The Labor System in Crisis: The Limits of Mobilization

2021 ◽  
pp. 198-230
Author(s):  
Wendy Z. Goldman ◽  
Donald Filtzer
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
The State ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Labor System ◽  
Defense Production ◽  
Labor Leaders ◽  
Central Asian Republics

By 1943, the labor system was in crisis. The state switched its focus from the cities to the countryside, mobilizing people to work far from home. Hundreds of thousands of Central Asian peasants were sent to eastern towns. Factories, mines, and timber operations became multinational sites combining workers from more than fifty national and ethnic groups. By 1945, 70 percent of Russian women were engaged in waged labor. As the Red Army began liberating the occupied territories, more workers were needed to rebuild devastated towns and industries. Local soviets, collective farms, and industry fought fiercely over labor. Leaders of the Central Asian republics demanded the return of their citizens. The Committee to Enumerate and Distribute the Labor Force failed to meet the demands of industry, and vast backlogs undermined all semblance of planning. Hundreds of thousands of newly mobilized workers fled back home; others sickened and died from illness and starvation. The labor system, initially a powerful weapon in the struggle for defense production, reached an impasse.

“All for the Front”: Free Labor, Prisoners, and Deportees

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-197
Author(s):  
Wendy Z. Goldman ◽  
Donald Filtzer
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
Vocational Schools ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
The Family ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Labor System

During the war, the Soviet state created a labor system that was unique among the combatant nations and unprecedented in its own history. The evacuation of industry to sparsely populated eastern towns demanded a new labor force. All able-bodied civilians became subject to a labor draft. The state sent millions of free workers to work on distant sites, enrolled youth in vocational schools, deployed exiled national groups in a “Labor Army,” and employed prisoners in Gulag camps in industry and construction. Women, peasants, and teenagers became major sources of new labor. Mobilized workers became the foundation of the war effort, but they also posed the state’s greatest domestic challenge: to provide services traditionally performed by the family. The provision of clothing, food, shelter, cleaning, and repair—jobs assumed by women for no remuneration—fell to the industrial enterprises. Pressure to produce and persistent shortages created appalling living conditions. Many mobilized workers fled. In the prison camps and Labor Army, starvation and illness decimated the labor force.

The Emergence of Civil Society

1991 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-78
Author(s):  
Natalia Sadomskaya
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
The State ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Central Asian Republics

Now Iam not concerned with definitions. Instead I would like to discuss very briefly the appearance of three organizations in Central Asia that are independent of the state. Everyone knows about the popular fronts in the Baltics; everyone has heard presentations about Ukraine, Belorussia, and Moldavia. I decided, therefore, to take the “hopeless” people, about whom one Soviet diplomat said two years ago: “They are not ready yet for democracy because they have jumped from the feudal system to the socialist system, avoiding your wonderful capitalistic stage when you created democratic institutions.” I want to demonstrate that democratic institutions were indeed created independently from the state in these Central Asian republics.

Manipulating the Census: Ethnic Minorities in the Nationalizing States of Central Asia

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Ferrando
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Developing Nation ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Central Asian Republics ◽  
Local Languages

Since independence, Central Asian republics have been facing the paradox of developing nation-state ideologies on the basis of a multinational population, inherited from their colonial and Soviet past. This ideology claims historical ownership over the territory, the so-called homeland (rodina in Russian or vatan in local languages). Central Asian governments do perceive the need to assert their sovereign rights on the land. In political terms, it becomes a quest to ensure that the territories claimed contain a majority of titular members of the nation and a minority of other ethnic groups. The census appears here to be the key instrument to measure people and legitimate the power of the titular nation.

Of Nils and Nation: Selma Lagerlöf'sThe Wonderful Adventures of Nils

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
BJÖRN SUNDMARK
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
School System ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
State School ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
National Ideology ◽  
Selma Lagerlof

Recently past its centenary, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–7), by Selma Lagerlöf, has remained an international children's classic, famous for its charm and magical elements. This article returns to read the book in its original contexts, and sets out to demonstrate that it was also published as a work of instruction, a work of geography, calculated to build character and nation. Arguing that it represents the vested interests of the state school system, and the national ideology of modern Sweden, the article analyses Nils's journey as the production of a Swedish ‘space’. With a focus on representations of power and nationhood in the text, it points to the way Lagerlöf takes stock of the nation's natural resources, characterises its inhabitants, draws upon legends and history, and ultimately constructs a ‘folkhem’, where social classes, ethnic groups and linguistic differences are all made to contribute to a sense of Swedish belonging and destiny.

Afars of Ethiopia in the system of ethnic federalism

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-146
Author(s):  
Roza Ismagilova
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
State Structure ◽  
Ethnic Federalism

The article pioneers the analyses of the results of ethnic federalism introduced in Ethiopia in 1991 – and its influence on Afar. Ethnicity was proclaimed the fundamental principle of the state structure. The idea of ethnicity has become the basis of official ideology. The ethnic groups and ethnic identity have acquired fundamentally importance on the political and social levels . The country has been divided into nine ethnically-based regions. The article exposes the complex ethno-political and economic situation in the Afar State, roots and causes of inter- and intra-ethnic relations and conflicts with Amhara, Oromo, Tigray and Somali-Issa, competition of ethnic elites for power and recourses. Alive is the idea of “The Greater Afar”which would unite all Afar of the Horn of Africa. The protests in Oromia and Amhara Regions in 2015–2017 influenced the Afar state as welll. The situation in Ethiopia nowadays is extremely tense. Ethiopia is plunging into serious political crisis. Some observers call it “the beginning of Ethiopian spring”, the others – “Color revolution”

TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM OF THE SMOLENSK REGION (1917–1922)

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-175
Author(s):  
Konstantin Kupchenko ◽  
Nikolay Fedoskin
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Party State ◽  
State Regional ◽  
Soviet Experience

The article analyzes the results of the state policy implementation withing the formation and development of the Soviet judicial system on the example of Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors set the goal, based on the analysis of sources not introduced into a wide scientific circulation, primarily stored at the State Archive of the Smolensk Region to restore the history of the creation and operation of justice institutions in the Smolensk region in the 1918s–1923s. The source base of the study was composed of documents stored at Smolensk State Regional Archive, materials on the history of the judiciary, statistical materials of the period under the study, documents on the history of the party-state bodies of the Smolensk region. The article studies current office documentation of both the higher and regional state bodies (Workers 'and Peasants' Government, People's Commissariat of Justice, Smolensk Governoral Executive Committee) and local authorities (Smolensk Council of Working People's Deputies, Executive Committee of Smolensk Governoral Council of Workers, Peasants' and Red Army Deputies), as well as Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors analyze the Soviet experience in the formation and development of judicial bodies under specific historical conditions; they consider transformations in the judicial system of the Smolensk Governorate in the 1917s–1922s, as well as the formation of Smolensk Governoral Court. The article studies legal foundations of the Soviet judicial system formation, characterizes processes of creating a judicial apparatus in the first years of Soviet power and analyzes activities of Smolensk Governoral Court during its formation. The authors reveal the essence, degree of efficiency, concrete results, political and socio-economic consequences, positive and negative lessons from the Soviet judicial system existed in Russia. The authors assume that the development of new legislation system in the 1920s was caused by the need to reform legal sources as the main means of socialism building. The authors conclude that the transformation of the Soviet judicial system completed the transition from the principle of «revolutionary expediency» to the principle of «revolutionary legality».

Inter-Ethnic Dynamics in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks: Evidence from the 2015 Baga Massacre

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Belmonte
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The State ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Boko Haram ◽  
Far North ◽  
North East

AbstractThis paper investigates the consequences for inter-group conflicts of terrorist attacks. I study the 2015 Baga massacre, a large scale attack conducted by Boko Haram at the far North-East state of Borno, Nigeria, as a quasi-natural experiment and examine a set of attitudes in the aftermath of the event of Christians and Muslims throughout the country. Comparing individuals, outside the region of Borno, interviewed by Afrobarometer immediately after the massacre and those interviewed the days before within same regions and holding fixed a number of individual characteristics, I document that the informational exposure to the event rendered Christians less amiable to neighboring Muslims and Muslims less likely to recognize the legitimacy of the state. Nonetheless, Muslims increased their view of the elections as a device to remove leaders in office, event that took place 2 months later with the election of the challenger, Muhammadu Buhari. My findings indicate that terrorist attacks may generate a relevant and heterogeneous backlash across ethnic groups.

Combatting organised crime and terrorism in Central Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma van Santen
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
The State ◽  
State Crime ◽  
International Policy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Terrorist Groups

Purpose This paper aims to examine the shift away from the traditional distinction between organised crime and terrorist groups towards their conceptual convergence under the crime-terror nexus narrative in the context of international security and development policy in post-Soviet Central Asia. It assesses the empirical basis for the crime-terror and state-crime nexus in three Central Asian countries – Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – and argues that the exclusion of the state from the analytical framework undermines the relevance of the crime-terror paradigm for policy-making. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on a literature review of academic research, recent case studies highlighting new empirical evidence in Central Asia and international policy publications. Findings There is a weak empirical connection between organised crime and Islamic extremists, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Hizbut Tahrir, in Central Asia. The state-crime paradigm, including concepts of criminal capture, criminal sovereignty and criminal penetration, hold more explanatory power for international policy in Central Asia. The crime-terror paradigm has resulted in a narrow and ineffective security-oriented law enforcement approach to counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism but does not address the underlying weak state governance structures and political grievances that motivate organised crime and terrorist groups respectively. Originality/value International policy and scholarship is currently focussed on the areas of convergence between organised crime and terrorist groups. This paper highlights the continued relevance of the traditional conceptual separation of terrorist and organised crime groups based on their different motives, methods and relationship with the state, for security and democratic governance initiatives in the under-researched Central Asian region.

Central Asia in Context of Afghan Situation

2011 ◽  
pp. 3-16
Author(s):  
I. Labinskaya
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Council ◽  
Political Sciences ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Central Asian Republics

The session of IMEMO academic council in December 2010 discussed the problems of Central Asia in the context of the Afghan situation. In her keynote report D. Malysheva, doctor of political sciences, pointed at the increased attention to Central Asia by regional and international players. This is explained by the new and extremely worrying situation in neighboring Afghanistan. There is a prospect that NATO will lose the war in Afghanistan and that the coalition troops will be withdrawn from that country. In its turn, this generates a threat of Taliban’s return to power in this country. Thus, we cannot exclude the political upheavals in the Central Asian republics that will inevitably affect Russia's interests. The discussion highlighted Russia’s stable interest to Afghanistan both politically and economically.

‘Hebrew Tarzans’ from Arthur Koestler's Thieves in the Night to Netflix and Fauda

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Jeremy Salt
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Four Books ◽  
Letting Go ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
As If

Core elements of Zionist propaganda justifying the colonisation of Palestine are exploited again in the four books critiqued in this article ( Thieves in the Night; Promise and Fulfilment. Palestine 1917–1949; Exodus; and The Haj). For propaganda to be viable, however, it has to be adapted to changing circumstances. Recent Israeli television dramas such as Fauda (Chaos) have realigned images without letting go of the central elements in the propaganda war. In Fauda, Israeli killings in the occupied territories are virtually advertised, as if the state wants viewers to see what it is capable of doing in the name of combatting ‘terrorism’.

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