scholarly journals GEORGE PADMORE AND THE SOVIET MODEL OF THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. 531-559
Author(s):  
THEO WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
British Commonwealth ◽  
Soviet Model

This article argues for an appreciation of the permeability of the Western socialist and black radical traditions and a recognition of their codevelopment. This relationship is illustrated through an analysis of George Padmore's intellectual history, particularly focusing on How Russia Transformed Her Colonial Empire (1946), in which Padmore applied Marxist ideas to his project of colonial liberation. The book functions as Padmore's manifesto for the transformation of the British Empire into a socialist federation following the model of the Soviet Union. Through comparisons with the manifestos of British socialist F. A. Ridley and American pan-Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois, this article contextualizes this manifesto within a moment of postwar internationalist optimism. This approach also facilitates a discussion of the meaning of “pan-Africanism” to Padmore, concluding that pan-Africanism was, for him, a methodology through which colonial liberation, and eventually world socialism, could be achieved.

scholarly journals THE SOVIET MODEL OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE OF THE FATE OF THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY: THE POLITICAL AND LEGAL ASPECTS

2019 ◽  
pp. 20-27
Author(s):  
V.V. Sukhonos
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Special Groups ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Soviet Model

The article is devoted to the constitutional and legal issues of local government organizations. The main attention is paid to the Soviet model of local government, which, in the period of the industrialization of the country, focused on the further strengthening of the Soviet state apparatus, the deployment of the so-called “Soviet democracy” and the fight against bureaucratic defects. However, such a situation as a whole was not typical of the Soviet system. That is why the Bolsheviks attempts to attract the poor sections of the rural population. However, success in this direction was caused not so much by the strengthening of the Soviet economy as a whole, but by the opportunity for the rural poor to plunder wealthy peasants, which had developed because of the dictatorship of the proletariat existing in the USSR. Subsequently, the Bolshevik Party raised the issue of organizing special groups of poverty or factions for an open political struggle to attract the middle peoples to the proletariat and to isolate wealthy peasants (the so-called “kulaks”) during the elections to the Soviets, cooperatives, etc. With the onset of socialist reconstruction, there was a need to organize poverty, because it was an important element and the establishment of “Soviet democracy in the countryside.” The Stalin Constitution of 1936 transformed the Soviets. From 1918, they were called the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies, and now, with the entry into force of the Stalin Constitution, the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. This transformation of the Soviets reflected the victory of the socialist system throughout the national economy, radical changes in the class composition of Soviet society, and a new triumph of “socialist democracy”. In addition, the “victory of socialism” in the USSR made possible the transition to universal, equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot. On December 24 and 29, 1939, citizens of the Soviet Union elected their representatives to the local Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. 99.21 % of the total number of voters took part in the vote. The election results are another testament to the growing influence of the Bolshevik Party on the population of the Soviet Union, which has largely replaced the activities of the Soviets themselves, including the local ones. Holding elections to the regional, regional, district, district, city, village and settlement councils of workers’ deputies completed the restructuring of all state bodies in accordance with the Stalin Constitution and on its basis. With the adoption in 1977 of the last Constitution of the USSR, the councils of workers’ deputies were renamed the councils of people’s deputies. In 1985, the last non-alternative elections were held for 52,041 local councils, and in 1988, their structure became more complicated: there were presidencies organizing the work of regional, regional, autonomous regions, autonomous districts, district, city and rayon in the cities of Soviets. People’s Deputies. Within the framework of the city (city subordination), village, and town councils, this work is carried out directly by the heads of the designated Councils. On December 26, 1990, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR introduced regular amendments to the Constitution of the USSR, which formally abolished the Presidencies, but did not prohibit their existence. On September 5, 1991, the Constitution of 1977 was effectively abolished. Finally, it happened after December 26, 1991, when the USSR actually ceased to exist. Thus, existing in the USSR during the period of socialist reconstruction and subsequent transformations that began with the processes of industrialization and ended as a result of the collapse of the USSR, the model of local government organization remained ineffective due to its actual replacement by the activities of the governing bodies of the ruling Communist Party. Keywords: Local Government; the system of Councils; local Councils; Council of Deputies of the working people; Council of People’s Deputies; Soviet local government.

Out of Empire into Socialist Modernity

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-70
Author(s):  
Steffi Marung
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this article the Soviet-African Modern is presented through an intellectual history of exchanges in a triangular geography, outspreading from Moscow to Paris to Port of Spain and Accra. In this geography, postcolonial conditions in Eastern Europe and Africa became interconnected. This shared postcolonial space extended from the Soviet South to Africa. The glue for the transregional imagination was an engagement with the topos of backwardness. For many of the participants in the debate, the Soviet past was the African present. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, three connected perspectives on the relationship between Soviet and African paths to modernity are presented: First, Soviet and Russian scholars interpreting the domestic (post)colonial condition; second, African academics revisiting the Soviet Union as a model for development; and finally, transatlantic intellectuals connecting postcolonial narratives with socialist ones. Drawing on Russian archives, the article furthermore demonstrates that Soviet repositories hold complementary records for African histories.

Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia since the End of Communism

2013 ◽  
pp. 424-462
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Period ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
Independent States

This chapter highlights how the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union initiated a new period in the history of the Jews in the area. Poland was now a fully sovereign country, and Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Moldova also became independent states. Post-imperial Russia faced the task of creating a new form of national identity. This was to prove more difficult than in other post-imperial states since, unlike Britain and France, the tsarist empire and its successor, the Soviet Union, had not so much been the ruler of a colonial empire as an empire itself. All of these countries now embarked, with differing degrees of enthusiasm, on the difficult task of creating liberal democratic states with market economies. For the Jews of the area, the new political situation allowed both the creation and development of Jewish institutions and the fostering of Jewish cultural life in much freer conditions, but also facilitated emigration to Israel, North America, and western Europe on a much larger scale.

British Communists, the British Empire and the Second World War

2004 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Redfern
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Second World War ◽  
British Government ◽  
World War ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

For a few years after its foundation in 1920 the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) attempted, energetically prompted by the Comintern, to work in solidarity with anticolonial movements in the British Empire. But after the Nazi victory in Germany the Comintern's principal concern was to defend the Soviet Union and the liberal democracies against the threat of fascism. British communists criticized the British Government for failing to defend the Empire against the threat from its imperial rivals. After the entry of the Soviet Union into the war in 1941 they vigorously supported the British war effort, including the defense of Empire. This was not though simply a manifestation of chauvinism. British communists believed that imperialism was suffering a strategic defeat by “progressive” forces and that colonial freedom would follow the defeat of fascism. These chimerical notions were greatly strengthened by the allies' promises of postwar peace, prosperity and international cooperation. In the last year or so of war British communists were clearly worried that these promises would not be redeemed, but nevertheless supported British reassertion of power in such places as Greece, Burma and Malaya. For the great majority of British communists, these were secondary matters when seen in the context of Labour's election victory of 1945 and its promised program of social-imperialist reform.

scholarly journals Why the Reasons for the Collapse of the USSR should be Sought before the USSR Formation. First Article

2020 ◽  
pp. 10-17
Author(s):  
V. A. Shamakhov ◽  
N. M. Mezhevich
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Soviet Model

It is pointless to begin the search for an answer to the question about the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union by analyzing the events of the eighties of the last century, moreover, considering the Soviet form of organization of the state and society. It is necessary to remember what the creators of the Soviet model relied on practices tested in the Russian Empire.

scholarly journals Douglas Northrop. Veiled Empire: Gender & Power in Stalinist Central Asia. Cornell University Press 2004. xvii+1392 pp. ISBN 0801439442.

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 894-895
Author(s):  
Marianne Kamp
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
Gender Power ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

Central to Douglas Northrop's archivally based study of the Soviet attempt to unveil Uzbek women is the argument that the Soviet Union was a colonial empire, one where Bolsheviks tried to transform daily cultural practices and gender relations against the wishes of most Uzbeks, who responded as colonial subjects by using weapons of the weak. Northrop's use of previously unavailable Communist Party documents allows an exploration of the Party's arguments for and against unveiling, and describes the Party's surprise at the vehemence and violence of anti-unveiling resistance in Uzbekistan. Starting with the 1927 Communist Party initiation of the Hujum—or campaign against veiling in Soviet Uzbekistan—this work's exclusive focus on the unveiling campaign allows Northrop to reveal that resistance to unveiling and other laws concerning “liberation” continued into the 1950s, and to examine the ways that intrusion into family life and cultural practices served the Party as a tool for defining loyalty during the Stalinist period. Northrop far exceeds Gregory Massell's The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929 (1974) in exploring Party arguments over policies toward Central Asia.

Bandali Al-Jawzi's Min Tārīkh Al-Harakāt al-Fikriyyat Fi'l-Islām: The First Marxist Interpretation of Islam

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Sonn
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Soviet Academy ◽  
Recent Exposure ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Movements ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Marxist Interpretation

Bandali al-Jawzi (1871–1943) has been regaining popularity recently, particularly among his native Palestinians and Muslim nationalists of his adopted home, the Soviet Union. In 1977, for instance, the Union of Palestinian Journalists and Writers, in cooperation with the Oriental Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, commemorated Jawzi as an outstanding Palestinian author. At that time a collection of various of his articles on the Arabic language and history was published in Beirut, as well as an edition of his only book, Min Tārīkh al-Harakāt al-Fikriyyat fi'l-Islām (The History of Intellectual Movements in Islam), first published in 1928. It is this recent exposure which was to take its rightful place in Islamic intellectual history.

Allied Council for Japan

1950 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-339
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Japanese Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Positive Action ◽  
British Commonwealth ◽  
General Secretary

At a meeting of the Allied Council for Japan on March 1, 1950, the British Commonwealth representative, Colonel W. R. Hodgson of Australia, urged General MacArthur to take “positive action” on Japanese charges that war prisoners in the Soviet Union had been denied repatriation unless they agreed to join the communist party upon their return. Colonel Hodgson criticized General MacArthur's policy of maintaining that the Allied Council could only discuss the issue, and demanded that the Council order Japanese authorities to make a thorough investigation of the accusations, particularly to determine if charges of treason should be brought against Kiyuchi Tokuda, general secretary of the Japanese communist party. William Sebald, United States representative on the Council, after an original statement that Colonel Hodgson's proposal was “not appropriate,” agreed to suggest that Japanese authorities launch a “positive” inquiry. The Japanese government on the following day announced initiation of an investigation.

Chernyshevskii, Nikolai Gavrilovich (1828–89)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Walicki
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Crimean War ◽  
Russian Philosopher ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Intellectual History ◽  
Russian Intelligentsia

Nikolai Chernyshevskii was the main theorist of the Russian democratic radicalism of ‘the 1860s’ or, more precisely, of the period of political ‘thaw’ and liberal reforms which followed Russian defeat in the Crimean War and the enthronement (in 1855) of Alexander II. He was also the best representative of the non-conformist elements among the raznochintsy, that is, the educated commoners, who at that time began to figure prominently in Russian intellectual and social life. As such, he exerted a powerful formative influence on the Russian intelligentsia. In 1862 Chernyshevskii was arrested, brought to trial and, despite insufficient evidence, condemned to lifetime banishment in Siberia. In exile, preserving his integrity to the end, he stoutly refused to ask for clemency (as a result, he remained in a remote Siberian village until 1883). In prison, waiting for trial, he wrote the novel Chto Delat’ (What Is To Be Done?) in which he showed the ‘new men’ of Russia – ‘rational egoists’, devoted to the cause of progress, and even a type of ascetic, self-sacrificing revolutionist. Thanks to a strange oversight of the censor the novel was serialized in the journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary) and, despite lack of literary distinction, became a powerful source of inspiration for several generations of Russian progressive youth. Chernyshevskii’s philosophical reputation was created by the Russian Marxists. The ‘father of Russian Marxism’, G.V. Plekhanov, greatly impressed by Chernyshevskii’s combination of Feuerbachian materialism and respect for Hegelian dialectics, described him as an important precursor of dialectical materialism. This view was taken up by Lenin who in Materialism and Empiriocriticism called Chernyshevskii ‘the great Russian Hegelian and materialist’, the only Russian philosopher before Marxism who was able to defend ‘integral materialism’ against the agnosticism and subjectivism of Neo-Kantians, positivists, Machists and ‘other muddleheads’. Soviet philosophers went even further: Chernyshevskii was treated by them not only as the greatest Russian philosopher before Marxism, but also as the greatest pre-Marxian philosopher of the world, founder of the highest form of pre-Marxian materialism. For several decades this was the obligatory dogma of the Soviet official ideology. After the breakdown of the Soviet Union, interest in Chernyshevskii’s philosophy almost completely disappeared in Russia. It is impossible, however, to deny Chernyshevskii’s importance in Russian intellectual history. Hence the need of rethinking his philosophical legacy.

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