socialist orientation)? Did foreign technical assistance play an important role in designing and assisting in the implementation of the reforms that have propelled growth in Vietnam? Does Vietnam’s experience support or contradict the increasingly fashionable view that institutional change is a prerequisite to successful economic reform? Can a country, such as North Korea, emulate the transition experience of Vietnam and expect similar success?

Politically connected boards and top executive pay in Chinese listed firms

Drawing on social comparison theory, this study examines the relationship between politically connected boards and top executive pay. Moreover, given the socialist orientation of China, tests are also carried out to establish the relationship between politically connected directors and pay dispersion across the firm. We find a negative association between politically connected boards and top executive pay. We also find that politically connected boards are negatively associated with pay dispersion, i.e., the higher the number of political directors on the board the smaller the gap between top executive pay and average employee pay. Finally, our study shows that politically connected directors weaken the pay‐performance link. These findings have important theoretical, policy, and managerial implications. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

La morale et l'éthique au regard du discours politique chinois

In their stated objectives, the Chinese authorities have given a high profile to the issue of morality, something that, in the current context, is clearly under duress. The question raised is thus whether such discourse is rooted in a morality or ethics particular to Chinese society, insofar as it displays certain aspects that are part of a civic morality of a socialist orientation, along with other features drawing on Confucianism or other components of Chinese culture. The moral injunction would however be empty, if it were not coupled with a politics of well-being, something which must be grounded in an anthropology. Such an anthropology (the search for harmony, consensus, the dynamic equilibrium between contraries) differs significantly from that which prevails in the West. It can therefore be highly instructive for us. The article concludes with some considerations on the Chinese political system.

Seeing Human Rights in 3(D): Modeling India's Controversial Patent Law to Improve Access to Medicines in Vietnam

A patent strategy known as evergreening contributes to increased medical costs by keeping lower-cost generic alternatives out of the marketplace, and criticism of the strategy is warranted in asking whether its abuse amounts to overzealous profiteering that disproportionately affects poor populations. Without addressing the potential dangers that evergreening poses, the most recent amendments to Vietnam’s Law on Intellectual Property came into effect in early 2010. What follows is the possibility for pharmaceutical patent holders to squeeze generic competition out of the Vietnamese market, putting increased pressure on a nation already strained by the price of medicines. The price of medicines in Vietnam remains high in comparison with average incomes, and the Vietnamese people bear the lion’s share of healthcare expenses while government spending on health is insubstantial.Meanwhile, India has already ventured to avoid the threat that evergreening once posed to its relatively poor population. Under the auspice of public health, the 2005 Indian Patent Act outlawed patentability for minor, insignificant alterations to known pharmaceutical inventions under Section 3(d). The controversial provision has been challenged on the grounds that it violates the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) as promulgated by the World Trade Organization. But the provision has survived legal scrutiny in India and is being looked at by other developing countries as a model provision for their own patent laws.By amending its Law on Intellectual Property to include an explicit prohibition on evergreening that is based on Section 3(d) of India’s Patent Act, Vietnam can lay the foundation for an intellectual property regime that adequately respects patent rights while enhancing access to affordable medicines for its people. Though importing a provision akin to Section 3(d) into Vietnamese patent law is not without challenge, doing so is i) doctrinally sound under international agreements and domestic law, ii) morally grounded in the maxim that all people have a right to health and iii) practically attainable without offending Vietnam’s socialist orientation and centralized government.

Counting One's Way onto the Global Stage: Enumeration, Accountability, and Reproductive Success in Vietnam

This article concerns the ways in which the enumeration of in vitro fertilization (IVF) births emerges as a practice that is simultaneously associated with a socialist nationalist project and post-Ðổi mới market reform. It explores the brief history of and changes in the ways in which recently introduced assisted reproductive technologies and IVF births come to be enumerated by state authorities and by female infertility patients. Focusing on changes in infertility treatment, the article suggests that in the process of making sense of the rapid social, economic, and political changes that have occurred in Vietnam over the past twenty-five years, individuals and institutions continue to draw on socialist orientations as they encounter market changes, leading to practices and subjectivities that are neither clearly socialist nor neoliberal. Rather, they are at once partial and incomplete, yet dynamic, temporally contingent on understandings of experienced pasts, and new opportunities of the current moment.

A battle worth winning: The service of culture to the Communist Party of Vietnam in the contemporary era

The Communist Party of Vietnam’s (CPV) market reform policies—introduced in the late 1980s and carrying on today—have opened the country to foreign investment, deregulated state-owned enterprises, decollectivized agricultural cooperatives, and encouraged foreign direct investment. However, what the Party has not wanted reformed, and has fought strongly on behalf of, is culture. Using primary source official CPV cultural policy documentation and secondary sources highlighting contemporary meanings of Vietnamese and foreign cultures, this paper evaluates the Party’s use of culture as a resource in the direction and regulation of the nation’s market economy with a socialist orientation. While culture is expedient for all governments, I argue that the CPV’s intent is unique in that it uses culture as an instrument to maintain its ownership, rather than simply to legitimize its regulatory ability, over the national political economy. This paper aims to show how culture is part and parcel of post-socialist governance’s political-economic framework and contributes to debates surrounding the reach and impact of neoliberalism in formerly command economies.

21st-Century Socialism and the Four Components of Sustainability

Socialism's survival strategy for the 21st century must place the highest priority on achieving sustainability. Sustainable socialism has four aspects: political, economic, cultural, and environmental. The characteristics of the four components are defined and the relationship between socialism and sustainability is explored. It is argued that five successful policies should be followed to achieve sustainable socialism. Threats to the five successful policies, and how to deal with them, are discussed. The relationship between sustainable socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat is also explored. Since the concept of the four components of sustainability complements Marx's enumeration of the Four Alls, it is clear that sustainable socialism and proletarian dictatorship are compatible. Sustainable socialism must be constructed on the basis of proletarian democracy guided by a communist party that works diligently to preserve the socialist orientation of development while resisting calls for the adoption of bourgeois democracy and private capitalism.