The Foreign Office, the French and the post-war division of Germany 1945–46

1986 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-234
Author(s):  
John W. Young

When, in May 1945, the Allies finally defeated Nazi Germany and began their military occupation, no-one expected that within five years the country would be divided into two political halves, one tied to the West and the other to the Soviet Union. Germany, despite its defeat in 1918, had remained the most powerful state in central Europe and had been an undoubted great power since 1870. If anything, the fear was that Germany would revive quickly and become a menace to the peace again. That it did become divided between East and West was of course due to the start of the ‘Cold War’ after 1945, with the Americans and British on the one side and the Russians on the other seeing, not Germany, but each other as the post-war ‘enemy’. In 1946 Winston Churchill was already able to speak of an ‘iron curtain’ stretching from Trieste, on the Adriatic, to Stettin, on the Baltic. By 1949 each side had established control of its own bloc—the Russians predominating in the Eastern European ‘People's Republics’, the Americans drawing the West Europeans together with the Marshall Aid Programme and the North Atlantic Treaty.

2017 ◽  
Vol 922 (4) ◽  
pp. 48-57
Author(s):  
V.L. Kashin ◽  
N.L. Kashina

Biographic information about the veteran of geodetic service of the Soviet Union Tamara Aleksandrovna Prokofieva is provided in this article. On January 1, 2017, she turned 96 years old. T. A. Prokofieva’s biography is in many respects similar to destinies of her age-mates who met the Great Patriotic War on a student’s bench. In 1939 she entered the Moscow Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Photography, and Cartography. Since then all her life was connected with geodesy. In this article we use Tamara Aleksandrovna’s memories of a communal flat of the 1930s, peripetias of military years, of the North Caucasian and Kazakh aero geodetic enterprises where she worked with her husband Leonid Andreevich Kashin who held a number of executive positions in geodetic service of the USSR in the post-war time.


Author(s):  
Valerii P. Trykov ◽  

The article examines the conceptual foundations and scientific, sociocultural and philosophical prerequisites of imagology, the field of interdisciplinary research in humanitaristics, the subject of which is the image of the “Other” (foreign country, people, culture, etc.). It is shown that the imagology appeared as a response to the crisis of comparatives of the mid-20th century, with a special role in the formation of its methodology played by the German comparatist scientist H. Dyserinck and his Aachen School. The article analyzes the influence on the formation of the imagology of post-structuralist and constructivist ideological-thematic complex (auto-reference of language, discursive history, construction of social reality, etc.), linguistic and cultural turn in the West in the 1960s. Shown is that, extrapolated to national issues, this set of ideas and approaches has led to a transition from the essentialist concept of the nation to the concept of a nation as an “imaginary community” or an intellectual construct. A fundamental difference in approaches to the study of an image of the “Other” in traditional comparativism and imagology, which arises from a different understanding of the nation, has been distinguished. It is concluded that the imagology studies the image of the “Other” primarily in its manipulative, socio-ideological function, i.e., as an important tool for the formation and transformation of national and cultural identity. The article identifies ideological, socio-political factors that prepared the birth of the imagology and ensured its development in western Humanities (fear of possible recurrences of extreme nationalism and fascism in post-war Europe, the EU project, which set the task of forming a pan-European identity). It is concluded that the imagology, on the one hand, has actualized an important field of scientific research — the study of the image of the “Other”, but, on the other hand, in the broader cultural and historical perspective, marked a departure not only from the traditions of comparativism and historical poetics, but also from the humanist tradition of the European culture, becoming part of a manipulative dominant strategy in the West. To the culture of “incorporation” into a “foreign word” in order to understand it, preserve it and to ensure a genuine dialogue of cultures, the imagology has contrasted the social engineering and the technology of active “designing” a new identity.


2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-17
Author(s):  
Fuad Ismayilov

Azerbaijan is a nation with a Turkic population which regained its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It has an area of approximately 86 000 km2. Georgia and Armenia, the other countries comprising the Transcaucasian region, border Azerbaijan to the north and west, respectively. Russia also borders the north, Iran and Turkey the south, and the Caspian Sea borders the east. The total population is about 8 million. The largest ethnic group is Azeri, comprising 90% of the population; Dagestanis comprise 3.2%, Russians 2.5%, Armenians 2% and others 2.3%.


2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID REYNOLDS

This review examines some of the recent British, American, and Russian scholarship on a series of important international transitions that occurred in the years around 1945. One is the shift of global leadership from Great Britain to the United States, in which, it is argued, the decisive moment was the fall of France in 1940. Another transition is the emergence of a wartime alliance between Britain and America, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on the other, followed by its disintegration into the Cold War. Here the opening of Soviet sources during the 1990s has provided new evidence, though not clear answers. To understand both of these transitions, however, it is necessary to move beyond diplomacy and strategy to look at the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the Second World War. In particular, recent studies of American and Soviet soldiers during and after the conflict re-open the debate about Cold War ideology from the bottom up.


Author(s):  
Dmitriy Myelnikov

The term ‘bacteriophage’ (devourer of bacteria) was coined by Félix d'Herelle in 1917 to describe both the phenomenon of spontaneous destruction of bacterial cultures and an agent responsible. Debates about the nature of bacteriophages raged in the 1920s and 1930s, and there were extensive attempts to use the phenomenon to fight infections. Whereas it eventually became a crucial tool for molecular biology, therapeutic uses of ‘phage’ declined sharply in the West after World War II, but persisted in the Soviet Union, particularly Georgia. Increasingly isolated from Western medical research, Soviet scientists developed their own metaphors of ‘phage’, its nature and action, and communicated them to their peers, medical professionals, and potential patients. In this article, I explore four kinds of narrative that shaped Soviet phage research: the mystique of bacteriophages in the 1920s and 1930s; animated accounts and military metaphors in the 1940s; Lysenkoist notions on bacteriophages as a phase in bacterial development; and the retrospective allocation of credit for the discovery of the bacteriophage during the Cold War. Whereas viruses have been largely seen as barely living, phage narratives consistently featured heroic liveliness or ‘animacy’, which framed the growing consensus on its viral nature. Post-war narratives, shaped by the Lysenkoist movement and the campaigns against adulation of the West, had political power—although many microbiologists remained sceptical, they had to frame their critique within the correct language if they wanted to be published. The dramatic story of bacteriophage research in the Soviet Union is a reminder of the extent to which scientific narratives can be shaped by politics, but it also highlights the diversity of strategies and alternative interpretations possible within those constraints.


1964 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 652-655 ◽  

The ninth annual Conference of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Parliamentarians was held in Paris on November 4–8, 1963. Addressing the parliamentarians, Mr. Dirk U. Stikker, Secretary-General of NATO, outlined the three essential aspects of the evolution in international relationships presently confronting the Alliance: first, relations between East and East—the rivalry between the Soviet Union and Communist China; secondly, relations between East and West—the questions arising from the Soviet Union's agreement to sign a partial test-ban treaty and the relations between the West and the uncommitted world; and, thirdly, relations between West and West—relations within the Atlantic Alliance itself.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-144
Author(s):  
Tomasz Gajownik

The non-aggression pact concluded in November 1932 between France and the Soviet Union was on the one hand the peak achievement of French diplomacy in implementing the plan of strengthening influence in Central and Eastern Europe, and on the other the growing position of Moscow in the international arena. The signed document was the first inter-state agreement concluded by France and the USSR. From the perspective of the Second Polish Republic, the Franco-Soviet rapprochement could have had certain unfavorable consequences. That is why both civilian and military factors closely watched the negotiation process between both parties and tried to determine the actual state of bilateral relations.


2020 ◽  
pp. 11-29
Author(s):  
V. Tkachenko ◽  
V. Yakuba

The article is a study of the wars of historical memory. The process of increasing use of the historical past in the public life of the present is considered. History has become a political tool through which one or another socio-political system is legitimized or delegitimized. In a number of countries, laws have been passed to punish those who write “wrong”. Real “wars of historical memory” have broken out in international relations. The ethnicization of history and the establishment of narratives about one’s own nation as exclusively a “victim of history” are gaining momentum, which requires special treatment and appropriate compensation. In particular, the initiators of the proclamation of “wars of historical memory” in different countries are not the same. Remembrance wars are often declared at the highest level, involving officials, including heads of state, who “rebuff” and “put in place the wrongdoers”, reminding the nation of the nation’s incurable wounds and the terrible crimes of its neighbors. Objectively, the question of the social motives of the “wars of historical memory” is brewing. The authors share the view that the main reason is the escalation of the confrontation between Russia and the collective West. Historical politics, which has taken the form of “wars of historical memory”, is a symptom rather than a cause of this confrontation. It has been analyzed that the politicization of historical memory often leads to negative consequences, and there is no easy way out of this situation. And it is difficult to find that decisive link, undertaking which it would be possible to pull out the whole chain of pressing problems. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the controversy over the role of the Soviet Union in World War II has not been annihilated, but has intensified amid escalating tensions between East and West. Summarizing the evolution of “wars of historical memory” to a sharp aggravation, Marlene Laruel noted: “I interpret the wars for historical memory between Poland, the Baltic states and Ukraine, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, as narrative «related to the exclusion of Russia from Europe or inclusion in it”.


Author(s):  
Ali Satan ◽  
Meral Balcı

In 1947, a British diplomat conducted a visit to the places travelled rarely by local and foreign travelers, The Black Sea Coast between Samsun and Giresun in the North, the Malatya-Erzincan train line in the South, the Sivas-Erzurum train route in the West, Erzincan-Şebinkarahisar- Giresun in the East, and reported what he saw to London. In secret report, there provided military, political, ethnographic and historical information. In rapidly changing life conditions in the world, this secret report, which was written seventy years ago, set us on a historical journey. In the year, which the secret report was written, Turkey preferred being part of Western bloc in newly established bipolar international system and British diplomats were trying to understand how Britain and the Soviet Union were looked at in the regions they visited. In the secret report, there were also striking observations regarding the activities of the newly formed opposition party (Democratic Party) in Anatolia, the distance between the Turkish elites and the Anatolian villagers, and the military-civilian relationship in Anatolia.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 541-558
Author(s):  
S. C. ROWELL

Since the breakdown of the Soviet Union and Swedish socialism the Baltic region has attracted more attention, although not perhaps as much as it might deserve, than since the 1930s. English-speaking readers have been presented with a magisterial survey of the northern world over a five hundred years' period. However, many of the old stereotypes of war, pestilence, and the rise of Sweden under Gustav Adolphus, the lion of the north, and of Russia under the delusively attractive despots, Peter I and Catherine II (both of whom were essentially Baltic animals), remain unchallenged. Over the past decade much new work has appeared in northern Europe to open a more intriguing and understandable vista – of Baroque vibrancy in art, literature, and architecture; remarkably resilient small towns and efficient manor economies; and powerful interacting religious and political mythologies that combine in a vision of ‘Gotho-Sarmatian’ unity.


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