War Front Research Articles

Studying War in a Time of War: Russian Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract In the first two weeks of August, 535 Russian soldiers were seriously wounded in Eastern Ukraine. The year was 1678. 1678 saw some of the heaviest fighting in the Russo-Turkish of 1676–81, as the Ottoman and Russian Empires, alongside their local allies, struggled to gain control of the strategic location of Chyhyryn. In summer 2023, that town on the Dnipro was only around 300km from the front in the Russo-Ukraine war. To read about soldiers being injured and killed in service of imperial expansion three centuries ago as we watch the same empire engage in the same activities in the same location today brings home how history and the present are inescapably connected. Indeed, historians of violence have faced this problem before, as with a group at the University of Pittsburgh working on Gun Violence and Its Histories, who explicitly seek to use histories of violence to think about gun violence in the modern USA. Military histories have long been an established part of the study of Russian history, highlighting the technological, imperial, bureaucratic, and diplomatic aspects of organized state violence. The present moment demands a re-evaluation of histories of Russia at war, one that considers such issues as histories of disability and pain, and also engages with recent calls to decolonize Russian studies. Putting into dialogue these different perspectives on war and violence we can consider if, why, and how we can study the history of war during a time of war.

Saga of Love under the Hail of Fire

This short story is excerpted from a memoir entitled Raha Dar Bad (Los Angeles: Ketab Corp., 2012), written by Soraya Baha. Ms. Baha was the sister-in-law of Mohammad Najibullah (1947–1996) who served as president of Afghanistan from 1986–1992. Najibullah became head of the secret police when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan in the December 1979. He was infamous for his brutality and ruthlessness. He became president of the country when the Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, and his widely despised government was considered a puppet regime of the Soviets. Ms. Baha was against the Soviet occupation, as well as the dictatorship of Najibullah. She ran away with her husband and their two children, Khaled, and Roya, and joined the war front in northern Afghanistan (Panjshir), where the famous partisan commander Ahmad-Shah Masoud had stationed his mujahedin forces. Masoud was fighting the Russians and led the largest war front in the mountains and valleys of Panjshir. Soraya Baha stayed there for some time in a small cabin with her two children. She later wrote her memoir and included this experience. The excerpted story below is based on true events that the author personally witnessed while in Panjshir.

“Those Who Wait, Burn”: New Penelopes in Plays by Sarah Ruhl, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Naomi Wallace

Homer’s Penelope is a nostalgic symbol in the patriarchal imaginary of war literature. Standing for the ever-faithful and dutiful wife who patiently waits at home while her husband returns from war, her paradigm has fulfilled two purposes in traditional war literature. She has helped to preserve, on the one hand, the dichotomy of home front versus war front and, on the other hand, those gendered expectations that have shaped and limited the notion of womanhood, both in war and in peace. This discussion of plays by Sarah Ruhl, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Naomi Wallace discusses the revisions these writers have undertaken on the figure of Penelope. With Passion Play, Part Three (2005), Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) (2015), and In the Heart of America (1994), Ruhl, Parks, and Wallace, respectively, revisit the figure of the waiting woman to reflect on the interrelations between war and home front and to invite the audience to question patriarchal notions of womanhood that continue to operate today. In their feminist revisions of Penelope, this article argues, Ruhl, Parks, and Wallace reconstruct an iconic figure to reclaim women’s agency, independence, and sexuality.

Military Report From the Front.

there is no front line everything is war front territory of the organism under attack enemy takes control.

The Effect of New Technology on the Concept of “Direct Participation in Hostilities” in International Humanitarian Law

ABSTRACT
 This Research is about participation in hostilities particular civilian participation in international and non-international armed conflict. According to the International Humanitarian Law when civilians directly participate in hostilities, they loss their protection right. 
 Over recent decades, because of the continued advancement of technology, the nature of warfare has changed significantly, the current war fronts are something different from the earlier battle field. Modernization of the world differentiates the strategies of wars, methods of wars and planning of achieving the military benefits. Therefore, the earlier laws do not fit with the current war front.
 It is not true to say that only Direct Participation in Hostilities (DPH) can respond adequately to current forms of participation in conflicts because nowadays there are various types of participation in wars that may not fall within the concept of direct participation such as indirect participation in hostilities. Consequently, if applied the condition of direct participation to regard a person as combatant then what will be position of people who do not directly take part such as service men.
 To answer the research questions this academic paper will explains the notion of DPH. Also, this research focuses on the elements of the DPH and then the effect of new technology on the concept of DPH in International Humanitarian Law will be argued.

Deterrence Without Mutual Destruction

Abstract With openness comes vulnerability. David Sloss's new work, Tyrants on Twitter, elevates the abuse of social media by autocrats to a new war front, reminiscent of the concerns for foreign penetration during the Cold War. His response to this new round of “information warfare” is the mobilization of a transnational alliance of the 40 or so leading democratic countries to register citizens for use of social media and filter out tyrants and their fronts, be they real people or bots. The book begins by chronicling the extent of democratic decline, a well-defended starting point. More complicated is the argument that the correlation between democratic decline and foreign interference establishes the causal role of the latter. Even more difficult is the conclusion that there is need for war-like footing to mobilize against foreign threats. The review ends with a note of caution on the costs associated with democratic societies closing up in the face of foreign challenge.

Restrictive Cardiomyopathies: What’s New on the War Front?

Restrictive Cardiomyopathies: What’s New on the War Front?

The role of Igbo women in peace building during the Nigerian civil war: 1967 – 1970

The salient roles of Igbo women during the Nigeria Civil War were a catalyst in the survival of many dying and suffering children, and the broken and frustrated Biafra soldiers. The roles too were important in the internal security of Igboland in the absence of the men who were on the war front to defend the fatherland. The devastation caused by the war affected the culture and traditional institutions of the Igbo, which in effect, posed a double challenge to the women. Igbo women were not only victims of the war, they were challenged too with roles of acting as heads of their various families and bridge builders in communal and inter-communal relations. The women amid uncertainties embarked individually and communally on peace-building processes. A spectrum of interventions embarked by the women to bring the end to the war spread across the area of health, business, international relations and food security through their salient actions, which enhanced and promoted human security and created positive peace in the land. This paper examines these roles played by Igbo women during the war and how their efforts helped bring about peace and hope during, and after the war period. Looking back and the devastation of that time, the Igbo women today would abhor any wars in Nigeria. We employ the conflict transformation theory in this narrative and conclude that Igbo women are creative peace-builders.

Dismantling Fabricated Reality in Shepard’s State of Shock

ABSTRACT 
 This paper investigates Sam Shepard’s States of Shock in which the playwright explores family relation during an international crisis, war. As male identity is noted as a recurring theme in Shepard’s plays, the paper examines masculine identity in States of Shock. As depicted in the play, Colonel and Stubbs, the main characters in the play, struggle to negotiate their personal identity prisms. As such, we explore this issue via the lens of social identity to address the primary constructs in the play. Although taking as its setting a family café, the events in the play transcend this both temporally and spatially through the two characters’ battle for male identity at the war front lines. As such, we argue that through the characters of Colonel and Stubbs, where the former promotes war mythologies regardless of the suffering of the traumatized soldier, Stubbs, the play presents a critique of American myths of war.

Gertrude Atherton’s WWI Propaganda to the Home Front:Mrs. Balfame,The Living PresentandThe White Morning

AbstractGertrude Atherton’sMrs. Balfame(1916),The Living Present(1917) andThe White Morning(1918) address the home front audience about the war front of World War I. Atherton chronicles American political transition from isolationism to new internationalism with her pro-Ally and pro-American agenda. In her novelMrs. Balfame, Atherton reflects political polarization in American society during the U. S. neutrality and anti-German stance, referring to the impacts of war reports on public opinion.The Living Presentunderlines French women’s wartime services on the home front and transatlantic collaboration through Atherton’s recollections. In her novelThe White Morning, German women’s suffering and sense of duty gradually carry them to the war front with women’s revolution that brings their war to an end with Prussian militarism and patriarchal oppression. Thus, Atherton’s propaganda literature encourages women’s political awareness and wartime mobilization for their postwar progress and demands as citizens.

Additive Manufacturing for Fabrication of Point-of-Care Therapies in Austere Environments.

Known as the "golden hour," survival of most critically injured patients is highly dependent on providing the required treatment within the first hour of injury. Recent technological advances in additive manufacturing (also known as three-dimensional [3D] printing) allow for austere deployment and point-of-care rapid fabrication of a variety of medical supplies, including human tissues and bioactive bandages, in prolonged field care scenarios. In this pilot project, our aim was to investigate the ability to 3D print a range of potential biomedical supplies and solutions in an austere field environment. We specifically designed and fabricated novel surgical tools, bioactive bandages, objects (screw and anatomic models), and human meniscal tissue in an austere African desert environment. A total of seven packages were sent using a commercial carrier directly to the end destination. A multi-tool ruggedized 3D printer was used as the manufacturing platform for all objects fabricated downrange. Human mesenchymal stem cells were shipped for 3D bioprinting of human menisci and bioactive bandages. Design and fabrication for all 3D-printed products utilized computer-aided design (CAD) tools. Initial shipment from a single U.S. site to the sub-Saharan Africa location was relatively prompt, taking an average of 4.7 days to deliver three test packages. However, the actual delivery of the seven packages from Orlando, FL, to the same sub-Saharan Africa site took an average of 16 days (range 7-23 days). The ruggedized printer successfully fabricated relevant medical supplies using biocompatible filament, bioink hydrogels, and stem cell-loaded bioinks. This prototype did not, however, have the capacity to provide a sterile environment. A multi-material complete bandage was 3D printed using polyamide polyolefin and cellulose, live cells, neomycin salve, and adhesive. The bandage, wound covering backing, and adhesive backing print took under 2 min to 3D print. Surgical instrument CAD files were based on commercially available medical-grade stainless-steel instruments. The screw CAD file was downloaded from the NIH 3D Print Exchange website. The prints of the two surgical tools and screw using thermoplastic material were successful. Menisci, relatively complex forms of the cartilage, were 3D bioprinted with a gel that held their form well after printing and were then solidified slightly using a cross-linking solution. After 2 min of solidification, it was possible to remove and handle the menisci. The current and future challenges of prolonged field care need to be addressed with new techniques, training, and technology. Ruggedized, deployable 3D printers allow for the direct fabrication of medical tools, supplies, and biological solutions for austere use. Delivery of packages can vary, and attention to routes and location is key, especially for transit of time-sensitive perishable supplies such as live cells. The significance of this study provides the real possibility to 3D print "just-in-time" medical solutions tailored to the need of an individual service member in any environment. This is a potentially exciting opportunity to bring critical products to the war front.

Optimal Dynamic Control of Proxy War Arms Support

A proxy war between a coalition of countries, BLUE, and a country, RED, is considered. RED wants to increase the size of the RED territory. BLUE wants to involve more regions in trade and other types of cooperation. GREEN is a small and independent nation that wants to become a member of BLUE. RED attacks GREEN and tries to invade. BLUE decides to give optimal arms support to GREEN. This support can help GREEN in the war against RED and simultaneously can reduce the military power of RED, which is valuable to BLUE also outside this proxy war, since RED may confront BLUE also in other regions. The optimal control problem of dynamic arms support, from the BLUE perspective, is defined in general form. From the BLUE perspective, there is an optimal position of the front. This position is a function of the weights in the objective function and all other parameters. Optimal control theory is used to determine the optimal dynamic BLUE strategy, conditional on a RED strategy, which is observed by BLUE military intelligence. The optimal arms support strategy for BLUE is to initially send a large volume of arms support to GREEN, to rapidly move the front to the optimal position. Then, the support should be almost constant during most of the war, keeping the war front location stationary. In the final part of the conflict, when RED will have almost no military resources left and tries to retire from the GREEN territory, BLUE should strongly increase the arms support and make sure that GREEN rapidly can regain the complete territory and end the war.

The Man without a Country: British Imperial Nostalgia in <i>Ferry to Hong Kong</i> (1959)

On New Year’s Eve 1959, Ferry to Hong Kong was screened at the Lee Theatre and the Astor in Hong Kong. Produced by Rank as its first CinemaScope feature, the big-budget movie tells the real-life tale of Steven Ragan (he was also known as Michael Patrick O’Brien), a stateless drifter who was stuck for ten months on the ferry sailing between Hong Kong and Macau from September 18, 1952, to July 30, 1953. The British film was Rank’s major Anglo-American joint venture of the year. Positioned within Cold War contexts, Ferry to Hong Kong could be seen as a British cultural-diplomatic response through cinematic soft power to reestablish national assurance on Asian Cold War fronts, following the 1956 Suez Canal debacle that witnessed the death of Britain’s imperial might at the hands of the Eisenhower administration. Unlike such vaunted Hollywood pictures as Soldier of Fortune (1955), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), and The World of Suzie Wong (1960), which imagined the incursions of American white knights into Hong Kong (as a stand-in for China), Ferry to Hong Kong conveyed imperial nostalgia and loss. The film turns the antihero into a paragon of British gallantry who saves the passengers and refugees from the hands of Chinese (Communist) pirates. The sinking ferryboat is the traumatic device used to recall British naval war stories and retell romantic and narcissistic tales of British valor and international influence. More than an adventure of a vagabond, Ferry to Hong Kong was an espionage thriller in uneasy disguise. The film preceded Gilbert’s three James Bond films, all of which affirmed the power of the individual in cracking transboundary networks of espionage and political intrigue.

Afro-Asian Intimacies Across Southern Cartographies: Race, Sex, and Gender in Toni Morrison's Home and Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dao

Afro-Asian Intimacies Across Southern Cartographies:Race, Sex, and Gender in Toni Morrison's Home and Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dao Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi (bio) In 1953, following the Korean Armistice Agreement that ostensibly ended direct U.S. intervention in Korea (but, in reality, merely led to a recalibration of the unending Korean War), African American soldier Clarence Adams was one of twenty-one prisoners of war who refused repatriation back to the United States and instead migrated to the People's Republic of China. His decision was influenced by the antiblackness that structured the segregated U.S. South, curtailing his chances of upward mobility, as well as his compassion for the Korean civilians devastated by U.S. military intervention, prompting recognition of the shared oppression of Third World peoples.1 Twelve years later, during the Vietnam War, he broadcast a message to Black soldiers via Radio Hanoi, urging them to return to the United States: "You are fighting the wrong war. Brothers, go home. The Negro people need you back there."2 According to Daniel Y. Kim, "Adams mobilize[d] a historiography of a race war to cast both the Korean and Vietnam Wars as ones waged by a white empire against a colored population," exemplifying what Bill Mullens terms "Afro-Orientalism": a phenomenon in which Black activists turned to idealized Asian subjects for anti-imperialist and antiracist inspiration.3 I begin with Adams' story for three reasons. First, it highlights continuities between Black narratives of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Whereas historians have elucidated the experiences of Black soldiers during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, respectively, few studies have grappled with these two Cold War fronts in relation, noting patterns and [End Page 97] particularities in Black subject formation across the two U.S. imperial conflicts.4 With the signing of Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, President Harry S. Truman desegregated the U.S. military, exemplifying the United States' project of racial liberalism and bolstering the expansion of the liberal empire, vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, even as Jim Crow laws continued to delimit the mobility of African Americans on the home front. Whereas the Korean War was the first U.S. experiment in militarized integration, it wasn't until the Vietnam War that the question of Black–white tensions in the military, transposed from the continental United States to the battlefront in Asia, gained widespread visibility. As Martin Luther King, Jr., famously observed in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech of April 1967: "[We watch] Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago."5 Segregation at home was only interrupted by "brutal solidarity" abroad: the uniting of Black and white soldiers in a common project of racialized wartime destruction.6 But continuities between the Korean and Vietnam Wars also led to political mobilization: many civil rights and Black Power leaders active during the Vietnam War era, such as Bobby Seale, James Forman, Ivory Perry, and Robert F. Williams, were radicalized during their experiences as Black soldiers in Cold War Korea.7 Second, Adams' story stitches together three southern spaces that are rarely discussed in relation: the U.S. South, South Korea, and South Vietnam. To focus on the southern-ness of these three sites is to trace the convergence of white supremacy, antiblackness, imperialism, and anticommunism that cohere at the intersection of the U.S. Civil War and Cold War politics.8 Raised in Memphis, Tennessee, amid the structural antiblackness of the segregated U.S. South, Adams joined the U.S. Army to escape incarceration at the hands of white policemen. This military service brought him to South Korea: a decolonizing nation that the United States had taken upon itself to protect in the Cold War struggle against North Korea, Communist China, and the Soviet Union. These south-south relationalities—the transposition of a Black subject of the U.S. South to the southern warfront of a new...

Uplifting Philosophies from the Gita

Bhagwad Gita, also known as the Gita, is an important ancient Indian text, written around the 3rd Century BCE. The Gita appears in the 18th Chapter of the epic, Mahabharata, written by Sage Vyasa. It is set on a war front. The Bhagwad Gita is presented as a dialogue between Arjuna, one of the warriors, and Krishna, his charioteer who was also a king. Arjuna is shown to be confused and conflicted about fighting in the war against his unjust cousins and teachers. Krishna, on the other hand, attempts, through various means, to counsel him about his duty by explaining the workings of mankind and the world. He points out the flawsin Arjuna’s reasoning and helps him clear his clouded judgement. In doing so, Krishna gave away secrets to living a meaningful life. Although the Gita is addressed towards Arjuna, his message applies to each one of us as humans who are at times conflicted, unsure and resentful. It contains eternal wisdom on the best ways to live our lives while also taking into consideration differences in personality and preference. Logic-based therapy is a modality of philosophical counselling developed by Dr. Cohen that suggests that human beings have certain faulty ways or illogical ways of thinking and interpreting life circumstances that manifest in the form of irritation and other day-to-day issues like procrastination, anger, management issues, low self-esteem etc. To solve such issues, which he calls Cardinal Fallacies, it is necessary to think rationally and transgress those illogical thought patterns. Hence, in Logic Based Therapy timeless philosophical ideologies are offered as antidotes by which people can adopt new ways of thinking and solve such everyday problems. This paper attempts to show how different cardinal fallacies can be tackled by using the eternal wisdom presented in the Bhagwad Gita, in the form of uplifting philosophies.

Альтернативы развития оружейного производства в России петровского периода (конец XVII - первая четверть XVIII в.) в отечественной историографии

This paper looks at how the production infrastructure for the firearms branch of the military industry emerged in Russia during the reign of Peter the Great (1689-1725). The objective of the study is to identify alternative development patterns for this industry, both in terms of methods of organizing arms production and its geographical location. In the study, the author referred to the works of Russian researchers from the pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and postSoviet periods; their historiographic analysis makes it possible to reach the research objective. Aside from the traditional methods like analysis and rising from the concrete to the abstract, common for philosophical studies, the author also applied research methods specific to history: problem chronology and prospective analysis. The research demonstrates that during Peter the Great's reign, the development of the firearms supply system for the armed forces was influenced by two trends, which took two different directions: one was the encouragement of private initiative; the other was the development of a state-funded network of arms enterprises and the centralization of the arms business in the arms makers' community (sloboda) in Tula. Ultimately, the latter trend prevailed, and the government focused its efforts on expanding the geography of arms production and searching for the most optimal location where arms enterprises could be deployed. The study documents the fate of all potential arms production hubs that emerged during Peter the Great's reign. Some of them never left the initial proposal stage (Yaroslavl, Ustyuzhna Zheleznopolskaya, ore processing plants in the Urals). Others did play a certain role in supplying the Russian army with firearms during the challenging period of the Great Northern War but gradually ceased their operations when the war was over (the Olonets plants (Lipetsk and Petrovsky plants), the arms enterprise in Tobolsk). Moscow, which used to be an important firearms production hub before Peter rose to the throne, lost this status under the new ruler, just as its status as Russia's capital. The new capital, St. Petersburg, was never even intended to be an arms hub. In the author's opinion, the government policy on building up Russia's arms industry prioritized the development of the long-established production assets in Tula (Tula Arms Plant) and the construction of a new arms plant in Sestroretsk, northwest Russia, within immediate reach of the Great Northern War's front lines. These state enterprises, along with the Izhevsk Arms Plant, which was built in the early 19th century, became the key suppliers of firearms for the Russian army and navy throughout the entire imperial period.

Everyday Life, Work, and Survival on the Soviet Home Front in World War II

Everyday Life, Work, and Survival on the Soviet Home Front in World War II

The Psychosocial Statuses of British Soldiers at the Gallipoli Front as per Guy Warneford Nightingale’s Letters

This manuscript has been focused on the content/expression analysis of letters sent by a British Officer from the Gallipoli front in the World War I. In the study, the frequency of using words which were mentioned in the letters was analyzed, and the psycological effect left by the extension of wars on the soldiers was investigated. So, this effect has also comprised the topic of the manuscript. The selection of Guy Warneford Nightingale's letters was not accidental because his letters were not controlled in the military censorhip at that time. He was released from this practice of censorshio because he worked as the officer who conrolled the soldiers' letters. Therefore, it was believed that his letter would provide us with epistemological information about the Gallipoli front in its clear form. Various statistical programs would be used in the study, and the findings obtained would be discussed with similar works.

RESPONSIBILITY OF BEING A “HIPSTER” IN A WARTIME IN UKRAINE

The focus is on the fashion practices of Ukrainian youth, so called ‘hipsters’, during the war. In the essay we move beyond understanding hipsters as a meaningless youth subculture of cultural appropriation and recombination. Instead, we consider hipsters as a force of resistance in cultural and war front lines. Ukrainian events proved that hipsters are not only about sophisticated consumer choices and humane ecological changes. A new public aesthetic for Kharkiv is considered on the example of the Nikolsky shopping center, which was built taking into account the new demands and tastes of hipsters. Despite its recent history, Nikolsky suffered from the bombings, but managed to reopen its doors and became one of the symbols of Kharkov's resilience and rebelliousness. The hipster rebellion is considered as the creation of a new liberation aesthetic and ethic in Ukrainian society. The key features of fashion behavior in the context of deglobalization processes are outlined, and vectors for future research are proposed. The work was done with support of the Solidarity Fellowship, sponsored by the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna).

Letters in Verse from the Great War

This article sets out to study the records and testimonies created during the First World War in order to understand this important historical moment in the existence of Romanian rural communities. Many of the testimonies of Romanian soldiers capture the shift from oral culture and oral language to writing and written culture. Writing, which the soldiers had yet to fully internalize, was one of the few possibilities available to them on the war front to maintain alive the connection with their families and to leave a trace about the exceptional times they were living. These written accounts, which do not always observe the rules of correct writing, make apparent and available to us today a deep layer of oral culture that had until then been orally transmitted from generation to generation. Romanian soldiers from Transylvania were best known for writing home messages in verse, which they composed on the spot, using memorized set structures and phrases from the shared folklore repertoire circulating at the time in the village world. Privates coming from the Kingdom of Romania also made verses in their letters or journal entries, but it was less common. They would sometimes insert in their notes orally transmitted moral stories or parables, as well as other forms and pieces of the peasant oral culture to which they belonged. Some of these testimonies can present real challenges in terms of understanding the writing but also the semantics of some of the words. While familiarized with letters, writing, and reading, their authors had only a rudimentary knowledge of spelling and punctuation rules. To be able to discern the meanings of these writings today, one needs to first understand the complex circumstances that produced them.