Prologue

Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Eylem Özkaya Lassalle

The concept of failed state came to the fore with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Political violence is central in these discussions on the definition of the concept or the determination of its dimensions (indicators). Specifically, the level of political violence, the type of political violence and intensity of political violence has been broached in the literature. An effective classification of political violence can lead us to a better understanding of state failure phenomenon. By using Tilly’s classification of collective violence which is based on extent of coordination among violent actors and salience of short-run damage, the role played by political violence in state failure can be understood clearly. In order to do this, two recent cases, Iraq and Syria will be examined.


2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-134
Author(s):  
Daniela Popescu

"The Escape to Turkey. Ways and Methods of Illegal Border Crossings into Turkey from the perspective of SSI documents (1945-1948). Romania`s first years after the communist regime took political power in Romania, concurrent with the onset of the Cold War, meant a reshuffle of the state institutions at first and later a dramatic impact on people`s lives. The political and institutional purges were the first signal that soon repression and terror will follow, thus prompting numerous Romanian citizens to leave the country. Yet, due to the strict surveillance of the Secret Police Services which did not easily allow traveling to Western countries, the only way to escape was through illicit border crossings. One of the most common destinations was Turkey, with documents issued between 1945 and 1948 by the Secret police services revealing an impressive number of such cases. Keywords: Illegal border crossings, escape, communism, Romania, Turkey. "


Author(s):  
Paul E. Lenze, Jr.

Algeria is a state in the Maghreb that has been dominated by military rule for the majority of its existence. The National People’s Army (ANP) used nationalism to justify its intervention into politics while ensuring that withdrawal would occur only if national identity were protected. Algeria, similar to other Middle Eastern states, underwent historical trajectories influenced by colonialism, the Cold War, and post-9/11 politics; briefly experimented with democracy; and as a result, experienced the military as the dominant institution in the state. The resignation of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after 20 years of rule in April 2019, following six weeks of popular protest, has raised questions as to whether democratization is possible. Algeria’s history of military involvement in politics, the strength of the military as an institution, and its cooperative links with domestic elites and international actors portend the endurance of authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.


Author(s):  
Tsolin Nalbantian

Chapter 2 deals with the 1946-1949 Soviet repatriation drive to collect all worldwide Armenians and “return” them to the ASSR and, specifically, the Lebanese Armenian political-cultural understandings of it. I explore how that initiative formed a chapter of Lebanese (and other Middle Eastern) Armenians’ renegotiation of national belonging in early post-colonial times. And although about a third of all Armenian repatriates travelled via Beirut, I also look at those who remained in Lebanon and in other countries in the Middle East. The emerging Cold War was more than a backdrop to this story. Heating up, the Cold War – and the very divergent readings of, and responses to, the repatriation initiative among Lebanese Armenians – reinforced tensions between Armenian rightists and leftists. Armenians’ response to repatriation did not simply reflect their extant political-cultural positions. Rather, repatriation sharpened those positions. Responses to repatriation echoed issues on the changing Lebanese/Syrian/Armenian identity complex at the dawn of the post-colonial nation-state. The responses to repatriation included a retelling and a reconstitution of the history of the tragedy of the genocide. They also automatically triggered questions about the location and nature of the Armenian homeland, adding fuel to the division between Dashnaks and Armenian leftists.


1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Bethell ◽  
Ian Roxborough

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.


2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLETTE MOUT

Any definition of Central Europe based on geographical and/or historical facts causes difficulties. The line dividing Europe during the Cold War has a very limited use because it does not take into account Central Europe as a special part of the continent. Historians such as Geoffrey Barraclough, Hugh Seton-Watson and Oskar Halecki discussed the idea of a separate identity of Central Europe during the Cold War. Especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this discussion was re-opened. From a historian's point of view, the most important contributions came from Piotr Wandycz and Jenő Szűcs. An imaginary centre of Europe can only be found in the continent's common history.There is a belief, rather widespread in English-speaking countries, that the eastern half of Europe is inhabited by a number of endlessly quarrelling small nations whose conflicts keep endangering the quiet and comfort of Anglophones. (Hugh Seton-Watson)


1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 931-952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dermot Keogh

Eamon de Valera and Fianna Fáil lost power in 1948 after sixteen years in office and the five remaining parties in the legislature formed a coalition government. Fine Gael was back in power. The last time the party had held office was in 1932. But they were now only the larger party in an inter-party government which included the Labour party, a splinter group called National Labour (which reunited with the parent party in 1950), Clann na Talmhan, and Clann na Poblachta. This was one of the most ideologically divided governments in the history of the state. It very soon became faction-ridden. Only one thing united this variegated political grouping – the unanimous wish to keep Eamon de Valera and his party in opposition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-199
Author(s):  
Adam Wielomski

The aim of this text is a contemporary estimation of the thesis formed in a famous book by Zbigniew Brzeziński and Carl Friedrich, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (1956). This is a classic text of Western political science about totalitarianism, simultaneously scientific and political. Scientific, because it presents the idea of three types of political regimes in the 20th century: totalitarian, authoritarian, and liberal-democratic. Political, because the term “totalitarianism” was very useful in the time of the Cold War. This term presents the old (Nazi Germany) and new (Stalinist Russia) totalitarian states as equal political enemies of the USA, equal in their hostility to political and individual freedom, i.e. America’s creed. By using this term, the Americans can create a horrible picture of Russian communism as totalitarian, the same as Hitler’s regime, while presenting old enemies (West Germany, Italy, and Japan) as good friends of both the USA and freedom, because in this moment these states are democratic and liberal. The new term ended the old line of the delimitation between fascist or pro fascist and antifascist states and legitimates the new alliance between the USA and Franco’s Spain. The author analyses the definition of totalitarianism by Brzeziński and Friedrich as well as the political and ideological accusations made against this book by leftist critics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenfei Liu

Abstract This paper departs from the definition of Slavistics and reviews the history of international Slavic studies, from its prehistory to its formal establishment as an independent discipline in the mid-18th century, and from the Pan-Slavic movement in the mid-19th century to the confrontation of Slavistics between the East and the West in the mid-20th century during the Cold War. The paper highlights the status quo of international Slavic studies and envisions the future development of Slavic studies in China.


2020 ◽  
pp. 35-58
Author(s):  
Teo Ballvé

This chapter shows how, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Cold War drew Urabá's economies of violence into the vortex of insurgency and counterinsurgency, reinforcing the region's reputation as a stateless frontier. The political violence wracking Urabá had clinched its position in the minds of locals and outsiders alike as a lawless, stateless frontier zone. While critical of these discourses of statelessness, the chapter demonstrates how they had a powerful effect on local political struggles. The frontier effect enabled the proliferation of competing state projects, turning the region into an even more fractious social space—a jagged mosaic of rival territorialities. But the violent clashes between insurgency and counterinsurgency that made Urabá into the “red corner” of Colombia were not caused by the absence of the state; they were conflicts over the form and content of statehood itself. None of these struggles played out in the absence of governmental structures and practices.


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