scholarly journals American Corn in Russia: Lessons of the People-to-People Diplomacy and Capitalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria I. Zhuravleva

This paper is devoted to the “corn diplomacy” in the context of Russian-American relations from the end of the 19th century to the Cold war period. The author focuses her attention on three cases dealt with the American attempts to export their corn and secrets of corn production to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Thеsе thematic priorities give her the brilliant opportunity to analyze two dimensions of American messianic feelings deter- mined the stable long-term perception trends of Russia in the American society. The eco- nomic one arose from the attractive prospects of exports of goods, capital, and technologies into Russian markets (Russia was supposed to learn “the lessons of American capitalism”). The humanitarian one turned a famished and backward Russia into the object of aid from the rich and prosperous America and the Americans—into “international philanthropists”. At the same time one of the main author’s conclusions is that the “corn diplomacy” played an important role in promoting better understanding between Russian and Americans be- came the equivalent of the people-to-people diplomacy. 

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (104) ◽  
pp. 1552-1590
Author(s):  
م.د. نجلاء عدنان حسين

       The Russian Revolution of 1917, or the Bolshevik Revolution, was one of the most important historical events in Europe during the First World War. This revolution changed the course of Russian history. Its outbreak led to the formation of the Soviet Union, which was dismantled in the late 20th century. Because of a number of popular unrest and protests against the rule of Russian tsars and the Russian Empire, whose reign was characterized by the slow development of the country because of the existence of a political system subject to autocratic regimes and the control of nobles and landlords in all aspects of life in Russia, made the Russian society in the late century Nineteen rural people in the majority of workers and peasants, with the influence of the clergy and the imperial palace, accompanied by a primitive social structure, a backward economy and an autocratic government. Life in Russia was in the style of the Middle Ages. Russia retreated from the European industrial revolution until 1860, This led the people to wage a revolt against the Russian reactionary tsarist government in 1917. It was one of the most famous leaders of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, who was called the " Revolutionaries of this revolution the Bolsheviks name or Almnschwk means the majority.


Author(s):  
Sergey Osipov

The subject of this research is the image of the USSR/Russia resembles in the popular animated TV series “The Simpsons” throughout the past 30 years, considering the method of translating information inserted in the media text, as well as the complexity/simplicity of decoding this information by the viewer, ambiguity/unambiguity of interpretations, etc. The TB series touched upon the following topics related to the USSR/Russia: immigration to the United States and life of the immigrants in the new homeland, the Cold War, Communism and anti-Communism, Russian culture, Russia as a rival of the United States. The author traces the dynamics, diversity, and specificity of covering Soviet/Russian theme for over 30 years in the context of the dynamics of relations between the Soviet Union/Russia and the West, including political, social, cultural, and other nuances. The author carries out a cross-disciplinary dedicated to the work of popular culture in the context of political history of the XX – early XX centuries. The novelty consists in revealing the main themes of the “Russian presence” in the TV series (based on the analysis of almost 700 episodes), and the way they are conveyed (leveling the established stereotypes or their debunking for the sake of countering manipulations with public sentiment). Impugning the statement that ideology of “The Simpsons” is purely neoliberal, the author draws a more complex and critical worldview of “The Simpsons” in with regards to American society. Russia holds a special place in this world due to complicated bilateral relations since the Cold War, which consequences are yet to be fully overcome. An ineradicable remnant of the Cold War is the link between Russia and Communism, in which “Communism” is a synonym of any dissenting view. Russia is also associated with a rich, although highbrow culture, unattractive to most of the ordinary citizens. The main satirical idea of “The Simpsons” is to emphasize the cultural dissonance, which intensifies the difficulties of mutual understanding based on political confrontation and remaining ideological prejudices.


1993 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 97-114
Author(s):  
Vladimir Benevolenski ◽  
Andrei Kortunov

This article is concerned mainly with the array of moral, ethnic, and nationalistic questions that emerged as a result of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Its claim is that the cause for the collapse of the empire was not so much its poor economic performance, rather the moral bankruptcy of which the people could no longer endure. Now Russia (and the West) must tackle, for example, the rise of nationalism in the new states; the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia; the highly unstable new states and their drive to dominate Soviet troops stationed within their territorial boundaries. Russia's role as a great power is imperative in maintaining global peace and acting as a stabilizing force in the area, as it was throughout the Cold War era. Reemergence of morality in Russian politics is the main success of Yeltsin's government, yet what alarms the authors most of all is the immoral treatment of ethnic minorities within the breakaway republics. The West is urged to make relations with these countries contingent upon this issue. As for the future, though prospects for a comprehensive collective security structure encompassing all new states is not realistic, regional alliances based on mutual interests are likely to surface.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-37
Author(s):  
TEKEREK MELTEM ◽  

Cinema had been found at the end of the 19th century. The first cinema shows in the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire had been held in 1896. Since the beginning of the 20th century, cinema, which was an effective tool in propaganda, had some experiences until the end of the First World War. After the war, developments in international relations brought Turkey and Soviet Russia closer together. Thus, good relations that started in 1919 will have been continued for a long time. During this period, cinema was used by the Bolsheviks in Russia about realizing the objectives of the regime, and this experience affected Turkey. Therefore, one of the issues which mentioned in the relations between the two countries was the cinema. Turkey wanted to benefit from propaganda and indoctrination power of cinema in Atatürk period dominated by the friendly relations between the two countries. This study aims to examine how cinema reflected on the relations between the two countries during the Atatürk period. It has been seen that cinema had an important status in relations between Turkey and Soviet Russia. The interaction on cinema started in the 1920s and continued in the 1930s. Although the cooperation continued between the two countries about the cinema, Turkey had been sensitive to any threat to the regime which could be coming from the Soviet Union in this process.


2019 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 260-275
Author(s):  
Victor V.  Aksyuchits

In the article the author studies the formation process of Russian intelligentsia analyzing its «birth marks», such as nihilism, estrangement from native soil, West orientation, infatuation with radical political ideas, Russophobia. The author examines the causes of political radicalization of Russian intelligentsia that grew swiftly at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries and played an important role in the Russian revolution of 1917.


2018 ◽  
pp. 550-563
Author(s):  
Daniel Sawert ◽  

The article assesses archival materials on the festival movement in the Soviet Union in 1950s, including its peak, the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students held in 1957 in Moscow. Even now the Moscow festival is seen in the context of international cultural politics of the Cold War and as a unique event for the Soviet Union. The article is to put the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in the context of other youth festivals held in the Soviet Union. The festivals of 1950s provided a field for political, social, and cultural experiments. They also have been the crucible of a new way of communication and a new language of design. Furthermore, festivals reflected the new (althogh relative) liberalism in the Soviet Union. This liberalism, first of all, was expressed in the fact that festivals were organized by the Komsomol and other Soviet public and cultural organisations. Taking the role of these organisations into consideration, the research draws on the documents of the Ministry of culture, the All-Russian Stage Society, as well as personal documents of the artists. Furthermore, the author has gained access to new archive materials, which have until now been part of no research, such as documents of the N. Krupskaya Central Culture and Art Center and of the central committees of various artistic trade unions. These documents confirm the hypothesis that the festivals provided the Komsomol and the Communist party with a means to solve various social, educational, and cultural problems. For instance, in Central Asia with its partiarchal society, the festivals focuced on female emancipation. In rural Central Asia, as well as in other non-russian parts of the Soviet Union, there co-existed different ways of celebrating. Local traditions intermingled with cultural standards prescribed by Moscow. At the first glance, the modernisation of the Soviet society was succesful. The youth acquired political and cultural level that allowed the Soviet state to compete with the West during the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students. During the festival, however, it became apparent, that the Soviet cultural scheme no longer met the dictates of times. Archival documents show that after the Festival cultural and party officials agreed to ease off dogmatism and to tolerate some of the foreign cultural phenomena.


This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.


Author(s):  
Victoria M. Grieve

The Cold War experiences of America’s schoolchildren are often summed up by quick references to “duck and cover,” a problematic simplification that reduces children to victims in need of government protection. By looking at a variety of school experiences—classroom instruction, federal and voluntary programs, civil defense and opposition to it, as well as world friendship outreach—it is clear that children experienced the Cold War in their schools in many ways. Although civil defense was ingrained in the daily school experiences of Cold War kids, so, too, were fitness tests, atomic science, and art exchange programs. Global competition with the Soviet Union changed the way children learned, from science and math classes to history and citizenship training. Understanding the complexity of American students’ experiences strengthens our ability to decipher the meaning of the Cold War for American youth and its impact on the politics of the 1960s.


Author(s):  
Anne Searcy

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.


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