The Cultural Roots of Estonia's Successful Transition: How Historical Legacies Shaped the 1990s

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Bennich-Björkman
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Institutionalism ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Elite Networks ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Legacies ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article investigates the cultural roots of Estonia's surprisingly successful transitions in the 1990s. Taking the point of departure in historical institutionalism, two layers of political cultural legacies are identified as particularly crucial in preparing Estonia for the democratic government installed after independence. First, the article argues that even in a Baltic context, Estonia stood out as a hotbed for social initiatives and elite networks during Communist times. Second, to understand why such liberalisation within the authoritarian Communist regime started earlier in Estonia than elsewhere in the Soviet Union, there is a need to acknowledge the importance that the historical experiences of the inter-war republic played. Estonia then developed a civic culture that partly survived even during the Päts regime from 1934 to 1939. These experiences surfaced once the yolk of Stalinism was lifted in the 1950s and shaped Estonia under Communism into a society of “collective mobilization” where democratically inclined counter-elites could form.

scholarly journals c) Cuba: A Sui Generis Case Study (Communist Proxy)

2021 ◽  
pp. 309-317
Author(s):  
Jason García Portilla
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Institutional Influence ◽  
Latin American Countries

AbstractThe anti-clerical elements of the Revolution helped Cuba succeed in various indicators (e.g. education quality and coverage, equality, health). The Cuban regime seized, dismantled, and limited the institutional influence of Roman Catholicism on these areas of public life. However, a strong cultural influence of a highly syncretised Roman Catholicism persists in Cuba even if its institutional influence has been curbed. Also, the Communist regime, by adopting Marxism, “threw the baby out with the bathwater” through persecuting all types of religion, including Protestant liberals. Finally, the Cuban regime conveniently turned to Rome to legitimise itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union and to silence Protestantism with a corporatist strategy. The socialist legal tradition had an effect opposite to its claims (e.g. lack of freedom, corruption), even if its anti-clerical element was an advantage. Comparing the Cuban experience to other Latin American countries with leftist dictatorships (e.g. Venezuela) helps understand their failure to achieve the Cuban indicators (e.g. education). The crucial factor in this regard is whether or not the power and influence of the Roman Church-State are reduced.

Žurnāla „Inostrannaja Literatura” rezonanse Latvijas literārajā telpā politiskā atkušņa laikā

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Zanda Gūtmane
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Foreign Literature ◽  
Nikita Khrushchev ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
Thaw Period

The paper is devoted to a parallel description of the literary processes in the Soviet Union and Soviet Latvia during Nikita Khrushchev’ reign, also known as the period of political thaw or the liberalisation of the communist regime (1953–1964). The main object of the research is the literary magazine Inostrannaja literatura (Иностранная литература), issued in the Soviet Union since 1955, dedicated to foreign literature and its translations; the principles of creating its content and structure during the political thaw period. The aim of the research: with concrete examples, to show the role of this legendary Russian literary periodical in the Iron Curtain period, expansion of freedom of thought, decanonization of socialist realism dogmas in general in the USSR, and also in the Latvian SSR. The methodological basis of the research consists of a comparative literature approach and a new historicism position that the literary text is important in studying different lines of history. The analysis of the publications clearly shows the replacement of the so-called periods of thaw and freezing. The article proves that the appearance of translations, reviews, previews, and research articles of foreign literature in this journal is closely connected with various political peripeteia of the USSR. In Latvia, there is a great resonance of Inostrannaja literatura, and it had an eventual influence on overcoming the dogmas of socialist realism in Latvian literature. The publications about the journal in Latvian literary editions and the study of the reception of one text example, a comparison of various editions of the writer Ēvalds Vilks’s (1923–1976) story “Twelve Kilometers”, prove it.

Dynamics of Cultural and Educational Processes of National Minorities of Transcarpathia of the Second Half of the 20th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-253
Author(s):  
Natalija Malets ◽  
Oleksandr Malets
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Ethnic Composition ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
National Minority ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Socialist Economic

The article analyses the dynamics of ethnic composition and ethnic processes in Transcarpathia in the second half of the 20th century, as well as ethno-cultural processes of national consolidation of Ukrainians of the region as part of the Ukrainian nation. The paper evaluates the practice of the Soviet state and the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to determine the nature, content and directions of all ethno-national and ethno-cultural policies in Transcarpathia. While researching the consolidation processes of Transcarpathian Ukrainians as part of the Ukrainian nation, the authors showed that the development of the traditions of Ukrainian national culture was seen in the environment of the creative intelligentsia and the majority of the people as an alternative to ideological communication. It is justified that the main goal of the communist authorities in Transcarpathia in 1945-1991 was to establish socialist, economic, political and ideological regime in the region. In order to accelerate this process, a Russian (Russian-speaking) national minority was hastily created in the region by the state authorities, which, having occupied leading political, ideological and economic positions, became a reliable support for the new communist regime. The article analyses the dynamics of ethnic composition and ethnic processes in Transcarpathia in the second half of the 20th century, as well as ethno-cultural processes of national consolidation of Ukrainians of the region as part of the Ukrainian nation. The paper evaluates the practice of the Soviet state and the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to determine the nature, content and directions of all ethno-national and ethno-cultural policies in Transcarpathia. While researching the consolidation processes of Transcarpathian Ukrainians as part of the Ukrainian nation, the authors showed that the development of the traditions of Ukrainian national culture was seen in the environment of the creative intelligentsia and the majority of the people as an alternative to ideological communication. It is justified that the main goal of the communist authorities in Transcarpathia in 1945-1991 was to establish socialist, economic, political and ideological regime in the region. In order to accelerate this process, a Russian (Russian-speaking) national minority was hastily created in the region by the state authorities, which, having occupied leading political, ideological and economic positions, became a reliable support for the new communist regime.

The New Constitution of the Soviet Union

1936 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1143-1152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Starr
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Stability

In 1934, the Soviet Union rounded out the first great cycle in its development. The fruition of the Five-Year Plan, the general collectivization of agriculture, the entry of the Soviet Union into the councils of the nations of the world—these and many other successes of the Communist régime were evidences of great achievement. Peace and order and economic progress had been attained at home; the stability of the government had been clearly demonstrated, and friends had been made abroad. The social and economic structure of the country had been completely transformed, and the Socialist community was now a going concern.

The National Library of Estonia

1991 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivi Eenmaa
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
National Library ◽  
Modern Library ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Supreme Council ◽  
Information Research ◽  
Estonian Language ◽  
Revolutionary Period

The National Library of Estonia, established in 1918, is now undergoing a revolutionary period of undoing the disastrous effects of the cultural policies of the communist regime. The library was the first in the Soviet Union to destroy the institution of banned books, the so-called ‘special collection’. Its democratic reconstruction follows from the cultural policies of the Estonian Republic, whose Supreme Council passed a National Library Act in 1990. The library is the central public research library of Estonia, acting at the same time as the library of Parliament. It collects, preserves and makes publicly accessible all printed matter published in Estonia, in the Estonian language, and relating to Estonia. It is the main coordinating centre for compiling the national bibliography, as well as for library and information research, and serves as a repository for the whole country. It also compiles and publishes statistics of Estonian publications. At present the library is scattered among several 18th- and 19th-century buildings, but the end of 1991 will see the completion of a new building, the largest and most modern library building in Eastern Europe, which will incorporate computer technology for all areas of library work.

scholarly journals Ivan the Terrible and Russian Feudalism in the Works of Hungarian and Russian Historians of the Soviet Era

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles J. Halperin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Ivan The Terrible ◽  
Soviet Historiography

In his book An Attempt at Microhistoriography (Rus. Опыт микроисториографии), Gyula Szvák, an outstanding Hungarian specialist in Russian history, republishes seven of his earlier articles and presents a previously unpublished eighth article on the Soviet historiography of the key issues of 16th-century Russian history. The articles consider Ivan Peresvetov’s works, reforms and oprichnina between the middle and second half of the sixteenth century; also, they compare the reigns and personalities of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Additionally, the author explores the personal stories of his mentors, Russian historian Ruslan Skrynnikov and Hungarian József Perényi. The book reviewed presents a kind of panorama of two historiographic traditions of studying the Russian Middle Ages in the Soviet Union and Hungary before the collapse of the communist regime there. The author returns to the peculiarities of Russia’s historical development and comprehension of the concept of “Russian feudalism” and reflects on the fate of historians who were engaged in the study of mediaeval Russia under rigid ideological principles.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail Kligman ◽  
Katherine Verdery
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Mass Action ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Industrial Facilities ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Party State

This introductory chapter provides a background of the collectivization of agriculture in Romania. The collectivization of agriculture was the first mass action, in largely agrarian countries like the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Romania, through which the new communist regime initiated its radical program of social, political, cultural, and economic transformation. Collectivizing agriculture was not merely an aspect of the larger policy of industrial development but an attack on the very foundations of rural life. By leaving rural inhabitants without their own means of livelihood, it radically increased their dependence on the Party-state. It both prepared and compelled them to be the proletarians of new industrial facilities. Moreover, it destroyed or at least frayed both the vertical and the horizontal social relations in which villagers were embedded and through which they defined themselves and pursued their existence.

The Russian Revolution and Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAULINE FAIRCLOUGH
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Economic Failure ◽  
The Military

Nearly thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have got used to seeing the Bolshevik Revolution as the prelude to a failed political experiment, albeit one that lasted a remarkably long time. But why do we see it as a failure? After all, the Soviet Union was a vast empire regarded as the military equal of the United States, feared and hated by successive US presidents, whose influence extended far beyond Soviet borders to include regimes in Africa, South East Asia, Central and South America. Had Mikhail Gorbachev not been removed in 1991, and had the Soviet system been able to reform itself into something like the form of communism we see today in China, no one would regard those seventy-plus years of Soviet power as a failure at all. What is meant by failure, in truth, is not really military or economic failure so much as a failure to sustain and uphold the ideals of equality and social justice that originally drew so many to the communist cause. The haemorrhaging of members from the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1956, for instance, was a result of widespread feelings of shock and disgust after Nikita Khrushchev's revelations at the Twenty-First Party Conference that year, at which he delivered his so-called ‘secret speech’ condemning Stalin's regime. For those who left the CPGB, and other communist parties across Western Europe, it was painful to realize that what they had for decades dismissed as ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ had in fact been accurate reportage. Most shocking of all was learning that the mass arrests and disappearances of the 1930s, and even the show trials of prominent Politburo and party members, were not proportionate, if regrettable, responses to plots to murder Stalin and overthrow Soviet power at all, but rather Stalinist crimes of epic and tragic proportions. Right up to the end of the Communist regime in Russia, reports of political and religious repression, the continued use of the Gulag system, confinement and forced treatment of dissidents in mental hospitals, literary and other cultural censorship continued to filter through the Iron Curtain.

“At War with Israel”: East Germany’s Key Role in Soviet Policy in the Middle East

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 129-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herf
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Global Cold War ◽  
State Of Israel

The Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc’s antagonism toward Israel. From 1953, when the German Democratic Republic (GDR) signed its first trade agreement with Egypt, until 1989, when the Communist regime in the GDR collapsed, East Germany opposed the state of Israel and supported Israel’s enemies in the Arab world, providing arms, training, and other support to countries and terrorist groups that sought to destroy Israel. From the mid-1960s until 1989, but especially from 1967 to the mid-1980s, both the Soviet Union and the GDR were in an undeclared state of war against Israel.

The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution

1960 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl A. Wittfogel
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
The Soviet Union

“The victory of communism is inevitable.” This claim has been made since the consolidation of the Soviet Union, and it has been restated with relish by the Kremlin's supreme spokesman during his recent visits abroad. It rests on the argument that Russian society, in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, has advanced from feudalism to capitalism and socialism, blazing a trail along which all other countries are bound to go. Thus the superiority of the Communist regime is asserted not merely on the basis of operational successes, but with reference to historical considerations which are ascribed to the “classics” of communism, and ultimately to Marx and Engels.

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