Soviet Attitudes Research Articles

“Tugev Balti natsionalistlik keskus” ning Nõukogude välispropaganda teel sõjast rahuaega ja külma sõtta [Abstract: “The strong Baltic nationalistic centre” and Soviet foreign propaganda: from war to peace and toward the Cold War

“Tugev Balti natsionalistlik keskus” ning Nõukogude välispropaganda teel sõjast rahuaega ja külma sõtta [Abstract: “The strong Baltic nationalistic centre” and Soviet foreign propaganda: from war to peace and toward the Cold War

Turkey, Kemalism, and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation by Vahram Ter-Matevosyan

Reviewed by: Turkey, Kemalism, and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation by Vahram Ter-Matevosyan Naira Sahakyan (bio) Vahram Ter-Matevosyan, Turkey, Kemalism, and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation (New York; London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 279 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-3-319-97403-3. Comparative studies of the Russian and Ottoman Empires have become fairly common in historiography. Surprisingly, interest in comparing the two countries does not extend to the successor states of the two empires, the USSR and the Republic of Turkey, and their ideological systems, Bolshevism and Kemalism, respectively. This is all the more conspicuous given the significant mutual interest of scholars in both countries. Soviet historians produced an impressive number of works on Turkey in general and on Kemalism in particular. Arguably, the lack of comparative studies of the Bolshevik and Kemalist regimes could be explained by the lack of command of the Russian language among Turkish and Western historians and by severe ideological contraints imposed on Soviet scholars. The book by Vahram Ter-Matevosyan aims to fill this lacuna. After presenting the formation and development of the Kemalist regime and its perception by contemporaries (in chapters 1–6), in the final two chapters the author discusses Soviet perceptions of the Kemalist revolution and Kemal's ideas and reforms, and brings together the fragmented international historiography of Kemalism. In reconstructing Soviet attitudes to Kemalism, Ter-Matevosyan goes beyond a narrow focus on Soviet-Turkish relations and explores the broader political context of bilateral contacts, such as World War II. The author approaches "Kemalism as a specifically republican phenomenon with strong and vivid characteristics inherited from the Ottoman past" (P. 9). Ter-Matevosyan sets two goals in his study: (1) examining the evolution and internal dynamics of Kemalism, and (2) examining existing problems and gaps in the study of Kemalism (Pp. 2–3). A salient feature of the book is its broad time frame, which covers the 1920s to the 1970s and encompasses three main topics: problems of defining and interpreting Kemalism (covered by chapters 1 and 6), a chronological account of the main stages of Kemalism's formation and transformation (chapters 2–4), and Soviet interpretations of Kemalism and their historical context (chapters 7 and 8). In chapter 1, Ter-Matevosyan outlines the main trends and problems in the international historiography of Kemalism, and shows that even the definition of Kemalism and [End Page 214] its periodization remain contested topics. For example, he writes, "Before the late 1980s, most existing accounts of Kemalism failed to see Kemalist reforms and ideas as stemming from the Ottoman era" (P. 13). Transcending traditional historiographic boundaries, Ter-Matevosyan brings into the discussion the Soviet historiography of Kemalism, which he groups into several phases: the 1920s to the mid-1930s, the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, and the post-Stalin era. This periodization is dicussed at length in the book's final two chapters, while also systematically referring to Soviet studies and perceptions of Kemalism throughout the text. Chapter 2 covers the political turning points of the 1920s and 1930s, from the foundation of the Republic of Turkey until the death of Atatürk in 1938. The author begins with an examination of the political consolidation of the 1920s, then turns to the first attempts of the ideological conceptualization of the new political regime – the development of the principles of the Republican People's Party (RPP) as the core of Kemalism. Ter-Matevosyan concludes that the Nine Principles elaborated by Mustafa Kemal on April 8, 1923, were more of a short-term policy platform rather than a strategic ideological vision (P. 45). These principles were elaborated in the wake of the RPP's Great Congress, where Mustafa Kemal delivered his "Six-Day Speech," known as "Nutuk." The first party statute adopted at the congress "for the first time … mentioned the party's republican (cümhuriyetçi), populist (halkçı), and nationalist (milliyetçi) nature" (P. 46). The Soviet emissaries present at the congress, Ol'ga Kameneva and Ziya Feridov, viewed "the cultural and educational reforms of the Kemalist regime as superficial and urban-centered" (P. 47). Already at the beginning of the 1930s...

The “Sole Legal Government of Vietnam”: The Bao Dai Factor and Soviet Attitudes toward Vietnam, 1947–1950

Earlier historical studies often suggested that the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin, distrustful as he was of Ho Chi Minh's policies and attributing little importance to Vietnam, remained unwilling to recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam until the Chinese Communist leaders threw their weight behind their Vietnamese comrades. On the basis of Soviet press articles, Hungarian archival documents, United Nations (UN) records, and other sources, this article shows that in fact Soviet interest in Vietnam significantly increased as early as 1948–1949, well before the proclamation of the People's Republic of China. This interest, expressed in growing press coverage and sporadic efforts to represent North Vietnam's cause in various UN organs, seems to have been linked to Moscow's strong disapproval of France's attempts to create an anti-Communist “puppet state.” From the outset, the USSR took the position that the Communist North was the sole legitimate representative of the Vietnamese nation and, hence, that the Bao Dai regime in the South was ipso facto illegitimate. The article concludes that Chinese support to Ho Chi Minh was only one of the three major factors that persuaded Stalin to recognize North Vietnam; the two others were the “Bao Dai factor” and Moscow's dissatisfaction with France's new European policy.

From Khrushchev and Brezhnev to Putin: Has Moscow’s Policy in the Middle East Come Full Circle?

Russian under President Vladimir Putin has established a strong presence in the Middle East. In fact, in 2017, Russian involvement in the regional affairs is more pronounced. Putin has done his utmost to restore Russia’s prestige in the region and has been successful to an extent. Russia though for a brief period lost out to the USA, especially in the case of Iraq and Libya but its decisive intervention in Syria has changed the dynamics. If one compares the policies followed by the Soviet Union in the Middle East during the reigns of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev to the present situation some interesting parallels can be drawn. However, it should be noted that the goals and policies pursued by Putin are entirely different. But in comparing the position of Russia in the Middle East under Putin to the Soviet position in the region under Khrushchev and Brezhnev is much stronger.

The provocation of empirical evidence: Soviet African Studies between enthusiasm and discomfort

Focusing on the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, the article looks at Africa through the eyes of Soviet scholars, who sought to comprehend the dramatic transformations on the continent. Incipient efforts under Comintern auspices in the 1920s and 1930s had fallen prey to the Stalinist purges. Since the mid-1950s, Soviet African Studies started to flourish, when socialism became a global project on Soviet political agendas in the context of cold war competition. Their expansion, however, was just as much an effect of intensifying encounters with colleagues in the region. Soviet scholars did not only struggle to reconcile the Marxist–Leninist framework with the diverse dynamics in African societies. They were also provoked by the reactions they received from Western and African counterparts during travels, and conferences. Challenging a diffusionist understanding of how ideas about socialism were ‘transferred’ from the Soviet Union to Africa, the key argument here is that the Soviet Union was neither an unchallenged ‘exporter’ of such models, nor where these static. Empirical evidence from Russian archives rather reveals confusion, destabilization and perceived marginalization of the Soviet position. Africa was, in this regard, not a repository for Soviet ideas about socialist transformation, but a space providing unforeseen challenges for Soviet theorizations through encounters and conversations.

“To Prohibit or Permit”: Strategies of Parental Behaviour in Relation to Children’s Video Games in Today’s Russia

The article analyses the results of the exploratory empirical research of children’s video game practice. Based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews, as well as observation diaries on the theme of children’s game socialization, particularly the interaction of children, their peers, parents concerning video games, some conclusions about parenting strategies practiced in contemporary St. Petersburg’s families are made. It was found that the rapid expansion of computer games produces the parent’s fears associated with a lack of understanding of the consequences of the video games impact on children. One of the main results is the conclusion that the parental legitimation of practices is in many ways inherited from and reproduces the Soviet attitudes towards parenting and children. Some statements, such as the 15-minute rule (allowing the use of computer per set), view of a computer as a cause of aggression and alienation, are axiomatized. However, it goes hand in hand with a (neo)liberal rhetoric in relation to the use of a computer.

Hoffmann, Peter Aleksandr Nikolaevic RadiÅ¡cev (1749–1802). Leben und Werk Kölm, Lothar and Schippan, Michael (eds) Peter Hoffmann — Studien zur Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte sowie zu den deutsch-russischen Beziehungen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Gesammelte Aufsätze, anlässlich des 90. Geburtstages (review)

SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 562 All the essays are lucidly written, some are theorized, each has a conclusion, partly compensating for the lack of concluding remarks by the volume’s editors. Department of Global, Cultural & Language Studies Henrietta Mondry University of Canterbury, Christchurch Hoffmann, Peter. Aleksandr Nikolaevic Radišcev (1749–1802). Leben und Werk. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2015. xv + 332 pp. Notes. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. €64.95: £49.00: $78.95. Kölm, Lothar and Schippan, Michael (eds). Peter Hoffmann — Studien zur Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte sowie zu den deutsch-russischen Beziehungen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Gesammelte Aufsätze, anlässlich des 90. Geburtstages. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2015. xl + 350 pp. Illustration. Notes. List of works. Index. £52.00. In November 2014 the Berlin historian Dr Peter Hoffmann celebrated his ninetieth birthday. Hoffmann’s area of specialization is imperial Russia and Russian-German relations. The occasion was marked by a new biography by Hoffmann of Aleksandr Radishchev and by two collections of Hoffmann’s published and unpublished essays, one on M. V. Lomonosov (not reviewed here), the other on cultural and international history of the imperial Russian period. Hoffmann is one of the last survivors of Eduard Winter’s East German school of historians of Russia. Youthful engagement with the Nazis made him ineligible for high status in the GDR, and he remained ‘in the back row’ of GDR academic life (as he titled his autobiography In der hinteren Reihe, Berlin 2006), a diligent member of the Marxist-Leninist East German historical establishment and the GDR Academy of Sciences, researching, writing, reviewing, annotating, translating: the bibliography of his works 1951–2015 occupies fifty-seven pages (Peter Hoffmann, pp. 257–313). From the beginning he was involved in Winter’s ground-breaking exploration of Russian-German Wechselseitigkeiten — connections and collaborations — beginning with Leonhard Euler. A. N. Radishchev and M. V. Lomonosov, two Russian eighteenth-century figures strongly influenced by their experiences in Germany, also preoccupied him. Hoffmann’s retirement in 1989 coincided with the end of the GDR and the ‘winding down’ (Abwicklung) of the Academy of Sciences and Marxist historical research in East Germany. Some of his work which failed then to find a publication outlet appears in the collected volume here. But Hoffmann, like some other older GDR historians, continued to publish, and his most productive period came in fact after 1991, with studies of St Petersburg, Peter the Great, Eastern Siberia, and serious and well-researched REVIEWS 563 biographical contributions on G. F. Müller, A. F. Büsching, Lomonosov and now Radishchev. Hoffmann’s Radishchev brings together the fruits of a life-time’s study: he first wrote on this topic for his undergraduate thesis in 1953. In the exegesis, however, there are few traces of previous Marxist and Soviet positions. (A few still turn up — thus Hoffmann writes [p. 39] that the 1767 Legislative Commission ‘would quickly exceed the limits set by Catherine’.) Hoffmann seeks to provide a reliable, detailed, factual biographical account, in which he is very successful; he goes into great detail, too, on the writing and publishing history of Radishchev’s Journey. His purpose is also to present his own view of Radishchev, essentially as an intellectual of, and bounded by, his own time. Rejecting the standard Soviet view of Radishchev as the ‘first Russian revolutionary’, he points out that Radishchev accepted the status quo, while seeing clearly the need for reform and also acknowledging the possibility of revolutionary change. Hoffmann’s Radishchev is an eighteenth-century philosophe, eager to improve the world, aware of contemporary revolutionary events but not believing in the necessity or the inevitability of revolution: Hoffmann cites relatively approvingly the views of A. McConnell in this respect (p. 166). Radishchev made freedom the highest ideal, but when the French Revolution evolved from liberty to terror, he turned back to the Enlightened ruler in search of societal good (p. 225). A striking and useful feature of the book is the space given to the opinions and researches of other scholars, which allows Hoffmann to canvas different scholarly views and to define his own against them. His bibliographical coverage is international and thorough, though not perfect...

The Soviet Approach to the Right of Peoples to Self-determination: Russia’s Farewell to jus publicum europaeum

The aim of this article is to explore the theory and practice of the Soviet position on the right of peoples to self-determination in 1917 and afterwards. It is a misunderstanding to mention Lenin’s (the Bolsheviks’) and Wilson’s concepts of self-determination in one breath, as ‘precursors’ in international law. The Soviet concept of the right of peoples to self-determination was adopted for tactical and propagandistic purposes, and it had little in common with the liberal democratic concept of this right that saw the right of peoples to self-determination as an end in itself. The real contribution of the Russian Bolsheviks to the history of international law has, to some extent, been overlooked. Throughout the 20th century, the West and the ussr had different regional standards and usages of the right of peoples to self-determination, thus presenting a continuous challenge to the idea of the universality of international law.

THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY OF STATES IN THE WAKE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

International law can be viewed as a project of exclusion and inclusion of events and ideas into its narrative. Some shake the pillars of international law, while others, influence its progressive development. Widespread wars and revolutions and events and ideas behind them occupy special place in this project: they expose irregularity in the system and at the same time may threaten its existence. The immediate and long-term effects of such events on international law can only be seen with a passage of time. The 1917 Russian Revolution marking its 100th anniversary this year is an illustrative example to this statement. Though it did not end to be the event in international law when the soviet law as predicted by some Soviet scholars replaced bourgeoisie law, it significantly contributed to disseminate ideas that laid foundation of the general international law. Though in post-revolutionary context Soviet Russia advanced different radical approach to universal social and economic justice and criticized the pre-existing international law, international law remained resistant to extremes and capable of encompassing constructive ideas. The most spectacular example of this approach is Soviet attitude towards equality of states – one of the main international law axioms and utopias and at the same time a cornerstone of Marxism- Leninism theory – and Russia’s early attempts to give it more precise legal meaning. This article briefly describes the bumpy way that this principle undertook before the Russian Revolution, to depict the background against which Soviet Russia started to advance its understanding of equality, in some sense, picking up and developing the ideas of the 1789 French Revolution. It further considers the meaning, that the early Soviet doctrine attached to equality and concrete legal mechanisms through which the Soviet approach was translated into international law, specifically focusing on the works of Vladimir Lenin. The article then studies the actual early soviet international law practice, through the lens of predominant soviet theoretical approaches. Two conclusions are made: Marxism-Leninism had limited impact on the Soviet early practice of international law (1) and inconsistent application of principle of equality in the postrevolutionary context should not lead to its complete disregard (2). To the contrary, it is here argued that the Revolution has been influential in the democratization of international law by developing the following legal dimensions of the equality principle. First, it restated equality in the terms of status, meaning equality in acquisition and exercise of rights (1). Second, it helped to eliminate “dual standards,” which meant the cases where a state could treat one state as dependent and the other – as independent (2). Third, it projected the concept of states’ equal rights to nations and peoples (3). Finally, in the early Soviet Russia practice, the idea that states have equal rights stopped to be confined to any group of states, as compared to international law at that time. To the contrary, it implied equality between all states, even in relations between socialist and capitalist states, thus helping in long-term perspective to abandon “civilization test” (4).

The Re-birth of Soviet Criminal Law in Post-Soviet Russia

Unlike some other Soviet Codes, first acts of the Bolshevist Criminal law were not modeled after the pre-revolutionary imperial codes. In the early Soviet criminal legislation, key juridical categories were replaced by sociological categories. The Marxist-Leninist principle of supremacy of interests of the state over the interests of an individual was envisaged on the legislative level and became a fundamental principle of the Soviet criminal law: crimes against the state were made the gravest ones, and the punishment for these crimes was much heavier than for all other crimes. The principle of analogy allowed criminal prosecution even in the cases, where the offence was not stipulated in the Criminal Code. In 1930s, the trend towards criminal repression intensified. Big changes, including the restoration of the traditional vocabulary of criminal law, the limitation of the doctrine of analogy, the careful analysis of crime in terms of subject and object, took place in the Soviet criminal legislation in 1960, when the new Criminal Code of the RSFSR was adopted. 1990s saw the long-awaited humanization and modernization of Russian criminal law, but situation started to change after the turn of the millennium. Certain cases as well as recently passed pieces of the Russian legislation show the sings of old Soviet attitudes in contemporary Russian criminal law and law enforcement.

Cannon Fodder for the Revolution: The Russian Proletariat in 1917

According to Marxist theory, the working class represents the principal dynamic force of the revolution because of its important intrinsic qualities--namely, its discipline and capacity to organize, its sense of solidarity and collective spirit, and its ability to engage in collective action. The workers' most important quality, however, is their supposed understanding and mastery of the socialist creed (simvol sotsialisticheskoi very), which is itself understood to be the direct result of their class consciousness. A true proletarian understands the difference between capitalism and socialism, between bourgeois and socialist revolution, and he knows the path ahead. He also appreciates the leading role he is expected to play in the necessary destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism, fully aware of his calling as the obvious dominant power (gegemon) and vanguard of the revolution. According to the tenets of Soviet historiography, the formation of the proletariat as a class in Marxist terms had been effectively accomplished in late tsarist Russia by the 1880s. By that time, workers were fully conscious of themselves as proletarians, which was regarded as the necessary proof that the class itself had come into being as a social formation. By 1917, this established social class was primed to carry out a socialist revolution and therefore readily assumed its appropriate leading role in the revolutionary movement. Following the end of the USSR in 1991, the problem of how the Russian working class actually became mobilized to do this predictably lost some of its urgency. Certain studies, however, continued to engage the topic and offered at least a partial revision of the standard Soviet position, suggesting that the workers coalesced as a class not in the 1880s but later, during World War I. (1) As for historians writing outside the country, there has never been a Soviet-like consensus on the problem of the Russian working class. However, an influential school of social historical research nonetheless agreed that a bona fide working class had effectively formed by 1917 and that, by then, a significant share of workers had begun to self-identify as proletarians. Scholars from this school of thought acknowledged the legitimacy of the revolution based on the framework of modernization theory. The workers and the soldiers represented the driving force of the revolution, after all, not the Bolsheviks. (2) Soviet historians reached their conclusions by combining deductive reasoning with Marxist definitions of the proletariat and socialist revolution. By contrast, non-Soviet specialists based their views on inductive reasoning drawn largely from empirical analysis. The logic of Soviet historians was straightforward: if the workers were the social group that played the most active role in overthrowing the monarchy and later the Provisional Government and were the most ardent in displaying their revolutionary fervor, then, naturally, they possessed a proletarian consciousness. Using deductive reasoning to resolve historical questions, however, does not work. This is especially true when the original theory at issue is itself subject to serious doubt. The use of inductive reasoning, however, also has its limitations. The empirical material on which historians have drawn to support their conclusions about workers during the revolution, for example, rests solely on assessments of the workers' exterior involvement in revolutionary events. By contrast, their interior motivations, incentives, and self-reflections as to how and why they engaged in revolution have generally been overlooked. Yet it is precisely such interior questions that are critical to understanding the extent to which workers endorsed socialist doctrine. The mere fact that a deviant act occurs is not enough to describe it as a One has to determine criminal intent, the offender's awareness of the criminal nature of his/her intent, and his/her participation in the crime. …

“Never a Dull Moment”: The Moscow Ambassadorship of Sir Frank Roberts in the Years of the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises, 1960–1962

ABSTRACTThis analysis explores the largely unsung Moscow ambassadorship of Britain’s Frank Roberts (1960–1962). After examining his Embassy’s role in developing cultural and commercial relations, the article addresses Roberts’ involvement in the Berlin and Cuban missile crises. In the former case, he made a low-key but important contribution by influencing American policy; in the second, he provided insightful assessments of Soviet attitudes and thinking. Roberts’ ambassadorship demonstrated the continued importance of resident embassies and ambassadors, because of the lack of ministerial-level Anglo–Soviet relations and the need to interpret Soviet policy in crisis situations. The research contributes to the literature of diplomatic representation as well as of Anglo–Soviet relations during the Cold War.

The USSR and Permanent Neutrality in the Cold War

The Soviet view of neutrality was shaped by political rather than legal considerations. Whether neutrality was rejected or promoted by the USSR and how it was defined depended on the concept's usefulness for Soviet foreign policy. To advance Soviet interests, a special doctrine of neutrality was created with obligations that Soviet leaders apparently believed would draw the permanently neutral states nearer to the Soviet bloc. This article, which relies on Russian and Western historical literature as well as archival documents, delineates the changing Soviet attitude during the Cold War toward permanent neutrality as well as toward four European neutrals (Austria, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland).

Korea in the Russian and Soviet Imagination, 1850s–1945: Between Orientalism and Revolutionary Solidarity

The current article deals with the Russian and Soviet attitudes toward Korea and Koreans since the first modern visitations of Russians onto Korean soil in the 1850s and until the end of the Colonial Period in Korea (1945). Before the October 1917 Revolution, these attitudes, largely, did not significantly differ from colonial Orientalism elsewhere. Koreans were to be “saved” by the Russian Empire from their “primitiveness” and “inaptitude” and also from Japan’s encroachments. By contrast with the imperialist ideologies in more liberal states of Western Europe, Tsar officials also wished to save Koreans from the “liberal heresies,” for which they were not “mature” enough. Some changes in attitudes became visible after the Russo-Japanese War, as Korea was no longer a target for Russian imperial aggrandizement. The Korean Independence movement and its fight against Russia’s own erstwhile battlefield enemy, Japan, came to receive relatively sympathetic press coverage. The presence of the second generation, bilingual Russian Koreans among the interpreters of Korean affairs for the Russian public, was an additionally important factor. With the October 1917 Revolution, colonized Korea came to be perceived as the Soviet Union’s ally in its anti-imperialist struggles. Even Korean nationalist terrorists of non-Socialist persuasion were seen as potential allies, to be reeducated and integrated into the Communist-led anti-imperialist movement. This internationalism, however sincere many of its adepts (a good number of the Russian cadres who worked with Korea were Jews, a former persecuted minority themselves) could be, was, however, tinged with a feeling of superiority. The Soviet Union was the revolution’s center—and Korea qualified for a faraway periphery at best. By the mid-1930s, as the Soviet Union was gradually developing into a dictatorial state, increasingly nationalist and less and less interested in its erstwhile internationalist commitments, these superiority attitudes were mutating into sentiments of distrust toward Korean ethnic Others, now routinely suspected of being “secret agents of Japan.” These sentiments laid the discursive foundation for the forcible removal of Maritime Province Russian Koreans to central Asia in 1937. Still, due to the continuous importance of October 1917’s internationalist legacy for the Soviet policies and ideology, Stalin’s Korea policy did not fully metamorphose into Tsar-like imperialism—outright annexation of Korea, wholly or in part was never even debated. The Soviet pursuit of these geopolitical interests was restricted by the ideological constraints stemming from the revolutionary legitimation of the Soviet state.

France in Soviet Foreign Policy, 1943–45

Using a new evidence from the Russian, French and British archives and the recently published diplomatic documents, this paper explores the main trends of the Soviet policy with respect to France between the “decisive turn” in the War in 1943 and the Yalta conference in 1945. Reappraising the traditional narrative about the successful and friendly Soviet-French cooperation, author underlines the pragmatic reasons which governed Moscow’s diplomacy. Stalin’s and Soviet diplomats’ attitude to de Gaulle wasn’t static and evolved during the war, though the basic features persisted. Stalin attuned his French policy to the dynamics of the relations inside the “Grand Alliance”. The aim of the Soviet-French rapprochement for Moscow was to provide a possible ally in a case of new war against Germany; to support de Gaulle, whom Moscow preferred to British and American proteges; to facilitate a work of the French communists and a growth of their influence, to prevent an anti-Soviet drift of France and to strengthen the Soviet positions in the “Polish question”

The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War

Consisting of 34 essays by an equal number of scholarly experts from around the globe, The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War should prove an invaluable resource for specialists and students alike. The essays explore a wide range of topics. Eschewing a standard chronological approach, editors Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde have organized the volume around geographical and thematic topics. Every major region of the world is covered, as is almost every conceivable topic—from the standard ones (geopolitics, economics, the nuclear revolution) to those that have become fashionable more recently (race, gender and women's rights, the environment, transnationalism, globalization, and the religious Cold War, among them).One of the book's many strengths is that the contributors do not speak with a single voice. Rather, they represent a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives, including an opening essay by Akira Iriye that takes a contrarian stance, arguing for the relative unimportance of the Cold War compared to other global developments during the twentieth century's second half—such as globalization and the emergence of a human rights regime. The authors have positioned the volume, in their words, “at the intersection of boundaries that divide many cold war histories and historians” (p. 3). Yet three guiding precepts run through the various chapters. First, many of the individual authors stress the global dimensions of the Cold War, emphasizing the agency of small states as well as non-state actors, thus moving well beyond the traditional concentration on superpower relations. Second, the essays taken together help overcome the tendency to separate the political, economic, ideological, and cultural spheres as distinct; the inextricable links between those spheres emerge clearly here. Third, many of the essayists highlight the tight connections between domestic and international developments, showing how the Cold War was influenced by and in turn influenced domestic forces.As with any edited collection, some essays stand out for their freshness and analytical rigor. Naoko Shibusawa's essay on “Ideology, Culture, and the Cold War,” for example, provides the most concise and sophisticated explication I have yet seen of that important subject. She regards ideologies of race, gender, and maturity as mutually reinforcing “notions of modernity” that shaped U.S. and Soviet attitudes and policies, and portrays the Cold War as a struggle between “competing exceptionalist claims” emanating from Moscow as well as Washington (pp. 39, 41). Cary Fraser, in his contribution on “Decolonization and the Cold War,” offers an equally provocative and persuasive explication of that critical historical phenomenon. “Decolonization,” he writes, “was thus project, process, and outcome of the search for a replacement for the quest for North Atlantic hegemony that had shaped the imperialism that preceded 1945 and the bipolar vision of the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact that emerged after 1945” (pp. 471472). John Prados's outstanding synthesis of “Cold War Intelligence History” and Vladislav Zubok's explication of the intersection between power and culture in Soviet strategy also deserve to be singled out for commendation. Among the regional essays, the contributions on the Middle East, by Salim Yaqub; South Asia, by Andrew J. Rotter; and Japan, by Antony Best, are especially noteworthy. Campbell Craig's masterful, succinct essay on the role of nuclear weapons in the Cold War also stands out.Other essays prove more descriptive than analytical, and a few border on the superficial, including the entries on geopolitics, on Africa, on international institutions, and on economics.Yet the volume contains far more strong essays than weak ones. Overall, the collection stands as a magnificent achievement. Its breadth and its helpful bibliographical aids alone make this a must-have volume. The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War belongs on the bookshelf of every serious scholar of the Cold War.

Divided Together: The United States and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, 1945–1965

<i>Divided Together: The United States and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, 1945–1965</i>

The Making of a Cold War Turning Point: The Sino-Soviet Split and the Prelude to Détente with the United States, 1965-1968

Other SectionsAbstractTHE UNITED STATES IN THE CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE OF THE SINO-SOVIET SPLITCHINA’S POLICY TOWARD THE UNITED STATES DURING THE SINO-SOVIET SPLIT, 1965-1968THE SOVIET UNION’S POLICY TOWARD THE UNITED STATES DURING THE SINO-SOVIET SPLIT, 1965-1968CONCLUSIONFootnoteReference

ASMENYBĖS AR VERTYBĖS? LIETUVOS PARTIJŲ LYDERIAI RINKĖJŲ AKIMIS IR POLITIKOS PERSONALIZACIJOS RIBOS

Lithuanian public debates share a strong conviction that the relationship between a Lithuanian voter and his/ her political representatives rests on personalisation, often nurtured by voter’s subjective and irrational feelings of love or hate in regard to particular political leaders. Is such kind of pessimism well-grounded and there are no “antidotes” to this worrisome trend of the present political life? The article addresses the problem of personalisation of political life in the post-soviet environment and attempts to challenge the aforementioned pessimism. The presented study aims to explore the relationship between perceptions of well-known Lithuanian political leaders’ personality portraits among the Lithuanian population and voter’s normative orientations on the individual level, holding voter’s normative orientations an important factor, limiting the proliferation of personalisation of politics. Perceptions of personality traits of political leaders on the individual level of analysis are xpected to pass through voter’s normative „lenses“ to produce different mental images of politicians in accordance to individual differences in politically significant value orientations.The study explores how perceptions of political leaders’ personalities in Lithuanian vary according to (a) respondent’s ideological self-identification on Left-Right scale, (a) respondent’s level of adherence to Soviet (anti-Soviet) values, (b) adherence to national conservatism (c), and post-materialist values (d). In order to understand the impact of individual’s ideological dispositions and value orientations on perception of personalities of politicians, the article follows a comprehensive theoretical approach to personality. Five-factor personality model (“Big Five”) stands out in terms of comprehensiveness and feasibility to the aims of the presented study. The Big Five offers not only a taxonomy of personality traits but also the conceptualisation of five personality dimensions. With a strong empirical orientation, it provides the conceptualisation of methodological tools for empirical studies of personality and the basis for a list of semantic differentials to measure the perception of political leader’s personality traits. The empirical analysis rests on the data of an internet panel survey, conducted in Lithuania in two waves – right before (August – September, 2012) and after (November, 2012) the Lithuanian General Elections 2012. The internet survey, administrated by research company Berent (N=1019), is representative in terms of the total population of internet users in Lithuania.Results of the study reveal a potential of individual’s normative orientations to predict his/ her perception of political leaders’ personalities on a number of personality traits and personality dimensions. Even though personality traits are objective and stable elements of individual’s psychological constitution, a serious disagreement regarding the personality portraits of analysed political leaders is revealed in the Lithuanian society, and the perceptions diverge according to individual’s political views and normative attitudes. Voter’s left-right self-identification and (anti)soviet attitudes predict the perception of three personality dimensions of Big Five – Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to experience – for analysed leaders, and national conservatism – perceptions of the abovementioned first two dimensions. The results of the study ask for further analysis of an impact that voter’s normative attitudes may bear on the perception of political leaders’ “moral traits” and emperamental features. The ideological identity of an individual may have a stronger impact on the perception of „moral traits“ of a politician than on perception of his/her temperamental constitution. A further elaboration of this idea would allow to understand mechanisms of political personalization better and to bring this discussion beyond the discourse of the end of ideology.

Russians in post-Soviet Central Asia: more ‘cold’ than the others? Exploring (ethnic) identity under different sociopolitical settings

This paper explores the identity and the social/political behaviour of Russians in post-Soviet Central Asia through a comparison with the Baltic countries via a ‘hot and cold ethnicity’ paradigm. Central Asian Russians are more likely, ceteris paribus, to be found at the ‘cold’ end of the spectrum of ‘ethnic temperatures‘. The article starts with outlining the historical roots of a specific Russians' self-designation in the ‘imperial peripheries’ – that is, a lowered attachment to their ethnic group as compared with loyalties towards the state. However, patterns of imperial penetration into different territories of the former USSR (FSU) were different, and so were the sociopolitical conditions under which Russians have found themselves after the collapse of the FSU. Due to this, patterns of Russians’ self-designation turned out to be quite divergent: Central Asia represents a contrasting pattern in comparison with the Baltics. Subsequent parts of the paper contain a more detailed analysis of the reasons behind a relatively ‘cold’ ethnic stance of Russians in Central Asia. These reasons include the salience of sociocultural boundaries versus ethnic ones, the nature of local political regimes, the role of Russian language and culture, official and popular interpretation of the Soviet past and attitudes towards the present-day Russia.