scholarly journals THE CULTURAL COMPONENT OF DIPLOMATIC RECEPTIONS IN THE USSR (1941–1945)

10.23856/4223 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 174-180
Author(s):  
Oksana Zakharova

An important component of the foreign policy activity of state, public and political figures is participation in official government receptions that have informative and communicative functions. The repertoire policy of concert programs of diplomatic receptions built in such a way not only to inform about state priorities in the field of culture, but also to create a special socio-cultural environment conducive to constructive communication. The researcher analyzed the content of concert programs of government receptions, which organized during the visits to the Soviet Union by W. Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, I.B. Tito. The researcher describes a festive reception at the Reception House of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs on Spiridonovka in Moscow on November 7, 1943, which organized in honor of the anniversary of the October Revolution, with the participation of the diplomatic corps, political and military elite, literary and art workers. Studying the Soviet diplomatic protocol during this period expands our knowledge not only in the field of the history of diplomatic relations, but also allows us to judge the peculiarities of the development of Soviet culture, its dependence on the tastes of the leaders and party ideology. The materials of the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation (Fund 057 – “Protocol Department”) used as sources.

2021 ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Yinan Li

In 2009, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and President of Georgia E.A. Shevardnadze published his memoirs in Russian, which contain an “explosive” plot: while visiting China in February 1989, during his meeting with Deng Xiaoping, a lengthy dispute over border and territorial issues occurred. At that time, Deng allegedly expressed his point of view that vast lands of the Soviet Union, from three to four million square kilometers, belonged to China. Chinese can wait patiently until someday the lands return to China. This content is cited in scientific works by many historians from different countries as an argument. However, there is no other evidence which can prove this recollection. Many details in it contradict the well known historical facts or are completely illogical. There is a good reason to believe that the plot in the memoirs of Shevardnadze is an incorrect recollection. It could even be considered as a made-up story. Moreover, it is possible that it was fabricated for some reasons. Hence, the plot is not worthy of being quoted as a reliable source. At the Sino-Soviet summit Deng Xiaoping did have expressed the point of view that in the past Russia and then the Soviet Union cut off millions of square kilometers of land from China, but at the same time he promised the leader of the Soviet Union that China would not make territorial claims. Since the mid-1980s Deng Xiaoping actively promoted the settlement of the Sino-Soviet border issues through negotiations, which led to the result that 99% of the border between Russia and China was delimited on a legal basis in the last years of his life. At present, the problems of the Sino-Russian border have been finally resolved long ago. There is no doubt that the scientific research and discussions on issues related to territory and borders in the history of Sino-Soviet relations can be made. However, such research and discussions should be based on reliable sources.


Author(s):  
Tacinur Akça

The Eurasian Countries incorporates many economic and cultural wealth. The Eurasian countries have attracted attention all over the world with its rich oil and natural gas reserves and geopolitical situation. Due to the increasing importance of the Eurasian countries, as well as being an alternative to a political foreign policy and it has created an economically viable alternative in terms of foreign trade for Turkey. The importance of exports is increasing for the development of Turkey and Eurasia cannot be neglected as an important issue. History of the republic's foreign policy is focused on establishing good relations with the West. Of the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended after the opening of the new Turkish foreign policy became inevitable to be based in Central Asia and the Caucasus, Turkey aimed to be active in this region. The main purpose of our study was that Turkey's foreign trade with The Eurasian Countries is to reveal the relationship. The interest in the region began in the beginning of 1990, the economic policies implemented by Turkey has tried to analyze using relevant data. İn our study, in order to analyze the economic relationship between our countries and Eurasian Countries, Turkey's import and export figures which were explained in the form of tables with the countries concerned. We will concentrate on the major Eurasian countries, especially in our work we focus on Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova.


Author(s):  
Albert Resis

The precise function that Marxist-Leninist ideology serves in the formation and conduct of Soviet foreign policy remains a highly contentious question among Western scholars. In the first postwar year, however, few senior officials or Soviet specialists in the West doubted that Communist ideology served as the constitutive element of Soviet foreign policy. Indeed, the militant revival of Marxism-Leninism after the Kremlin had downplayed it during 'The Great Patriotic War" proved to be an important factor in the complex of causes that led to the breakup of the Grand Alliance. Moscow's revival of that ideology in 1945 prompted numerous top-level Western leaders and observers to regard it as heralding a new wave of Soviet world-revolutionary messianism and expansionism. Many American and British officials were even alarmed by the claim, renewed, for example, in Moscow's official History of Diplomacy, that Soviet diplomacy possessed a "scientific theory," a "weapon" possessed by none of its rivals or opponents. This "weapon," Marxism-Leninism, Moscow ominously boasted, enabled Soviet leaders to comprehend, foresee, and master the course of international affairs, smoothing the way for Soviet diplomacy to make exceptional gains since 1917. Now, in the postwar period, Stalinist diplomacy opened before the Soviet Union "boundlesshorizons and the most majestic prospects."


Slavic Review ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 614-630
Author(s):  
Jan S. Adams

Historically, leaders of the Soviet Union have shown extraordinary faith in the power of bureaucratic reorganization to solve political problems. The 1985-1987 restaffing and restructuring of the foreign policy establishment indicate that Mikhail Gorbachev shares this faith. In the first sixteen months of his leadership, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs replaced its minister, two first deputy ministers, seven deputy ministers, a third of all Soviet ambassadors, and created four new departments. In addition, important changes were made in the central party apparat, affecting three of the CPSU Central Committee departments: The International Information Department was abolished. The Propaganda Department gained added prominence in international affairs with the appointment of a new chief, Aleksandr Iakovlev, who began playing a conspicuous role as Gorbachev's advisor at international conferences even before his elevation to the Politburo in January 1987. Of great significance for the Soviet foreign policy establishment as a whole, the International Department (ID) was given new leadership, a new arms control unit, and expanded missions.


Author(s):  
Susan Cannon Harris

Sean O’Casey came to see the Soviet Union as a market for the kind of ideologically-committed and antirealist drama that neither the Abbey Theatre’s directors nor London’s commercial producers wanted. Many of the plays O’Casey wrote after his move to England in 1928 become legible only in the context of the history charted during this book’s first four chapters, the Stalinised British left organizations with which O’Casey worked, and the genre of socialist realism. Investigating the genesis and performance history of O’Casey’s 1939 Communist play The Star Turns Red, this chapter shows how O’Casey’s post-realist aesthetic derives from the literary tradition of queer socialism, which reached him through Shelley and Larkin. Analyzing O’Casey’s nondramatic writing about and for the Soviet Union as well as his American supporters’ insistence that he remained artistically independent of Soviet ideologies about literature, this chapter shows that O’Casey’s ambivalence about British left culture masks an unbounded admiration of the kind of proletarian literature which O’Casey believed – thanks to his limited and misleading contact with it – was represented by socialist realism. O’Casey was also strongly drawn to the heroic and heterosexual masculinity cultivated by official Soviet culture.


Author(s):  
T. Nosenko

The article deals with preconditions and implications of a major event in the history of international relations of our country, namely – the restoration of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Israel. This development, which took place in 1989, on the eve of the demise of the Soviet Union, must be viewed as a result of the general review of the whole system of interstate relationships that had dominated Moscow’s foreign policy for decades. It was part of a major change destined to restructure Russia’s role in the world community.


Slavic Review ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-397
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Veidlinger

The history of the Soviet Yiddish State Theater (Gosudarstvennyi evreiskii teatr, or Goset) provides an illuminating glimpse into the life of Jewish entertainers and the position of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. While Solomon Mikhoels, the theater's star actor and director from 1929 until 1949, is well known for his role in chairing the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II, and for becoming the first victim of Stalin's anti-Semitic purges with his 1948 execution, little research has been conducted on the theater to which he dedicated his life. Art and theater historians have evaluated the theater's aesthetic approach to selected productions, and Mikhoels's contemporaries have provided anecdotal glimpses into that artist's life by writing biographies of him, but there has not yet been an attempt to assess the theater's relationship to the state during its heyday or to place the theater within the context of Soviet culture of the 1920s.


Author(s):  
Uladzimir Snapkouski ◽  

The article examines the main directions of activity and forms of interaction between the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Belarusian SSR in the UN and its specialized institutions during the years of perestroika (1985 - 1991). To disclose the topic, materials from the journal “International Affair” were used (reviews of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the foreign policy of the USSR, articles by the foreign ministers of the Union republics, primarily Ukraine and Belarus), book and journal publications of Union / Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian scientists, documents of the United Nations and foreign policy of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Belarusian SSR. The author’s conscious emphasis on the union level reflects the real situation in relations between the Union Center and the republics in the Soviet federation during the perestroika period, when these relations rapidly evolved from the foreign policy dictate of the Center to greater autonomy of the republics in the international arena, which ultimately has led to the collapse of the USSR and the proclamation of independence all union republics. The article analyzes such issues as the new approach of the Soviet Union to the UN in the years of perestroika, the formation of new relations between the Union republics and the Center, diplomatic cooperation of Soviet delegations and representatives of socialist countries in the UN, Belarusian initiatives at the 45th session of the UN General Assembly (1990). During the years of perestroika, the Soviet leadership and the union Foreign Ministry did a tremendous job of clearing the rubble of the Cold War, developing broad international cooperation and integration the USSR into the world economy. The Belarusian and Ukrainian diplomatic services have made a significant contribution to this activity within the framework of the UN and its specialized agencies and have received much broader opportunities for realizing the national interests and needs of their peoples within the framework of radically renewed relations between the Union Center and the republics. The article is one of the first attempts in post-Soviet historiography to investigate the activities of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the BSSR in the UN and its specialized institutions during the period of perestroika


Worldview ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-21
Author(s):  
Anne Fried

Senior editor Arnaud de Borchgrave of Newsweek writes (July 10,1972):Today, Western Europe is a collection of nations united only in disunity. Within the last month, I have spoken with more than a dozen of the top foreign policy planners in Europe. Never before have I seen them so gloomy; never before haye I heard so much talk about Europe's confusion and disarray. “The spectacle we are presenting to the world,” one expert told me, “is truly lamentable.” It is more than lamentable; it is highly dangerous. For Western Europe faces the threat of “Finlandization”— which is to say, of finding itself effectively dominated, so far as foreign affairs are concerned, by the Soviet Union.


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