Late State Socialism: Consolidation, Legitimization, and Reform from Above

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balázs Trencsényi ◽  
Michal Kopeček ◽  
Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič ◽  
Maria Falina ◽  
Mónika Baár ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Political System ◽  
The State ◽  
Critical Potential ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
State Socialist

Seeking to consolidate the state socialist framework of government, individual regimes developed, in dialogue with social scientific research, peculiar disciplines of state socialist governance and authoritarian socio-technics. With the help of political economy, socialist jurisprudence, political sociology, or “prognostics,” late socialist regimes tried hard to stabilize their rule. At the same time, knowledge production catalyzed from above gave rise to a critical potential that caused a majority of the experts to endorse wholeheartedly first perestroika and glasnost coming from the Soviet Union and later also the radical break with the state socialist political system. Another effort to boost the failing legitimacy of the regime was a reconfiguration of national communism. Whereas the earlier, “liberalizing” variant was turning to the liberal nationalist tradition for inspiration, linking the cause of individual and national liberty, the later, “homogenizing” version drew more on the romantic nationalist identification of the ethnic Other as the oppressor.

The Voices of Keti Chukhrov: Radical Poetics after the Soviet Union

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-478
Author(s):  
Marijeta Bozovic
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Future Challenge ◽  
Institutional Critique ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Many ◽  
State Socialist

Abstract The newest Russian poetic avant-garde wields highly aware appropriations and remediations in stark opposition to mainstream cultural phenomena, including nostalgia for the imperial and militant aestheticized politics of the Soviet Union. Efforts to think leftward beyond the state socialist past to a global egalitarian future challenge both Russian and “Western” narratives in our increasingly interconnected world. The Georgian-born Russian-language poet Keti Chukhrov, in particular, theorizes powerlessness in deeply local yet globally familiar ways. Despite the many voices rumbling through her work, Chukhrov’s theses are consistent: art must be communist; all desire, even faked, is political eros; and the post-Soviet subject is not even dead. Chukhrov embeds her politics in institutional critique, lends her labor to collectives and collaborations, and refracts her poetic voice into multitudes.

The enemy in the communist political system – example of the Polish People’s Republic 1956–1989/ Kategoria wroga w komunistycznej Polsce w latach 1956–1989

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krystyna Trembicka
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political System ◽  
The State ◽  
Military Organizations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Inherent Feature ◽  
Communist Movement ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Type ◽  
Second Category

AbstractCategory of enemy presented in the program documents of the communist parties, was an inherent feature of the communist way of thinking, then reflected in the political system of the People’s Poland. Political regimes modeled on the Soviet Union needed enemies. Mobilization, which in the first phase of development of the state served reconstruction of the country, and then defend the status quo, required activation against all kinds of enemies. It was evident the need for the existence of the enemy, which was permanent. Changed only the image of the enemy.Enemies were sought inside and outside the communist movement. Communist world was composed mainly of enemies. The enemy was necessary, even mythical. Fight against real or mythical enemies allowed to pursue various goals: differentiate society, to explain various failures, eliminate inconvenient persons, to justify the existence of the security services and the need to strengthen it, to build a party of a new type.The communist movement had created two categories of enemies. The first included the kind of traditional, “class” enemies of the communist movement, “acquired” along with the state in 1944, and treated as a real enemies, which were various types of: 1) social groups as a “capitalist elements” - traders, farmers; 2) political and military organizations and institutions; 3) ideologies and doctrines competitive with Marxism. The U.S. and English imperialism was the constant enemy which was located outside of the state. The second category consisted of enemies which were created in Polish People’s Republic - “objective” and “potential” enemies.

scholarly journals The cold war and the Women’s International Democratic Federation: defending women’s rights and inspiring women with achievements of the state socialism?

2020 ◽  
pp. 172-185
Author(s):  
Yulia Gradskova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
The State ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
State Socialist

This paper is dedicated to the history of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (further WIDF), the influential transnational organization of the period of the Cold War. The scholars who were dealing with the history of this organization have different opinions about its activities and historical role. Indeed, several researches have shown that the federation realized a lot of solidarity work; the federation was important not least with respect to the anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles as well for cooperation between women from inside and outside Europe. But on the other hand, historically this organization was seen as dependent from the Soviet Union or as the organization where Communist ideas and Soviet bloc’s geopolitical interests have played an important role. The aim of this paper is to explore some of the contradictory aspects of the WIDF’s ideology and activities. I use the WIDF’s official publications, first of all, the federation’s journal Women of the Whole World/ Zhenshchiny mira (published from 1951 in English, French, Russian and, later on German, Spanish and Arabic) vis-à-vis the material from the archive in Moscow, belonging to the WIDF’s member organization from the Soviet Union (GARF, Fond of the Committee of the Soviet Women). In this paper I discuss the federation’s use of the achievements of the state socialist countries on the way to women’s emancipation as well as WIDF’s main political concepts and some of their interpretations. Thus, I explore the contradictions with respect to how the concepts as human rights, democracy and women’s rights were used in WIDF’s documents from different periods as well as discuss conflicts connected to their use.

scholarly journals Towards the Expert Governance: Social Scientific Expertise and the Socialist State in Czechoslovakia, 1950s–1980s

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vítězslav Sommer
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
State Economy ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
State Socialist

This article is concerned with the process of introduction and the further expansion of social scientific expertise in state socialist Czechoslovakia from the mid-1950s until 1989. It presents these developments in the context of the changing policy strategies of the Communist Party elites and describes how closely social scientific expertise, and social scientific knowledge production in general, was interconnected with the broader development of the state socialist governance from the post-Stalinism of the second half of the 1950s to the 1980s perestroika period. This text is structured around three crucial realms of the state socialist governance: state, economy and labor, and socialist society. The first part of the article is concerned with the expertise in the field of state, law and political sciences, which played a significant role during the late 1950s, when the socialist statebuilding project was finished. The following section focuses on the rise of social scientific expert culture during the reform communist period of the 1960s. The third part of this study analyzes how the reform communist expert culture was transformed by the post-1968 regime in a large expert apparatus in order to build strictly centralized technocratic governance. Finally, this article describes how social scientific expertise responded to the crisis and disorganization of state socialist governance during the perestroika period.

Russian Protectionism: Problems of Institutional Heritage

2012 ◽  
pp. 96-114
Author(s):  
L. Tsedilin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Trade ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
The State ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State Monopoly ◽  
The Times ◽  
Soviet Experience

The article analyzes the pre-revolutionary and the Soviet experience of the protectionist policies. Special attention is paid to the external economic policy during the times of NEP (New Economic Policy), socialist industrialization and the years of 1970-1980s. The results of the state monopoly on foreign trade and currency transactions in the Soviet Union are summarized; the economic integration in the frames of Comecon is assessed.

Condition of the Armenian Apostolic Church at the Time of Coming to Authority N. S. Khrushchev

2020 ◽  
pp. 245-265
Author(s):  
Арсен Артурович Григорян
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
National Archive ◽  
The State ◽  
State Archive ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Apostolic Church

Цель данной статьи - описать условия, в которых Армянская Апостольская Церковь вступила в эпоху правления Н. С. Хрущёва, начавшуюся в 1953 г. По содержанию статью можно поделить на две части: в первой даются сведения о количестве приходов на территории Советского Союза и за его пределами, а также о составе армянского духовенства в СССР; во второй излагаются проблемы, существовавшие внутри Армянской Церкви, и рассматриваются их причины. Методы исследования - описание и анализ. Ценность исследования заключается в использовании ранее неопубликованных документов Государственного архива Российской Федерации и Национального архива Армении. По итогам изучения фактического материала выделяются основные проблемы Армянской Апостольской Церкви на 1953 г.: финансовый дефицит, конфликт армянских католикосатов и стремление враждующих СССР и США использовать церковь в своих политических целях. The purpose of this article is to describe the conditions in which the Armenian Apostolic Church entered the epoch of the reign of N. S. Khrushchev, which began in 1953. The article can be divided into two parts: first one gives information about the number of parishes in the territory of the Soviet Union and beyond, and about the structure of the Armenian clergy in the USSR; the second one sets out the problems that existed in the Armenian Church and discusses their causes. Research methods - description and analysis. The value of the study lies in the use of previously unpublished documents of the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the National Archive of Armenia. Based on the results of studying the materials, the main problems of the Armenian Apostolic Church in 1953 are: financial deficit, the conflict of Armenian Catholicosates and the eagerness of USSR and the USA, that feuded with each other, to use the Сhurch for their political purposes.

Striking Factory and Strike of Consciousness in the Work of S. M. Eisenstein

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elen Vogman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Work ◽  
Political Model

The Soviet Union of the 1920s produces and supports multiple connections between the policy of work in factories and the research in medical, neurological, and collective physiology. The theatrical and cinematic work of S. M. Eisenstein forms a specific prism where these interconnections appear in a spectrum of concrete attempts to engage the factory as an aesthetic and political model. The factory as a concrete topos which Eisenstein exploits in Gas Masks and Strike questions the interrelations between the human body and machine in a new iconology of a striking factory. For the duration of the Strike, the factory is represented beyond any functionality: the workers’ body movements and gestures are all the more expressive the less they have to do with their everyday work. This modulated status of production appears in Capital, Eisenstein’s unfulfilled project to realize Marx’s political economy with methods of inner monologue invented by Joyce. This last project transfigures the factory strike into the structure of cinematographic thinking where the neuro-sensorial stimuli constantly strike the logic of the everyday consciousness in the non-personal, polyphonic, and intimate monologue.

Will the Rise of China Transform the International System?

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (Fall 2021) ◽  
pp. 231-258
Author(s):  
Kemal İnat ◽  
Melih Yıldız
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political System ◽  
International System ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Global Status ◽  
Chinese Policy ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
The Rise Of China ◽  
The U.S

In this article, the rise of China is discussed in the light of economic and military data, and what the challenge from China means for the global leadership of the U.S. is analyzed. Changes in the indicators of the U.S. and China’s economic and military power over the last 30-40 years are examined and an answer is sought for the following question: What will the consequences of China’s rise be in terms of the international political system? To answer this question, similar ‘rise and challenge’ precedents are discussed to contextualize and analyze and the present challenge China poses. This article concludes that while improving its global status, China has been taking the previous cases’ failed challenges into consideration. China, which does not want to repeat the mistakes made by Germany and the Soviet Union, is hesitant to pursue an aggressive military policy and tries to limit its rivalry with the U.S. in the economic area. While Chinese policy of avoiding direct conflict and focusing on economic development has made it the biggest economic rival of the U.S, the rise of China initiates the discussions about the end of the U.S. and West-led international system.

Socio-political problems of residents of Вishkek residential areas

2021 ◽  
pp. 346-356
Author(s):  
Rita Bobuevna Salmorbekova ◽  
Dilshat Karimova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Expert Survey ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Rational Distribution ◽  
Internal Migrants ◽  
The City

The article examines the problems of the population of the residential areas of the city of Bishkek based on the sociological study. An expert survey carried out in four districts of Bishkek is presented. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than 50 new residential areas appeared in the city. Naturally, new residential areas do not have sufficient infrastructure for the population to this day. The current situation with internal migrants in Kyrgyzstan violates the regional demographic balance and the rational distribution of the population across the country. The population is moving actively at the interdistrict and interregional levels. As a result, the main influx of internal migrants moves to Bishkek and Chui Region. The problem of researching the state of the new residential areas in Bishkek is relevant for modern Kyrgyzstan. However, the official statistical base does not cover all citizens living in new buildings, since most residents do not have a residence registration in the area. 75–80 % of the population does not have education and health services. In many residential areas, social facilities, roads, and communications have not been built yet, and the infrastructure as a whole is not developed. Ignoring the issue on the part of the state can lead to a social explosion, expressed by protest actions, exacerbation of social and interregional conflicts among residents of the given area. Based on this, it was necessary to conduct an expert survey among the representatives of the municipal territorial authorities of each district. The main problems of residents of the new residential areas were studied as much as possible.

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