‘The Russian Revolution has not yet taken place’: British views of the Soviet economy between the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-seventies

2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (258) ◽  
pp. 814-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Nineteen Sixties ◽  
World War ◽  
Nineteen Fifties ◽  
Nineteen Seventies ◽  
Expert Commentary ◽  
Education Science ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Second World

Abstract This article examines British officials' and ministers' attitudes towards the Soviet Union's economy in the post-Second World War era. In the nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties, public and some expert commentary posited Soviet economic ‘success’ based on the country's increasingly rapid growth rate, its potential for consumerization, the promise of economic reform, and the Soviet state's emphasis on education, science and the application of computer technology. New evidence from British official archives, presented here, makes clear that Westminster and Whitehall were never persuaded of this view, and always believed that political meddling and microeconomic inefficiencies would ultimately restrain and undermine Soviet growth.

scholarly journals Kriegsliteratur aus der DDR und die Zensur in der Volksrepublik Polen in den ersten Nachkriegsjahren

2017 ◽  
pp. 253-262
Author(s):  
Marek Rajch
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Important Criterion ◽  
World War ◽  
Nineteen Fifties ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
Second World

From all of the German literature distributed in Poland during the first half of the nineteen fifties, that of the GDR was the most strongly represented, because like the People's Republic, it was part of the Eastern Bloc. A substantial part of this literature touched upon the themes of the Second World War. As some prominent Eastern German authors had taken part in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1939, this subject also couldn't be ignored.The introduction in 1949 of socialist realism as the most important criterion of art, and particulary strong political pressure, led to a great deal of confusion and insecurity, not only for Polish publishing houses, but also among the censors, whose task was to take decisions about what literature could be printed. Censors’ opinions in this period often differed, not only in terms of detailed matter, but also in the final decisions about the eventual fate of the title submitted for evaluation.

Francis Stuart’s broadcasts from Germany, 1942—4: some new evidence

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (127) ◽  
pp. 408-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Roth
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
Television Documentary ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Rose ◽  
Second World

The poet and novelist Francis Stuart’s sojourn in Germany during the Second World War and his broadcasting activities for the Nazis remain acnámh spairneamong historians and journalists alike. Assessments of his radio talks range from that of his biographer J.H. Natterstad, who described them as being of ‘a literary or semi-literary’ character, to that of Kevin Myers, who equated the broadcasts with ‘voluntary siding with the most bestial régime in the history of civilisation’. In October 1997 a television documentary during which Stuart was quoted as saying that ‘the Jew was always the worm that got into the rose and sickened it’ triggered off a long-running controversy in the letters pages of theIrish Times. Some prominent intellectuals rushed to Stuart’s defence, arguing, for example, that the worm metaphor was indeed a positive one, representing the ‘hidden, unheroic and critical’. On the other hand, leaving aside the question whether or not Stuart was an antisemite, two German emigrants to Ireland argued that anyone, including Stuart, ‘who lived in Germany at that time, any person working for the Ministry of Propaganda had to be an active Nazi sympathiser’. From a more scholarly perspective, David O’Donoghue has recorded that in his radio talks Stuart was neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Russian, while Dermot Keogh suggested that Stuart’s broadcasts from Germany in fact mirrored the content of antisemitic publications in Ireland at the time. Stuart himself denied ever having backed the Nazis, and rejected the charge of antisemitism in the R.T.É. interview broadcast in January 1998: ‘I never supported that régime.’

New Evidence on a Lost Work by Exekias

1978 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 161-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Anne Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Type A ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Small Fragment ◽  
Board Game ◽  
World War ◽  
Lost Work ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Second World

Until the Second World War, the antiquities collection held by the university in Leipzig included a set of four fragments attributed to Exekias, and long recognised by scholars as deriving from an amphora which in the subject of both obverse and reverse scenes was close to the type A amphora signed by Exekias in the Vatican Museum. Unfortunately the fragments were lost during the war; W. Herrmann has recently published them as war losses, listing all the information available on their history— the provenience is unknown. Three of the fragments bear a clear resemblance to side A of the Vatican amphora, which shows Achilles and Ajax intent on a board game, but the Dioskouroi scene on side B was identified only on the very slender evidence of T. 391 (Plate IVa), a small fragment bearing the head of a white dog.This identification is now supported by the discovery that T. 391 joins cleanly with a hitherto unpublished fragment in Cambridge as may be seen in Plate IVc. The join is substantiated by the portion of the hand of ‘Polydeukes’ appearing on both fragments, by the leash held in that hand, and by the dog's paw, all of which bridge the break.

Reflections on the Russian Revolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-195
Author(s):  
Jerzy J. Wiatr
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Second World ◽  
Soviet Historiography ◽  
Founding Myth ◽  
Modern Russian

The Russian revolution of 1917 was one of the turning points in world history, even if its radical (communist) stage proved to be a historical blind street. There was just one revolution – not two, as it had been interpreted by the Soviet historiography. The uniqueness of the Russian revolution results from the fact that the radical seizure of power in November 1917 turned to be the beginning of a long process of totalitarian dictatorship, which lasted for mor than seventy years. Today, it is the heritage of the victory in the Second World War that constitutes the founding myth of modern Russian state.

In the Footsteps of ‘Lenin’: Peace, Struggle and the Progressive Intelligentsia in Colonial Bengal

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-252
Author(s):  
Binayak Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

The article begins with an obscure Bengali poem ‘Lenin’ published in 1924. Tracing the publication and its consequences, it explores the transmission of progressive ideas from Europe to Bengal, following the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Subsequently, the rise of fascism in Europe, and the Second World War marked a significant juncture in this trajectory, where the rhetoric of ‘peace’, championed during the years after the First World War, developed into a new relationship with popular struggles in Bengali progressive cultural practice.

Achter de schermen van radio en televisie in 1959. Een VVO-pamflet over de toepassing van de taalwetgeving

2008 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-336
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
World War ◽  
Nineteen Thirties ◽  
Nineteen Fifties ◽  
The Public ◽  
Television Broadcasting ◽  
Second World ◽  
Legal Grounds ◽  
Language Laws

Na de Tweede Wereldoorlog werd de naleving van de taalwetten uit de jaren dertig ernstig verwaarloosd. Het afdwingen ervan kwam pas in de late jaren vijftig weer op gang. De Vlaamse ambtenaren die deze discriminatie beu waren, richtten daarvoor een drukkingsgroep op. Omdat ze kon teruggrijpen naar de vooroorlogse taalwetten, beschikte de organisatie over stevige juridische gronden. Deze bijdrage onderzoekt de eerste grote actie van het Verbond van het Vlaams Overheidspersoneel, gericht op de openbare omroep in België. Het is een toonbeeld van hoe de Vlaamse beweging kon herleven en het negatieve odium van de collaboratie tijdens de Duitse bezetting kon overstijgen door een argumentatie op basis van cijfergegevens en wetgeving.________Behind the scenes of the radio and television broadcasting network in 1959. A VVO-pamphlet about the application of the language lawAfter the Second World War the compliance with the language laws from the nineteen thirties was seriously neglected. Its enforcement was not reactivated until the end of the nineteen fifties. The Flemish civil servants who were fed up with this discrimination founded a pressure group for this purpose. The organisation had solid legal grounds, because it could refer to the language laws from before the war. This contribution investigates the first major action by the Union of Flemish Civil Servants (VVO) addressed at the public broadcasting network in Belgium. It exemplifies how the Flemish Movement could make a comeback and transcend its negative stigma from the collaboration during the German occupation by means of arguments based on statistics and legislation.

Lev Karsavin

2020 ◽  
pp. 509-527
Author(s):  
Martin Beisswenger
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
World War ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Angela Of Foligno ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World ◽  
Oswald Spengler

A historian of Western Medieval history by training and a religious philosopher by vocation, Lev Platonovich Karsavin (1882–1951) explored the interconnectedness of history and religion throughout his life. He developed his ideas focusing on the notions of theophany and theosis, where the divine revealed itself in history and history moved towards divinization. Karsavin’s writings reflected influences of such diverse thinkers as Nicolas of Cusa, Bonaventure and Angela of Foligno, or Vladimir Soloviev and Oswald Spengler. Building upon their ideas, Karsavin created an original philosophy of personalism, which was based on the concept of ‘all-unity’. Central to it was the idea of the ‘person’ both as an individual and a collective entity. This chapter examines Karsavin’s life and thought, first in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, through the experiences during the Russian Revolution, during his exile in Berlin, Paris, and Kaunas, and finally to his incarceration in Stalin’s Gulag camp where he was sent after the end of the Second World War and where he perished. It pays close attention to a number of crucial points of Karsavin’s intellectual odyssey including the impact of the revolution on Karsavin’s thought, the development of his concept of ‘all-unity’, his historiosophy, his engagement with ecumenism as well as his involvement with Eurasianism. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the rediscovery of Karsavin’s philosophical legacy in post-Soviet Russia.

scholarly journals The Russian Revolution After One Hundred Years

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Gill
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Development Model ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Second World ◽  
Soviet Experiment

The Russian revolution was the defining episode of the twentieth century. It led to the transformation of Russia into one of the superpowers on the globe, but one that exhibited a development model that was both different from and a challenge to the predominant model in the West. The Soviet experiment offered a different model for organising society. This was at the basis of the way in which international politics in the whole post-second world war period was structured by the outcome of the Russian revolution. But in addition, that revolution helped to shape domestic politics in the West in very significant ways. All told, the revolution was of world historical and world shaping importance.

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