Dictatorship Over the Proletariat

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-38
Author(s):  
Vladimir Bukovsky
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political System ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Insane Asylums

Tens of thousands of books have been written about the Soviet Union–about its industry, agriculture, the political system, and its history. Even about prisons, concentration camps, and insane asylums there is a lot of literature. And yet, in talking with various persons in the West, I have realized how little is known here about Soviet life.

Choice in the West

1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Working Out

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.

Part 1 The Cold War Era (1945–89), 13 The Intervention in Czechoslovakia—1968

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hafner Gerhard
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Valid Consent ◽  
The Cold War

This contribution discusses the intervention of five member states of the Warsaw Pact Organization under the leading role of the Soviet Union in the CSSR in August 1968, which terminated the “Prague Spring” in a forceful manner. After presenting the facts of this intervention and its reasons, it describes the legal positions of the protagonists of this intervention as well as that of the states condemning it, as presented in particular in the Security Council. It then examines the legality of this intervention against general international law and the particular views of the Soviet doctrine existing at that time, defending some sort of socialist (regional) international law. This case stresses the requirement of valid consent for the presence of foreign troops in a country and denies the legality of any justification solely based on the necessity to maintain the political system within a state.

Redefining the Political System of the USSR: Mass Support for Political Change

1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 857-874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ada W. Finifter ◽  
Ellen Mickiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political System ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Political ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Core Component ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cross Tabulation ◽  
Using Data ◽  
New Institutions

Using data from a national public opinion survey carried out in the Soviet Union during November and December 1989, we explore two attitudes relevant to the revolutionary changes there: (1) attitudes toward change and political democracy and (2) attitudes toward a core component of socialist ideology, the locus of responsibility for social well-being (the state or individuals?). These variables are unrelated, with the sample relatively evenly divided among the intersecting cells of a cross tabulation. While social conflict may be mitigated by the small sizes of absolutely opposing groups, consensus may also be hard to reach. Ethnicity, education, income, age, party membership, and life satisfaction have important effects on these attitudes. We discuss how attitude patterns in our data may be related to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and to problems faced by the independent successor states as they develop new institutions and foster new values.

scholarly journals Mor Rusland - tur retur: mellem husmødre og kannibaler

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Bryld
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Homeless Women ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Mother ◽  
Gender Specific

The belief in women's "natural" predisposition to motherhood and domesticity was drastically strenghtened during the period of perestrojka, which has been characterized by Russian democratic feminists as "basically a male project". After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the proclamation of a new Russia, the ongoing search for a national identity continued to nourish what was imagined to be a stable identity, i.e. a female body with a gender-specific mission. So magically promising did this bonding appear that, in 1995, it even influenced the naming of the political party of Prime Minister Chernomyrdin: "Our Home is Russia" ("Nash dom - Rossija"), which clearly links the vision of national identity to the femininity of mothering, nuturing and caring. Behind this image hovers the representation of the Soviet Union as a fallen woman. The article shows how some women internalize the paradigm of the new "mother nation" by constructing prostitutes, homeless women, lesbians, or even unfaithful wives as Soviet "others"; sometimes this deviant is so explicitly ostracized that she is situated beyond the borders, i.e. in the West (or simply in "Europe", i.e. non-Russia). However, this discourse of pathetic and nostalgic womanhood does not stand alone; it is countered by subversive self-representations of domesticity and maternity such as cannibalistic chaos and death (e.g. L. Petrushevskaya's The time - night.) I suggest that both strategies, each in their own way, mirror the collapsing cultural identities which make up the present period of "transition".

Yiddish Publishing in the Soviet Union, 1953–1991

2020 ◽  
pp. 70-86
Author(s):  
Gennady Estraikh
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One

In the fall of 1956, a group of British Communists visited the Soviet Union. As did a number of other delegations and individual visitors of the time, they sought to examine the extent of progress of de-Stalinization in the political system and, in particular, to understand the status of Jews in post-Stalinist society. In their report, the delegation noted that among Jews of the older generation, including the one or two thousand who came to the Leningrad Synagogue to celebrate the festival of Simchat Torah, “the non-existence of a Yiddish paper was regarded as a deprivation and an injustice.”...

Legitimacy and Power in the Soviet Union Through Socialist Ritual

1984 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christel Lane
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Right ◽  
Over Time

Every political system must secure compliance with its commands on the part of the ruled; the methods applied to achieve this vary from society to society and within societies over time. One way of gaining compliance is for political elites to establish the legitimacy of the political system, of their position within it, and of the commands that are issued. Political power can be said to be legitimate when, in the words of Sternberger, it is exercised both with a consciousness on the part of the elite that it has a right to govern and with some recognition by the ruled of that right. Both this consciousness of the right to govern and its acknowledgement by the ruled is derived from some source of authorization which may change over time. This paper will focus on the conscious attempts of Soviet political elites from the early sixties onwards to change their strategy of gaining compliance by reducing reliance on coercion and strengthening political legitimacy. It will draw attention to their efforts to develop a new source of authorization and to employ a new legitimation procedure. In developing the theoretical argument the Weberian typology of legitimate rule will be employed, and this approach to the topic will be contrasted with that adopted by T. H. Rigby in two recent publications.

Litvinov's Lost Peace, 1941–1946

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Grand Alliance ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Realist Conception

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the ensuing conflict witnessed the political rehabilitation of the former People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maksim Litvinov. After serving as ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943, Litvinov returned to the Soviet Union and played a key role in charting Moscow's wartime Grand Alliance strategy. He urged So-viet leaders to convene a joint Anglo-Soviet-American commission to discuss military-political questions, and he helped organize the October 1943 foreign ministers'conference in Moscow. As the war drew to a close, Litvinov argued for a postwar settlement dividing the world into security zones. His realist conception of foreign policy suggested a more moderate alternative o Josif Stalin's reliance on confrontation with the West. Although Litvinov faded again from public view after his retirement in 1946, his belief that the Grand Alliance could continue suggests that the rapid, postwar descent into the Cold War might have been averted had it not been for Stalin.

Making states and breaking states: Kosovo and the Caucasus in 2008: Introduction

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 657-660
Author(s):  
Ronald Grigor Suny ◽  
Vicken Cheterian
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Federal States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Rules Set

Two events in 2008 shaped the political map of the Caucasus: the West's decision on the independence of Kosovo and the Russo-Georgian War. First, on 17 February, Kosovo authorities unilaterally declared the independence of what was at the time a UN protectorate. This declaration enjoyed much support in the West, including near-immediate recognition by key states such as the US, Germany, France, the UK, and a dozen others. But it also faced strong opposition from Serbia and Russia and strong skepticism from prowestern countries such as Georgia. Russia opposed not only the Kosovo declaration itself but more importantly the western adoption of it. From the Russian perspective, by supporting Kosovo's accession to sovereignty western states were violating the rules set at the moment of collapse of the federal states of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union: to invite the former union republics to join the international clubs of sovereign states, but not extend such invitation to any other sub-units. In other words, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Kazakhstan, and Russia became members of the United Nations, but sub-entities like Chechnya, Kosovo, or Tatarstan did not receive the same recognition.

“Islamofascism” and the Burden of the Holocaust

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Norton
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust

This chapter examines the link between “Islamofascism” and the Holocaust, which “left the West with a grief too great to bear, and a shame too bitter to acknowledge.” In Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman shares how he came to recognize “Islamofascism.” In the days of the fist Gulf War, Berman found himself at odds with those, formerly his allies, who opposed the war. According to Berman, “Islamofascism” is the successor to Nazism and the Soviet Union, as a form of totalitarianism fundamentally opposed to the freedoms of Western civilization. The chapter argues that if the West is to bear true witness to the evil of the Holocaust, it must meet ethical demands that go beyond the construction of memorials and an ethic of remembrance; it must close the camps and take the Muselmänner—the most abject prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps—as its own.

The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of Russian Nationalism

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlène Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Organic Unity ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Post Soviet Space

The Eurasianist ideology is coming back on the Russian political and intellectual scene but also among the Turkic and Muslim elites in the Russian Federation and in Kazakhstan. The political, economic, social and identity difficulties of the transition invite Russians and other post-Soviet citizens to think about their relations with Europe and about the relevance of taking the West as a model. In this context of destabilization, Eurasianism proposes a geopolitical solution for the post-Soviet space. It presupposes the existence of a third continent between East and West, called “Eurasia,” and supports the idea of an organic unity of cultures born in this zone of symbiosis between Russian, Turkic, Muslim and even Chinese worlds. Neo-Eurasianism is the main ideology born among the different Russian conservative movements in the 1990s. Its theories are very little known, but the idea of an entity called Eurasia, regrouping the center of the old continent in which Russia would be “at home,” is more and more rife. It attracted many intellectuals and politicians in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union: Eurasianism was a way to explain the “disaster.”

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