March of the chekists: Beria’s secret police patronage network and Soviet crypto-politics

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy K. Blauvelt
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Unique Case ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Civilian Leadership ◽  
Shed Light

Lavrentii Beria built up one of the most powerful patronage networks in Soviet history. Its success represents a unique case in Soviet history in which a regionally based secret police patron-client network, comprised primarily of representatives of ethnic minorities, took control first of the civilian leadership of one of the major regions of the Union, and then of the most powerful institution in the USSR, the national secret police, and subsequently became one of the main competing factions in the “crypto-politics” of the late-Stalin era. The fact that the Beria network emerged from the secret police gave it certain advantages in the political struggles of the period, but it also held weaknesses that played a role in Beria’s final undoing. The evolution and political struggles of Beria’s network also shed light on the inner workings of the competition among informal networks that made up the crypto-politics of the period. Using recent memoirs, new archival sources and interviews, this article will examine how Beria developed, managed and advanced his informal network, giving particular attention to the specific and unique outcomes that resulted from the rooting of this network in the secret police, at five critical junctures in Beria’s career.

Wetlands Explained

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Conservation Policy ◽  
Compact Form ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Conflicts ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Ecosystem Science ◽  
Wetland Regulation ◽  
Shed Light

This book brings together in compact form a broad scientific and sociopolitical view of US wetlands. This primer lays out the science and policy considerations to help in navigating this branch of science that is so central to conservation policy, ecosystem science and wetland regulation. It gives explanations of the attributes, functions and values of our wetlands and shows how and why public attitudes toward wetlands have changed, and the political, legal, and social conflicts that have developed from legislation intended to stem the rapid losses of wetlands. The book describes the role of wetland science in facilitating the evolution of a rational and defensible system for regulating wetlands and will shed light on many of the problems and possibilities facing those who quest to protect and conserve our wetlands.

The Puzzle of Precarity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven P. Vallas
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Organizational Fields ◽  
Precarious Employment ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Shed Light

Social scientific efforts to understand the political and economic forces generating precarious employment have been mired in uncertainty. In this context, the Doellgast–Lillie–Pulignano (D–L–P) model represents an important step forward in both theoretical and empirical terms. This concluding chapter scrutinizes the authors’ theoretical model and assesses the present volume’s empirical applications of it. Building on the strengths of the D–L–P model, the chapter identifies several lines of analysis that can fruitfully extend our understanding of the dynamics of precarization, whether at the micro-, meso-, or macro-social levels of analysis. Especially needed are studies that explore the dynamics of organizational fields as these shape employer strategy and state policy towards employment. Such analysis will hopefully shed light on the perils and possibilities that workers’ organizations face as they struggle to cope with the demands of neoliberal capitalism.

(Anamnesis) Revolting Bodies: “Le Forgeron” and the Poetry of the Past

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert St. Clair
Keyword(s):  
Victor Hugo ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Louis Xvi

weChapter 4 takes up the question of poetry and engagement at its most explicit and complex in Rimbaud, focusing on a long, historical epic entitled “Le Forgeron.” We read this poem, which recreates and re-imagines a confrontation between the People in revolt and Louis XVI in the summer of 1792, as Rimbaud’s attempt to add a revolutionary supplement to the counter-epics modeled by Victor Hugo in Châtiments. Chapter 4 shows how Rimbaud’s “Forgeron” challenges us to examine the ways in which a poem might seek “to enjamb” the caesura between poiesis and praxis by including and complicating revolutionary (counter)history into its folds in order to implicate itself in the political struggles of its time.

Managing the Health of Chosŏn Kings: Illness and Treatment in the Daily Records of the Royal Secretariat

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wung Seok Cha
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Mental Status ◽  
Daily Activities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Korean Language ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Choson Dynasty ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shed Light

TheSŭngjŏngwŏn ilgi (Daily Records of the Royal Secretariat)is one of the major chronicles of the events of the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910). Although the records prior to the year 1622 are no longer extant, the remaining records from the years 1623 to 1910 meticulously recount the daily activities of the reigning Chosŏn kings, including copious information on their physical and mental status. Because the king’s health was considered as important as other official affairs in many respects, detailed records were kept of royal ailments and how court doctors treated them. This article surveys the state of Korean-language scholarship on the medical content of theDaily Recordsand presents selected translations to demonstrate how this valuable historical source can shed light on both the social history of Chosŏn medicine and the political importance of kingly health at the Chosŏn court.

scholarly journals Hard-to-Survey Populations and Respondent-Driven Sampling: Expanding the Political Science Toolbox

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-526
Author(s):  
Rana B. Khoury
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Science Methods ◽  
Respondent Driven Sampling ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Multimethod Research ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Population Inference ◽  
Shed Light

Survey research can generate knowledge that is central to the study of collective action, public opinion, and political participation. Unfortunately, many populations—from undocumented migrants to right-wing activists and oligarchs—are hidden, lack sampling frames, or are otherwise hard to survey. An approach to hard-to-survey populations commonly taken by researchers in other disciplines is largely missing from the toolbox of political science methods: respondent-driven sampling (RDS). By leveraging relations of trust, RDS accesses hard-to-survey populations; it also promotes representativeness, systematizes data collection, and, notably, supports population inference. In approximating probability sampling, RDS makes strong assumptions. Yet if strengthened by an integrative multimethod research design, it can shed light on otherwise concealed—and critical—political preferences and behaviors among many populations of interest. Through describing one of the first applications of RDS in political science, this article provides empirically grounded guidance via a study of activist refugees from Syria. Refugees are prototypical hard-to-survey populations, and mobilized ones are even more so; yet the study demonstrates that RDS can provide a systematic and representative account of a vulnerable population engaged in major political phenomena.

基层档案揭示的农业合化作运动：以江苏省宝应县为例 1953–1957

Rural China ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-305
Keyword(s):  
Rural China ◽  
Jiangsu Province ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Ordinary Sense ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Resistance Forces ◽  
Shed Light

Agricultural collectivization was a movement in the early 1950s that profoundly changed the traditional methods of production and lifestyle in rural China. Drawing on original archives from Baoying county of Jiangsu province, this article delves into the actual implementation of, and resistance by different stratum of the peasantry to, this movement. The wealth of archival data and details included in this study shed light on the multifaceted realities of the movement that have been obscured in past studies, in particular, the complexity of the mentality of the peasants and their various forms of resistance, as well as the efforts by government officials to divide and put down the resistance forces and carry out the state’s policies. These data further enable an in-depth analysis of the basic issues about agricultural collectivization. It is shown that this movement was more than a transformation of economic institutions in the ordinary sense; it involved intense political struggles. 上世纪五十年代初开始的农业合作化运动深深改变了中国农民传统的生产生活方式。本文以江苏省宝应县的原始档案为依据，试图从底层的角度探究这一运动的具体实施过程，以及各阶层农民对这一运动的真实反应。本文以大量数据和细节揭示了农业合作化运动的多重面相，特别是以往研究中被忽视的部分，如农民对这一运动的复杂心态和种种抗争，以及当政者如何分化瓦解各种反对力量、步步推进其政策的过程。基于这些事实，本文就农业合作化运动中存在的基本问题进行了讨论，并提出这场运动已经超越了一般经济制度的改革，其实质是一场严峻的政治斗争。 (This article is in Chinese.)

The (W)hole in the Archive

Paragraph ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie Ring
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
East German ◽  
Stark Contrast

This article turns its attention to the accounts that Foucault and Derrida made following their encounters with archives, and it relates these accounts to the files of the former East German secret police. Derrida and Foucault located differing qualities of authority in the archives that they consulted, yet they are shown here to converge around a problem of non-integrity in the structuration of the archive as supposed guarantor of epistemological sovereignty. A terminology of sovereign integrity dominates the Stasi's files, so that they sit in stark contrast with the literary and cinematic texts that grapple with the Stasi's legacy — texts that are beset with images of inconsistency and perforation. When read in dialogue with the poststructuralist accounts of the archive, these spy files and the cultural works that emerged after their opening enable new reflection on the ethics of visiting archives, as an act of doing justice that nonetheless risks collapsing the fragments of complex pasts into the narrative wholes of the political present.

scholarly journals Resistance against being formulated as cultural other

Pragmatics ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chie Fukuda
Keyword(s):  
Learning Environment ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
The Political ◽  
Language Practices ◽  
Shed Light

So-called traditional theories in second langauge acquisition (SLA) have been criticized for their neglect to examine interactional, social, and political aspects in language practices. The present study will illustrate exoticization, one of the political phenomena observed in interactions between native-speaker and non-native speaker (NS/NNS). Exoticization is known as a covert power exercise where ‘self’ creates inferior ‘other’ in order to establish and maintain its superiority (Said 1978), which involves identity construction and categorization. Adopting a conversation analysis (CA) approach and utilizing NS-NNS conversations in Japanese, this study will first demonstrate how exoticization is discursively constructed through the development of interactions. Then the study will explore how the NNS participant tries to resist such practices. By so doing, this study will shed light on interactional and ideological aspects of language practices and society as a learning environment. The study will also suggest the necessity for exploring what NNSs face in real L2 societies in order to develop emic perspectives in SLA studies.

Imperial Presidency and the Neo-patrimonialization of Disorder in post-Authoritarian Nigeria

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77
Author(s):  
Adeniyi S. Basiru
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Imperial Presidency ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Presidential Democracies ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Public Disorder

The president and the network of offices that are linked to him, in modern presidential democracies, symbolize a neutral state that does not meddle in order-threatening political struggles. It however seems that this liberal ideal is hardly the case in many illiberal democracies. Against this background, this article examines the presidential roots of public disorder in post-military Nigeria. Drawing on documentary data source and deploying neo-patrimonial theory as theoretical framework, it argues that the presidency in Nigeria, given the historical context under which it has emerged as well as the political economy of neo-patrimonialism and prebendalism that has nurtured it, is a central participant in the whole architecture of public disorder. The paper recommends, among others, the fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian neo-colonial state and the political economy that undergird it.Keywords: Imperial Presidency; Neo-patrimonialism; Disorder; Authoritarianism; Nigeria.

Die Bedeutung der ethne in der Politik und den Politeiai des Aristoteles

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gertrud Dietze-Mager
Keyword(s):  
Federal State ◽  
The Political ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Shed Light

The Politeiai are one of Aristotle’s historical works. Several hundreds of fragments have come down to us. While Aristotle’s Nomima barbarika recorded the customs of the barbaric ethne, the Politeiai are generally considered to be a collection of polisconstitutions. A closer look reveals, however, that alongside a majority of Greek poleis Aristotle also included several ethne in his Politeiai, namely those in the North(west) of the Greek mainland and on the Peleponnesus. This article tries to shed light on Aristotle’s reasons for selecting these ethne. On the basis of key passages in the Politics, the author argues that their presence in the Politeiai indicates that Aristotle considered them as Hellenic, and, although inferior in status to the polis, capable of having a politeia. In Aristotle’s time, nearly all of the ethne known to have been included in the Politeiai had formed koina. While Aristotle did not explicitly discuss the federal state, he acknowledged its existence both in the Politics and the Politeiai, obviously inspired by the political reality of his time in which the koina played an increasingly prominent role, illustrated by their presence as members in Hellenic treaties alongside the poleis.

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