scholarly journals Soviet Legal and Criminological Debates on the Decriminalization of Homosexuality (1965–75)

Slavic Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rustam Alexander

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, almost three decades after consensual sodomy was declared a crime in the USSR, voices began to speak out in favor of its decriminalization. This article traces the history of the ensuing debate on this issue, conducted between Soviet criminologists and legal academics in the period from 1965–75. Through a close reading of the related texts, I explore the evolution of the different positions put forward. These fall into two camps: on the one hand, legal scholars who, together with their graduate students, made the case for decriminalization, and on the other, criminologists affiliated with the Interior Ministry, who opposed their views. The article provides the first detailed historical account of this extraordinary discussion and contributes to expanding our scant knowledge on the history of homosexuality in the Soviet Union.

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-154
Author(s):  
Leonid L. Rybakovsky ◽  
◽  
Natalia I. Kozhevnikova ◽  

The article shows that due to the fact that Russia has the largest territory among the rest of the world, the richest natural resources, making it a self-sufficient, advantageous geographical position, as well as a kind of history of the creation and development of the state, in the past, and still causes hostile attitude to it a number of states. Thanks to sufficient human potential, Russia, constituting the core of a state united with other peoples in pre-revolutionary and Soviet times, was able to defend its homeland, even from such an enemy as Nazi Germany. The increase in the population of Russia has always been the most important factor in ensuring the security of the state. The paper provides a detailed description of the demographic development of Russia, both as part of the Soviet Union and as an independent state. The dynamics of the population of Russia is considered, on the one hand, in the group of countries with a predominance of the Slavic ethnos, and on the other hand, it is compared with the demographic dynamics of the English-speaking group of countries.


Open Theology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanislav Panin

AbstractThe article concentrates on the history of Astral Karate, its doctrine and sources. Astral Karate was a late-Soviet eclectic spiritual movement based on esoteric interpretations of martial arts and yoga. The term “Astral Karate” had spread in the 1980s thanks to spiritual leader and underground esoteric author Valery Averianov who called himself Guru Var Avera. On one hand, the movement reflected global tendencies, such as growing interest in Eastern cultures and spirituality, that characterized esoteric groups in the USSR as well as in the USA and Europe during this period. On the other hand, esoteric groups in the Soviet Union developed in isolation from European and American esoteric currents and under unique ideological and legal pressures. The combination of these factors contributed to the originality of late-Soviet esoteric currents and therefore makes Astral Karate an important object of academic inquiry, which helps us to understand the specifics of Soviet spirituality and its further developments in post- Soviet states


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.


Author(s):  
Tobias Rupprecht

This chapter complicates conventional understandings of Latin America’s Cold War by looking at the travels of tercermundista intellectuals and activists to all parts of the USSR. Visits of intellectuals from the global South to the Cold War Soviet Union have hardly been studied. Accounts of the history of Cold War Latin America have put the Soviet Union, as a political and intellectual point of reference, aside too readily. The early Cold War was a time of enhanced, and rather successful, Soviet attempts to present their country in a positive light towards the emerging Third World. Those Latin Americans who developed a sense of belonging with the Third World in the 1960s, this chapter demonstrates, were still susceptible to the lures of certain characteristics of the Soviet state and suggested their implementation in their home countries. The reason for the positive perception came, on the one hand, as a result of very lavishly funded and well conducted programmes for Third World visitors in the Soviet Union.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Vladimir Bobrovnikov ◽  
Artemy M. Kalinovsky

Abstract Fazliddin Muhammadiev’s Dar on dunyo (“In the other world”), first published in Tajik in 1965 and later translated to Russian, Uzbek, and many other languages, is the only known fictionalized account of the ḥajj produced in the Soviet Union. Based on a trip made by the author in 1963, the novel provided the Soviet reader a rare glimpse into this sacred rite. Drawing on archival sources, contemporary responses, and the text itself, this article traces the origins and publication history of the novel, situates it within Soviet domestic and foreign policy goals, and analyzes the text to see how the author tried to reconcile competing ideological priorities.


2018 ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Oliver Musa Noyan

The following bachelor thesis will deal with the policy of national minorities in the Soviet Republic of Georgia and its impact on the wars of secession in the early 1990s. The analysis will be framed in a center- periphery model to explain the complex struggle between the soviet authorities in Moscow and Tbilisi on the one hand, and Tbilisi and its autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the other hand throughout the 20th century. The paper tries to examine the contemporary ethnic conflicts in Georgia though the lenses of an historical conflict-analysis to show the deeper historical roots of those frozen conflicts and the effects of the policy of nationalities in the Soviet Union on those conflicts.


2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francine Lecours

Soon after the opening of hostilities between Iran and Iraq in September 1980, the Soviet Union offered military assistance to Tehran while simultaneously suspending arms deliveries to Baghdad, a formerly faithful client. Following Iran s refusal of assistance, and possibly in reaction to a percieved threat from the spreading of Iran's Islamic revolution, Moscow re-opened arms shipments to Iraq. This ambivalent behavior on the part of the Soviet Union is partially explained by the history of its interests in the region. The Soviet Union has long Had strategic ambitions to bring Iran under its influence. Moscow welcomed any opportunity to increase economic and political des with Tehran even if in the short term the results were only partial. On the other hand, Iraq is an influential member of the Arab community - a useful relationship for the USSR, and one that while mutually1987 advantageous for both parties, has not required extensive commitments. One cannot ignore the possibility that important events in the Gulf War will cause an abrupt shift in Soviet attitudes and actions in the region.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Evgenia Tokareva

In the extremely difficult international situation of the second half of the 1930s, relations between the USSR and the Vatican occupied a very insignificant place. This is partly why the sources that would cover this problem more prominently are very scarce. Under these conditions, the Soviet press becomes an important and still insufficiently appreciated source. With the general strict censorship of the press of this period, it allows us to identify various, but sometimes quite significant nuances of perception of the Vatican policy in the Soviet Union. The first event that influenced some reassessment of the image of the Vatican was the VII Congress of the Comintern, held in 1935, which put forward the tactics of a united front, which assumed, among other things, cooperation with confessional organizations of workers, and even with the petty-bourgeois strata of the population. In the light of this new tactic, a certain line is beginning to be drawn, albeit almost imperceptibly and even, perhaps, unwittingly, between the Vatican as a political force and the national structures of the Catholic Church. A more noticeable reassessment of the image of the Vatican took place in 1938, when the differences between Italian fascism, German Nazism, on the one hand, and the Vatican, on the other, on racial problems and on the issue of the persecution of the Catholic Church became obvious and could not fail to attract the attention of Soviet diplomats and, following them, the Soviet press. The subsequent election of Pope Pius XII to the papal throne in 1939 allows us to strengthen this line and enrich it with attention to the Vatican's peacemaking policy. But the conclusion of the Molotov — Ribbentrop pact once again returns the image of the Vatican to its supposedly political conjuncture, but this time in the interests of the other side, which has now become the main opponent of the USSR, i. e. England and France. And only the German attack on the USSR allows for a brief moment to see the possibility of forming a different image of the Vatican, an opponent of racism and fascism in all its manifestations. A careful reading of the press allows us to draw a preliminary conclusion about the absence of a clearly developed and formulated position of the governing bodies of the Soviet Union in relation to the Vatican, which varied, albeit slightly, depending on changes in the foreign policy interests of the Soviet state.


1957 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
Alvin Z. Rubinstein

The post-Stalinist interest shown by the Soviet Union in the non-aligned nations of Southern Asia has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the quantity and quality of material dealing with this area appearing in leading Soviet scholarly journals. Though there has been the usual spate of propagandistic articles lauding the growing evidences of expanding cultural, economic, and political relations between the Soviet Union on the one hand, and India, Afghanistan, Burma, and Indonesia on the other, it would be a mistake to dismiss all such Soviet endeavors as unworthy of serious attention. Much of the material reflects a diligent effort by Soviet orientalists to analyze the past and the present of the nations of Southern Asia with a view toward making up for the previous period of flagrant neglect.


2004 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-200
Author(s):  
Y. Stotyka

In 1991 Ukraine became an independent state, abandoned central planning, and started the transformation of its economy. The country inherited a highly monopolised structure of economy from the Soviet Union, therefore demonopolisation and the development of competition have been among the main areas where structural changes were necessary. The present study gives a comprehensive picture of the development of antitrust policy in the Ukraine from 1992 to 2002 through an assessment of evolving competition policy and examination of the policy's implementation. On the one hand, the development of competition policy in the Ukraine included the establishment of rules and appropriate procedures, as well as the creation of a proper institutional framework. On the other hand, the lack of a unified state approach to the reformation of the economy in general and to the problems of the development of competition in particular could be observed. The actions of different state organs were not synchronised, and competition policy in the Ukraine failed to become the main element of the economic policy setup.


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