scholarly journals NKVD bodies of Khabarovsk Krai during the final stage of World War II and the first post-war period (June–December 1945)

Author(s):  
Aleksandr V. Zhadan

The article is devoted to the currently little-studied topic which is the influence of the political and socio-economic processes of the final stage of the World War II on the activities of the Khabarovsk Krai NKVD organs. The study was based on the archival documents related to the work of the NKVD organs of the Far East in the second half of 1945. The collections of documents stored in the departmental archive and information center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Khabarovsk Krai constituted the source base of the research. Most of the archival sources used by the author are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The techniques of historical criminological analysis were applied in the process of research. The author considered the peculiarities of the transition of law enforcement agencies of Khabarovsk Krai to work under martial law connected with the events of the Soviet-Japanese war; structural transformations of the first post-war period, including the formation of new territorial bodies in South Sakhalin; activities in combating crime and protecting public order. It is concluded that the geopolitical events in the region and the internal social processes of the period under study demanded that the NKVD of Khabarovsk Krai not only strengthen the traditional activities to combat crime and protect law and order but also organize work in a number of new areas. The study of archival documents showed that the internal affairs bodies paid considerable attention to the organization of civil defense and the protection of population from possible attacks by Japanese aircraft during that period. Assessing the effectiveness of the activities of the territorial bodies of the Khabarovsk Krai NKVD in the period between June and December of 1945, the author concludes that despite a number of difficulties which were largely caused by the problems connected with personnel and logistics, the internal affairs bodies managed to ensure public safety and law and order in the front-line region and to prevent criminal excesses (outbreaks of banditry, group escapes or prisoner riots, etc.) and sabotage at strategically important facilities.

Author(s):  
Olga I. Aganson ◽  

The research analyzes Britain’s approaches to the post-war arrangement of the political space of Southeastern Europe at the final stage of World War II. In an effort to maintain its status as a global power, Great Britain took an active part in developing the foundations of a new world order. British strategic planning paid special attention to the Balkan region, where British interests traditionally clashed with the Russian/Soviet ones. The author tries to trace the elements of continuity and variability in British policy in the Balkans. This will enable us to get a more nuanced understanding of the new balance of forces in the region, one of the main manifestations of which was the extinction of the «Balkan polyphony».


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-70
Author(s):  
A. D. Popova

The article features the causes of the crime rate increase that occurred in the Soviet Union after World War II. The author studied archival documents of the Chief Department of Gang Prevention, as well as memoirs written by militia officers and common citizens. The increase in gangsterism and crime in general presented a serious challenge for the country that had just won the most terrible war in human history. The author managed to define two major causes of crime rate increase in the post-war years. The first was poverty, homeless children, substandard living conditions, and poor organization of public leisure time. The second included nationalist movements in some ethnic regions, uncontrolled weapon possession, and numerous largescale Bills of Oblivion. The post-war crime rate increase had complex causes and was a serious challenge for militia officers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-567
Author(s):  
Alexander V. Zhadan

This article examines the causes and conditions of the aggravation of the criminal situation in the Far East in the second half of 1945 and the historical experience of local NKVD (Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs) bodies in maintaining law and order under the conditions of the Soviet-Japanese war and the first post-war period. Based on the analysis of the documentation of the NKVD departments of Primorye and Khabarovsk territories, including internal administrative documents (orders, plans, etc.), as well as materials of primary party organizations (minutes of party meetings, certificates, memos, etc.), the author draws conclusions about the development of the criminal situation in the region, and discusses the NKVDs ways and directions to ensure law and order. Studying the stated problems, it was possible not only to state the presence of negative dynamics in the number and severity of criminal manifestations, but also to establish that the criminal crisis of the second half of 1945 was caused by the imposition of new socio-economic and political factors (including the amnesty for prisoners, the relocation of large masses of troops, the Soviet-Japanese war, the placement of prisoners of war, demobilization) on the already difficult criminal situation that had developed during the Great Patriotic War. The study largely confirmed the fact repeatedly noted in historiography about the impact of personnel starvation and problems of material support on the effectiveness of the NKVD in the war and post-war period. The archival documents show that the main ways to normalize the operational situation in the Far East region were measures concerning organizational work and operational-search activities, as well as control-methodical and administrative measures. The author concludes that the measures taken allowed the NKVD of the Far East to reverse the explosive growth of serious street crime by the end of 1945. However, this success was only partial - the overall level of criminal activity in the region continued to remain at a fairly high level for several post-war years.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 268-271
Author(s):  
Larisa E. Gorelova ◽  
Vera N. Shelkova

The article is devoted to the problems of the maternity and childhood welfare services recovery in the USSR in the second half of the 40s. of XX century. It shows the contribution of medical scientific institutions in the training of pediatric professionals.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-84
Author(s):  
I. E. Magadeev

The paper examines how military and political leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain assessed in the first post-war years and in the face of emerging bipolar world order the lessons of World War II, how the latter influenced their strategic planning and forecasts with the emergence of nuclear weapons. The author outlines the key features of this period (1945–1949), including still fresh memories of the unprecedented destruction and losses of the past war, the US ‘nuclear monopoly’, and the absence of a system for nuclear deterrence. The paper provides a systematic comparison of lessons from the past war, learnt by the Soviet, the US and British establishment, identifies similarities and differences between them. The author concludes that WWII was perceived by the political and military leaders of that time as a model of the eventual ‘great war’ in the future, which almost certainly would be ‘total’ and ‘global’ in scope and would demand both thorough preparations during the peacetime and the militarization of civil life. Indeed, the experience of WWII had greatly influenced the strategic and operational planning in the USSR, the USA and Great Britain in 1945–1949. Moscow prepared to face the potential aggression on its Western borders or in the Far East in order to avoid the mistakes of 1941. In Washington the decisionmakers acknowledged the Soviet superiority in conventional weapons and didn’t exclude the possibility that the Soviet Army could quickly establish control over the Western Europe and that the US military would have to retake it in a ‘new Operation Overlord’. The pessimistic outlook of the ‘defense of the Rhine’ was also shared in London, and the British military planned to evacuate the troops to the British Isles (‘shadow of Dunkirk’) and to focus on strategic bombing of the USSR and its allies. Even the appearance of nuclear weapons, that would dramatically alter the strategic context in the following years, played a relatively minor role in 1945–1949. The author concludes that the shadow of World War II and its lessons had a long-lasting effect on the post-war international relations.


2008 ◽  
pp. 177-205
Author(s):  
Adam Kopciowski

In the early years following World War II, the Lublin region was one of the most important centres of Jewish life. At the same time, during 1944-1946 it was the scene of anti-Jewish incidents: from anti-Semitic propaganda, accusation of ritual murder, economic boycott, to cases of individual or collective murder. The wave of anti-Jewish that lasted until autumn of 1946 resulted in a lengthy and, no doubt incomplete, list of 118 murdered Jews. Escalating anti-Jewish violence in the immediate post-war years was one of the main factors, albeit not the only one, to affect the demography (mass emigration) and the socio-political condition of the Jewish population in the Lublin region


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
David Ramiro Troitino ◽  
Tanel Kerikmae ◽  
Olga Shumilo

This article highlights the role of Charles de Gaulle in the history of united post-war Europe, his approaches to the internal and foreign French policies, also vetoing the membership of the United Kingdom in the European Community. The authors describe the emergence of De Gaulle as a politician, his uneasy relationship with Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II, also the roots of developing a “nationalistic” approach to regional policy after the end of the war. The article also considers the emergence of the Common Agricultural Policy (hereinafter - CAP), one of Charles de Gaulle’s biggest achievements in foreign policy, and the reasons for the Fouchet Plan defeat.


Author(s):  
Christel Lane

This chapter analyses inns, taverns, and public houses in their social context, exploring their organizational identity and the social positions of their owners/tenants. It examines how patrons express their class, gender, and national identity by participation in different kinds of sociality. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hostelries afforded more opportunities for cross-class sociability than in later centuries. Social mixing was facilitated because the venues fulfilled multiple economic, social, and political functions, thereby providing room for social interaction apart from communal drinking and eating. Yet, even in these earlier centuries, each type of hostelry already had a distinctive class character, shaping its organizational identity. Division along lines of class hardened, and social segregation increased in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, up to World War II. In the post-War era, increased democratization of society at large became reflected in easier social mixing in pubs. Despite this democratization, during the late twentieth century the dominant image of pubs as a working-class institution persisted.


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