Soviet Newspapers Research Articles

The Woes of Farmer Andropov

Soviet newspapers are filled with the most interesting stories—particularly on the first and second pages, which are devoted to the Soviet economy. Four subjects dominate these pages: food problems, discipline problems, and management and transportation problems.

Soviet Union: The Presentation of American Cultural Events in the Press

This study was conducted to investigate the presentation of American cultural events by selected Soviet newspapers and magazines. It was found that the Soviet mass media have, to a certain extent, an easier time of establishing trust in foreign reporting, because only approximately one per cent of the population have travelled outside the country or have extensive and regular access to foreign publications. The research questions centered on which American cultural events were featured in the Soviet press in a selected time period and how the event or artist was presented. The content analysis comprised the following domestic and foreign categories: performing arts, visual arts, general, literature and cultural relations. This content analysis showed that no generalizations could be made about the presentation of american cultural events in the soviet press. it was impossible to discern why the soviet press chose to cover certain events while totally ignoring others. Katherine A. Williams is on the staff ...

Managing and Building a Collection of Russian and Soviet Newspapers

Managing and Building a Collection of Russian and Soviet Newspapers

The “Lessons” of Vietnam and Soviet Foreign Policy

This study systematically identifies the Soviet lessons of Vietnam as presented in eleven Soviet newspapers (specialized and regional as well as the central papers) and eight journals. Altogether, 1,585 citations were coded, representing more than 70 different lessons. A predominant finding is that the most common lessons the Soviet Union learned from Vietnam differed from their American counterparts: the Soviet lessons would not have warned the leadership about the dangers of military intervention in Afghanistan. A left/right scale was constructed, based on such issue clusters as why the communists won in Vietnam, the nature of imperialism, and the implications of Soviet policy in the Third World. Substantial variation was found among the media examined, many of which are linked to specific Soviet institutions. The implication is that Soviet foreign policy is contingent upon individual choices, institutional interplay, and changing contexts. This, in turn, suggests that Western policy makers should not lose sight of their capacity to influence the Soviet policy dialogue, and hence Soviet policy choices.

Soviet Newspapers and Periodicals on Microfilm: A Review of the Four Continent Book Corporation Microfilm Program/Review Article

Soviet Newspapers and Periodicals on Microfilm: A Review of the Four Continent Book Corporation Microfilm Program/Review Article

The Berlin agreements: An exchange of exclaves and enclaves

Joseph Stalin was one of the most important world leaders during the first half of the 20th century. He died suddenly in early March 1953 after a short illness, which was described in a series of medical bulletins in the Soviet newspaper Pravda. Based on both the clinical history and autopsy findings, it was concluded that Stalin had died of a massive hemorrhagic stroke involving his left cerebral hemisphere. However, almost 50 years later, a counter-narrative developed suggesting a more nefarious explanation for his sudden death, namely, that a “poison,” warfarin, a potent anticoagulant, had been administered surreptitiously by one or more of his close associates during the early morning hours prior to the onset of his stroke. In the present report, we will examine this counter-narrative and suggest that his death was not due to the administration of warfarin but rather to a hypertension-related cerebrovascular accident resulting in a massive hemorrhagic stroke involving his left cerebral hemisphere. The counter-narrative was based on the misunderstanding of certain specific autopsy findings, namely, the presence of focal myocardial and petechial hemorrhages in the gastric and intestinal mucosa, which could be attributed to the extracranial pathophysiologic changes that can occur as a consequence of a stroke rather than the highly speculative counter-narrative that Stalin was “poisoned” by the administration of warfarin.

Juvenile Delinquency in the U.S.S.R.: Some Quantitative and Qualitative Indicators

Juvenile delinquency in the U.S.S.R. has received comparatively little scholarly attention either from sociologists interested in deviance or from students of Soviet affairs. Yet, while data, especially of a statistical variety, are severely limited, the volume of discussion delinquency receives in Soviet newspapers and scholarly journals shows that the problem is regarded as a significant one. This paper utilizes much of the available Soviet data and draws upon Western scholarship on the US.S.R. to provide a picture of delinquency in the Soviet Union. Data on age, sex, family backgrounds, education, occupation and other characteristics of delinquents are presented in an attempt to form a tentative picture of the nature and quality of Soviet delinquency. Generally, there are indications that Soviet delinquency is similar in many of its aspects to parallel phenomena in other industrial societies. It appears to be primarily a problem involving urban, lower-class male youth whose educational attainments and chances for upward mobility are low. According to the limited data assembled, property offenses form the single largest category of juvenile offense. On the whole, delinquency does not appear to be protest against the Soviet system, at least not in any conscious way. Care should be exercised, therefore, in any attempt to relate delinquency to larger issues of the stability of the Soviet social system.

The Social Evaluation of Occupations in the Soviet Union

One of the consequences of the revival of sociology as a distinct discipline in the Soviet Union has been the appearance of empirical studies of prevailing attitudes toward the major occupations in Soviet society. These studies have been accompanied by discussions in Soviet newspapers and in the educational and economics literature of the problems associated with the popular perception of various occupations, particularly among student youth.

A New Incentive for Soviet Managers

O N September 9, 1962, Pravda published proposal by Yevsey G. Liberman, until then little-known professor at the Kharkov Engineering and Economics Institute. The New York Times referred to Liberman as a heretic . . . obviously influenced by capitalist experience; Radio Free Europe tagged his plan notably revisionist-and rational; but in the Soviet Union his proposal called forth stormy controversy which, for weeks on end, filled the pages of the leading Soviet newspapers and economic journals, and monopolized the agenda at numerous official and semi-official meetings and conferences. Some of those who participated in these debates saw in Liberman's proposal the greatest contribution to progressive Marxism since Lenin re-interpreted some of the basic theories of Karl Marx; others took somewhat more skeptical view of what, at least at the surface, appeared to be deviation from Communist ideology; yet others dubbed Liberman's plan threat to the very survival of socialist central planning and predicted that its adoption would spell return to capitalist modes of production. Long before its official publication in Pravda, Liberman's plan had been given substantial backing by the Soviet Academy of Sciences' influential Learned Council for Problems of

Social Conformity and the Comradely Courts in the Soviet Union

This is a study of the comradely court in the Soviet Union today. The institution is located in factories, housing units, and collective farms for the popular trial of minor offenders. One of its major functions is that of encouraging social conformity through the use of the pressure of public opinion. It is particularly efficacious as it deals with miscreants at the prelegal level. The court can be seen as both a preventive and a corrective instrument. The facts and cases cited are based primarily on information in articles in Soviet newspapers and legal periodicals.

American Books in Soviet Publishing

Among the things the Russians like to boast about is publishing. Their presses are now producing about 64,000 books (in over a billion copies), nearly 640 million copies of magazines, and nearly 13 billion copies of newspapers each year. Although they define a book as any publication five pages or more in length and their average newspaper consists of four pages or less, the figures are still impressive. Most of their books do contain far more than five pages, their magazines seem to contain, on the average, as much textual material as those outside Russia, and their newspapers are almost devoid of advertisements and many of the other space fillers that make American newspapers so bulky. What the text of the Soviet newspapers has to do with the day's news is, of course, another matter.

Cybernetics and Society

Cybernetics, or science of control, is known to American readers chiefly through the work of Norbert Wiener of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article, prepared by a group at the Scientific Council on Cybernetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences headed by Academician Berg, appeared as a full-page article in a Soviet newspaper. It discusses the basic concepts of cybernetics, its applications, and the administrative measures that have been taken to promote its study in the USSR. [Cybernetics and Life, Ekonomicheskaia Gazeta, June 12, 1960—slightly abridged.]

A Survey of Soviet Publications on Korea, 1950–56

In the six-year period from 1950 to 1956 a considerable number of books articles, and pamphlets on Korea were published in the Soviet Union. Although some of these items were noted in the Library of Congress bibliography of Russian language works in August 1950, and although a few have been mentioned in subsequent surveys of Soviet publications on the Far East, there has been no recent attempt to describe and assess in general terms the total Soviet output on the subject of Korea since the North Korean Communist invasion brought war and world attention to the peninsula. Such a general survey is the main objective of the present study. A secondary aim is to present a tentative report on the present state of Korean studies in the Soviet Union. The present survey is by no means all inclusive; Soviet newspapers are not discussed; some items known to exist have not been available for inspection; others unknown undoubtedly lie buried in the voluminous pages of Soviet periodical literature. Nevertheless it is believed that the scrutinized sample of Soviet writings on Korea has been adequate for the presentation of an accurate general picture.

A Problem in Soviet Business Administration

The operation of Soviet enterprises has long been characterized by a tendency to lag behind production schedules at the beginning of the month, and then to speed up the rate of production at the end of the month in order to fulfill the monthly quota. This uneconomic practice of storming has often been censured by Soviet leaders, but they have not found a way to eliminate it. On the basis of discussions of management in Soviet newspapers and periodicals, the author ascribes the causes of storming to certain features of enterprise administration, each of which is fairly effective for its particular purpose, but which together generate this tendency to work in spurts. The author speculates about changes which might succeed in eliminating storming.' Dr. Berliner is an economist with the Council for Economic and Industry Research, Inc. His book, The Soviet Business Enterprise, will be published this year.

Soviet Attitudes toward Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character.

This book is a survey, on different levels, of the nature of Soviet leadership. An intensive study was made of Soviet newspapers, professional journals, movies, and records of Party Congresses, and selected interviews were carried out with emigres of different periods.

The War in China and the Soviet Press

THROUGHOUT course of war in China there has been a tendency in world to assume that all countries except Soviet Union are more or less neutral. Suggestions have recurred constantly that Soviet Union will ultimately intervene on side of China against Japan. Yet expression the world press as commonly used still omits almost entirely of both Soviet Union and China. It is particularly pertinent, therefore, to attempt a survey of news about China and about war that is presented to Soviet public. By such a survey, for one thing, it may be possible to judge views which readers of Soviet newspapers are likely to develop. Perhaps more important, it may show whether there are any indications in Soviet that U.S.S.R. might intervene in China's struggle against Japan. It is no surprise to find in Soviet a special emphasis on Eighth Route Army, former Chinese Red Army.1 The area which this army occupied when it came to terms with National Government, just before beginning of Japanese invasion, has been greatly expanded since beginning of war. It now takes in a great part of North China into which Japanese columns have penetrated. This whole area, including its original nucleus organized under Chinese Government as Border Region of Shensi, Kansu, and Ninghsia, is referred to in Soviet as Special Region. On October i5, 1938, Pravda published a Survey of Chinese Press dealing with this region, emphasizing that Chinese are defending themselves, but also making it clear that, in this region at least, defense does not mean simply waiting for Japanese to arrive. On contrary, aim and methods of Eighth Route