“The East Asian Frontier of the Socialist World: North Korea in the 1950s”

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 160-183
Author(s):  
Avram Agov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
East European ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The 1950S

The decade of the 1950s was a formative period for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (dprk), one that shaped its integration into the international socialist system. This article examines the interaction between North Korea’s internal (institutional) and external (international) integration into the socialist system that, at this time, the Soviet Union and its East European bloc allies dominated. It argues that North Korea was more integrated into the socialist world than its nationalist ideology implied. The 1950s marked the culmination of the dprk’s connectivity to the international socialist world. The narrative begins in the second half of the 1940s with the building of North Korea’s socialist system. It then focuses on East European bloc aid to North Korea during and after the Korean War, as well as the dprk’s reactions to this fraternal assistance. By the second half of the 1950s, North Korea came to associate integration with dependency, generating nationalist impulses in dprk policy and laying the foundation for the juche (self-reliance) paradigm. North Korea’s nationalist ideology was part of a broader post-colonial nation building drive, but socialist interdependency also played a role in the dprk’s divergence, after the early 1960s, from the Soviet bloc and the People’s Republic of China.

Warsaw Pact Countries’ Involvement in Chile from Frei to Pinochet, 1964–1973

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 56-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radoslav A. Yordanov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Warsaw Pact ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines the policies of Warsaw Pact countries toward Chile from 1964, when Eduardo Frei was elected Chilean president, until 1973, when Frei's successor, Salvador Allende, was removed in a military coup. The article traces the role of the Soviet Union and East European countries in the ensuing international campaign raised in support of Chile's left wing, most notably in support of the Chilean Communist Party leader Luis Corvalán. The account here adds to the existing historiography of this momentous ten-year period in Chile's history, one marked by two democratic presidential elections, the growing covert intervention of both Washington and Moscow in Chile's politics, mass strikes and popular unrest against Allende's government, a violent military coup, and intense political repression in the coup's aftermath. The article gives particular weight to the role of the East European countries in advancing the interests of the Soviet bloc in South America. By consulting a wide array of declassified documents in East European capitals and in Santiago, this article helps to explain why Soviet and East European leaders attached great importance to Chile and why they ultimately were unable to develop more comprehensive political, economic, and cultural relations with that South American country.

scholarly journals THE DEFENSIVE–OFFENSIVE POLITICAL BEHAVIOR OF NORTH KOREA IN THE KOREAN PENINSULA

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 262
Author(s):  
Aucky Adi Kurniawan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Relationship

<div><p class="Els-history-head">The study seeks to explain North Korea's political behavior that tends to act defensively and offensively which has often been represented as a dangerous country. Moreover, historically, the events of the Korean War that led to the breakup of Korea into two parts, the northern part that is associated with the Soviet Union and the southern part that is joined by the United States, makes the relationship between the two countries increasingly conflictual. Coupled with the formation of two axes of power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea is allied with its ideological one brother China, and South Korea is allied with the United States. The political escalation between the two countries continues to rise, resulting in the relationship of two becoming very conflictual, and because of that, the rivalry that is formed between the two countries raises various potential conflicts that couldn't be avoided. This research used the congruent method by used the balance of threat theory from Stephen Walt who argued that the state reacts to the perceived threat rather than power, and aims to balance it. The results found that North Korea's defensive - offensive actions were motivated by distrust of America-allied South Korea through several joint exercise programs on the peninsula that is considered a form of threat. Overall, the main argument of this research is the North Korea’s defensive - offensive actions are determined by the attitudes of South Korea and its ally the United States.</p></div>

North Korea Facing Collapse: Domestic Political and Social and Economic Situation

2012 ◽  
pp. 89-102
Author(s):  
no name Leading Korean scholars
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Political System ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
East European ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Chinese Policy ◽  
The Stability

The paper deals with various aspects of economic and social crisis in the DPRK on the eve of 2010’s. Basically, there is an evident functional paralysis of the command economy that leads to its complete decay and breakdown. The result is emergence of a set of isolated sectors and segments living by different rules. Also, it triggers major social processes which undermine the stability of North Korean political system and its ideology. Different options of future developments are considered in the light of possible similarities with processes characteristic of the Soviet Union, East European countries and China in the past. Special attention is paid to actual and potential role of external factors, primarily to the influence of Chinese policy towards North Korea and the recent contacts with South Korea.

Pragmatism And Revolution- North Korean Pomiculture, 1958–1967

2015 ◽  
pp. 117-128
Author(s):  
Robert Winstanley-Chesters
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Developmental Approach ◽  
Kim Il Sung ◽  
Political Literature ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Environmental Engagement ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

Building on past analysis by its author of North Korea’s history of developmental approach and environmental engagement, this paper encounters the field of pomiculture (or orchard development and apple farming) in the light of another key text authored by Kim Il-sung, 1963’s “Let Us Make Better Use of Mountains and Rivers.” At this time North Korea had left the tasks of immediate agricultural and industrial reconstruction following the Korean War (1950–1953) behind and was engaged in an intense period of political and ideological triangulation with the great powers of the Communist/Socialist bloc. With relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union in flux and Chairman Mao’s development and articulation of the “Great Leap Forward,” North Korea was caught in difficult ideological, developmental and diplomatic crosswinds. Utilising narratives of development in the pomicultural sector and accompanying political literature as exemplars, this paper considers Pyongyang’s negotiation of this flux as expressed in these developmental terms. Amongst the orchards of Chagang province, ultimately the paper uncovers elements of reflexivity, pragmatism and charismatic political articulation that will be familiar to the contemporary analyst of North Korean matters.

Cuba and the Soviet Bloc: Searching for the Last Guardians of Socialism

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200942094991
Author(s):  
Radoslav Yordanov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Common Enemy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Revolutionary Ideology ◽  
The Cold War

Based on a wide array of original documents from over 20 archives in Eastern Europe, the US, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, this paper traces the complex interplay between Havana’s revolutionary ideology and pragmatic state instincts which governed Cuba’a relations with the Soviet bloc from the ouster of Fulgencio Batista until the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It overviews their relations by hearing the candid voices of Moscow’s closest East European allies (Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia) regarding Cuba’s continuous transformations. Additionally, the views of the other East European socialist states, which were not among Moscow’s closes backers, namely Albania, Yugoslavia and Romania, are also taken into account. In so doing, this paper seeks to enrich our understanding of the complex trajectory Cuba, the Soviet Union and the remaining East European socialist states underwent in their struggle against the common enemy, the United States. It also seeks to paint a more nuanced picture of the interplay between the realist imperative of state survival and the ideological drive of revolutionary expansionism, which marked Havana’s relations with the East, the West and the South throughout the Cold War.

The Proletarian Child Strikes Back

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dafna Zur
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Working Class ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Transnational Connections

This chapter explores children’s literature during a time when new leftist visions demanded that content and form be merged to better capture the child-heart. Proletarian writers wrote against the bourgeois child-heart and translated it into a moral instinct and outrage over the exploitation of the working class. These writers, many of whom went on to become prominent literary figures in North Korea, sought to create a child-heart that, unlike the angelic disposition of its bourgeois counterpart, was fueled by resentment and choreographed action. Noting the transnational connections with proletarian cultures in Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States, this chapter examines the content and language of leftist writing and points to emerging developments in children’s literature that spilled over into the formative period of 1950s North Korea, which became home to many of the prominent writers and illustrators active in the mid-twenties and thirties.

Rollback, Liberation, Containment, or Inaction? U.S. Policy and Eastern Europe in the 1950s

1999 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
László Borhi
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Eisenhower Administration ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Negotiated Settlement ◽  
Hungarian Revolution ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Economic Warfare ◽  
The One

This article discusses the Eisenhower administration's policy toward Eastern Europe in the years leading up to the 1956 Hungarian revolution. The article first considers the broader context of U.S. Cold War strategy in Eastern Europe, including policies of “economic warfare” and “psychological warfare,” as well as covert operations and military supplies. It then examines U.S. policy toward Hungary, particularly during the events of October-November 1956, when the Eisenhower administration had to decide how to respond to the uprising. The article brings to light the Eisenhower administration's dual policy toward Hungary—a policy that attempted, on the one hand, to strike a negotiated settlement with the Soviet Union, and, on the other hand, to promote instability within the Soviet bloc. An analysis of these contradictory approaches sheds broader light on the dynamics of U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s.

scholarly journals Actualized Stigma: The historical formation of anti-Americanism in North Korea

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAEWOO KIM
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Japanese Colonial

AbstractDuring the Open Port period and Japanese colonial period (1876–1945), Koreans generally had a positive image of the United States. This positive view of the United States held by Koreans persisted until after liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. The United States was a ‘liberator’ that saved the Koreans, and was viewed as ‘a cooperator’ with whom Korea was to solve its national task of establishing a new country. However, the concept of ‘American imperialist warmonger’ had begun to be promoted in North Korea from 1948–49. It was a concept advanced by the Soviet Union and the North Korean leadership. The negative image of the United States, which spread throughout North Korea from the early years of the Cold War, was merely a perplexing stigma lacking substantiated grounds. However, the experiences of the Korean War actualized the image of the United States as a ‘warmonger’ in the hearts of the North Korean people. Alleged indiscriminate aerial bombings, mass slaughters, sexual assaults, and arson attacks against Korean civilians became the most important reason for the expansion of intense sentiment. Anti-Americanism began to be systemized and routinized in every aspect of North Korean life after the Korean War.

The Role of the Mongolian People’s Republic in the Korean War

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty

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