Council for Economic Mutual Assistance

1962 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 638-638

Communist Party and government delegates from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union attended a meeting in Moscow of the Council for Economic Mutual Assistance (COMECON) on June 7 and 8, 1962. It was reported that the delegations had decided to support the proposal for an international trade conference which would embrace all countries without discrimination. The delegations also expressed their desire for the further expansion of foreign trade with capitalist countries. A communiqué issued at the end of the meeting said that the Council agreed that its main activity in the immediate future would be coordination of the long-term and current economic plans of the COMECON countries. The meeting deemed it necessary that special attention be paid to: the speeding up of specialization and cooperation of production, the maximum development of raw material, fuel, and power supplies, the necessity of beginning in the near future the coordination of principal capital investments in the extracting and processing branches of industry, and the further widening and deepening of coordination of scientific and technical research. It was agreed that, whenever necessary, the members would set up joint enterprises, joint scientific research centers, and joint projecting and designing offices. During the course of the meeting the Mongolian government was admitted as a member of COMECON.

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-116
Author(s):  
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

The article presents the analysis of the study groups set up by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to assess the non-military aspects of Soviet power and potential during the era of Nikita Khrushchev. Following Stalin's death, the Western alliance tried to form a comprehensive view of the strengths and weaknesses of the USSR's economy and political system. This was part of NATO's effort to adjust to the realities of a long Cold War, the outcome of which would not be decided by military force alone. The NATO reports were largely successful in describing the long-term trends of the Soviet economy and the weaknesses of the Soviet system. However, they usually failed to anticipate specific, though significant and potentially dangerous, initiatives of the Soviet regime. On balance they were a crucial input for NATO ministers, and their importance in the shaping of Western policies needs to be evaluated carefully.


2021 ◽  
pp. 99-106
Author(s):  
Татьяна Васильевна Галкина

Рассматривается разработка нового содержания и нового формата патриотического воспитания подрастающего поколения. На Карте Победы (административная карта Российской Федерации) на территориях 85 субъектов страны будут размещены две цифры (военные потери, потери мирного населения), а также те виды продукции, которую данный регион отправлял на фронт. Создание такой карты позволит не только привлечь к работе над проектом большое количество участников, но и позволит по-новому (с цифрами и фактами) увидеть собственную страну, победившую фашизм. Новизна подхода к содержанию проявляется в возможности и доступности работы с подлинными историческими источниками – рассекреченными документами периода Великой Отечественной войны в региональных архивах. Главной тематикой становится тыловая повседневность мирного населения (в том числе военная продукция для фронта) и выявление количества людских потерь в тылу, которые представляют собой последствия нацистского геноцида в отношении народов Советского Союза. Мегапроект настроен на скоординированную работу региональных команд педагогических вузов России, региональных школьных команд и экспертных команд. При этом командообразование рассматривается как один из эффективных методов реализации патриотического проекта. Что касается нового формата, то в структуру мегапроекта включены два научно-исследовательских архивных проекта, два творческих (конкурс и региональный онлайн-проект) и ряд организационно-педагогических мероприятий. В итоге педагогические перспективы реализации мегапроекта «Карта Победы – 2025» представляются эффективным опытом осуществления долговременного разновозрастного проекта патриотической направленности. The article is dedicated to the development of a new content and a new format of patriotic education of the younger generation. On the Victory Map (administrative map of the Russian Federation) in the territories of 85 subjects of the country will be placed two figures (military losses, the loss of civilian population), as well as those types of products that the region sent to the battle-front. The creation of a map will not only attract a large number of participants to the project, but will also allow you to see your own country, which defeated fascism in a new way (with numbers and facts). The novelty of the content’s approach is manifested in the ability and accessibility of work with authentic historical sources – declassified documents from the World War II period in regional archives. The main theme is the rear daily life of the civilian population (including military products for the front) and the identification of the number of human losses in the rear, which are the consequences of the Nazi genocide against the peoples of the Soviet Union. The mega-project is set up for the coordinated work of regional teams of Russian pedagogical universities, regional school teams and expert teams. At the same time, team formation is considered as one of the effective methods of implementing a patriotic project. As for the new format, the structure of the mega-project includes 2 research archival projects, 2 creative (competition and regional online project) and a number of organizational and educational events. As a result, the pedagogical prospects of the implementation of the mega-project “Victory Map 2025” seem to be an effective experience of the implementation of a long-term multi-age project of patriotic orientation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-241
Author(s):  
Mathijs Pelkmans

AbstractMissionaries have flocked to the Kyrgyz Republic ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Evangelical-Pentecostal and Tablighi missions have been particularly active on what they conceive of as a fertile post-atheist frontier. But as these missions project their message of truth onto the frontier, the dangers of the frontier may overwhelm them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork amongst foreign and local Tablighis and evangelical-Pentecostals, this article formulates an analytic of the frontier that highlights the affective and relational characteristics of missionary activities and their effects. This analytic explains why and how missionaries are attracted to the frontier, as well as some of the successes and failures of their expansionist efforts. In doing so, the article reveals the potency of instability, a feature that is particularly evident in missionary work, but also resonates with other frontier situations.


Author(s):  
Ivan V. ZYKIN

During the years of Soviet power, principal changes took place in the country’s wood industry, including in spatial layout development. Having the large-scale crisis in the industry in the late 1980s — 2000s and the positive changes in its functioning in recent years and the development of an industry strategy, it becomes relevant to analyze the experience of planning the spatial layout of the wood industry during the period of Stalin’s modernization, particularly during the first five-year plan. The aim of the article is to analyze the reason behind spatial layout of the Soviet wood industry during the implementation of the first five-year plan. The study is based on the modernization concept. In our research we conducted mapping of the wood industry by region as well as of planned construction of the industry facilities. It was revealed that the discussion and development of an industrialization project by the Soviet Union party-state and planning agencies in the second half of the 1920s led to increased attention to the wood industry. The sector, which enterprises were concentrated mainly in the north-west, west and central regions of the country, was set the task of increasing the volume of harvesting, export of wood and production to meet the domestic needs and the export needs of wood resources and materials. Due to weak level of development of the wood industry, the scale of these tasks required restructuring of the branch, its inclusion to the centralized economic system, the direction of large capital investments to the development of new forest areas and the construction of enterprises. It was concluded that according to the first five-year plan, the priority principles for the spatial development of the wood industry were the approach of production to forests and seaports, intrasectoral and intersectoral combining. The framework of the industry was meant to strengthen and expand by including forests to the economic turnover and building new enterprises in the European North and the Urals, where the main capital investments were sent, as well as in the Vyatka region, Transcaucasia, Siberia and the Far East.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-149
Author(s):  
A.V. Surzhko ◽  

The article examines the main aspects of Soviet-Chinese cooperation in the field of sports after the normalization of bilateral relations in the late 1980s — early 1990s. Sport was one of the factors that contributed to overcoming the consequences of the thirty-year split between the USSR and the PRC at the state, regional and informal levels. During this period, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China actively exchanged numerous sports delegations, adopting each other's successful experience in organizing and conducting competitions, as well as training athletes. In the USSR, Chinese national sports were popularized, primarily wushu and ping-pong. More traditional for the Soviet side was football, matches in which Soviet and Chinese athletes repeatedly played. Also, the article reveals some economic aspects of sports bilateral cooperation. A common thing for this period was the conclusion of various kinds of agreements and contracts at the interregional level, including those related to the sports component. The personal role of regional party functionaries, sports officials and athletes in the development of Soviet-Chinese relations is shown. There is a certain continuity between the perestroika period and the "golden age" of Soviet-Chinese cooperation in the 1950s. The experience of cooperation in sports gained at the end of perestroika had a beneficial effect on the development of Russian-Chinese relations in the 1990s. The study is carried out on the example of the Irkutsk region, which, due to objective reasons, has developed long-term and strong relations with a number of Chinese cities. The main source of the research was the Irkutsk regional periodicals.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Nikitin ◽  
Irina Bolgova ◽  
Yulia Nikitina

This article analyses the peace-making activities of Soviet/Russian nongovernmental public organisations (NGOs) with reference to the Federation for Peace and Conciliation, the successor of the Soviet Peace Committee. NGOs were formed at the initiative of the state and party organs of the Soviet system but were transformed into independent NGOs after the collapse of the USSR with their own active strategy of assistance in conflict resolution. This study is based upon unique archive materials and the personal experience of one of the authors, who used to work for such organisations. The study focuses on the ethnopolitical conflicts which took place between the collapse of the USSR and the mid‑1990s. There is a widespread opinion in academic literature that so-called non-governmental organisations set up by the government do not have their own identity, especially during social crises, and passively follow the government’s political line. However, the study of their activities demonstrates that during the first years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, these organisations initiated a significant number of practical and political projects with the participation of high-ranked representatives of the governments, parliaments, and political parties of both post-Soviet and foreign states and international organisations, including the UN, OSCE, NATO, CIS, etc. This, in turn, played a role as a substantial supplement to classical interstate diplomacy and practically promoted the settlement of certain ethnopolitical conflicts. The archive materials analysed prove that in the early post-Soviet period, a certain inversion in the direction of political and ideological impulses took place, and a number of non-governmental organisations that used to transmit the interests of the Communist Party and state organs to the international environment were able to create new international projects and consultations in the form of “track one-and-a-half” diplomacy, i. e. the informal interaction of officials in the capacity of unofficial experts. And in such cases, it was NGOs which shaped the agenda and transmitted public interests to the state structures of Russia and the CIS states, mediating between fighting sides and amongst representatives of various states, practically assisting the settlement of ethnopolitical conflicts.


1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leszek Buszynski

Southeast Asia in United States policy fell from a region of high priority during the Vietnam war to become, after the fall of Indochina, an area of relatively minor interest. For the United States, Southeast Asia evoked memories of misperception, intensified over-commitment, and simplistic assumptions that characterized the American effort to defeat local Vietnamese national communism. Since the formulation of the Nixon doctrine of disengagement in 1969, United States policy towards Southeast Asia has been undergoing a process of long-term readjustment in recognition of the exaggerated significance that the region had assumed in American thinking. The fall of Saigon in April 1975 was a major stimulus to this readjustment as it gave the Americans compelling reasons to anticipate a reassertion of Soviet influence in the region. Successive American administrations attempted to place the region in a wider global context to avoid the dangers of extreme reaction to local national communism while developing the flexibility to coordinate a response to the Soviet Union at a global level. The main concern of American policy was to remove the basis for direct United States involvement in the region in a way that would satisfy post-Vietnam war public and congressional opinion and the demands of strategic planners for greater freedom of manoeuvre against the Soviet Union.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 043-049
Author(s):  
Punit GAUR ◽  
Anurag TRIPATHI ◽  
Shovan Sinha RAY

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan’s economy was weak since most of the industrial enterprises were located in Russia. To attain economic growth, Kazakhstan crafted a unique foreign policy known as the multi-vector foreign policy, which facilitated an easy inflow of direct foreign investments into the state economy. After economic liberalization in 1991, India took a serious interest in Central Asia, and since then the two nations have come a long way marked by complex interdependence in the international arena. They have demonstrated a successful and sustained upward trend in their bilateral relationship through soft power, trade and long-standing historical connections. Thus, the prospects of mutual cooperation between Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan, and India are quite promising in the near future.


Author(s):  
Johann P. Arnason ◽  
Marek Hrubec

Problems of social revolutions and/or transformations belong to the classical agenda of social inquiry, as well as to the most prominent real and potential challenges encountered by contemporary societies. Among revolutionary events of the last decades, particular attention has been drawn to the changes that unfolded at the turn of the 1990s and brought the supposedly bipolar (in fact incipiently multipolar) world to an end. The downfall of East Central European Communist regimes in 1989 and of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the beginning of a new era, originally characterised on the one hand by the relaxation of international tensions and on the other by the ascendancy of Western unilateralism. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Soviet collapse prompts the authors of this book to reflect on revolutions and transformations, both from a long-term historical perspective and with regard to the post-Communist scene. The social changes unfolding in Eastern and Central Europe are not only epoch-making historical turns; their economic, social and political aspects, often confusing and unexpected, have also raised new questions and triggered debates about fundamental theoretical issues. Moreover, they have had a significant impact on developments elsewhere in the world, in both Western and developing countries.


Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.


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