scholarly journals Valiko Jugeli and the Сult of the People’s Guard in Georgia

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis King

This article looks at the semiofficial cult of the Red (People’s) Guard in Georgia from 1917 to 1921. The guard originated in the chaos and uncertainty of late 1917 and played a key role in securing the power of Noy Zhordania and the social democrats in Georgia against Bolshevik and other challenges. It also served as the power base for its undisputed leader, Valiko Jugeli. The official and party press fostered a heroic cult around the Guard, its exploits, and its leadership, reflected in Jugeli’s diary-style memoir, A Heavy Cross (1920). The guard’s cultivated image was selfless, politically conscious, internationalist, and devoted to the revolution. Its many critics saw it as thuggish, undisciplined, chauvinistic, corrupt, and militarily ineffective. The mutual dependency between Zhordania and Jugeli ensured that the guard was politically untouchable in Georgia. The need to maintain the loyalty of the guard, and gain the support of Jugeli, was at times a crucial factor in the politics of the country. Ultimately, the power and influence of the guard eroded the effectiveness of Georgia’s armed forces, and its treatment of national minorities, particularly Armenians and Ossetians, helped Bolsheviks inside and outside Georgia undermine and then overthrow the Democratic Republic. After the Sovietisation of Georgia in 1921, the record of the guard was used to discredit the social democrats’ democratic credentials domestically and internationally. Since around 1990, the guards’ South Ossetia campaigns of 1918–1920 have been used to underpin the area’s claims for independence from rule by Tbilisi.

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
William Carl Mathews

On 29 December 1918 Gustav Noske was appointed as a People's Commissar and charged with command of the armed forces in Germany. Within days Noske was confronted with an armed in surrection in Berlin, the so-called Spartacist Uprising, and subsequent revolutionary outbreaks in Bremen, Braunschweig, and the Ruhr, where sympathy for the events in Berlin existed. Relying on volunteer units, the Free Corps (drawn from war veterans, students, and the middle classes), Noske developed a powerful army on which he could rely to suppress the revolutionary violence from the Left. Using military force and martial law, he reestablished order throughout Germany in 1919 and 1920. The results of the so-called Noskepolitik were at best mixed. Mass movements based on the councils (Räte), often identified as “bolshevism’ by Noske and his contemporaries, were indeed suppressed, but the price was very high: counterrevolution and right-wing terror developed to the point that massive protests were provoked among wide segments of the working class. Bloodshed ensued, including the political murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by members of the Free Corps. Many workers became alienated from the newly formed Weimar Republic, while the Reichswehr drifted into hostility toward the young democracy, and some units joined in the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in March 1920. Noske, already under serious criticism from his own party, the Social Democrats, was forced to resign because of his inability to control the army and guarantee its loyalty to the Republic.


2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Vera Eccarius-Kelly

The article examines trends in voting preferences and voting behavior of Turkish-origin German voters. Despite only representing a small percentage of the total German electorate, Turkish-origin voters are gaining an opportunity to shape the future political landscape. While the Social Democrats have benefited most directly from the minority constituency so far, this author suggests that the Green Party is poised to attract the younger, better educated, and German-born segment of the Turkish-origin voters. All other dominant national parties have ignored this emerging voting bloc, and missed opportunities to appeal to Turkish-origin voters by disregarding community-specific interests. 


wisdom ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Gegham HOVHANNISYAN

The article covers the manifestations and peculiarities of the ideology of socialism in the social-political life of Armenia at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. General characteristics, aims and directions of activity of the political organizations functioning in the Armenian reality within the given time-period, whose program documents feature the ideology of socialism to one degree or another, are given (Hunchakian Party, Dashnaktsutyun, Armenian Social-democrats, Specifics, Socialists-revolutionaries). The specific peculiarities of the national-political life of Armenia in the given time-period and their impact on the ideology of political forces are introduced.


Author(s):  
Dennis Eversberg

Based on analyses of a 2016 German survey, this article contributes to debates on ‘societal nature relations’ by investigating the systematic differences between socially specific types of social relations with nature in a flexible capitalist society. It presents a typology of ten different ‘syndromes’ of attitudes toward social and environmental issues, which are then grouped to distinguish between four ideal types of social relationships with nature: dominance, conscious mutual dependency, alienation and contradiction. These are located in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) social space to illustrate how social relationships with nature correspond to people’s positions within the totality of social relations. Understanding how people’s perceptions of and actions pertaining to nature are shaped by their positions in these intersecting relations of domination – both within social space and between society and nature – is an important precondition for developing transformative strategies that will be capable of gaining majority support in flexible capitalist societies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-119
Author(s):  
Yu.Yu. IERUSALIMSKY ◽  
◽  
A.B. RUDAKOV ◽  

The article is devoted to the study of such an important aspect of the activities of the World Russian People's Council (until 1995 it was called the World Russian Council) in the 90-s of the 20-th century as a discussion of national security issues and nuclear disarmament. At that time, a number of political and public figures actively called for the nuclear disarmament of Russia. Founded in 1993, the World Russian Council called for the Russian Federation to maintain a reasonable balance between reducing the arms race and fighting for the resumption of detente in international relations, on the one hand, and maintaining a powerful nuclear component of the armed forces of the country, on the other. The resolutions of the World Russian Council and the World Russian People's Council on the problems of the new concepts formation of foreign policy and national security of Russia in the context of NATO's eastward movement are analyzed in the article. It also shows the relationship between the provisions of the WRNS on security and nuclear weapons issues with Chapter VIII of the «Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church».


Author(s):  
James Retallack

This chapter focuses on the repression unleashed against Social Democrats in Saxony and Germany under Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law (1878–90). The chapter’s perspective moves between the national, regional, and local levels to assess the range of options open to those who sought to eradicate the “threat” of Social Democracy. The first section examines the national context of Bismarck’s war on socialism, while the following section considers Saxon peculiarities (opportunities and constraints). The focus falls on plans to impose the Lesser State of Siege on Leipzig. The next section discusses the Social Democrats’ continuing success in Landtag and Reichstag elections and zooms in on election battles “in the trenches.” Two final sections consider groups and individuals who played other roles in suppressing Social Democracy, in monitoring the fairness of elections, and in trying to rewrite the “rules of the game” for future election contests.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-35
Author(s):  
Anna Friberg

The article explores some of the composite concepts of democracy that were used in Sweden, primarily by the Social Democrats during the interwar years. Should these be seen as pluralizations of the collective singular democracy or as something qualitatively new? By showing how these concepts relate to each other and to democracy as a whole, the article argues that they should be considered statements about democracy as one entity, that democracy did not only concern the political sphere, but was generally important throughout the whole of society. The article also examines the Swedish parliamentarians' attitudes toward democracy after the realization of universal suffrage, and argues that democracy was eventually perceived as such a positive concept that opponents of what was labeled democratic reforms had to reformulate the political issues into different words in order to avoid coming across as undemocratic.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Lisa Scullion ◽  
Katy Jones ◽  
Peter Dwyer ◽  
Celia Hynes ◽  
Philip Martin

There has been an increasing focus in the UK on the support provided to the Armed Forces community, with the publication of the Armed Forces Covenant (2011), the Strategy for our Veterans (2018) and the first ever Office for Veterans’ Affairs (2019). There is also an important body of research – including longitudinal research – focusing on transitions from military to civilian life, much of which is quantitative. At the same time, the UK has witnessed a period of unprecedented welfare reform. However, research focused on veterans’ interactions with the social security system has been largely absent. This article draws on the authors’ experiences of undertaking qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) to address this knowledge gap. We reflect on how QLR was essential in engaging policy makers enabling the research to bridge the two parallel policy worlds of veterans’ support and welfare reform, leading to significant policy and practice impact.


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