4. The limits of power

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-122
Author(s):  
Joseph T. Glatthaar
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Strong Position ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Over Time

At the end of World War II, America was in a uniquely strong position which it was not always able to leverage. “The limits of power” details the deterioration of America’s relationship with the Soviet Union into weapons stockpiling, brinkmanship, and the threat of mutually assured destruction. The Vietnam War lost popularity over time and while wars in the Gulf captured the public imagination, they fueled anti-American sentiment in those territories. During the War on Terror, strategists first overestimated the effectiveness of technology and then underestimated numbers and costs required for the lengthier, costlier, but more effective “boots on the ground” approach. Care for veterans was also under-resourced.

Soviet Selves

2019 ◽  
pp. 60-81
Author(s):  
Justine Buck Quijada
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Religious Actors

Chapter 2 presents the Soviet chronotope embodied in Victory Day celebrations. Victory Day, which is the celebration of the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II, presumes the familiar Soviet genre of history, in which the Soviet Union brought civilization to Buryatia, and Buryats achieved full citizenship in the Soviet utopian dream through their collective sacrifice during the war. The ritual does not narrate Soviet history. Instead, through Soviet and wartime imagery, and the parade form, the public holiday evokes this genre in symbolic form, enabling local residents to read their own narratives of the past into the imagery. This space for interpretation enables both validation as well as critique of the Soviet experience in Buryatia. Although not everyone in Buryatia agrees on how to evaluate this history, this genre is the taken-for-granted backdrop against which other religious actors define their narratives.

From the League of Nations to Vietnam

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Udi Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Moment

This chapter focuses on theories of Hans J. Morgenthau, a German émigré specialist on foreign relations. In the years immediately after World War II, Morgenthau emerged as the highest intellectual authority on international relations in the United States. His theory, which became known as “realism,” explained why the United States had no choice but to oppose the Soviet Union and China and prevent them from expanding their power in Europe and East Asia. However, Morgenthau also opposed U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War. This dual position marked both the high point of the German–American symbiosis and the moment of its crisis.

The Oil Strategies of Nazi Germany

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-114
Author(s):  
Rosemary A. Kelanic
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Indirect Control ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Nazi Era ◽  
Over Time

This chapter analyzes four cases that span the Nazi era in Germany. From the beginning of the Nazi regime in March of 1933 until its defeat in April of 1945, the chapter identifies three major turning points: (1) Adolf Hitler's announcement of the Four-Year Plan in September of 1936; (2) the imposition of an Anglo-French naval blockade against Germany on September 3, 1939; and (3) the shift from blitzkrieg to attrition warfare against the Soviet Union in December of 1941. This divides the case into four distinct periods: March 1933 to August 1936; September 1936 until September 3, 1939; September 4, 1939, until the end of December 1941; and January 1942 through the end of the war in April 1945. Hitler's anticipatory strategies changed over time, in tandem with his country's coercive vulnerability, intensifying from self-sufficiency before World War II to indirect control at the war's start to, finally, direct control after Operation Barbarossa failed to speedily defeat the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). One would expect that Hitler, as the most expansionist leader of the twentieth century, would engage in conquest to get oil; yet primarily, he sought oil security through less extreme measures.

scholarly journals The Excluded: Begging in the Postwar Soviet Union

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (02) ◽  
pp. 259-288
Author(s):  
Elena Zubkova
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
The 1960S

To what extent was the Soviet state able to control (and oppose) the process of social exclusion and to what extent was Soviet society ready to integrate social outcasts? This article attempts to answer these questions by analyzing the phenomenon of begging in the Soviet Union between the 1940s and the 1960s. The article begins by studying the phenomenon of begging as a reaction to poverty, serving as a survival strategy for the lower social classes who were excluded from society due to poor standards of living. A brief historical overview of the campaign to combat begging in the the USSR from the Revolution of 1917 until the mid-1950s shows both the continuity and shifting perspectives of state reaction to this social problem. This article also analyzes begging, which was an important social phenomenon in the USSR after World War II, through the specific biographies of actual beggars. The article concludes with an examination of the public discourse on poverty in the 1950s and early 1960s, which reveals how both society and the state viewed the issue.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

Atskaņotājmākslas attīstība Liepājā un Otrā pasaules kara ietekme uz mūziķu likteņiem

2021 ◽  
pp. 338-351
Author(s):  
Vēsma Lēvalde
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Soviet Union

The article is a cultural-historical study and a part of the project Uniting History, which aims to discover the multicultural aspect of performing art in pre-war Liepaja and summarize key facts about the history of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. The study also seeks to identify the performing artists whose life was associated with Liepāja and who were repressed between 1941 and 1945, because of aggression by both the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. Until now, the cultural life of this period in Liepāja has been studied in a fragmentary way, and materials are scattered in various archives. There are inaccurate and even contradictory testimonies of events of that time. The study marks both the cultural and historical situation of the 1920s and the 1930s in Liepāja and tracks the fates of several artists in the period between 1939 and 1945. On the eve of World War II, Liepāja has an active cultural life, especially in theatre and music. Liepāja City Drama and Opera is in operation staging both dramatic performances, operas, and ballet, employing an orchestra. The symphony orchestra also operated at the Liepāja Philharmonic, where musicians were recruited every season according to the principles of contemporary festival orchestras. Liepāja Folk Conservatory (music school) had also formed an orchestra of students and teachers. Guest concerts were held regularly. A characteristic feature of performing arts in Liepaja was its multicultural character – musicians of different nationalities with experience from different schools of the world were encountered there. World War II not only disrupted the balance in society, but it also had a very concrete and tragic impact on the fates of the people, including the performing artists. Many were killed, many repressed and placed in prisons and camps, and many went to exile to the West. Others were forced to either co-operate with the occupation forces or give up their identity and, consequently, their career as an artist. Nevertheless, some artists risked their lives to save others.

Military Industry Evacuation at the Beginning of World War II and the NKVD

2020 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 142-151
Author(s):  
Uta G. Lagvilava ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Technical Equipment ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Industry ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Internal Affairs

A few months after the fascist Germany’s attack on the USSR, under harsh wartime conditions, at the end of 1941 military industry of the Soviet Union began to produce such a quantity of military equipment that subsequently was providing not only replenishment of losses, but also improvement of technical equipment of the Red Army forces . Successful production of military equipment during World War II became one of the main factors in the victory over fascism. One of the unlit pages in affairs of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) is displacement and evacuation of a huge number of enterprises and people to the east, beyond the Urals, which were occupied by German troops at the beginning of the war in the summer of 1941. All this was done according to the plans developed with direct participation of NKVD, which united before the beginning and during the war departments now called the Ministry of Internal Affairs, FSB, SVR, the Russian Guard, Ministry of Emergency Situations, FAPSI and several smaller ones. And all these NKVD structures during the war were headed by Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria.

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.

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