Church Diplomacy in the Conditions of the Cold War: Directions of International Activity of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Period of Detente International Tension in the 1970s

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Alexey Beglov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Third World ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
International Activity ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

The article provides an overview of the international activities of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate during the 1970s. The following directions of church international activity are described: 1) Peacekeeping activities, and the transformation of the USSR into a springboard for interreligious efforts to limit the arms race and reduce the nuclear threat. Throughout the 1970s, the USSR positioned itself as a platform for dialogue on the problems of peacemaking, not only inter-Christian, but also inter-religious; 2) Building a new system of relations with the Orthodox and Ancient Eastern Churches, which acquired new significance in connection with the transfer of the confrontation between the two superpowers to the countries of the third world; 3) Participation in the work of international religious institutions, which in the 1970s became important actors in the process of defusing international tension and the Helsinki process. The Russian Church to some extent became an element of the Soviet “soft power” in the conditions of the detente of the 1970s, was one of the actors in the detente of international tension as much as it was possible in the context of the Soviet bureaucratic system.

Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Religious Diplomacy of USSR during the Cold War

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8 (106)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Victoria Gerasimova
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
The Cold War

The paper deals with the issue of organization of pilgrimage trips of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to the Holy Land (Israel and Jordan) during the Cold War Era. The author argues that a number of foreign policy factors (primarily the struggle for Russian property and the tension of Soviet-Israeli relations) led to the opening of the opportunity to make Orthodox pilgrimage trips from the USSR to the Holy Land. The paper provides evidence that the Soviet government considered the possibility of regular dispatch of groups of Soviet pilgrims from among the “clergy and laity” already in 1956, whereas in reality the first group went only in 1964. Archpriest Mikhail Zernov's project on the restoration of pilgrimage trips from the USSR to the Holy Land that has not been analyzed before is introduced into academic circulation. The author examines the specifics of the composition of the pilgrim groups, and a description of pilgrims' activities, as well as the perception of the role of pilgrims by Soviet officials. The author comes to the conclusion that the establishment of the practice of sending pilgrim groups through the ROC MP became one of the USSR's foreign policy instruments in the Middle East, which provided an alternative to traditional diplomacy.

From global to local and back: the ‘Third World’ concept and the new radical left in France

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kalter
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Third World ◽  
Global Dynamics ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
World Concept ◽  
Radical Left

AbstractIn the second half of the twentieth century, the transnational ‘Third World’ concept defined how people all over the globe perceived the world. This article explains the concept’s extraordinary traction by looking at the interplay of local uses and global contexts through which it emerged. Focusing on the particularly relevant setting of France, it examines the term’s invention in the context of the Cold War, development thinking, and decolonization. It then analyses the reviewPartisans(founded in 1961), which galvanized a new radical left in France and provided a platform for a communication about, but also with, the Third World. Finally, it shows how the association Cedetim (founded in 1967) addressed migrant workers in France as ‘the Third World at home’. In tracing the Third World’s local–global dynamics, this article suggests a praxis-oriented approach that goes beyond famous thinkers and texts and incorporates ‘lesser’ intellectuals and non-textual aspects into a global conceptual history in action.

Rethinking the Middle East and North Africa in the Cold War

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-319
Author(s):  
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Third World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History

The new Cold War history has begun to reshape the ways that international historians approach the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the post-1945 era. Rather than treating the region as exceptional, a number of scholars have sought to focus on the historical continuities and transnational connections between the Middle East and other areas of the Third World. This approach is based on the notion that the MENA region was enmeshed in the transnational webs of communication and exchange that characterized the post-1945 global system. Indeed, the region sat not only at the crossroads between Africa and the Eurasian landmass but also at the convergence of key global historical movements of the second half of the 20th century. Without denying cultural, social, and political elements that are indeed unique to the region, this scholarship has drawn attention to the continuities, connections, and parallels between the Middle Eastern experience and the wider world.

scholarly journals The Religious Factor in the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Russia and Belarus: Comparative Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
S. P. Dontsev ◽  
S. I. Boyko
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
Religious Factor ◽  
Historical Past

The article attempts to analyse the role of the religious factor in the formation and implementation of Politics of memory in modern Russia and Belarus. The urgency of work is caused by the increasing role of the religious factor in the politics of memory of the two States in the first decade of XXI century the research Objective — identify and similarities in the manifestations of the religious factor in the politics of memory of Russia and Belarus. For this purpose, we identified the subjects and mechanisms of interaction of state and religious institutions in the formation and implementation of memory policy. We showed that in Russia, religious organisations have a greater subjectivity in the politics of memory and can form a complementary discourse of memory and expand it at the expense of their system of interpretation of the past. As concerns the religious factor of the processes of political socialisation in the context of the policy of memory we revealed in the interaction of religious organisations of the two countries with the systems of public education and the armed forces. We concluded the similarity of the strategies of this interaction in Russia and Belarus. We showed that in both states, the selective interaction with religious organisations is carried out according to the criterion of their tradition. We also concluded that religious organisations do not form adversarial, but complementary channels of socialisation in the implementation of the state policy of memory. The process of creating a symbolic space and the possibility of participation of religious organisations, especially the Russian Orthodox Church, which is a key actor here, is also analysed. We also studied the religious factor of memory policy in the context of integration of Russia and Belarus. We concluded that the attempts to use it building the value basis of integration on the concepts of the collective historical past have not yet been successful, but such an opportunity remains.

6. Cold wars at home

2021 ◽  
pp. 102-119
Author(s):  
Robert J. McMahon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Third ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
State Relations ◽  
At Home

‘Cold wars at home’ highlights the domestic repercussions of the Cold War. The Cold War exerted so profound and so multi-faceted an impact on the structure of international politics and state-to-state relations that it has become customary to label the 1945–90 period ‘the Cold War era’. That designation becomes even more fitting when one considers the powerful mark that the Soviet–American struggle for world dominance and ideological supremacy left within many of the world’s nation-states. The Cold War of course affected the internal constellation of forces in the Third World, Europe, and the United States and impacted the process of decolonization, state formation, and Cold War geopolitics.

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