Troubleshooters, Political Machines, and Moscow's Regional Control

Slavic Review ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-358
Author(s):  
John Willerton ◽  
William Reisinger
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Regional Control ◽  
Political Reforms ◽  
Political Machines ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Leaders

Since the beginning of Soviet power, national leaders have been concerned with controlling the diverse regions that make up the Soviet Union. They have used many means, including coercion, to extend their influence over the localities. Lower-level party officials, especially regional first secretaries, have been crucial links between the national regime and the periphery. These officials juggle a complex set of political and economic responsibilities and must safeguard a region's political stability, while applying national directives. They oversee the economic life of their bailiwick and attempt to enhance its productivity. Recruiting and elevating these lower-level officials is critical to maintaining national influence in the regions; the 1988-1990 political reforms have not changed this method.

Confronting Soviet Power: U.S. Policy during the Early Cold War

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 151-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Avey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Distribution Of Power

Many self-identified realist, liberal, and constructivist scholars contend that ideology played a critical role in generating and shaping the United States' decision to confront the Soviet Union in the early Cold War. A close look at the history reveals that these ideological arguments fail to explain key aspects of U.S. policy. Contrary to ideological explanations, the United States initially sought to cooperate with the Soviet Union, did not initially pressure communist groups outside the Soviet orbit, and later sought to engage communist groups that promised to undermine Soviet power. The U.S. decision to confront the Soviets stemmed instead from the distribution of power. U.S. policy shifted toward a confrontational approach as the balance of power in Eurasia tilted in favor of the Soviet Union. In addition, U.S. leaders tended to think and act in a manner consistent with balance of power logic. The primacy of power over ideology in U.S. policymaking—given the strong liberal tradition in the United States and the large differences between U.S. and Soviet ideology—suggests that relative power concerns are the most important factors in generating and shaping confrontational foreign policies.

The Soviet Union's Secret Diplomacy Concerning the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1924–1925

1994 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 459-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Elleman
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
The South ◽  
Soviet Authority ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Majority Control ◽  
Beijing Government

Following the october revolution, the Soviet Union regained majority control over the strategically located Chinese Eastern Railway, which ran through Manchuria, by signing two previously unpublished secret agreements: the first with the Beijing government on May 31, 1924, and the second with Zhang Zuolin's government in Manchuria on September 20, 1924. These secret agreements were signed despite the Soviet government's repeated promise that it would never resort to secret diplomacy. The Soviet Union also renewed control over the Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway despite a 1919 Soviet manifesto promising that this railway would be turned over to China without compensation. To consolidate Soviet power over this railway, the USSR then signed the January 20, 1925, convention with Japan that recognized Japan's authority over the South Manchurian Railway in return for Japan's acquiescence to full Soviet authority over the Chinese Eastern Railway.

Stalin’s Dilemma

2012 ◽  
pp. 965-990
Author(s):  
Edward Bever
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Educational Game ◽  
Military Effectiveness ◽  
Design Development ◽  
Simulation Games ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Complex Design ◽  
Human Cost ◽  
Historical Levels

Stalin’s Dilemma is an educational game that simulates the industrialization of the Soviet Union during the three Five Year Plans between 1928 and 1942 (Bever, 2000). The goal of the game is to reach or exceed the historical levels of industrial capacity, military effectiveness, and political stability in order to prepare the country to repel an attack by Nazi Germany, but with less human cost than was inflicted by Josef Stalin. This chapter describes the game and discusses its design, development, and use in various educational settings and structures. Its goal is to convey insights and lessons that can be applied to future development and employment of other instructional simulation games. The primary conclusions are the need to support a complex design with extensive player aids and to harness students’ competitiveness and ambition by directly connecting performance in the game to performance in the course.

Regionalism or Clientelism?

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 50-71
Author(s):  
Clayton Black
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Western Historiography

Abstract This article examines the Leningrad Opposition of 1925 not so much as a regionally based schism in the party opposed to Stalin’s increasing monopoly of power, but rather as a cohesive expression of the city’s frustration with NEP and the economic hardships it imposed on the most industrialized city in the Soviet Union in the first seven years of Soviet power. Contrary to Western historiography on the Opposition, Zinoviev did not so much lead as align with the city’s leaders.

Political Affinities and Maneuvering of Soviet Political Elites: Heorhii Shevel and Ukraine’s Ministry of Strange Affairs in the 1970s

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-411
Author(s):  
Olga Bertelsen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Institution

AbstractThis article examines the goals and practices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ukraine in the 1970s, a Soviet institution that functioned as an ideological organ fighting against Ukrainian nationalists domestically and abroad. The central figure of this article is Heorhii Shevel who governed the Ministry from 1970 to 1980 and whose tactics, strategies, and practices reveal the existence of a distinct phenomenon in the Soviet Union—the nationally conscious political elite with double loyalties who, by action or inaction, expanded the space of nationalism in Ukraine. This research illuminates a paradox of pervasive Soviet power, which produced an institution that supported and reinforced Soviet “anti-nationalist” ideology, simultaneously creating an environment where heterodox views or sentiments were stimulated and nurtured.

An Average Azeri Village (1930): Remembering Rebellion in the Caucasus Mountains

Slavic Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 705-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Grant
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Rule ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Caucasus Mountains

In this article, Bruce Grant advocates an anthropological perspective for understanding resistance to early Soviet rule, given that not all anti-Soviet rebellions operated by the same cultural logic. Combining oral histories and archival evidence to reconstruct highly charged events in rural northwest Azerbaijan, where as many as 10,000 men and women joined to overthrow Soviet power in favor of an Islamic republic in 1930, Grant examines moral archetypes of banditry, religious frames of Caucasus life, magical mobility, and images of early nationalist struggle against communism. Exploring what it means to have been “average” in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, Grant invites readers to consider classic narrative framings of periods of great tumult.

“Reenacting the Story of Tantalus”: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Failed Rhetoric of Liberation

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Tudda
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's publicly declared goal to achieve the “liberation” of Eastern Europe, a goal that they claimed would replace the Truman administration's “passive” containment policy.But the evidence shows that Eisenhower and Dulles were unwilling to risk war with the Soviet Union and believed that liberation, if actually pursued, would induce the Soviet Union to react violently to perceived threats in Eastern Europe. Hence, in top-secret meetings and conversations, Eisenhower and Dulles rejected military liberation, despite their public pronouncements. Instead, they secretly pursued a tricky, risky, and long-term strategy of radio broadcasts and covert action designed to erode, rather than overthrow, Soviet power in Eastern Europe. In public, they continued to embrace liberation policy even when confronted with testimony from U.S. allies that the rhetorical diplomacy of liberation had not worked. This reliance on rhetoric failed to deter the Soviet Union from quashing rebellions in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956. If anything, the Eisenhower administration's rhetorical liberation policy may have encouraged, at least to some degree, these revolts.

The Oil Deal: Nariman Narimanov and the Sovietization of Azerbaijan

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-394
Author(s):  
Sara Brinegar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
The South ◽  
South Caucasus ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Russia

This essay, with a focus on Baku, Azerbaijan, demonstrates that the need to secure and hold energy resources—and the infrastructures that support them—was critical to the formation of the Soviet Union. The Azerbaijani statesman Nariman Narimanov played a pivotal role in the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan by attempting to use Baku's oil to secure prerogatives for the Azerbaijan SSR. In part, Narimanov gained his position by striking a deal with Vladimir Lenin in 1920, an arrangement that I am calling the oil deal. This deal lay the foundations of Soviet power in the south Caucasus. Lenin charged Narimanov with facilitating connections between the industrial stronghold of Baku and the rural countryside of Azerbaijan and Narimanov agreed to do what he could to help supply Soviet Russia with oil. Lenin put Narimanov in charge of the Soviet government of Azerbaijan, with the understanding that he would be granted significant leeway in cultural policies. Understanding the role of the south Caucasus in Soviet history, then, is also understanding how the extraction and use of oil and other natural resources were entangled with more familiar questions of nationalities policy and identity politics.

The Soviet drifting station SP-3, 1954–55

Polar Record ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 8 (54) ◽  
pp. 222-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. F. Treshnikov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
European Part ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Arctic Seas ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Barents And Kara Seas

In the early years of Soviet power, expeditions to the Barents and Kara Seas were organized, and this laid the foundations of navigation between the European part of the Soviet Union and the Siberian rivers Ob' and Yenisey. In the course of these voyages great quantities of goods were carried across the Arctic seas, which were to become important in the country's economy.

The Security Service for Chinese Central Leaders

1995 ◽  
Vol 143 ◽  
pp. 814-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Secret Service ◽  
Security Service ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Leaders ◽  
Treasury Department ◽  
Specialized Organization

National leaders need security protection against political assassinations, espionage, terrorism and many other dangers, and therefore almost every country has a specialized organization to provide such protection. In the United States, the President is protected by the Secret Service of the Treasury Department, and in the Soviet Union, the Kremlin denizens were guarded by the Ninth Directorate of the KGB. The Chinese security system for the top leadership, consisting mainly of the Central Security Bureau in Zhongnanhai, is however distinctive in several respects. Institutionally it has a peculiarly complex set of arrangements which result in some puzzling divisions of responsibilities. It also relies heavily on a military detachment, Unit 8341. Above all, the Chinese central security apparatus can, and does, play a more active and indispensable political role than is common in other countries.

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