scholarly journals China, Eastern Europe and Russia compared

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (S) ◽  
pp. 85-93
Author(s):  
Ivan Szelenyi ◽  
Péter Mihályi
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Chinese Leader ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
East European ◽  
Tiananmen Square ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Transition To Capitalism ◽  
Market Capitalism

AbstractAfter the collapse of the Berlin Wall it was conceivable that China would follow the path towards the cessation of communism, as it happened in the successor states of the USSR, Yugoslavia and the East European satellite states of the Soviet Union. But the Communist Party of China (CPC) managed to retain control and avoided the Russian and East European collapse, a full-fledged transition to capitalism and liberal democracy. For a while, China was on its way to market capitalism with the possible outcome to turn eventually into a liberal democracy. This was a rocky road, with backs-and-forth. But the shift to liberal democracy did not happen. The massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, approved by Deng Xiaoping, was a more alarming setback than the contemporary Western observers were willing to realize. This paper presents an interpretation of the changes under present Chinese leader, Xi Jinping in a post-communist comparative perspective.

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.

scholarly journals Multiculturalism and Ostalgie

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Alessandro Figus ◽  
Andrea Pisaniello ◽  
Stefano Mustica
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Right ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Different Cultures

Abstract “Ostalgie” is coming from a German word referring to nostalgia for aspects of life in East Germany, and not only. It is a new multipurpose and new expression related the German terms “Nostalgie” (nostalgia in Italian) and Ost (East). Its anglicised equivalent, ostalgia, it is rhyming with “nostalgia” and it is also sometimes used. The collapse of Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall destruction, was the concept protected concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from ‘61 to ’89, It especially divided West and East European countries, the wall cut off West Berlin from almost all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Formally its demolition began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992 and coincides in some generation from the Warsaw Pact countries, legally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation with the “Mutual Assistance” URSS of the birth of “ostalgie”, that it goes against with modern principle of multicultural society and globalisation of the world. At the eighth congress of the communist party Lenin recognized the right to self-determination of the populations of the empire and promised them significant concessions, although its final intent was to reach the true dictatorship of the proletariat which would have rendered the ethnic-national distinctions useless. The Soviet Union became the incubator of new nations with the dissolving of the Russian nation in the Soviet state. Does the “ostalgie” refer to the USSR, is this compatible with multiculturalism? Is it compatible with that plurality of tending different cultures that coexists in mutual respect and which implies the preservation of their specific traits by rejecting any type of homologation or fusion in the dominant culture?

The development of trade relations between the Republic of Cyprus and the Soviet Union (1960-1963)

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 258-263
Author(s):  
Argyrios Tasoulas
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Bilateral Trade ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Republic Of Cyprus

This article studies the development of Soviet-Cypriot trade relations in 1960-63, based on research at the Archives of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF). Concurrently, a historical analysis follows the events after the creation of the new Cypriot state and the two major Cold War crises (the building of the Berlin wall and the Cuban missile crisis). The efforts made by both governments to develop bilateral trade, the aftermath of the two major international crises and the results of the two governments’ policies have been identified and analyzed.

East European military expenditures in the 1970s: collective good or bargaining offer?

1983 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Reisinger
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Gross National Product ◽  
Defense Spending ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Military Expenditures ◽  
Domestic Support ◽  
Nicolae Ceausescu ◽  
General Secretary

In late November 1978, Nicolae Ceausescu, general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, returned to Bucharest from a Moscow meeting of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). In a series of speeches from 25 November through 1 December, he began to denounce efforts by the Soviet Union to integrate more fully the armies of the WTO members and to get the East European members to increase their defense expenditures. Ceausescu was making a dramatic (and apparently successful) appeal for domestic support for his resistance to Soviet pressure. Other WTO member-states, although less publicly, have also resisted this Soviet pressure. Romania is not the only East European state ignoring Soviet calls for higher defense spending. Poland, for example, has also shown a significant decline during the 1970s in the amount of its gross national product (GNP) spent on defense (D/GNP). East Germany, on the other hand, increased its expenditures dramatically over the same decade.

Freedom’s Just Another Word . . .

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Student Movements ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Tiananmen Square ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

For any way of thought to become dominant, a conceptual apparatus has to be advanced that appeals to our intuitions and instincts, to our values and our desires, as well as to the possibilities inherent in the social world we inhabit. If successful, this conceptual apparatus becomes so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not open to question. The founding figures of neoliberal thought took political ideals of human dignity and individual freedom as fundamental, as ‘the central values of civilization’. In so doing they chose wisely, for these are indeed compelling and seductive ideals. These values, they held, were threatened not only by fascism, dictatorships, and communism, but by all forms of state intervention that substituted collective judgements for those of individuals free to choose. Concepts of dignity and individual freedom are powerful and appealing in their own right. Such ideals empowered the dissident movements in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before the end of the Cold War as well as the students in Tiananmen Square. The student movements that swept the world in 1968––from Paris and Chicago to Bangkok and Mexico City––were in part animated by the quest for greater freedoms of speech and of personal choice. More generally, these ideals appeal to anyone who values the ability to make decisions for themselves. The idea of freedom, long embedded in the US tradition, has played a conspicuous role in the US in recent years. ‘9/11’ was immediately interpreted by many as an attack on it. ‘A peaceful world of growing freedom’, wrote President Bush on the first anniversary of that awful day, ‘serves American long-term interests, reflects enduring American ideals and unites America’s allies.’ ‘Humanity’, he concluded, ‘holds in its hands the opportunity to offer freedom’s triumph over all its age-old foes’, and ‘the United States welcomes its responsibilities to lead in this great mission’. This language was incorporated into the US National Defense Strategy document issued shortly thereafter.

“New Cold Wars Have Begun”

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-67
Author(s):  
Rush Doshi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
American Power ◽  
Tiananmen Square ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Balance Of Forces ◽  
The Cold War

Chapter 3 uses Party texts to explore China’s changing view of the United States at the end of the Cold War and the ends, ways, and means of its subsequent grand strategy to blunt American power. It demonstrates how China went from seeing the United States as a quasi-ally against the Soviet Union to seeing it as China’s greatest threat and “main adversary” in the wake of three events: the traumatic trifecta of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Gulf War, and the Soviet collapse. It traces how Beijing launched its blunting strategy under the Party guideline of “hiding capabilities and biding time,” which it tied to perceptions of US power captured in phrases like the “international balance of forces” and “multipolarity.” The chapter also introduces China’s effort to asymmetrically weaken American power in Asia across military, economic, and political instruments, which are discussed in greater detail in subsequent chapters.

Jewish Communist, Socialist, and Maverick Lawyers

2003 ◽  
pp. 329-343
Author(s):  
John Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Business Perspective ◽  
European Immigrants

This chapter reflects on Jewish communist, socialist, and maverick lawyers. Whereas many Jewish solicitors viewed their profession primarily from a business perspective—and were extremely successful in both business and professional terms—another group of solicitors from the same east European background were driven by more altruistic motives, impelled by a zealous pursuit of justice on behalf of their clients or devoted to active campaigning for specific legal reform. Some members of this latter group were communists; a larger number of the outstanding Jewish lawyers from the second generation of east European immigrants were associated with the Labour Party; still others were mavericks. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, it has become apparent that the recruitment of Jewish lawyers into the Communist Party was a passing phase born out of the frustrations of the 1930s, and the misplaced idealism of the early 1950s. Towards the end of the century, Jewish radicalism continued in new forms.

The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 3)

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political System ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
External Context ◽  
Final Segment ◽  
Extended Analysis ◽  
The Impact

This is the concluding part of a three-part article that discusses the transformation of Soviet-East European relations in the late 1980s and the impact of the sweeping changes in Eastern Europe on the Soviet Union. This final segment is divided into two main parts: First, it provides an extended analysis of the bitter public debate that erupted in the Soviet Union in 1990 and 1991 about the “loss” of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The debate roiled the Soviet political system and fueled the hardline backlash against Mikhail Gorbachev. Second, this part of the article offers a concluding section that highlights the theoretical implications of the article as a whole. The article, as the conclusion shows, sheds light on recent literature concerning the diffusion of political innovations and the external context of democratization and political change.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document