Peace Propaganda and Submarines: Soviet Policy toward Sweden and Northern Europe

Author(s):  
INGMAR OLDBERG

Since the late 1970s, as part of an intensified peace propaganda campaign, the Soviet Union has sought to create a nuclear-free zone in Sweden and northern Europe. Simultaneously, it has increased its criticism of Sweden's defense, partly to offset the effects of Soviet submarine violations of Swedish waters. These violations have increased since the stranding of the U-137 in 1981 and have seriously impaired Soviet-Swedish relations. The Soviet leaders perceive new opportunities with the advent of the Social Democrats in Sweden, whose active foreign policy favors détente and disarmament rather than the arms race. Important factors in the background include growing East-West tension, with Soviet superiority in northern Europe, and the political and economic stagnation, militarization, and “KGB-ization” of Soviet society.

Slavic Review ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Yanowitch ◽  
Norton T. Dodge

One of the consequences of the revival of sociology as a distinct discipline in the Soviet Union has been the appearance of empirical studies of prevailing attitudes toward the major occupations in Soviet society. These studies have been accompanied by discussions in Soviet newspapers and in the educational and economics literature of the problems associated with the popular perception of various occupations, particularly among student youth.


Author(s):  
Neville Kirk

Notwithstanding continuing similarities, Mann’s and Ross’s socialism was increasing characterised by differences. These similarities and, especially so, differences constitute the subject matter of chapter four. Mann and Ross continued to share commitments to the Social Revolution, labour movement unity and ethical and scientific socialism. Yet against these were Mann’s developing syndicalism, his downgrading of the political, especially parliamentary, means to socialism, and his synthesis of syndicalism and Bolshevism, as manifested in his membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He also had a positive impression of the Soviet Union right up to his death. In contrast, Ross increasingly attached equal importance to political and economic means, and in the 1920s worked actively in the Australian Labor Party. He opposed the application of the Soviet Bolshevik revolutionary model to Australia and fought against Australian communists. Ross’s growing attachment to Rationalism also signified that he was becoming more outspoken than Mann in his opposition to most kinds of religion. Yet, remarkably, the two men remained good friends and comrades. In conclusion, their case sheds new light upon the origins and character of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-354
Author(s):  
Christopher Gilley

AbstractThis article examines the attempts by left-wing Ukrainian nationalists to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable: Ukrainian nationalism and Soviet socialism. It describes how leftist Ukrainian parties active during the Revolution and Civil War in Ukraine 1917–1921 advocated a soviet form of government. Exiled members of the two major Ukrainian parties, the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries, then took this position further, arguing in favor of reconciliation with the Bolsheviks and a return to their homeland. After the Entente recognized Polish sovereignty over Eastern Galicia and Soviet Ukraine introduced a policy of Ukrainization in 1923, many West Ukrainian intellectuals took up this call. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 and the Bolsheviks’ purge of Ukrainian Communists and intellectuals all but ended the position. However, it was more the Soviet rejection of the Sovietophiles that ended Ukrainian Sovietophilism than any rejection of the Soviet Union by leftist Ukrainian nationalists. Thus, an examination of the Ukrainian Sovietophiles calls into question the accounts of the relationship between Ukrainian nationalism and the Soviet Union that have common currency in today’s Ukraine.


1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Cooper ◽  
Arthur Schatzkin

The mortality structure of a society is determined primarily by the nature of the social organization. Although this general principle, which forms the basis of the Marxist approach to public health, has been well demonstrated in the classical model of capitalist society, there has been little attempt to apply this theory to countries that have experienced socialist revolutions. This paper examines the mortality structure of the U.S.S.R. Given the high degree of similarity between mass disease in the U.S.S.R. and Western capitalist countries, fundamental questions must be raised about the political and economic system currently operating in the U.S.S.R. It is suggested that the health experience in the Soviet Union over the last two decades has been determined primarily by the nature of the antagonistic class relations that have resulted from the restoration of capitalism.


2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (s1) ◽  
pp. 157-173
Author(s):  
André Mommen

After a monetary reform in 1946, the Communists helped by Jenő Varga and the Social Democrats advised by Nicholas Kaldor each drafted an economic reconstruction plan introducing central planning. Having already campaigned for economic planning after the war, Káldor was also in favour of a Keynesian income and fiscal policy. Good trade relations with the Soviet Union were in his eyes a precondition for economic recovery and stability. But the non-participation of Hungary in the Marshall Plan weakened the authority of the Social Democrats vis-à-vis the Communists who were now pressing for a Soviet-type planning system and the dictatorship of the proletariat.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine Patricia Hafso

During the 1980s, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev implemented extensive reforms prohibiting alcohol. The reform had distastrous results and is widely regarded as a failure. Although Gorbachev's alcohol reform was ultimately reversed and regarded as unsuccessful, the alcohol policy is revealing in regards to changes taking place in Soviet society during the 1980s. The reform demonstrated changes in the political landscape, economics, and government transparency. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
Boris Guseletov ◽  

The article analyzes the phenomenon of the emergence and development of a new pan-European political Party of the European left in the political arena. Its forerunner was a Forum of the new European left, formed in 1991, close to the Communist and workers’ parties and the group «European United Left – Nordic Green Left» in the European Parliament, which emerged in 1995 through the merger of «Confederal Group of the European United Left» faction of environmentalists «Left-wing Green of the North». Many experts viewed these parties as a vestige of a bipolar world, and believed that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, they should finally disappear from the political arena of Europe, giving up the left flank to the socialists and social Democrats. However, European Communists and left-wing radicals demonstrated incredible political vitality and in the tenth years of the twentieth century in a number of EU countries (Greece, France, the Czech Republic) managed to bypass their opponents on the left flank. In 2004 a pan-European party of the European left was created, which is characterized by a commitment to unorthodox Communist and environmental values and a moderately eurosceptic view of the EU’s development prospects. In the last European elections in 2019, this party lost some ground, but nevertheless managed to maintain its small faction in the European Parliament. So today it is difficult to speak about prospects of the European left, although the strength of parties in Germany, Greece, Spain, France and other countries, as well as the weakening of the party of European socialists, gives us reasonable confidence in the fact that the radical left will be able to maintain its presence on the political stage of Europe in the next 10-15 years. The author of the article tried to identify the causes of this political force and its future prospects.


Author(s):  
Khurshid Egamberdievich Khodjamberdiev

This article illuminated that the early 1980s, the social and political development of the Soviet Union began to show signs of decline. Therefore, a period of rapid decline in economic and social life began and also extensive development of the economy has resulted in more costs, and this has already begun to manifest itself in the political and social spheres were opened by the helping scientific literatures and archive documents as well. KEY WORDS: policy, Uzbekistan, culture, ecology, education, industry, reconstruction, import, export.


1991 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janine Ludlam

The concept of “social contract” is useful in understanding the process of reform currently under way in the Soviet Union. The social contract “concluded” by Khrushchev and Brezhnev provided the population with economic guarantees but deprived it of any political power. Their contract was geared primarily toward less educated, blue-collar workers. During the past seventy years Soviet society has become industrialized, urbanized, and educated. Gorbachev has understood that the well-being of the Soviet economy will in the future rest on the labor and know-how of skilled and educated professionals. He must therefore conclude a new contract that will be advantageous to this sector of society in order to ensure its participation in his efforts to reform the economy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Newman

Although students of the Soviet period have long been fascinated with criminality, few works have studied courts and common criminals on the basis of trial records, especially during the nep. Aside from scholarly treatments of show trials, the reasoning behind judicial decisions and criminal pleas has been left to the imagination of Sovietologists. This gap is addressed by examining case files involving the primary form of appeal available to Soviet convicts: cassation. After detailing the evolution of Soviet cassation from its origins in the French Revolution and contextualizing its place in the Soviet justice system, this article embarks on a close reading of convicts’ pleas, prosecutors’ reports, and judges’ written decisions in cassational cases. Cassational appeals are examined to determine how different seats of power within the judiciary sparred over verdicts. Judicial decisions of cassational cases are cross-referenced with legal codes and legislation to determine how Soviet judges applied the law, particularly when considering the social backgrounds of appellants. From the outlook of criminals themselves, the wording of their appeals is analyzed to determine how they understood the law, Soviet society, and what they thought they needed to say to gain redemption. Ultimately, this paper explores how individuals brought before courts understood Soviet power and justice through the lens of criminal appeals during the infancy of the Soviet Union.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document