Glasnost, the Coup, and Soviet Arabist Historians

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-577
Author(s):  
Garay Menicucci
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
State Funding ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
International Solidarity ◽  
Oriental Studies ◽  
Middle East Studies ◽  
Coup Attempt

The 19 August 1991 coup attempt in Moscow and the subsequent collapse of the economy of the former Soviet Union has had its effects on Middle East studies. The seizure of Communist party property and bank accounts and the dispute between the Russian federal government and what remained of the centralized Soviet state structure still headed by President Gorbachev placed such distinguished centers for Middle East research as the Institutes for Oriental Studies in Moscow and St. Petersburg in serious financial jeopardy. Even before the coup attempt and the dissolution of the Communist party, continued full state funding was uncertain and the institutes were scrambling to establish joint publishing agreements with Western academic presses to ensure some infusion of hard currency against the plunging value of the ruble. Individual researchers began looking for translation work or other lucrative forms of moonlighting to supplement their insufficient salaries. And, of course, the content of Middle East studies has undergone a radical transformation. For the social scientists, such notions as “imperialism,” “socialist orientation,” and “international solidarity” have been swiftly abandoned and replaced with what experts now call “the new pragmatism,” which seeks to steer foreign policy away from engaged ideological alliances in the Middle East and towards bettering those state-to-state relations in the region that serve Russian national and economic interests.

Institutional Change in the East German Transformation Process: The Role of the State in the Reorganization of Property Rights and the Limits of Institutional Transfer

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 13-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Lehmbruch
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Transfer Payments ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
East German ◽  
Eastern European Countries

German social scientists have often stressed that the East German transformation was a process sui generis that differed strongly from the transformation paths of eastern European countries. This difference was of course mainly due to the integration of the former GDR into the Federal Republic of (West) Germany. Indeed, it is commonly assumed that the wholesale transfer of West German institutions left little room for the endogenous paths of transformation observed in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The unintended outcome of this strategy of “exogenous” institutional change was a transformation crisis with the effect of a profound external shock. To be sure, this shock was mitigated by the simultaneous introduction of the West German “social net,” accompanied by massive transfer payments. But many of the dire predictions made by skeptical observers in 1990 have indeed come true.

Revolution in Iraq

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Rezk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Virus Spreading ◽  
First Time

In July 1958, an unknown nationalist, General Abdul Karim Qasim, came to the helm of power in Iraq. Chapter 3 reveals how analysts reacted to the brutal murder of his predecessor Nuri al Said, as Britain’s most important ally in the Middle East seemed to contract the Nasser ‘virus’ spreading through the region. Qasim quickly demonstrated that he was no Nasserist stooge however. Whilst British policymakers hoped in vain that the new Iraqi leader could be cultivated as a counterweight to Nasser, the intelligence community rapidly realised that Qasim had neither the charisma nor the popularity to compete with his Egyptian counterpart in the Arab Cold War. Qasim reliance on Iraqi Communists to counteract the influence of local Nasserites led to widespread fears that Iraq was on the brink of acquiring Soviet satellite status. This chapter brings to light for the first time the JIC’s nuanced analysis of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), suggesting to policy-makers that in fact the Soviet Union was acting as a restraining influence on the Iraqi communists. Qasim came to be increasingly depicted as ‘paranoid’ and ‘irrational’, whilst assessments of Nasser took on a new and more complimentary light as a ‘moderate’ potential ally in the quest to prevent Communist penetration of the Middle East.

Privatization and Crime: The Post-Soviet Experience

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise I. Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
The Other ◽  
Careful Planning ◽  
Privatization Process ◽  
Criminal Groups ◽  
Soviet Experience

This paper examines the criminalization of the privatization process now occurring in the former Soviet Union. The different means by which the economy has been criminalized and its impact on the citizenry are examined. This paper argues that former Communist Party elite and organized criminal groups have purchased the majority of the state's assets. The absence of careful planning and proper legal protections in implementing the massive privatization program are given as important explanations for the failure of this process. Though special attention is given to Russia, this analysis applies to the other states of the former Soviet Union as well.

The Jamahiriya Experiment in Libya: Qadhafi and Rousseau

1980 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami G. Hajjar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The World ◽  
Taking Charge ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Middle East Studies

Only a few social scientists outside the field of Middle East studies are aware that in the sovereign state of Libya today there is no government. Indeed, it is not likely to have one so long as the country's strongman, Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi,1 continues to be the leader of the Libyan revolution. This has been the case ever since 2 March 1977, when the institution of government in its traditional legal-bureaucratic sense was dismantled, and the people's authority, exercised through people's congresses and committees, was proclaimed. By this action, Libya initiated in practice the so-called era of jamahiriya—the era of the masses and the practice of direct democracy – and has taken a number of steps in that direction. A recent example was the renaming of some of its embassies overseas as ‘people's bureaux’, with Libyan students and citizens taking charge of their functions and management.2 This action, instigated personally by Qadhafi, was intended to illustrate to the world that since Libya has no government, ordinary Libyan citizens overseas represent themselves directly to foreign peoples.

Writing the Intifada Collective Action in the Occupied Territories

1993 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 560-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian S. Lustick
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
West Bank And Gaza ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

The five-year-old Palestinian uprising, the intifada, was the first of many mass mobilizations against nondemocratic rule to appear in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the former Soviet Union between 1987 and 1991. Although the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is seldom included by the media or by social scientists in their treatments of this putative wave of “democratization,” many studies of the uprising are available. Although largely atheoretic in their construction of the intifada and in their explanations for it, the two general questions posed by most of these authors are familiar to students of collective action and revolution. On the one hand, why did it take twenty years for the Palestinians to launch the uprising? On the other hand, how, in light of the individual costs of participation and the negligible impact of any one person's decision to participate, could it have occurred at all? The work under review provides broad support for recent trends in the analysis of revolution and collection action, while illustrating both the opportunities and the constraints associated with using monographic literature as a data base.

The August 1991 Coup and Its Impact on Soviet Politics

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Dunlop
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The State ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Military ◽  
Coup Attempt

A book published by the author in 1993 contained a lengthy chapter on the August 1991 coup attempt in the Soviet Union. This article builds on and updates that chapter, making use of a trove of newly available documents and memoirs. The article discusses many aspects of the coup attempt, but it particularly seeks to explain why the coup failed and what the implications were for the Soviet Union. The events of December 1991 that culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union were the direct result of changes set in motion by the failed coup. The major state and party institutions that might ordinarily have tried to hold the country together—the Communist Party apparatus, the secret police, the military-industrial complex, the Ministry of Defense, and the state administrative organs—all were compromised by their participation in the coup. As a result, when events pushed the Soviet Union toward collapse there was no way of staving off that outcome.

scholarly journals Family History in the Middle East

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Ikran Eum
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family And Household ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Middle East Studies

The study of families and their histories opens up a cross-disciplinary dialogueamong anthropologists, historians, and other social scientists, includingarea specialists. The content of Doumani’s edited book, Family Historyin the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender, falls convincinglyinto such disciplines as history, anthropology, Middle East studies,women’s/gender studies, and Islamic studies, since the collection of articlesprovides various indepth case studies drawn both from Islam and frompolitical, economic, legal, and social perspectives.The anthology’s main theme suggests that the family is an entity that,along with the progression of history, evolves continuously. By reconstructingthe family histories of elites and ordinary people in the Middle East fromthe seventeenth to the early twentieth century, the book challenges prevailingassumptions about the monolithic “traditional” Middle Eastern familytype. Instead, it argues cogently that the structure and boundaries of thesefamilies have always been flexible and dynamic.The book is divided into four sections that explore issues concerningthe family from the perspective of politics, economics, and law. In the firstsection, “Family and Household,” Philippe Fargues, Tomoki Okawara, andMary Ann Fay analyze the structure of the nineteenth-century family andhousehold and illustrate how its formation was influenced by changes in the ...

scholarly journals Births, miscarriages and induced abortions among foreign born women in Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
S Jokela ◽  
M Koukkula ◽  
E Lilja ◽  
R Klemetti ◽  
P Koponen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Sexual And Reproductive Health ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Induced Abortion ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Region Of Origin ◽  
Induced Abortions

Abstract Background The increasing number of foreign-born women living in Finland has raised a need for more information about their sexual and reproductive health and need for services. This study explores the prevalence of births, induced abortions and miscarriages as well as the associated socioeconomic factors of foreign-born women. Methods This study used data collected in the Survey on Well-Being Among Foreign Born Population (FinMonik), conducted in 2018-2019. The random sample (n = 6 695) consisted of women aged 18 to 64 years and living in Finland. The participation rate among women was 56% (n = 3 746). The results were stratified according to country groups based on geographic region of origin: Middle East and Africa; Russia, former Soviet Union and Estonia; Asia; EU, North America, Latin America and others. The analyses were conducted with logistic regression adjusting for age. In the analyses, weights were used to reduce non-response bias. Results The proportion of women who had at least one birth in their lifetime varied from 67 to 80%. Those from the Middle East or Africa had the highest proportion of three or more births (41%). The proportion of women who had experienced induced abortion was highest among women from Russia, former Soviet Union and Estonia: 34% of these women had experienced at least one abortion while 20% had experienced at least two abortions. No difference in reported miscarriages was observed between the groups (20-27%). In all groups, married women (82%) and those with only basic education (82%) had more often at least one birth than unmarried women (61%) and those with higher education (70%). Compared to the other groups, lower educated Russian, former Soviet Union and Estonian women had more often experienced at least one induced abortion (44 %). Conclusions There are major differences in the prevalence of births and abortions among women from different regions and educational level. Key messages Challenges in sexual and reproductive health vary by region of origin. Low-threshold health services and health education are needed to guarantee better sexual and reproductive health for all women.

Towards a Developmental Theory of Constitutionalism: The Chinese Case

1998 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Benewick
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Developmental Theory ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
The European Union ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The United Kingdom

CONSTITUTIONS, CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM AND CONSTITUTIONAL conflict are once again commanding attention. The celebrations of the bicentennial of the American constitution, the implementation of constitutional reform in Canada, the Labour government's programme for constitutional change in the United Kingdom, the seemingly intractable conflict in Northern Ireland, and transfers of sovereignty to the European Union from its constituent states, testify to this. Equally, if not more challenging, have been the upheavals in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and its reconstituted states, the ‘third’ wave of democratization across the developing world, the experiment in participatory constitutionalism in South Africa and the return of Hong Kong to China. Of the 179 countries that elect their governments out of a total of 192 countries in the world, 176 have codified constitutions. Constitutions, however, that are not fully mature or operative and are not based on the principles or drafted with the advice of those nations that have developed and entrenched their constitutions tend to be disregarded, or even dismissed. Moreover, writing a constitution is one exercise, implementing, and interpreting it is a far more complex and delicate undertaking. So how are social scientists to evaluate the process?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document