Soviet Mission Research Articles

Czechoslovak politicians in Soviet diplomatic reports and the issue of establishing official relations between Czechoslovakia and Russia / USSR (early 1920s)

The article analyzes the reports of Soviet representatives to the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs about the views and policies of Czechoslovak state and political figures regarding Russia (the USSR) in the 1920s. Trying to achieve official recognition of Soviet Russia, and then the USSR, the heads of the Soviet mission in the Czechoslovak Republic S. I. Gillerson, P. N. Mostovenko, K. K. Yurenev, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, A. Ya. Arosev reported to G. V. Chicherin and M. M. Litvinov about the positions of the president, ministers, heads of political parties, diplomats of Czechoslovak Republic on this issue. At the same time, they often gave detailed characteristics of Czechoslovak figures, pointed out the internal factors and external reasons that prevented the ratification of the temporary Soviet-Czechoslovak agreement of 1922 and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In addition, in these reports were recorded changes in the positions of individual politicians towards Russia depending on external circumstances. The documents of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation and published materials on the history of Soviet-Czechoslovak relations, used by the author, help to understand better the problematic nature of the relations between the two countries.

It Takes Three to Tango: How a Cuban Ballerina Interpreted for Castro and Khrushchev

This text launches a series of articles under the image-based project 'With the Aid of an Unidentified Interpreter: Putting Names to Faces on Historical Photos' dedicated to the history of high-level interpreting. Here, the quest is to identify the interpreter at the two encounters between Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro at Harlem's Hotel Theresa and at the Soviet Mission in New York on 20 and 23 September 1960 based on a photo from the personal archive of Khrushchev's assistant Vladimir Lebedev. This interpreter turned out to be Menia Martínez, a historic figure in Cuban ballet. Educated at the Vaganova School in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), she was proficient in Russian. The text looks at other professional and unprofessional interpreters who worked with the two leaders before, on, and after this trip to New York and whose work contributed to the development of Cuban-Soviet and East-West relations. The discussion draws on available visuals, memoirs, newspaper sources, and unclassified documents placing the discussion in the wider context of international relations at the time. The author is grateful to Menia Martínez, who, in a telephone conversation, has helped in clarifying some of the aspects of the matter under investigation.

Repatriation of Soviet Сitizens and Soviet Partisans of the French Resistance from France to the USSR

The article is devoted to aspects of the repatriation of citizens and Soviet partisans of the French Resistance from France to the USSR. For the Soviet Union the first facts of the mass presence of its citizens on French territory began to appear even before the allied landings in Normandy, in 1944. After the liberation of most of French territory, in October 1944, the allies handed over to the USSR information about the presence in their zone of occupation of about 30.000 soviet citizens who became prisoners of war. The repatriation of Soviet citizens from France was one of the earliest repatriation activities for the USSR during the war years. The activity of the Soviet department for the repatriation of Soviet citizens began on 10 November, 1944 even before the signing of an agreement with the allies on the mutual return of their citizens. The publication examines the categories of Soviet citizens in France, the course of the organization of repatriation, as well as the problems that the Soviet mission has faced. The position of Soviet citizens at the time of their liberation on French territory, the attitude of Soviet citizens to their return to the USSR and their post-war fate are considered. It is noted that the factor of the presence among the repatriated “false partisans” and former soldiers of the ost-troops of the Wehrmacht for the worse affected the fate of some of the true heroes of the Resistance. The result of the study shows that most of the Soviet participants in the Resistance after the war were discriminated throughout their lives and were deprived of their rights, despite their contribution to the defeat of the enemy in a foreign land.

ФАКТОР КОММУНИСТИЧЕСКОЙ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ В ГЕРМАНИИ В СОВЕТСКО-ПОЛЬСКИХ ОТНОШЕНИЯХ В 1923 ГОДУ

The article raises the little-studied topic of the influence of the proletarian revolution in Germany, prepared in 1923 with the active support of the Comintern and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), on relations between Poland and the USSR. The author relies on unpublished archival materials, first published and introduced into scientific circulation, revealing these events in a new light, declassified in the post-Soviet period. The work shows how, despite the presence of radical proposals that threatened a new large-scale war in Europe, the leadership of the RCP(b) chose a more pragmatic approach. Given the military power of the Polish state, Moscow decided to dispense with threats and intimidation that distinguished the Soviet approach to Poland from its policies towards Lithuania and Latvia in order to achieve the lifting of Warsaw's severe restrictions on transit between Germany and the USSR. In response, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) agreed to make a number of concessions, primarily on economic and financial issues, including the payment of 30 million rubles in gold to Poland, to which Warsaw was entitled under the Riga Peace Treaty and was actually sabotaged by Moscow. In addition, the USSR was ready to allow the transit of Polish goods to Persia. This plan did not work, since Poland was aware that the lifting of restrictions on transit between the USSR and Germany increased the chances of revolution in Germany, which threatened Poland with communist countries encircling it. In addition, by the time the Soviet mission arrived in Warsaw with the above-mentioned proposals, there was no longer much sense in insisting on such an exchange with strong opposition from Polish diplomats, since plans to organize a proletarian revolution in Germany had failed.

Soviet military mission in Greece (1944) - victory factor in the Second world war

Soviet military mission in Greece (1944) - victory factor in the Second world war

The Soviet Plenipotentiary Mission and the Belarusian diaspora in Lithuania in the 1920s

The article is dedicated to little-known pages of the history of Soviet diplomacy. Contacts with emigrant circles were an important part of the work of the Soviet representative office in Lithuania in the 1920s. The search for effective ways to infiltrate communist propaganda in broad circles of the population of neighboring countries, as well as attempts to persuade political figures of these countries to cooperate, were the main motives of these relations. Starting in 1921, the emigrants themselves, including members of the Council of the Belarusian People’s Republic, the unrecognized Belarusian government in exile, sought connections with Soviet diplomats, mainly for financial reasons. These contacts became interesting for Soviet establishment in 1923, when the Council of ambassadors of the Entente recognized the Soviet-Polish borders under the Riga Peace treatment. Looking for the way out of situation they decided to transfer to BSSR to implement even partially their ideas, or to cooperate closely with the Soviet mission. This one in its turn used this channel for access to Belarusian minority in Lithuania. The article is based on archival materials of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR.

Searching for an Ally. The Soviet Diplomats in Latvia and Their Contacts with Kastus Ezavitau 1925–1926

This article is dedicated to the research of unknown fragments of national Belarusian emigrant groups’ history. Soviet diplomatic plans to establish ties with the local Belarusian population and to expand Communist propaganda in Latvia required contact with the leaders of the Belarusian movement, including Ezavitau. The main subject is the activity of Kastus Ezavitau in the middle of the 1920s. There was no possibility for Belarusian activists in the region of Latgale, where most Latvian Belarusians lived, to avoid collaboration with the Soviet permanent mission because of a lack of money and the discrimination policy of Latvian authorities. Local Belarusian activists had to fi ght for infl uence over the Latgale peasants, who often could not yet decide on their national identity, with the much more active and infl uential Polish and Russian diasporas. The Soviet mission provided fi nancial support to the press, and for school education in Belarusian, but forced them to carry out their demands in return. Analysis of a number of archival documents shows that, contrary to the widespread idea of his pro-Soviet mood, this collaboration was involuntary and undesirable for Ezavitau during this period, as we may see in the documents. He tried to provide more independent activity, such as the creation of the Belarusian party, but was permanently stopped by his super- visors in the Soviet mission. Soviet diplomats were not satisfi ed by collaboration with Ezavitau either but had no other candidate with whom to establish a permanent contact.

Behind the Curtains of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in the middle of the 1930s. On the Edition Deutschland und die Sowjetunion 1933–1941. Dokumente aus russischen und deutschen Archiven (2019)

Research on international relations today is no longer limited to diplomatic contacts but also includes economic and cultural ties. Another factor that should not be neglected is the people themselves; the personalities who shaped politics. This text focuses on those concerned with German-Soviet relations in the 1930s, both at the “centre” in Moscow and at the Soviet plenipotentiary representation in Berlin. This article deals with this range of problems against the background of Soviet-German relations in the 1930s both in the Kremlin and in the Soviet mission in Berlin. The article is based on archival ma- terials discovered and published in the framework of the edition project “Germany and the USSR 1933–1941” pursued under the aegis of the Joint Commission on the Study of Contemporary History in Russian-German Relations. The methodological guidelines are borrowed from the works of Western historiography. The documents under scrutiny shed the light on the functioning of one of the primary foreign-political instruments — the diplomatic corpus of the Soviet Union and Germany. In the documents published in Volume 2, three main areas of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Relations’ (Narko- mindel) functioning are covered: the personnel responsible for the Soviet-German relations, the inner life of the Soviet mission in Berlin, and the work of the central apparatus in Moscow. On the basis of the interdepartmental correspondence of the Narkomindel staff, their memoranda, and the impressions of the German diplomats, one can get an impression of the level of professionalism of at least some Soviet diplomats. In sum- mary, owing to the publication of such a large amount of documents from the Russian and German archives, historians from different countries can now pursue research on a wide range of problems related to the international relations of the 1930s and early 1940s, which is extraordinarily important for understanding the causes and mechanisms which led to World War Two.

The fragrance of belonging in Russian Beringia

The aim of this study is to explore how the smells associated with particular emotions encode the feeling of belonging in Russian Beringia. The differing olfactory patterns are conceptualised within the broad socio-political processes of Soviet and post-Soviet modernisation. The odours, the mental representations of the odorous stimuli, are considered socially constructed. Following David Howes (2002) and Constance Classen et al. (1994), it is assumed that the cultural politics of olfaction intensify under the changing social regimes. The study further draws on David Chaney’s concept of lifestyle (1996) that proves to be helpful in enhancing the investigation of the interrelation between social differentiation and aesthetic patterns in the context of the Soviet mission civilisatrice. In the analysis of the impact of the Soviet (and post-Soviet) policies on the native olfactory practices, the study shifts the focus from deodorisation (a concept that refers to elimination of those odours that colonizing western discourse finds socially unacceptable) towards sanitation (process in which cleanliness as a synecdoche for civility may lead to, but not necessarily does, a repudiation of certain odours). It demonstrates that the realms where the senses, aesthetic, and social hierarchies overlap have a wide spectrum of cultural forms, often unintended from the point of view of the Soviet or post-Soviet policy makers.

First Moon landing was nearly a US-Soviet mission.

As today’s tensions mount, it is salutary to recall that cooperation was on the table during the cold war, writes Roger D. Launius. As today’s tensions mount, it is salutary to recall that cooperation was on the table during the cold war, writes Roger D. Launius.

Sweden, the USSR and the early Cold War 1944–47: declassified encrypted cables shed new light on Soviet diplomatic reporting about Sweden in the aftermath of World War II

In March 1946 the Soviet government decided to radically revise their policy towards Sweden. The Soviet demand, ever since November 1944, for the total extradition of the approximately 30,000 Baltic refugees in Sweden was suddenly dropped and a number of measures were taken by Moscow to accomplish a rapprochement between the two countries. On the basis of recently declassified Soviet encrypted diplomatic correspondence between the Soviet mission in Stockholm and the Soviet foreign ministry for the years 1944–1947, this article analyses the way in which the Soviet envoy to Sweden, Il'ia Chernyshev, represented Swedish affairs before his superiors in Moscow, and how these representations may have contributed to Moscow's decision to revise its policy towards Sweden.

Under A Red Veil: Staging Afghan Emancipation in Moscow

AbstractThis article explores the Soviet mission to emancipate Afghan women during the Soviet war in Afghanistan through a detailed reading of the stenogram of a 1982 seminar in Moscow designed as an exchange of ideas and experiences between leading members of the Committee for Soviet Women and the Democratic Organization of Women of Afghanistan. Approaching this episode as a moment in the quest to find new forms of modernity – Communist, Islamic, or Western – in Afghanistan, the article shows how Soviet women's representatives repeatedly played up the important of the hujum in 1930s Soviet Central Asia as a model program for Afghan and, to some extent, all Third World societies. At the same time, however, the Afghan women at the conference, while avid Communists, articulated their own vision of women's emancipation for Afghanistan which did not reject the veil, a vision at odds with that articulated by their Soviet 'teachers.'

Change and Continuity in Soviet Policy Towards Soviet Jewry and Israel, May-December 1948

Change and Continuity in Soviet Policy Towards Soviet Jewry and Israel, May–December 1948 Binyamin Pinkus (bio) Introduction This article focuses on the Jewish national awakening among Soviet and East European Jewry and the first signs of official Soviet policy on the Jewish Question. Although May-December 1948 is a relatively brief period in Israeli-Soviet relations, it is one of utmost importance because it reflects the dilemmas and inconsistencies of Soviet policy toward Israel and Jewish issues. The Soviet regime under Stalin's leadership would solve these issues in typical totalitarian style: a war to the death using all means available to the state. Israel requested that the Government of the USSR grant official recognition to the Provisional Government of the State of Israel. On May 18, 1948 Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov notified Israel of the USSR's decision to grant full de jure recognition. He asserted that the "Soviet Government hopes that the establishment of the sovereign independent state by the Jewish People will serve to strengthen peace and security in Palestine and the Near East, and it expresses its faith in the development of friendly relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the State of Israel."1 The Soviet Union was the first superpower to extend de jure. Although Washington preceded Moscow in endorsing the Jewish State, it had only accorded de facto recognition. The other two Western powers, France and Britain, after exhaustive efforts granted de facto recognition to Israel in January 1949. De jure recognition was delayed until May 1949 and April 1950 respectively. The situation in eastern Europe was different. The new socialist states competed with one another to be the first to recognize Israel after the Soviet Union. On May 18, Zygmunt Modzelewski, the Polish Foreign Minister, informed Moshe Sharett, the Israeli Foreign Minister: [End Page 96] In the name of the Polish Government, I would like to express [Poland's] satisfaction with the Provisional Government as the provisional Jewish regime in Israel . . . The Polish Government's position on matters related to the Jewish People and Jewish Government in Israel is common knowledge in international forums and especially in the UN. The Polish Government has consistently maintained a position of great sympathy for the Jewish People who have fought for their freedom and their own state.2 One of the members of the Polish delegation at the UN, Julius Katz-Sukhy, lauded the establishment of the Jewish state and expressed hope that "the Arabs of Palestine would also establish their own state."3 In mid-June, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Rumania extended de facto recognition to Israel, and Bulgaria followed in turn.4 The "right" person had to be selected to serve as Israel's representative to the Soviet Union. Eliahu Elath, a senior official of the Jewish Agency who was involved in Zionist diplomatic affairs, could have been chosen, or a top figure in the ruling political party, Mapai. The heads of the left-wing parties in Israel had been unconditionally excluded from the mission to Moscow and were allowed a place only on the mission to Warsaw. According to Eli Tzur, "The most sensitive ministry under Mapai's control was the Foreign Ministry headed by Moshe Sharett. Mapam's (left-wing Zionist- Socialist party) involvement in this ministry was perceived as a major political issue because of the party's pro-Moscow orientation." Mapai's Central Committee debated whether to admit Mapam representatives into the Diplomatic Corps, especially to posts in eastern Europe, according to a proportional party key.5 Mapai could offer many qualified candidates of Russian origin who were fully acquainted with the country's history and culture. One of top contenders was Mordechai Namir, a leader of the Histadrut and key Mapai figure, who asked Ben-Gurion "for an assignment in Moscow or another Slavic country."6 He had already carried out a number of important diplomatic missions in February and July 1948 in East European countries and negotiated with Czechoslovakia and Rumania on arms, oil, and immigration. Namir recalled that they had received him there "with a standing ovation."7 Sharett considered Golda Meir the most suitable candidate for the Soviet mission. He approached...

Celebrating women: gender, festival culture, and Bolshevik ideology, 1910-1939

The first International Women's Day was celebrated in Copenhagen in 1910 and was adopted by the Bolsheviks in 1913 as a means to popularize their political program among factory women in Russia. By 1939, Women's Day had joined May Day and the anniversary of the October Revolution as the most important national holidays on the calendar. This is an analysis of both Bolshevik attitudes towards women and invented state rituals surrounding Women's Day in Russia and the early Soviet Union to demonstrate the ways in which these celebrations were a strategic form of cultural practice that marked the distinctiveness of Soviet civilization, legitimized the Soviet mission for women and articulated the Soviet construction of gender. Through the years, Women's Day celebrations temporarily empowered women as they sang revolutionary songs, acted as strong protagonists in plays, and marched in processions carrying slogans about gender equality. In speeches, state policies, reports, historical sketches, plays, cartoons, and short stories, the passive Russian woman was transformed into an iconic Soviet Woman who could survive, improvise and prevail over the most challenging of circumstances.

Notes on Roman Jakobson's culture of scholarship*

Although Roman Jakobson came to Prague as an employee of the Soviet Mission of the Red Cross - that is, as a diplomat - scholarship did not cease to interest him, and he very much hoped that his stay in Czechoslovakia would bring him together with local linguists. It was to this end that he brought with him a letter of recommendation from the hand of the renowned Russian philologist, A. A. Šaxmatov (1864–1920). The letter was brief, but strong: Most esteemed colleague:1 This letter may reach you through our gifted young scholar, Roman Osipovic Jakobson. I appeal to you strongly to give him encouragement abroad. He is a linguist on whom we place great hopes. […] (From Toman 1994: 38)

Balloons for the exploration of Mars

The Soviet mission to Mars envisioned in 1994 consists of two probes, each of which will carry a balloon described in the present paper. Since a balloon in the Martian atmosphere is driven essentially by thermal forces, the only possibility for a balloon flight is to stay at ceiling during the day and deposit half the mass of a guiderope during the night. The nominal caracteristics of the Mars-94 balloon are: volume 5,500 m 3, flight ceiling during day 2 to 4 km above zero reference level, total floating mass 65.4 kg, gondola 15 kg, guide rope 13.5 kg.

Mössbauer spectroscopy on the surface of Mars. Why?

A Mossbauer spectrometer is included in the preliminary payload of a rover to be placed on the surface of Mars in the Soviet mission to the planct in 1996/1,2/. In counection with the American planctary program it has also been suggested to construct a Mossbauer spectrometer to be landed on Mars /3, 4/. The objective is to study the iron compounds of the Martian soil and rocks by backscattering Mossbauer spectroscopy. The paper describes the significance of the element iron in the study of the evolution of the planetary system and what we might expect to learn from Mossbauer spectroscopy of the surface materials of Mars. The study of Mars is expected to expand substantially in the coming decades, probably culminating with a manned flight to the planet. The international Mossbauer community may contribute significantly to the preparation of these events.

A fault-tolerant multitransputer system for space applications

This paper describes a fault-tolerant multi-transputer architecture that is meant to be used as an on-board instrumentation computer in one of the experiments on the Soviet mission to Mars, Mars 94. Fault tolerance is achieved by reconfiguring the array of transputer modules and triggering redundant processes in healthy modules. Reconfiguration and fault isolation is achieved by ‘short-circuiting’ faulty modules. The system is compared to simplex, duplex and TMR systems using reliability and MTTF as parameters and it is found to be a highly reliable system, especially in cases where long missions are considered.

Mars '94

U.S. planetary scientists have been invited to participate in the Mars '94 mission of the U.S.S.R. Up to 10 will be selected as Participating Scientists, to do Mars research with Soviet mission scientists using information obtained by instruments on the spacecraft. Of U.S. scientists invited by non‐U.S. principal investigators to participate as co‐investigators, fewer than 10 can be supported. The U.S. program will be directed and managed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.In October 1994 the Soviet Union will launch the two Mars '94 probes, which will reach Mars in 315 days. The nominal mission lifetime is 12 months, or half a Mars year, starting at orbit insertion. Each probe will consist of a 3‐axis stabilized PHOBOS‐type spacecraft and a descent module containing a balloon, two or three small stations, and two or three penetrators. Instruments on the spacecraft will do planetary, plasma and trajectory studies.

SIMS remote analysis of the Phobos surface: The DION experiment

The fact that the small bodies as Comets and asteroids have been submitted to a very weak evolution turn them into witness materials of the early stages of formation of the solar system. After the successful multi—spacecraft missions to the Halley comet a great interest is focusing now on asteroids. The soviet mission to Phobos, launched in July 1988 is a peculiar opportunity to study such a small body which could reasonably be a capturated asteroid. The peculiarity is also in the very low and very slow flyby that can be performed in the case of Phobos ; it has been taken advantage of that to use methfds of active remote chemical analysis derived from the laboratory techniques SIMS and LAMMA