Instructed Silence, Constructed Memory: The SED and the Return of German Prisoners of War as ‘War Criminals’ from the Soviet Union to East Germany, 1950–1956

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA MORINA
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Security ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
Nazi Past

After 1950, at least 23,000 German POWs remained in Soviet captivity as ‘war criminals’, and they were pardoned and released in several amnesties from 1950 to 1956. This article examines the political and propagandistic reactions of the ruling SED to the return of those prisoners. It analyses how the SED's attempts to reintegrate ‘war criminals’ into a socialist society related to the official politics of the past (Vergangenheitspolitik) and the construction of a memory of the Nazi past in East Germany. The SED's key strategy in dealing with these returnees – avoiding the question of individual and collective responsibility – is put into the context of the party's central ideological objective, namely to dissociate the socialist GDR from the legacy of Nazi Germany. On the basis of newly accessible documents from the archives of the former Ministry for State Security, the article also describes the intensive involvement of the Stasi in repatriation and reintegration matters at all levels of society.

Warsaw Treaty Organization

1965 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 1075-1076
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Consultative Committee ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
The Soviet Union

At a meeting in Warsaw on January 19–20, 1965, the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Treaty Organization adopted a communiqué condemning proposals for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) multilateral force (MLF). Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and the Soviet Union were represented at the meeting by their respective Prime Ministers and Foreign and Defense Ministers and by the First Secretaries of their Communist Parties. Albania, although invited, did not send a delegation on the ground that the meeting had been convened without prior consultation.

Conventional Arms in Soviet Foreign Policy

1980 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Finley
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Significant Determinant ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
Military Relations

Military relations between the United States and the Soviet Union over the past decade exhibit an apparent paradox: professed mutual interests in parity yielding in practice to a competitive military buildup. The paper examines four hypothetical explanations—denoted respectively as the hypotheses of mirage, momentum, victory, and spillover—in the context of conventional military force development. While certain valid elements are identified in each hypothesis, the author concludes that it is the appeal of spillover, the non-fighting functions of conventional military advantage, which despite a mixed payoff may be regarded as the most significant determinant of Soviet behavior. The evolution of force levels and military budgets, and the political purposes and activities of the U.S.S.R. in the First and Third Worlds, provide the data for analysis.

Moscow and Tokyo: An Uneasy Peace

1985 ◽  
Vol 481 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
HIROSHI KIMURA
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Political ◽  
Soviet Policy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Northern Territories ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines why Soviet-Japanese relations since 1945 have been so poor at the political, economic, and military levels. It first analyzes recent changes in Moscow's foreign policy toward Japan and then looks at the major determinants shaping this policy. Kimura assesses recent Soviet policy and concludes that the Soviet Union has few diplomatic options open to improve the Soviet-Japanese relationship. Soviet diplomacy in the past has been heavy-handed, clumsy, and inflexible, especially as regards the so-called Northern Territories. Soviet attitudes must evidence greater flexibility and a willingness to negotiate before the relationship can be significantly improved.

Internationalist Mobilization during the Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Moldovan Elections of 1990

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alan Mason
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Political ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Socialist Republic ◽  
Soviet Socialist Republic ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union

In September 1989, speaking to the Republican Strike Committee of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), Erkin Nurzhanovich Auel'bekov, assistant chairman of the All-Union Soviet of Nationalities, asked a question of great importance to Soviet citizens in the increasingly fragile union: “Is there such a thing as a Soviet narod (people), or is this just an empty fiction?” For Auel'bekov and the assembled strike committee, the answer was not in doubt. “Certainly for all of us here,” he continued, “there is such a narod. There is a passport, there are Soviet people (sovetskie liudi) and, moreover, there is justification for thinking that this is the most important achievement of the past seventy years of Soviet power.” Soviet patriots, they agreed, needed to protect this narod from the process of “nationalization” that threatened the Soviet Union and its constituent people both locally in Moldova and more broadly in the union in general. The protection of this achievement in Soviet nation building became the mission of an “internationalist' ” movement as it moved from a strike campaign to stop language laws in 1989 to an election campaign in 1990. The political strike of 1989 had achieved none of its immediate goals and as internationalist activists moved into the second phase of the conflict over the future of Moldova they invoked imperiled Soviet achievements as they first attempted to take the Moldovan government through the ballot box, and failing at that, to take the eastern region of Transnistria out of Moldova.

The German Factor in Soviet Westpolitik

1985 ◽  
Vol 481 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-28
Author(s):  
HANNES ADOMEIT
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Soviet Policy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Close Cooperation ◽  
Positive Results ◽  
Broad Overview

The author begins with a broad overview of Russian-German relations and observes that Russian diplomacy has historically vacillated between close cooperation with Germany and the construction of alliances against Germany. The latter has always been important to the Soviet Union, especially since 1945. The first section of the article evaluates the importance of East Germany in Soviet policy. The second section evaluates Soviet-West German relations in terms of Soviet long- and short-term interests. The author argues that Soviet policies toward both Germanys in the late 1970s and early 1980s have failed to produce positive results. The campaign against West German “revanchism” and “militarism” lacks credibility. The recent Soviet attempt to limit intra-German relations is likely to be met with resistance. The Soviet approach has been a setback and an embarrassment. Soviet control over East Germany will become more difficult than it has been in the past.

scholarly journals About lost futures or the political heart of history

HISTOREIN ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
María Inés Mudrovcic
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
Secular State

This article attempts to show that in western societies of today, in the absence of absolute foundations and the lack of a frame of meaning that opens new horizons of expectations, a political self understanding of the present in terms of past, begins to emerge. This is possible because the major “catastrophes” of the 20th century have not established a rupture between past and present on the political plane. What I am trying to show here is that the kind of break between past and present made possible by events such as the French Revolution and the Fall of the Soviet Union, took place because these events provoked political ruptures. Because the catastrophes of the 20th century did not break the political order which gave them birth (the modern secular state), they have created an order of time which, without leaving the future aside, feeds itself from the past.

scholarly journals Young Russians’ View of Their Family’s Soviet Past: Nostalgic, Post-Utopian or Retrotopian?

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 102-119
Author(s):  
Anna Shor-Chudnovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Young People ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Private University ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
E Mail

Anna Shor-Chudnovskaya – PhD in Sociology, Researcher, Sigmund Freud Private University, Vienna, (Austria). Address: Freudplatz 1, 1020 Wien, Austria. E-mail: [email protected] Citation: Shor-Chudnovskaya A. (2018) Young Russians’ View of Their Family’s Soviet Past: Nostalgic, Post-Utopian or Retrotopian? Mir Rossii, vol. 27, no 4, pp. 102–119. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2018-27-4-102-119 This article presents analysis of interviews with young Russians about the lives of different generations of their families in the Soviet Union. The analysis shows that the ideas about the life in the USSR and about family pasts are very fragmented and scarce, and it does not seem to the young people that this past affects their lives today. Nor does the question of the connection between the past and present seem interesting or relevant to them. The narratives about life in the USSR often idealize the circumstances and conditions of this life, but the young people do not express any nostalgic attitudes towards the Soviet past. One of the main findings of the analysis was the extreme inconsistency in the descriptions of life in the USSR, judgments about it and in stories about the attitudes of older relatives. Such contradictions do not seem to be a distinctive feature of the younger generation, but rather continue a Soviet tradition. Overall, young people’s attitude to the Soviet past is determined by at least three factors: the political situation in present-day Russia, the post-utopian heritage of the USSR and pan-European retrotopian tendencies.

Warsaw Treaty Organization

1966 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 867-868
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
Consultative Committee ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Ministers

The Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Treaty Organization met in Bucharest on July 4–6, 1966. Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and the Soviet Union were represented by the first secretaries of their respective Communist parties and by their prime ministers, foreign ministers, and defense ministers. Albania, which had taken no part in the work of the organization since its break with the Soviet Union in 1961 and had refused an invitation to attend the Committee's 1965 meeting, had not been invited.

Translation and Transformation: English-Language Children's Literature in (Soviet) Russian Guise

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Inggs
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
English Language ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Free Translation ◽  
Soviet Russia

This article investigates the perceived image of English-language children's literature in Soviet Russia. Framed by Even-Zohar's polysystem theory and Bourdieu's philosophy of action, the discussion takes into account the ideological constraints of the practice of translation and the manipulation of texts. Several factors involved in creating the perceived character of a body of literature are identified, such as the requirements of socialist realism, publishing practices in the Soviet Union, the tradition of free translation and accessibility in the translation of children's literature. This study explores these factors and, with reference to selected examples, illustrates how the political and sociological climate of translation in the Soviet Union influenced the translation practices and the field of translated children's literature, creating a particular image of English-language children's literature in (Soviet) Russia.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document