Soviet Leadership Research Articles

Opening Up Arms Control Silos

Over the years, countless undergraduate students in survey courses and special subjects have been lectured about U.S. President Richard Nixon’s May 1972 visit to Moscow, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty’s (ABMT) signing, and the agreement that concluded the first round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Images of Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev putting pen to paper in the Kremlin’s grand St. Vladimir Hall will be familiar to hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of students who have studied U.S. and Soviet foreign policy, the Cold War, and the arms race. Yet, this outward appearance of amity and compromise between leaders with their metaphorical fingers on the metaphorical buttons of thousands of nuclear weapons belies the lengthy and, at times, vicious bureaucratic infighting that plagued the SALT and ABMT negotiations. It is this very bureaucratic complexity that the late Patrick J. Garrity (who sadly passed away on May 10, 2021) and Erin R. Mahan seek to address in Averting Doomsday: Arms Control During the Nixon Presidency. Not only do they concern themselves with personal and institutional factors that influenced Nixon’s arms control agenda policies, but they also make a welcome effort to encompass the entirety of arms control. This ambitious aim brings together an assessment not just of strategic nuclear issues, but also of nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear testing, chemical weapons control, and biological weapons control. These areas are frequently left in silos—pun apologetically intended—and treated as distinct issues. Garrity and Mahan are therefore to be praised for such a comprehensive approach.

Some aspects of national-state building amongthe Finno-Ugric peoples in the USSR

Introduction. The article considers some aspects of the national-state building of the Finno-Ugric peoples in the USSR. It highlights the ways of realization of the policy of the Soviet power in this matter. Its positive achievements, as well as contradictions and omissions in the implementation process are represented. The research aims at giving the complex analysis and the objective assessment of the national-state building processes of the Finno-Ugric peoples in the USSR. Materials and Methods. The article summarized legislative documents and materials contained in the works of Soviet and contemporary authors on this problem. Such methods of research as comparative, historical, genetic, legal, descriptive, logical were used to achieve the goal. It also employed the method of actualization which allowed to connect the development of modern processes with the historical experience of the past. Results and Discussion. The research traced the dynamics and certain tendencies of the realization of the national policy towards the Finno-Ugric peoples in the USSR. The analysis of the national-state building processes among them allowed concluding about the significance of the Soviet stage in their development, despite some contradictions, mistakes and omissions in the actions of the Soviet leadership. Underestimation of the national problems of the ethnic groups within the USSR, along with many other unsolved problems in the economy, politics, spiritual and social spheres, accumulated in the State, eventually led to its collapse, which led to problems in geopolitics. Conclusion. Considering all aspects of nation-state building in the USSR made it possible to conclude on the significance and value of creating national administrative-territorial formations among Finno-Ugric peoples, whose continuations are the present-day national subjects of the Russian Federation. The conclusion was made that the established foundations of the nation-state structure of the Russian Federation should be preserved as an important factor in the preservation and development of Finno-Ugric peoples.

NEGOCIERILE BILATERALE ROMÂNO MAGHIAREPRIVIND TRECEREA FRONTIEREI (1945-949)

The Romanian-Hungarian border after the end of the Second World War was one of the priorities of the Petru Groza government at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946. The border before the Conference benefited from additional protection from the Romanian authorities to prevent the illegal crossing of the border by the Hungarians. Even after the ratification of the Peace Treaty in 1947, there were incidents on the Romanian-Hungarian border. Due to the fact that at the beginning the Romanian-Hungarian border did not benefit from official recognition by international bodies, surveillance was mainly done through security and defense missions, with the exception of the border with the USSR. In 1944, in Northern Transylvania, the Soviets began an extensive border surveillance activity. Soviet military rule was maintained from November 1944 to March 1945, with the coming to power of a pro-Soviet government led by Dr. Petru Groza. Also, while the Soviet leadership controlled Northern Transylvania, they made provisions for the Border Guard Corps, which was significantly reduced. From a number of 44,000 in 1944 to 12,000 in April 1945. The Frontier Police also underwent permanent restructuring, coming under the supervision of the Allied Control Commission. In order to avoid illegal border crossing, we will see throughout this article that Romania has taken special measures to prevent this. This caused discontent among Hungarian citizens living in Hungary, as they were subjected to a series of bureaucratic procedures that made it difficult for them to come to Romania. In 1946, the Border Troops Command belonging to the Ministry of National Defense was established. The pedantic problems between Romania and Hungary regarding this aspect were dealt with within the Ministry of the Interior. The numerous problems caused by crossing the border determined the creation of a mixed Romanian-Hungarian delegation to discuss and lay the foundations for a convention in order to solve the existing problems. The first convention aimed to settle the points being accepted by both parties. Later, the Hungarian side requested the reinstatement of the Convention for Small Border Traffic with Hungary from 1931, which, however, was not accepted by the Romanian state. On November 25, 1947, with the arrival of the Hungarian delegation in Romania, a Protocol was signed. Point 3 of it referred to the issue of movement of people who have property in both countries. Transit visas were also on the agenda of the discussions. The two delegations held numerous negotiations between 1945-1949, but which did not lead to the definitive stop of the fraudulent crossing of the border with Romania.

Three Variants of the First Five-Year Plan for the Economy of the USSR (From Realism to Utopia Against the Background of the Economic and Political Development of the USSR in 1928–1929)

The article analyzes the first stage of the formation of the planning system in the USSR as an integral part of the command economy. It is shown that the goals and objectives of the first long-term plans were determined by the objective need to overcome the economic and military backwardness of the USSR, in comparison with the developed capitalist countries, and by the conviction of the Soviet leadership in the idea that military conflicts with class and geopolitical opponents are inevitable. At the same time, the goals and objectives were determined by the NEP crisis in the period of reconstruction. The author of the article compares three variants of the first five-year plan. He considers and explains the differences in their aims, macroeconomic tasks and basic national economic proportions. Based on the world and Soviet economic history, the author assesses the feasibility of individual versions of the five-year plan and shows the utopian nature of the adopted five-year plan. Besides, the article analyzes the fulfillment of the five-year plan in the first two years. Alternative macroeconomic estimates demonstrate non-achievement of targets for all most important indicators. Moreover, the article has considered some indicators that were increased for individual sectors of the economy in spring of 1929. Due to the utopian nature of the adopted plan, the question is considered whether Stalin and his entourage were insane and how they could navigate in what was happening in the economy having unreliable macroeconomic information. Although, they are proved to have had sufficient information about the real situation in the economy.

Проблемы послевоенного противостояния держав-победительниц в работах советских авторов в журнале Foreign Affairs на заре Холодной войны

The article analyzes from an imagological point of view the articles of Soviet authors published in the Foreign Affairs magazine in 1945-1947. The aim of the work is to study the attempts of the Soviet leadership to use the temporarily available channel of communication with the United States of America and highlight the characteristic features of the image of the enemy created by Soviet authors who wrote to a foreign audience. Based on the analysis of articles by Soviet authors published in the journal Foreign Affairs, the author comes to the conclusion that Soviet propaganda from the outside was slightly different from the one that was directed inside the country and turned to its standard images, depending on the foreign policy situation. The novelty of the work lies in addressing a relatively little-studied aspect of the early Cold War, namely, the attempts of the Soviet side to present its point of view on what is happening in the world directly through Western publications, including the most prestigious. The relevance of the work is to demonstrate how gradually in Soviet propaganda rhetoric, directed not only inside, but also outside the country, there was a transition from the old trends of the times of military alliance with Western powers to a new orthodoxy, criticizing former allies not only from communist, but also from general democratic and left-patriotic positions. It can also be noted that this process was neither rapid nor abrupt, hostility and negative stereotypes about the United States and Britain were created gradually. This is especially relevant in the context of the historical process that is now called the “Second Cold War”.

Trade, Economic and Political Relations between Soviet Russia and the Chinese Province of Xinjiang in 1921-1922

The author analyzes the features and results of trade, economic and political relations of the Chinese province of Xinjiang with Soviet Russia and the USSR in 1921-1922. The main sources for the preparation of the article were historical and archival materials on the trade and economic relations of Xinjiang with Russia and the Soviet Union (1896-1949) in Chinese, as well as documents from a number of Moscow archives (the Russian State Archive of Economics, the Russian State Military Archive, the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation). The analysis showed that during the period under review the Soviet-Xinjiang trade, economic and political relations were rather ambiguous. This is evidenced by statistical data on the volume of trade for 1921 and 1922, which, despite the measures taken by Moscow, did not increase. In addition, it should be emphasized that the range and list of goods supplied by the parties changed significantly. The author comes to the conclusion that in 1921-1922 there did not take place the final restoration and development of all-round ties between the Soviet Union and the Chinese province of Xinjiang. It was the Soviet leadership that was the initiator of the bilateral rapprochement.

Curzon's Ultimatum and Its Impact on the USSR Policy Towards Poland

The author raises the issue that was practically unexplored on the impact of the British ultimatum delivered to the USSR in May 1923 on the relations between Moscow and Warsaw. The author cites new documents from the diplomatic correspondence of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs' central office (NKID) with the Polish embassy which show that the uproar caused by the Curzon memorandum in the Soviet leadership extended far beyond the sphere of Soviet-British relations. There are analyzed the concessions that Moscow was ready to make in order to prevent Poland from joining the new anti-Soviet front. The comparative-historical analysis is used to examine the dynamics of changes in the nature and scale of these concessions depending on the tension in Soviet-British relations. The conclusion is made that the Curzon memorandum provoked a turn in the Soviet policy towards Poland which Moscow did not fully abandon even when the fears of forming a new anti-Soviet coalition were dispelled. The article also substantiates the reasons why the Soviet leadership decided not to give up its readiness to make a number of concessions to Poland, despite the fact that in June 1923 there was no threat of a new anti-Soviet intervention and Warsaw's participation in it.

The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History by Austin Jersild

<i>The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History</i> by Austin Jersild

Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 by Jeffrey Herf

<i>Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949</i> by Jeffrey Herf

Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961–1975 by Natalia Telepneva

<i>Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961–1975</i> by Natalia Telepneva

David Joravsky (1925–2020)

David Joravsky (1925–2020) John Bushnell and Sheila Fitzpatrick Having learned belatedly of the death of David Joravsky, the historian of Soviet science and professor of history at Northwestern University, the editors of Kritika publish this two-part memorial to honor his passing. ________ I first encountered Dave Joravsky in graduate school, when I read his Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 1917–1932.1 The overarching subject was the shift of the official version of Soviet science from a rather mundane positivist-materialist reductionism in the 1920s (largely ignored by practicing scientists) to an imposed "dialectical materialism" that took hold in the early 1930s and provided ideological cover for (the most famous example) Lysenko's Lamarckian view that traits acquired during an organism's lifetime—that is, not determined by genes—could be inherited by its offspring. Almost everything in the book was new to me. What most startled me, however, was Dave's demolition of the belief, to which almost all scholars of the Soviet Union at the time subscribed, that Lenin, in a 1905 article on "Party Organization and Party Literature" had provided the authoritative basis for Soviet leaders' insistence that literature—belles lettres—should be written from a Bolshevik point of view. That was, in fact, the position that Stalin took in the 1930s. As Dave pointed out, Lenin had asserted only that political and social analysis published in the Bolshevik newspaper should reflect the party's ("party" not yet capitalized) positions; competing socialisms were either irrelevant or unwelcome. That might seem to be no more than a puzzling aside in a book on Soviet science, but in fact it was a refreshing reminder that Soviet scholarship of that time, and even later, [End Page 451] offered a very unreliable history of early Bolshevism, as it did of Soviet science. Yet Western historians decided to turn the Soviet false credit into a false charge (which they nevertheless seemed to think was true). Dave reminded them that they should look at the original documents. Not really a necessary reminder, you might think, but Cold War–era historians made that mistake over and over again. Even as recently as 15 years ago I had to recommend that a publisher not accept a book proposal on the history of Soviet art whose reasonably well-known would-be author claimed the same Lenin article to be the foundation stone of Soviet art. Dave wrote two other remarkable books on Soviet science, The Lysenko Affair and Russian Psychology: A Critical History.2 Here, however, I want to introduce you instead to his last, as yet unpublished but completed book: Great Nations of the West.3 Joravsky used literature (the works of Émile Zola, Lev Tolstoi, Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, and many other greats) as his sources for this meditation on nationalism, antisemitism, and attitudes toward war in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. How did these writers frame the nation? How did they justify nationalism? Did they see war as useful, necessary, inevitable, central to national identity? Dave was the opposite of a nationalist and appalled by the justifications great writers offered for war, but his purpose was not to denounce them, because that would have been too easy. Of course, he did not hide what he thought. He really did want to understand their points of view. The book sits at the boundary of history and literary studies: Dave assumed that literature maps and perhaps shapes intellectual trends. The book reflects his astonishing breadth and depth of knowledge, and his writing is compelling. Dave was a generous colleague, with a habit of asking fundamental questions. When I talked with him about my own work, he routinely honed in on what he took to be the essential questions: What was my basic assumption? Was I writing from a political or moral point of view (he employed other dichotomies as well), and why? Sometimes I found that style of interrogation of my work useful, sometimes—temporarily, at least—annoying, particularly when I didn't have ready answers to his questions. But the questions were useful even when I tried to ignore them. When the department dealt with hiring decisions, Dave tended to pose questions...

Ленинградский управхоз в годы блокады: зона ответственности и образ

Introduction. The key figures in the communal services of Leningrad during the period of the city blockade were the household managers – upravkhozy. Their functions were determined by a special regulation adopted and approved by the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. Household managers were supposed to monitor the state of the household, including the housing stock, regulate the passport regime, carry out the correct and timely collection (and in some cases, accrual) of apartment and utility bills. With the help of the employees subordinate to them, they were obliged to carry out routine repairs of the housing stock. Methods and Materials. Using a set of documents deposited in the archives, as well as diaries and official decisions of the Leningrad leaders during the war, the authors highlight the emotional background of the blockaded city. Along with the solution of the food problem, an important task in the conditions of massive shelling and bombing was the preservation of the housing stock in a satisfactory condition. Analysis. Being subordinate to the district council executive committee, the household managers accumulated in their hands the funds and property of the household, they hired and fired a significant part of the workers, and had the right to impose disciplinary sanctions on them. In the emergency conditions of the blockade, they became the most important link between the party and Soviet leadership of their district and the tenants. Since there was often no effective control over the work of the household managers, they were able to decide at their own discretion, without the sanction of the housing department, on the distribution of vacated rooms and apartments that belonged to deceased and evacuated residents of Leningrad. Results. On the basis of a set of documents, including archival materials, the article examines the impact of Leningrad administrative farms on the daily life of Leningraders during the years of the blockade. It is concluded that the abuses of household managers were explained by their low wages, insufficient professional training to solve complex issues of public utilities and a low educational level. Authors’ contribution. O.A. Gavrilova identified historical sources, analyzed the official decrees issued by the leadership of Leningrad. M.V. Khodjakov analyzed archival materials and memoirs of blockade survivors, designed the text of the article. Key words: blockade of Leningrad, Great Patriotic War, housing policy, urban economy, household manager.

The Bleeding Wound: The Soviet War in Afghanistan and the Collapse of the Soviet System by Yaacov Ro’i

This author’s prolific scholarship combines nuanced argumentation with an encylopedic knowledge of late-socialist Soviet society, notably in the realms of foreign relations, nationalities policy, and religion. In this exhaustively researched book, Ro’i turns his attention to the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), a conflict that Eduard Shevardnadze, the USSR’s last foreign minister, termed “a sin” in a 1990 speech to the Supreme Soviet (115). Although a number of excellent monographs on the subject have been published in recent years, Ro’i offers something new. In 1992/3, when a conflict that killed at least 15,000 Soviet soldiers and more than a million Afghans was recent news, he and a small team of interviewers conducted surveys and interviews with hundreds of former Soviet citizens, most of them war veterans, across eleven Soviet republics and among emigrés in Israel. Incorporating elements of qualitative and quantitative data and analysis, the result is a source base rich and unique in its combination of detail and raw emotion.The Bleeding Wound is a magisterial survey of the war’s intersection with important trends in the Soviet 1980s. The assessment of Russian political scientist Dmitrii Ol’shanskii whom Ro’i quotes at the outset summarizes the book’s argument: “The truth about Afghanistan emerges only in a polyphony of varying points of view grounded in authentic knowledge” (5). Ro’i seeks to study “the ways that the war encompassed various aspects of late Soviet government and society” through the lens of “a number of topics that were of paramount importance in the 1980s” (306)—official (civilian and military) attitudes toward the various stages of the war, the behavior and treatment of Soviet soldiers, ethnic relations in the Red Army, Soviet popular culture, veterans (afgantsy), and glasnost’. The book is organized according to ten thematic chapters, two providing a detailed chronology, three focusing on the military, and two engaging with media and public opinion. The final three chapters analyze the challenges confronting returning afgantsy, the position of Central Asian Muslims in the Red Army, and the political activity of afgantsy during and after the Soviet collapse.One area in which the book breaks new ground concerns its focus on Central Asian Muslims. Historically speaking, the Central Asian republics and Afghanistan hold much in common. The long-standing conventional wisdom is that the Soviet leadership sought to capitalize on these affinities by deploying Central Asian soldiers in the initial part of the war, only to pull them back because they were too sympathetic to locals, too Muslim, or insufficiently “internationalist.” Ro’i’s interviews and survey data allow him to paint a more complex picture. For example, his Central Asian respondents rated the need to intervene in Afghanistan much higher than did Russians, other Slavs, and Muslims from Russia and the Caucasus. In the early part of the war, 56 percent of Central Asian subjects affirmed the USSR’s “need” to intervene, compared to 31 percent of Russians (169). By contrast, in the same period, Central Asians scored lowest on the “moral right” to intervene compared to the same groups (173). Results like this one lead Ro’i to highlight the limitations of such surveys, and to rely instead on interviews with forty-four veterans and fifty civilians from the region. He identifies racism and Islamophobia as reasons behind doubt (in the USSR and Washington) about the Central Asians’ patriotism (260): “Careful scrutiny of the evidence demands that we refrain from drawing conclusions about widespread Central Asian disloyalty to the Soviet Union (261).” Rather than making sweeping generalizations, Ro’i brings his Central Asian informants to life by skillfully deploying colorful vignettes, such as one about a Tajik soldier who met Afghans who had known his parents. These and other accounts help to lighten the mood of a work that can make for harrowing reading (260).Jam-packed as it is with data and dense analysis, The Bleeding Wound may intimidate non-specialist readers. But Ro’i’s gift for weaving a galaxy of sources, and many different methodologies, into one elegant narrative, makes this book unique. It is both an excellent introduction for the more intrepid general reader and, more obviously, a key reference work about the Afghan War and the Soviet 1980s.

The struggle for power in Egypt in May 1971 and its impact on relations with the USSR

The subject of the study is the power struggle that unfolded in Egypt in May 1971 between President M. A. Sadat and a group of prominent statesmen led by Vice President A. Sabri. He had close ties with the leaders of the USSR. When the struggle ended with the removal of Sabri and his group from their posts, which was called the May Correctional Revolution. These events affected relations between Sadat and Soviet leaders, given that Sabri was a favorite of the USSR in Egypt after the death of President Nasser. On the other hand, at that time there were many attempts by the United States to expand ties with Egypt. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that more than 50 years after the end of the power struggle that took place in Egypt in May 1971, accusations, gossip and rumors still resound in the minds of many. This struggle had a great impact on Soviet-Egyptian relations during the era of Egyptian President M. A. Sadat. Therefore, the author of the article seeks to analyze the events and development of this struggle or correct the distortion of facts with the help of memoirs and works of diplomats and politicians published over the past 50 years in Russian and Arabic. This undoubtedly provides an opportunity for a clearer and more comprehensive conclusion about the reality of the relationship between Sadat and the Soviet leaders after the overthrow of the Ali Sabri group, which resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the USSR and Egypt on May 27, 1971.

RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR OF 2022 : HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF TRAGEDY AND LESSONS FOR NEXT GENERATIONS OF UKRAINIANS

Problem statement. For many of our compatriots, the large-scale invasion of sovereign Ukraine by Russian troops on 24 February 2022 came as a complete suddenness, an extreme aggression by the so-called “brotherly people”. The Russian Federation has launched a full-scale invasion along the entire length of the common border, as well as from the territory of Belarus and the temporarily occupied Crimea, launched missile strikes against military and critical civilian infrastructure in the regions of Ukraine and continues to conduct military operations destroying cities, villages and the civilian population, perpetrating genocide against the Ukrainian people. But if we carefully analyse Ukrainian-Russian relations throughout the centuries of our non-neighbourliness, then the openly hostile attitude of today's the Russian establishment and the part of Russian society that supports it is not surprising. The purpose of the article is to conduct a historical analysis of the Russian aggression origins against the Ukrainian people, nation, state, culture, Ukrainians during the X−XXI centuries and outline the historical prospects of relations with the Russian state for the preservation and stable development of future generations of Ukrainians. Conclusions. The future of the Russian state depends entirely on the position of the civilized world. According to leading historians, with whom we fully agree, the destruction of the modern Russian empire could lead to the development of such post-imperial ethnic groups as the West Siberian, Far Eastern, Cossack pre-Caucasian, etc. At the same time, we can agree with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the coalition forming advisability of countries most interested in Russia's disarmament, which could include Britain, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and possibly Turkey. Such an alliance could be a powerful lever in opposing the revival of the Soviet Union, which was a “prison of nations” and has now been partially revived to force all civilized countries (especially those bordering Russia and Belarus) to consider further steps. So, let us remember and constantly remind our children that the policy of the Soviet leadership towards Ukraine was occupation, as well as the policy of the Russian Empire in the XIX century and the Russian Federation now. It consisted in purposeful actions to destroy Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as the bearer of national identity, history, culture and language in order to permanently consolidate the territory of Ukraine under Moscow's rule. Today, Ukraine is forced to defend its civilized European choice and state sovereignty from Russia. It is necessary to remember and prevent the mistakes and miscalculations that led to the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917−1921, the main of which were internal disagreements in the face of external aggression, which led to the occupation of the territory. Today we have a chance to end this war for the sovereignty of our state, for the life of the people in it and finally bury the empire of evil.

СОВЕТСКИЙ СТРУКТУРАЛИЗМ: Е. ПРЕОБРАЖЕНСКИЙ, С. СТРУМИЛИН, Н. ВОЗНЕСЕНСКИЙ, Ю. ЯРЕМЕНКО

Structuralism is a relatively young area of economic research, but it already has its own history in Russia. The first debates over the rates and proportions of the Soviet economy began back in the 1920s. The discussions between “geneticists” and “teleologists” were quite open then. Geneticists defended the traditionalist approach, relying on the exhaustion of the restoration impulse and the need to return the country to “normal”, average world growth rates and the accumulation rate of 16-18%. Teleologists relied on the “law of socialist accumulation” and the “theory of two regulators”. They were confident in the possibilities of accelerated development; even the “starting version” of the 1st Five-Year Plan provided for achieving an accumulation rate of more than 20%. And in the end, despite the monstrous mistakes the Bolshevik leadership made during collectivization, the teleologists turned out to be right. The 2nd Five-Year Plan was more successful — the planned savings rate was reduced, the production of consumer goods was increased, and it was possible to switch from cards to planned trade turnover. The idea of accelerated development and the discovery of the law of socialist accumulation belonged to E. Preobrazhensky, but its implementation, including through planned calculations, was carried out by S. Strumilin, and starting from the 3rd Five-Year Plan — by N. Voznesensky. The end of the post-war period and the death of I. Stalin marked the end of “adaptive modernization”. The 8th Five-Year Plan, which aimed for faster growth of Group B industries over Group A, failed to be fulfilled. By the end of the 1970s the Soviet economy fell into inevitable stagnation. Economists of that time gave alarmist forecasts about the decline in growth rates, and proposed measures to overcome the crisis, but all of those were palliative in nature. The structuralist theory of multi-level economy by Yu. Yaremenko appeared at the same time. This theory contained a number of provisions that could be called heretical, contradicting both Marxism and the neoclassical mainstream. Despite its fruitfulness, it was ignored by both planners and Soviet leaders.

American Representatives to the USSR and the Fate of Soviet Religious Policy at the Beginning of the Great Patriotic War. From Father Leopold Braun&amp;apos;s Correspondence of 1941

In this article, the authors analyse and comment upon four documents from the archives of the Vatican Secretariat of State which reflect the earliest phase of US-Soviet contacts during the Great Patriotic War relating to the question of religious freedom in the USSR. The international reputation of the Soviet Union as a country of deliberate persecution of religion became a domestic political problem for the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the autumn of 1941, as its attempts to include the USSR in the Lend-Lease programme met with resistance from influential religious circles, particularly American Catholics. These circumstances led the US administration to seek the support of the Vatican, on the one hand, and, on the other, to seek statements from the Soviet leadership that would confirm the latter&amp;apos;s commitment to the principle of religious freedom declared in Soviet law. At the same time, Roosevelt himself was convinced that a military crisis would force the Soviet Union to abandon its previous anti-religious policy. This view was also shared by the representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Moscow, the American Assumptionist Fr Leopold Braun. As can be seen from the letters published here, Fr Braun was convinced that the US administration should take immediate and vigorous steps to secure guarantees of religious freedom from the Soviet leaders. His letters were sent both to Washington and to the Vatican, where they were read as confirming the position of the American side in urging the Holy See to show flexibility towards Soviet Russia.

“Lenin and the Bolsheviks Were All Kurds”: Folklore and Politics in the Soviet Kurdish Culture of the 1920–1930s

To overcome imperial legacy, the Soviet policy after 1917 set itself new guidelines in the field of foreign and domestic policy. Among the policies of the Soviet government in the first decades of its existence was the systematic intensive development of the modern national identity of the non-Russian peoples of the USSR. This included, inter alia, training national specialists and developing a modern educational and cultural infrastructure, but also providing each of the ethnic groups of the USSR with a certain set of modern cultural institutions and products. This canon also included literary works related to Soviet politics which glorified the leaders of the party and the government. All these measures urgently required experts which can provide expertise for efficient implementation of these policies, and therefore contributed to greater flexibility in treating the scholars. Focusing on the cases of N. Ya. Marr and his students O. L. Vilchevsky and A. Sh. Shamilov, this article examines the implementation of the Soviet policy towards the Kurds, including various linguistic and ethnographic projects. Special emphasis is placed on the history of the appearance of Kurdish-language works about Soviet leaders. The work is based on previously unused archival material.

МОВНА ПОЛІТИКА В УРСР В ГАЛУЗІ ОСВІТИ (1960–1980-і рр.)

The article highlights the peculiarities of language policy in education during the period of «stagnation». The author analyzes the legal acts related to the process of Russification of school education, in particular, the Resolution «On Further Improvement of Learning and Teaching of the Russian Language in the Union Republics» of June 1, 1978, the USSR Law «Fundamentals of the Legislation of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics and the Union Republics on Public Education» of July 19, 1973, the Resolution of the Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian SSR «On Additional Measures to Improve the Teaching of the Russian Language in National Secondary Schools» of May 26, 1983, etc. The state educational policy of the Soviet government contributed to an increase in the number of Russian-language schools and classes for in-depth study of the Russian language, the establishment of allowances for Russian language teachers, the introduction of advanced training courses for Russian language teachers, and an increase in the number of textbooks on academic subjects written in Russian. The author traces the dynamics of the number of schools with one and two languages of instruction in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1959-1965 academic years. The analysis of the number of schools with one language of instruction during the mentioned period shows a decrease in the number of schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction by 1725 units. As for the schools with Ukrainian-Russian language of instruction, there was a tendency to increase them by 107 units, and the number of schools with Russian-Ukrainian language of instruction increased by 73 units. It was found that the Russification of the educational process also took place in higher education. It was accompanied by the teaching of academic subjects in Russian, the dissemination of Russian-language literature, and the conduct of admission campaigns mainly in Russian. In spite of Russification and assimilation, prominent figures of the national liberation movement campaigned by distributing leaflets among the population, in which they opposed the reduction of Ukrainian-language educational institutions and pressure on the Ukrainian language. In response, the Soviet leadership took measures aimed at persecuting and eliminating active public figures. The Russification policy of the Soviet authorities in the field of education led to a national and cultural upsurge of student youth, who, despite the threat of persecution, distributed self-published literature among the general Ukrainian population, which truthfully covered the Russification policy of the Soviet leadership, the assimilation of the cultural and spiritual values of the Ukrainian people.

Unknown Episode of Soviet-Greek Contacts in 1945: Meeting of Patriarch Alexy (Simansky) of Moscow and All Russia with Greek Politicians in Egypt

The publication introduces into scientific circulation a note by G. G. Karpov, Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the meeting of Patriarch Alexy (Simansky) of Moscow and All Russia with representatives of the Greek political emigration in Egypt in June 1945. The meeting took place during a large-scale visit of a delegation of the Russian Church to the Middle East and Egypt. While the patriarch was in Alexandria, he was visited by the former head of the Greek government in exile, Sofoklos Venizelos, and the former deputy prime minister of that government, Georgios Roussos. Their visit, in fact, was an attempt by liberal political figures in Greece to establish contact with the Soviet leadership through the mediation of the Primate of the Russian Church.