scholarly journals Compulsory Mine Work: The Single-Party Regime and the Zonguldak Coalfield as a Site of Contention, 1940–1947

2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (S17) ◽  
pp. 115-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
NurŞen Gürboğa

SummaryThis study examines the forms of state domination over mine labour and the struggles of coalminers at the Zonguldak coalfield during World War II. It is focused on the everyday experiences of compulsory workers as reflected in petitions by those workers and the surveillance materials of the single-party regime at the time. Its aim is to reveal how, under an authoritarian regime, compulsory workers created a political agency. The compulsory labour system was one of the most coercive devices with which the state controlled mine labour between 1940 and 1947, but the compulsory workers negotiated with the political elite for their living and working conditions, and did so within a political sphere which had been devised by the ruling elite as a governmental strategy for managing and shaping the population. By subverting the political discourse of the ruling elite, the miners contributed not just to the development of workers’ rights, but also helped reveal the merits of a democratic society.

Author(s):  
Faridullah Bezhan

Wish Zalmiyan or the ‘Awaken Youth Party’ (AYP) was the first political party to operate openly in Afghanistan. It enjoyed support from the intelligentsia and the monarchical regime. The AYP’s key ideological elements were nationalism and constitutionalism. While they made the party popular with a segment of the ruling elite and the intelligentsia, they brought resentment from the religious establishment for which Islam was the only ideology to be followed and the Quran the only constitution the country needed. This chapter examines how, in the aftermath of World War II, most members of the urban Afghan educated class leaned towards nationalism and constitutionalism as the driving forces for new political dynamics and the progress of the country. It explores what type of nationalism the Wish Zalmiyan party was advocating.


Author(s):  
Amanda L. Tyler

The experience of World War II and the precedent of the Japanese American internment dramatically altered the political and legal landscape surrounding habeas corpus and suspension. This chapter discusses Congress’s enactment of the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 along with its repeal in 1971. It further explores how in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, questions over the scope of executive authority to detain prisoners in wartime arose anew. Specifically, this chapter explores the Supreme Court’s sanctioning of the concept of the “citizen-enemy combatant” in its 2004 decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and evaluates Hamdi against historical precedents. Finally, the chapter explores how Hamdi established the basis for an expansion of the reach of the Suspension Clause in other respects—specifically, to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Duindam

Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.


1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard

The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.


2019 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Edyta Kahl

The problems discussed in the article concern the educational policy in Poland in the first years after World War II (1944-1948). The article presents the educational concepts and postulates of different political fractions and teachers’ circles, which already before the end of the War had formulated their own educational programmes. The discussions about the shape of the post-war educational system, particularly the organization of schools, the school structure, the ideological foundations, the syllabus, school handbooks and teachers’ training, were carried out, among others, between the representatives of the National Democrats, Christian-national groups, political parties, teachers’ organizations and school administration. Their attitudes to many problems varied considerably, and thus, the situation required social debate and confrontation of opinions. The quality of those discussions, the style in which the educational problems were solved as well as the direction of the structural and ideological transformations in the post-war educational system, were significantly influenced by the geopolitical post-war conditions and a strong position of the Left, consolidated by the Soviets, in the policy of the Polish state. In the expansive struggle for the political leadership in Poland, the Left used different forms of pressure and terror in order to eliminate the opposition. To achieve social legitimization for its pseudo-democratic activities, the Left undertook attempts to encourage other groups to co-operate. Particularly, the communists tried to attract cultural elites, including teachers, who they wanted to use to start the process of rebuilding social consciousness according to the rules of the ideology of Marxism and Leninism. These monopolistic ambitions, in the first years after World War II, were reflected in the destruction of the underground state and the development of administrative structures of the totalitarian system. As far as the educational system is concerned, the policy of the Left was manifested in more and more apparent actions taken to subordinate school to the communists’ interests, thus including education into the process of the transformation of the political system. All those activities, were part of the phenomenon of structural Sovietization, formed the foundations for the ideological offensive, planned by the communists and conducted on a massive scale after the formation, in 1948, of the monopolistic Stalinian party - PZPR (Polish United Workers’ Party).


Author(s):  
Alexander Naumov

This article reviews the role of Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 in escalation of crisis trends of the Versailles system. Leaning on the British Russian archival documents, which recently became available for the researchers, the author analyzes the reasons and consequences of conclusion of this agreement between the key European democratic power and Nazi Reich. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the moods within the political elite of the United Kingdom. It is proven that the agreement became a significant milestone in escalation of crisis trends in the Versailles model of international relations. It played a substantial role in establishment of the British appeasement policy with regards to revanchist powers in the interbellum; policy that objectively led to disintegration of the created in 1919 systemic mechanism, and thus, the beginning of the World War II. The novelty of this work is substantiated by articulation of the problem. This article is first within the Russian and foreign historiography to analyze execution of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement based on the previously unavailable archival materials. The conclusion is made that this agreement played a crucial role in the process of disintegration of interbellum system of international relations. Having officially sanctioned the violation of the articles of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 by Germany, Great Britain psychologically reconciled to the potential revenge of Germany, which found reflection in the infamous appeasement policy. This launched the mechanism for disruption of status quo that was established after the World War I in Europe. This resulted in collapse of the architecture of international security in the key region of the world, rapid deterioration of relations between the countries, and a new world conflict.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Antic

This article analyzes how the ideological discourse of the Croatian fascist movement (the Ustaša) evolved in the course of World War II under pressures of the increasingly popular and powerful communist armed resistance. It explores and interprets the way the regime formulated its ideological responses to the political/ideological challenge of the leftist guerrilla and its propaganda in the period after the proclamation of the Ustaša Independent State of Croatia in 1941 until the end of the war. The author demonstrates that the regime, faced with its own political weakness and inability to maintain authority, shaped its rhetoric and ideological self-definition in a direct dialogue with the Marxist discourse of the communist propaganda, incorporating important Marxist concepts in its theory of state and society and redefining its concepts of national boundaries and racial identity to match the communists’ propaganda of inclusive, civic national Yugoslavism. This massive ideological renegotiation of the movement’s basic tenets and its consequent leftward shift reflected a change in an opposite direction from the one commonly encountered in narratives of other fascisms’ ideological evolution paths (most notably in Italy and Germany): as the movement became a regime, the Ustaša transformed from its initial conservatism, traditionalism (in both sociopolitical and cultural matters), pseudo-feudal worldview of peasant worship and antiurbanism, anti-Semitism, and rigid racialism in relation to nation and state into an ideology of increasingly inclusive, culture-based, and nonethnic nationalism and with an exceptionally strong leftist rhetoric of social welfare, class struggle, and the rights of the working class.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-262
Author(s):  
Ana María Carballeira Debasa

The principal aim of this study is to examine the use of charity as a factor of political legitimation by the ruling elite of al-Andalus in the Umayyad period. Accordingly, it explores the degree to which charity was an instrument in the hands of the authorities, and the manner in which this strategy was decisive in the process of consolidating power. In a broader sense, this analysis enables us to deepen our knowledge of the political elite in al-Andalus and to elucidate how charitable attitudes reflected a particular conception of power.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-90
Author(s):  
Boris Valentinovich Petelin ◽  
Vladilena Vadimovna Vorobeva

In the political circles of European countries attempts to reformat the history of World War II has been continuing. Poland is particularly active; there at the official level, as well as in the articles and in the speeches of politicians, political scientists and historians crude attacks against Russia for its commitment to objective assessments of the military past are allowed. Though, as the authors of this article mention, Russian politicians have not always been consistent in evaluation of Soviet-Polish relationships, hoping to reach a certain compromise. If there were any objections, they were mostly unconvincing. Obviously, as the article points, some statements and speeches are not without emotional colouring that is characteristic, when expressing mutual claims. However, the deliberate falsification of historical facts and evidence, from whatever side it occurs, does not meet the interests of the Polish and Russian peoples, in whose memory the heroes of the Red Army and the Polish Resistance have lived and will live. The authors point in the conclusions that it is hard to achieve mutual respect to key problems of World War II because of the overlay of the 18th – 19th centuries, connected with the “partitions of Poland”, the existence of the “Kingdom of Poland” as part of the Russian Empire, Soviet-Polish War of 1920. There can be only one way out, as many Russian and Polish scientists believe – to understand the complex twists and turns of Russo-Polish history, relying on the documents. Otherwise, the number of pseudoscientific, dishonest interpretations will grow.


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