Soviet Empire Research Articles

The conquest of the Russian Arctic

Spanning nine time zones from Norway to the Bering Strait, the immense Russian Arctic was mostly unexplored before the twentieth century. This changed rapidly in the 1920s, when the Soviet Union implemented plans for its conquest. The Conquest of the Russian Arctic, a definitive political and environmental history of one of the world's remotest regions, details the ambitious attempts, from Soviet times to the present, to control and reshape the Arctic, and the terrible costs paid along the way. Paul Josephson describes the effort under Stalin to assimilate the Arctic into the Soviet empire. Extraction of natural resources, construction of settlements, indoctrination of nomadic populations, collectivization of reindeer herding--all was to be accomplished so that the Arctic operated according to socialist principles. The project was in many ways an extension of the Bolshevik revolution, as planners and engineers assumed that policies and plans that worked elsewhere in the empire would apply here. But as they pushed ahead with methods hastily adopted from other climates, the results were political repression, destruction of traditional cultures, and environmental degradation. The effects are still being felt today. At the same time, scientists and explorers led the world in understanding Arctic climes and regularities. Vladimir Putin has redoubled Russia's efforts to secure the Arctic, seen as key to the nation's economic development and military status. This history brings into focus a little-understood part of the world that remains a locus of military and economic pressures, ongoing environmental damage, and grand ambitions imperfectly realized.

Uuemaid uurimusi külma sõja ja Nõukogude Liidu lõpust [Abstract: New research on the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union

This article reviews three new books on the history of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, focusing in particular on the authors’ views on the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and early Estonia-Russia relations. “Cold War: an international history” by Carole K. Fink is a useful textbook for university students and teachers. Its main objective is not to ohver new perspectives on the history of the Cold War, but rather to summarize the main ongoing debates and to write a concise and readable narrative. The strength of Fink’s text lies in its chronological scope: it starts in 1917, seeing the Bolshevik revolution as the trigger for the Cold War, and finishes with the September 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers, which she considers the mark of the end of the post-Cold War era. “The last empire: the final days of the Soviet Union” by Serhii Plokhy is, in scope and intent, a very different book. This is a detailed autopsy of the last months of the Soviet Union’s struggle for its life, covering the period from July to December 1991. Plokhy’s main argument is that the demise of the Soviet empire was not an inevitable outcome of the end of the Cold War, most importantly because of the consistent and strong support of the Bush administration for Gorbachev’s program to save the Soviet state. This support was maintained until the Ukrainian referendum for independence in November 1991. The fate of the Soviet Union, according to Plokhy, was thus decided primarily by Ukraine. Mati Graf’s book “Impeeriumi lopp ja Eesti taasiseseisvumine 1988–1991” seems to support the view that the Soviet Union had a chance to survive the August Coup, even after the declarations of independence by the three Baltic states. But the Baltic states were an exception among the Soviet republics, for they had the internationally recognized status of being illegally occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union. It is not entirely clear, however, whether Graf actually accepts this point of view, because he contends that the legal position of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was similar to that of the Russian SFSR. Graf’s strength lies in the detailed documentation of Estonia’s process of secession from the Soviet Union. It is not often realized that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania managed not only to declare the restoration of their independence, but also to secede from the Soviet Union according to Soviet laws. The article concludes by discussing Estonia’s early relations with the new, democratic Russia led by Boris Yeltsin. It is still a matter of debatte whether there were “missed chances” in Estonian-Russian relations in the early 1990s. Graf supports the view that Estonia made several mistakes that alienated those forces in Russia that were most sympathetic toward Estonia. This is contested by other scholars. Be that as it may, more thorough research on Estonian-Russian relations, in the context of Russian engagement with the West in the 1990s, would be rewarding for anyone wanting to understand East-West relationships in the post-Cold War era. KEYWORDS: Cold War, Soviet Union, Baltic states, Russia, Perestroika, international systems

Al-Qeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and Forms of Rebellion in the 21st Century in the Vacuum of Ottoman Soviet 'Collapse'

Today around the world, from the uprisings in India by traditional peoples against the Vedanta mining & development schemes (Anon, 2014), in Panama the Ngobe-Bugle Indian tribe, to the massacre in the Amazonas Province of Peru, Native people are striving to protect their lands from resource extraction and environmental pollution (Letourneau, 2014). No ideology unites them, no international organization can protect them from armies and corporate militias and death squads. National governments call those who resist “terrorists” and so class any actions of self-defense. We have entered an era of global conflict between traditional peoples and corporations where one way of life is being exterminated. While it is in general a continuation of the assault of western colonialism, today’s indigenous rebels instead of being considered devil worshipers are now seen as minions of terror. At the same time international confrontations and competition for resources are escalating. The defeat of the USSR is often described as a “collapse” of authority and transition to a new civil entity, Russia, but like the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, it has resulted in a dismemberment of the Soviet Empire. Where the Middle East remains unstable 100 years after the Ottoman defeat, the Russian periphery has become unstable in both independence movements along its southern borders as well as those flanking Europe. The demise of both empires threatens the stability of the world today.

Value System and the Sum of Technologies

The fall of the Soviet empire is traditionally referred to technological problems. However, it is possible to relate this unexpected downfall to degeneration of the Soviet value system, which earlier produced the rise unprecedented in Russian history. Today in society and culture, the main deficiency is in inspiring objectives that can response to the national character and mechanisms of their achievement but not in technologies. The author discusses the ways and prospects of searching these values.

President Bush Doctrine in the Middle East and Iran

George Herbert Walker Bush was confronted with major changes in the world in his president time. The Cold War ended after 40 years, the Communist empire collapsed and the Berlin Wall collapsed, too. The Soviet Union lost and Mikhail Gorbachev who was reformist leader and always supported by Bush had resigned. While Bush has defended the democratization, he emphasized on foreign policy cautiously toward new countries. The biggest test of George Herbert Walker Bush was the invasion of Saddam Hussein who was president of Iraq to Kuwait and threatened to invade on Saudi Arabia. Bush's commitment to support the liberation of Kuwait could gain the support of UN, American and Congress and set out 425 thousand American soldiers to Kuwait. 117 thousand American troops joined the allied forces. After bombing for weeks and a hundred-hour ground war, Iraq was defeated by the army of a million people. Iran condemned the invasion of Iraq at the time but in the UN's activities announced neutrality in relation to declare. Disarm Iraq and to establish safe areas in North and South were gains America’ about Iraq. President Bush refused the Americans to Iraq in order to maintain the regional balance toward Iran. He also ordered Iraq used his planes against the north movement by the Kurds and southern movement in Iraq by Shiites. This action caused great destruction and had many international reactions. After it ,safe zones formed in northern and southern and Iraq was banned from entering the military to the region. Designed New World Order was just after the defeat of Iraq, the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Its principles were announced b President Bush as follows: first revision of the structure of the international economic system, but only the process of this suggestion was the Uruguay Round of GATT into the WTO in 1955. These changes were more in favor of industrialized countries. Second, strengthening the UN, third preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, fourth campaign against international terrorism. Finally, the issue of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the components of the new world order was proposed by President Bush.

New Imperial History. POST-Soviet historiography in search of a new paradigm for the history of empire and nationalism1

The main trends are examined in historical reflection, since 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, on the imperial and national past of Russia and the USSR. The revival of national historiography is placed in the epistemological and political context of postmodernity, which fuses late 19th-century paradigms with the Soviet concept of “ethnos” and with postcolonial sensitivities. The problematic national history of Russians is seen in relation to this complex methodological and ideological background. The evolution of imperial history is traced from the state-centered rediscovery of “empire” to different interpretations of “empire” as a general framework for the region’s entangled history. The new paradigm of imperial history is then introduced with its focus on the “imperial situation” of complex societies and multilayered, irregular diversity. This understanding of imperial history is precisely what has made studies of the Russian Empire relevant internationally. Students of the Russian and Soviet empires and their successor states have much to contribute to this field of intense scholarly activity.

Social Origins of the Soviet Party Elites, 1917–1990

The Soviet system replicated the imperial reign it destroyed by establishing the rule of a new elite: the Soviet party bureaucracy. True beneficiary of a revolutionary transformation, this elite came from peasant sons, promoted and rewarded by the Soviet system. This provincial surplus was a major force behind the Soviet empire: many of these young, uprooted individuals were extraordinarily successful. From slums and humble origins, they reached the inner circle of party power and remained there for almost forty years. This article profiles one of the most powerful groups within the upper echelon of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the members of the Central Committee, using statistical database analysis to examine the dramatic social transformation of this demographic group and its evolution to successful power domination.

Is a Consolidation of Liberal Democracy in the Russia Federation a Reality?

The downfall of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union was at first considered by sociologists as a matter of transition from a dictatorial to a democratic regime. As a result, they inferred an affinity between the ongoing processes in the states constituting part of the Soviet Empire and the process of democratization occurring in Latin American or Southern European states. Shortly afterwards, however, the disparity between the various processes became obvious, when in some of the post-Soviet states the dictatorial regime lingered on, while others returned to a dictatorial regime after having been democratic in the past. Thus, sociologists have, in fact, no guidelines to account for the regime changes in these states, and it is also not clear what type of regime developed during Yeltsin’s presidency and what type of regime is developing in Russia under Putin.Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way. (Nikolai Gogol)Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. (Winston Churchill)

The Russian Countryside from Tsarist times to the Fall of the Soviet Empire

The Russian Countryside from Tsarist times to the Fall of the Soviet Empire

Izolacjonizm i appeasement: Waszyngton i Londyn wobec imperium sowieckiego oraz polskiego kryzysu latem 1920 r.

Isolationism and Appeasement: Washington and London vis-à-vis the Soviet Empire and the Polish Crisis in the Summer of 1920The article analyses the attitude of the political elites of the USA and Great Britain towards the question of Russia and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1920. The analysis is based on the B. Colby Papers associated with the US Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, as well as material concerning President Woodrow Wilson (the Congress Library in Washington), together with heretofore unexamined documents regarding Philipp Kerr, private secretary to the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the actual éminence gris of his cabinet (P. Kerr Papers, National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh) and the Cabinet Papers at the National Archives in London. From January 1920 Lloyd George conducted a consistent policy of maintaining an agreement with Soviet Russia, known as “peace through trade”. Its culmination was an invitation to London issued to a political delegation headed by Lev Kamenev, member of the Political Bureau. At the same time, the United States withdrew from active policy in Europe after the Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty. Within this context the author analysed the reaction of the Wilson Administration and the Lloyd George cabinet towards Soviet aggression in Central Europe, when in August 1920 the Red Army reached Warsaw and Lenin proclaimed the Sovietisation of Poland. The British response to this challenge to the entire Versailles system assumed the form of a decision made by Lloyd George (also on 10 August 1920), urging Poland to capitulate in the face of the demands formulated by Moscow. By relinquishing Poland to the Soviet empire the British prime minister hoped to achieve reconciliation with Lenin at a diplomatic conference that was to take place in London in the autumn of 1920. The Americans responded to Soviet aggression by declaring passivity, announced by Bainbridge Colby in his famous note of 10 August. The author presented the origin of this act as well as the motives for the Lloyd George resolution conceived as an historical prefiguration of the isolationism policy (in the case of the USA) and appeasement (in the case of Great Britain).

The Untold History of the United States OliverStone and PeterKuznick. New York: Gallery Books, 2012.

The Untold History of United States Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. New York: Gallery Books, 2012.Professional historians are not likely to find much shocking in filmmaker Oliver Stone's and American University professor Peter Kuznick's The Untold History of United States. Essentially, their argument against American empire presented in book is not radically different from that of such progressive historians as Charles Beard in early twentieth century or New Left historiography influenced by work of William Appleman Williams in 1960s. And many contemporary historians generally agree with Stone and Kuznick critique of American empire. Nevertheless, general public retains allegiance to notions of an exceptional and benevolent America intent upon mission of spreading freedom, democracy, and economic prosperity to world. So much for idea that radical professors are brainwashing American youth to question concept of American hegemony. But this time, revisionist historians have a gifted filmmaker to support their case with an accompanying ten-part film series which Stone directed for Showtime cable television network.Scholars on right disagree with critique of American empire presented in The Secret History of United States, asserting that Stone and Kuznick are influenced by historical revisionism of Howard Zinn and fail to give adequate attention to crimes committed by communist dictators such as Joseph Stalin. Similar to Zinn, Stone and Kuznick do rely primarily upon secondary sources, but, unlike Zinn, they do provide endnote citations for their sources. In addition, they claim that due to rather unthinking embrace of nation's history by most Americans, who are quite aware of sins committed by Stalin, it is necessary to challenge popular complacency by concentrating upon how United States has often betrayed mission. Accordingly, Kuznick and Stone hope that their work will aid in fostering a movement of people, both in United States and world, who will no longer tolerate domination by the wealthiest, greediest, and most powerful and assist United States in regaining its democratic, egalitarian, and revolutionary soul (615).This mass movement rhetoric, however, is somewhat at odds with biographical approach taken by authors in developing their history. The Untold History of United States is hardly a comprehensive American history text. The emphasis is upon twentieth and twenty-first centuries and America's relationship with world during this time period. Thus, book begins with Spanish American War in 1898 and emergence of United States as a colonial power. Commencing with Franklin Roosevelt, Stone and Kuznick tend to tightly construct their narrative around US Presidents and how all of these leaders, some more than others, have perpetuated expansion of an American empire. This approach personalizes criticisms made by Stone and Kuznick, taking attention away from American business interests searching for cheap labor and markets.Stone and Kuznick do not simply offer villains, but they extol a hero in person of Henry A. Wallace. After serving as Secretary of Agriculture during early years of New Deal, Wallace became Vice President in 1940. Many in Democratic Party and business community, however, found Wallace to be too liberal and sympathetic to America's Soviet allies. At 1944 Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt, seeking a fourth term, was forced to drop Wallace from ticket in favor of Missouri Senator Harry Truman. Following death of Roosevelt, Truman authorized dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in addition to taking an uncompromising stance with Soviets and implementing policies such as Truman Doctrine. Stone and Kuznick speculate that Cold War with carnage and waste might have been avoided if Wallace rather than Truman had assumed Presidency in 1945. …

Nobody Does It Better: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Turns Sixty

Most of the world knows Ian Fleming’s fictional character James Bond through the 12 novels, 2 collections of short stories, and 23 films over the past 50 years which have been made of him. However, very few realize that the character began 60 years ago as a pulp hero standing up for Western values against a morally corrupt, vindictive, and spreading communist empire. Ian Fleming created a hero that embodied the West and its ideals of individualism, perseverance, and greatness, and in order to understand the popularity of James Bond, one must understand just what the character represents to the world. In this concise article, a textual and philosophic consideration of the character of James Bond is undertaken by examining Fleming’s original novels, stories, and writings on the subject. It becomes apparent that Fleming’s creation was to stand strongly opposed to the collectivist Soviet Union and its values, as well as be a tribute to Western spies who sacrifice their own happiness in the name of protecting democracy. The continued popularity of James Bond is found in the idea that the character represents the West against those who seek to destroy it and its values.

Filming ideologies

As a young man growing up in Shandong province in the 1980s and 1990s, Chao Ren witnessed great changes in China as it transformed from a communist empire to the world's second largest economy. As a filmmaker in China for more than 12 years, five years spent as a lecturer in directing at the Beijing Film Academy, he began to research the decades of his father's generation, the decades from post WW II through to 1966, and the ideological reconstructions that led to these enormous changes.Through the subtext of ideological struggle within mainstream cinema, Ren is seeking to explicate the nature of competing ideologies by revealing how this struggle impacted on cinema practices, techniques and content. Titled ‘The Terminator of China: Between Light and Dark’ (2013), interviews with scholars are intercut with sequences from eight carefully selected, highly successful mainstream films to illustrate key moments in the struggle.

Chinese Views of Post-2014 Afghanistan

As 2014 begins, the U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan. Whether one considers how China is seen by Afghanistan or how Afghanistan is seen by China, both countries' views of each other have undergone great changes since the beginning of the war in 2001.During the past half century, China has played a secondary role in Afghanistan. From the 1950s until the 1980s, the Soviet Union was Afghanistan's largest trading partner, its greatest source of aid, and a close friend; as a result, Afghanistan was drawn into the Soviet sphere of influence. The Soviet Union had a monopoly on influence in Afghanistan until 1989, when it was compelled to withdraw its troops. Since the new outbreak of war in Afghanistan beginning in 2001, the United States has performed the role the Soviet Union once played. It has stationed large numbers of troops on Afghan soil, has played a crucial part in the Afghan government, and continues to oversee the country's security and politics. During both periods, China certainly played a role in Afghanistan's affairs, but not a particularly decisive one.The situation today is quite different. As Afghanistan enters a period of transformation, international society, as well as the Afghan government itself, will generally expect China to assume a larger role in Afghanistan and participate more proactively. This includes providing more investment, aid, and other development assistance, as well as taking on more responsibility for the country's stability. During a visit to Beijing in September 2013, Afghan president Hamid Karzai said that he hopes China will continue to help bring about peace, security, and stability in Afghanistan, in addition to playing a constructive role in improving the relations with neighboring states.1 He also expressed a desire for the two countries to strengthen their trade and cultural cooperation and a hope that China will help Afghanistan boost its capacities, develop its economy, and improve the lives of its people.Afghanistan has also changed in the eyes of China. Previously, the country was seen solely as an external threat to security. While Afghanistan remains a contributing factor to external instability, it has become a partner that offers many potential benefits to the Chinese economy, as well as opportunities for China to further develop its influence on the periphery. China already has economic interests in Afghanistan that should not be overlooked. In 2008, for example, a Chinese company won rights to the Aynak copper mine project. In 2011, China National Petroleum Corporation signed a contract to acquire the oil fields of the northeastern provinces of Sar-i-Pul and Faryab. Both projects required China to make a huge investment. When they begin operation, the minerals, oil, and gas produced will need to be exported, requiring further investment in the construction of railroads and pipelines. Through these projects, China hopes to acquire the resources needed to sustain its economic growth and simultaneously contribute to the reconstruction of Afghanistan's economy by providing the country with capital, technology, and employment opportunities, as well as considerable profits and tax revenue.Yet as China increases its investment in Afghanistan, it also must address the problem of how to protect its economic interests. The largest risk arises from instability. Chinese investors are powerless in the face of Afghanistan's political, social, and religious conflicts, and China is incapable of solving these political and security problems on its own. In the face of such challenges, Chinese investors and political leaders must work with the international community to stabilize Afghanistan and establish good relations among all the country's factions and clans. For China, this is particularly important in the areas in which Chinese companies are located. In September 2013, President Xi Jinping proposed a vision to build a Silk Road economic zone, which has been seen as proof of China's strategy of developing its western provinces. …

Środowisko – tak, Zieloni – nie. Problematyka ochrony środowiska naturalnego w badaniach empirycznych

This article presents the perception of environmental issue by Polish society - attaching importance to these issues and the assessment of political activities in solving environmental problems. The first part of the article describes environmentalism and the green parties which gained relevant position in Western European party system in the 70s of the twentieth century. Then the activities of the Greens in Poland and other Central European countries are described that took place after the collapse of the communist system in 1989. The article also illustrates the results of research on social perception of the environmental issues. The vast majority of Poles consider these issues important and claim that politicians should increase their activities in this area. Nevertheless, this doesn't affect the position of the Greens in the Polish party system. This is due to the history after World War II when Central Europe was in the Soviet sphere of influence and the weakness of the green parties that have never been able to present their offer efficiently to public opinion.

Из города на дачу: социокультурные факторы освоения дачного пространства вокруг Петербурга (1860–1914) by О. Ю. Малинова-Тзиафета (review)

Reviewed by: Из города на дачу: социокультурные факторы освоения дачного пространства вокруг Петербурга (1860–1914) by О. Ю. Малинова-Тзиафета Anna Ananieva (bio) and Julian Windmöller (bio) О. Ю. Малинова-Тзиафета. Из города на дачу: социокультурные факторы освоения дачного пространства вокруг Петербурга (1860–1914). Санкт-Петербург: Издательство Европейского университета в Санкт-Петербурге, 2013. 336с., ил. ISBN: 978-5-94380-137-2. At least by the middle of the nineteenth century, the Russian word “dacha” had found its proper place in European vocabulary as a term for “Russian country house” in general and “summer dwellings of Petersburgers” in particular. 1 The sociocultural phenomenon thus conceived remained deeply rooted in the people’s everyday life even after the dissolution of the Russian and later the Soviet Empire. Its integration in the here and now of common living environments may be one reason why the dacha stayed outside the focus of scientific investigation for a long time. Only in the 1990s did it become an object of observation and reflection. Nearly at the same time, the Russian press and the international [End Page 426] housing and urban studies “discovered” the dacha as a socio-cultural practice combining recreational and economic functions. 2 Receiving academic attention during the time of the 1990s’ economic crisis highlighted its significance for “sustaining life.” 3 Dacha life became an object of international investigation for anthropologists, historians, art historians, and literary scholars. In 2003, the British historian Steven Lovell published the first comprehensive study on the cultural history of the dacha since the eighteenth century. 4 One of the recent publications based on field research and investigating today’s dacha culture was written by the American anthropologist Melissa L. Caldwell. 5 The Russian historian Olga Malinova-Tziafeta devotes her new study to the dacha’s ascent to a mass phenomenon of Saint Petersburg’s urban culture. Her book Iz goroda na dachu explores the sociocultural factors of dacha development around the capital of the Russian Empire between 1860 and 1914. It is one of the first works to start closing the gap that until now existed in the historiography on dacha culture and Saint Petersburg’s urban development in the time period after the Great Reforms. Malinova-Tziafeta draws from a variety of sources, ranging from newspapers to guidebooks and including visual sources like postcards and photographs, found in four different archives (P. 25). The secondary literature includes recent publications in Russian, English, and German as well as old works related to her topic. The book consists of four chapters, with an emphasis on the second and the fourth. The first chapter, “Ot dachi k dachke,” contains a history of the term “dacha,” following it from the seventeenth century to the [End Page 427] late nineteenth. The author’s concern to reconstruct the term’s historical semantics and its fixing in juridical and fiscal texts is an important one. A conceptual history of the dacha remains a desideratum. Various significant yet still fragmentary studies defining the phenomenon for respective time periods have been published by historians, art and literary historians, and linguists. 6 Combined, these findings and Malinova-Tziafeta’s observations lay a good base for a further clarification of the term. Such an undertaking would contribute to developing a joint perspective on the dacha as a phenomenon of Russian culture and could relativize the stereotypical juxtaposition of Moscow and Petersburg as two contrasting types of living environments in the countryside. The following three chapters of the book each deal with sociocultural factors influencing the valorization of dacha space and transforming the dacha from an elite into a mass phenomenon. The focus lies on hygiene and health issues resulting from the ongoing industrialization (chapters 2 and 3). The fourth chapter is concerned with the sociocultural influence of railroad construction on dacha space and vice versa. In the second chapter, “Bor’ba za blagoustroistvo Peterburga i dachnyi otdykh (1860−1914),” Malinova-Tziafeta expounds the struggle for improved hygiene and health conditions in the capital and its consequences for the development of dacha space around the city. The chapter centers on refuse disposal and the planned construction of urban sewerage, as well as the sociocultural factors connected to them. The author vividly elaborates how civic life was affected by industrialization and how the municipal authorities on the one hand, and the developing middle class on the other, tried to deal with it. Compared to other European metropolises, Saint Petersburg...

Unipolar World in Crisis as Russia Challenges US and Allies, Dragging Other Disgruntled Countries Along

For more than two decades after the collapse of Soviet Union and concomitantly, cold war, United States of America became dominant world power, with western powers queuing behind her. Preoccupied by domestic political and economic problems that led, in the first instance, to the collapse of the octopus (Soviet empire), the old rival and foe receded from international politics and other engagements. United States and her western allies, thus, had field days in most part of Europe, South America, Asia, Middle East and Africa. However, having gathered sufficient political and economic stability, Russia, in the last one year, is not only making foray into international politics but actually challenging US socially, politically and militarily. This paper is out to examine how Russia is doing these dragging along some disgruntled continents against United States of America and her allies.

Soviet Empire and Operatic Realm: Stalinist Search for the Model Soviet Opera

Cet article est consacré à l’opéra classique et à son utilisation par le pouvoir soviétique pour en faire un instrument de formation d’une conscience impériale sur une base nouvelle, soviétique et contribuer à la création d’un espace politique transnational d’un genre nouveau. L’attitude du pouvoir soviétique à l’égard de l’opéra est passée d’un rejet dans les années 1920 à un encouragement et à un soutien actif dans les années 1930. À partir du moment où le pouvoir a compris que l’opéra pouvait servir à la légitimation du régime, il a commencé à diffuser la culture opératique dans l’ensemble du territoire de l’État multiethnique et multinational soviétique. Une campagne d’ouverture de nouveaux théâtres d’opéras dans les républiques soviétique d’Asie centrale et du Caucase, dans les grandes villes de Sibérie et de l’Oural a commencé dans les années 1930 et s’est poursuivie jusqu’à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. L’auteur émet l’hypothèse que cette campagne était liée à la recherche d’un opéra soviétique idéal. Une attention particulière est accordée aux Décades nationales, festivals d’une dizaine de jours qui étaient l’occasion de représenter sur la scène du Bolchoï de Moscou les réalisations musicales et opératiques des républiques sœurs à partir de 1936. L’article étudie le sens idéologique et les prémisses de ces campagnes, ainsi que le degré de dépendance de ces contrées éloignées par rapport au centre.

Petru Negură, Mobilitate socială și limite de aparat: observații pe marginea poveștii vieții unui intelectual moldovean din epoca sovietică târzie / Social Mobility and Bureaucratic Limits: Some Observations Concerning the Life Story of a Moldovan Intellectual During the Late Soviet Era

The biography of Ion, who came from a poor peasant family, then became professor (he obtained his PhD at the most prestigious university in the former Soviet empire) and member of the first freely elected Moldovan parliament, offers a case study in which we can observe, at the micro scale, the upward social mobility process that took place in the Soviet Union through secondary and higher education institutions. However, this “life story” illustrates a certain cap which was sometimes imposed to new “national cadres” (employees) in their career development, who were suspected of disloyalty towards the Soviet regime. This new elite formed and capped by the same system (a process which was subject to a double logic: training of professionals and political control) became in the years of perestroika and the “velvet revolutions”, the new vanguard which took over after the departure of the Soviet government, by embracing the values of the “national revival” and liberal democracy

Inny kolonializm. O możliwości zaaplikowania metodologii postkolonialnej do studiów nad Europą postkomunistyczną

The paper defends the usefulness of the postcolonial approach to the study of various processes in the postcommunist countries that belonged, for decades, to the inner and outer parts of the Soviet empire. The paper shows, in particular, how some developments in post-Soviet Ukraine can be better understood in the context of Russo-Soviet internal colonialism, and how Ukraine’s thoroughgoing ambivalence and conspicuous regionalism result historically from different types of colonization of different regions. The paper insists, nonetheless, on a clear recognition of intrinsic limitations of the postcolonial approach, determined primarily by the absence of the racist component in Soviet imperialism – the component that is crucial for the classical (post)colonial situation and that makes it profoundly different from the Soviet one in terms of the complete exclusion / potential inclusion of subjugated peoples. In sum, all the usefulness of postcolonial theorizing for the analysis of the postcommunist world should not inhibit researchers from the recognition of its only partial and very conditional applicability, and of the need for due reservations, selfreflection and self-restrain.