scholarly journals Religious Diplomacy of the Soviet Unionduring the Cold War (the Time of N.S. Khrushchev and L.I. Brezhnev)

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 130-149
Author(s):  
N. A. BELYAKOVA ◽  
N. Yu. PIVOVAROV
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Line Material ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
The Cold War

This article will be consider the main areas of cooperation between Soviet departments and religious organizations in international politics from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. Contacts of the representatives of the churches of the USSR steadily expanded in geographical and religious terms at that time. The article shows that the establishment of contacts under the religious line, material support and promotion of international relations of religious organizations of the USSR were part of “people’s democracy”. This was used as “soft power” to spread the Soviet ideological project. Religious diplomacy contributed to the reduction of international tension, was a channel of alternative relations between the two opposing superpowers in a bipolar world. At the same time, the Soviet Union continued the ideological struggle against religion and its institutions, and the socially significant activities of Soviet religious leaders were addressed only to foreign audiences.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

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.

Soviet reform and the end of the Cold War: explaining large-scale historical change

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney ◽  
G. John Ikenberry
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Theoretical Issues

IntroductionAfter years of retirement in the academy, macro’historical commentary on contemporary events has returned to fashion. Radical domestic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and new patterns ofEast’West relations-in short, the collapse of communism and the end othe Cold War’mark the end of an era and present an invitation to international theorizing.1 Few would deny that these changes are momentous, but there is little consensus concerning their origins, trajectory, and implications. Explaining these events will necessitate a reweighing of fundamental theoretical issues. Thesize and speed of these changes were largely unexpected,reminding us how primitive our theories really are and encouraging us to broaden our theoretical perspective. To capture these events, theorists must reach across the disciplinary divides of Sovietology, international relations theory political economy, and political sociology.

scholarly journals Edward Hallett Carr: Historical Realism and the Liberal Tradition

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Freeland Duke
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The Cold War

The works of Edward Hallett Carr represent an important contribution to the historiography of Soviet Russia and to the study of international relations in general. Yet his work is often dismissed, primarily because Carr was considered 'ideologically unsound,' that is, a Stalinist. This essay examines the validity of that charge and concludes instead that Carr was in fact firmly realistic in his writings on the Soviet Union and on international relations. In the case of the Soviet Union, this paper argues that Carr's realism produced works of balance and judgement in a period - the Cold War- when such characteristics were anathema to the historiography of the subject. In at least one of his works on international relations, The Twenty Years' Crisis, this realism represented a novel and revolutionary approach to the the subject.

scholarly journals The Opening Phase of the Struggle for Germany

Slavic Review ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-480
Author(s):  
Robert M. Slusser
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Opening Phase

Ever since the Berlin blockade of 1948 the attention of historians of modern and recent international relations has been engaged by the problem of how Germany and its capital, Berlin, came to be divided, first among the major powers of the anti-Hitler Grand Alliance—Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France—and then, in 1949, into two rival states, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. This problem lies at the heart of the much-debated question regarding the origins of the Cold War. This review article makes no pretense at being a comprehensive report on the literature of the German problem. My aim is, rather, to call attention to some recent contributions to the literature and place them in context.

The ‘New Cold War’ in ‘critical International Relations studies’

1986 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Kubalkova ◽  
A. A. Cruickshank
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
New Left ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Cold War

In the historiography of the Cold War a small but active group of American historians influenced by New Left radicalism rejected the view prevailing in the USA at the time in regard to the assignation of responsibility for the beginning and continuation of the Cold War.1 Although their reasoning took them along different routes and via different perceptions as to key dates and events, there were certain features all US revisionists had in common (some more generally recognized than others). Heavily involved as they were in the analysis of the US socio-economic system, the Soviet Union was largely left out of their concerns and it was the United States who had been found the ‘guilty’ party. The revisionists, of course inadvertently, corroborated Soviet conclusions, a fact gratefully acknowledged by Soviet writers.2

scholarly journals Vestlig journalistik i Østblokken under den kolde krig. Temaer, tilgange, teser

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 627
Author(s):  
Bent Boel
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship

Bent Boel: Western Journalism and Soviet Bloc Dissidents During the Cold War: Themes, Approaches, Theses The role of journalism in international relations is a field which increasingly is attracting scholars’ attention. Cold War history is no exception in that regard. This article tries to identify themes, approaches and theses in the emerging literature dealing with Western journalists’ role in the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. It more particularly discusses an issue which figures prominently in the new scholarship, namely the relationship between Western journalists and Soviet Bloc dissidents. Reflecting the bias of the literature, most examples draw on the Soviet case. The bulk of the literature on Cold War journalism discusses American (subsidiarily British) journalists in the Soviet Union and West German journalists in either the USSR or the GDR. As is shown in the article, a number of recent publications have contributed to our understanding of Western journalism in the Soviet Union and the GDR. They have, among other things, thrown new light on the working conditions of the journalists, their role as political actors, and in particular their relationship with Soviet Bloc dissidents. However, it also seems clear that we need substantially more research before we can draw firmer conclusions concerning these themes. An illustrative example could be the relationship between journalists and dissidents. One thesis developed in the new literature is that Western journalists developed a close relationship with Soviet dissidents in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To the extent that this is correct, it is an important finding, which to some degree relativizes the much celebrated impact of the so-called Helsinki process. However, it raises a number of questions. In particular, a number of contemporary testimonies point to a less homogeneous view of the Moscow correspondents: their reactions to the dissidents differed considerably and, presumably, so did their newspapers reports. And there are rather conflicting views on the attitudes of different groups of journalists. Such issues certainly deserve further investigation. In addition, a major problem with the existing literature is that it overwhelmingly focuses on the Soviet Union while ignoring other Soviet Bloc countries. Apart from the special case of West German journalism in the GDR, very little has been written about Western Journalism in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Still another lacuna is the analysis of the journalistic output and its reception. While there are studies of media coverage of specific issues, more thorough and larger studies are required if we are to understand the possible impact of the media on international relations in this period, including, as some claim, on the ending of the Cold War.

scholarly journals The Future of World Order: Building a Community of Common Destiny

2017 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 159-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Yakunin
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Common Destiny

This article briefly examines the political and ideological aspects of Western countries’ post-Cold War approach to the world order. The Western triumph in the Cold War is generally attributed to reasons that are largely erroneous. The ongoing crises in international relations reveal structural inconsistencies, which have been present in the United States’ foreign strategy since the collapse of the Soviet Union and have contributed to the subsequent erosion of the global order. The article analyzes the new trends of globalization resulting from the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It concludes that Russia and China have now largely recognized Washington’s failure to establish a unipolar world system and to legitimize it through various political and media mechanisms and techniques. It suggests that it is only through the solidary development that both China and Russia are currently championing with their recent grand integration initiatives that a more successful and sustainable multipolar world benefiting every nation on the planet can be built and maintained.

Two Cold Wars and why they ended differently

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-639
Author(s):  
ROBERT HUNT SPRINKLE
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
American History ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

Though usually assumed by scholars of international relations to have been one-of-a-kind, the Cold War—the global East-West rivalry that ended with the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union—resembled in many of its features an earlier match usually assumed by scholars of American history to have been entirely exceptional: the continental North-South rivalry that ended with the War Between the States. Each was a contest of ideologically ambitious, institutionally immiscible, and territorially extensionist socioeconomic systems. Each rivalry evolved a mechanism for the procrastination of conflict. In both cases this mechanism was initially deliberative—based on debate. It remained deliberative in the North-South case, which deteriorated from cooperation to catastrophe, but it switched from deliberative to confrontational—based on threat—in the East-West case, which ended in voluntary unilateral abandonment of ideology, institutions, and territory. The irony of the outcomes of these two rivalries, whose likelihoods of violent end would probably have been misranked at their respective midpoints, is discussed.

Introduction: Writing the History of Terrorism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carola Dietze
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Global History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter analyzes the most important trends in the writing of the history of terrorism since the beginning of terrorism research in the late nineteenth century up to today. It presents the origins of terrorism studies in Western social sciences and international relations, and it contextualizes the standard narrative of the history of terrorism put forward by the political scientists David C. Rapoport and Walter Laqueur. The chapter traces major developments in the history of terrorism in professional historiography in the Soviet Union or Russia as well as Europe and the United States during and after the Cold War, and especially since the attacks on September 11, 2001, and it outlines the results and effects of that historiography. On the basis of the evaluation of the scholarship available to date, the article maps out the rationale and the contours of the new global history of terrorism pursued in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism.

scholarly journals From the Soviet Union to Russia, the Fall and the Rise of an Empire

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Vjollca Mucaj ◽  
Pranvera Dibra
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Main Question ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Creation ◽  
International Role ◽  
The Cold War

The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War incited the beginning of a new World order of international relations and the creation of new actor roles in this new stage. In the last 25 years Russia’s role as a great power had a different context, from an empire in free fall to the revitalization of its international role. The main question this work asks is: Which is Russia’s position in the international arena after the disintegration of the Soviet Union? The answer to this question is given by researching under the prism of the creation of a new vision, around what Russia represents in two and a half decades and how its role is represented in a different context of international relations. It will be also researched on the perspective of Europe as an instrument to balance and obstruct the Russian expansion. The work will be based on the analysis of the archival information of the period of time. The methods of historical, logical and comparative analysis have been used, together with various literatures from different researchers and politician. This study aims to explain the forms and weaknesses of the regime and the causes which brought to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, in other words the causes of the fall of the communist bloc: Yeltsin’s presidency (1991-1999); Russia’s new context in the international arena and the role of the new actors will be explained: Putin’s presidency (1999-2008); and the explanation of the revival of Russia’s international role as a great power (2009-2014). This work also highlights the foreign policy, the alterations and the contradictory character of the leadership, the change of presidency between Putin and Medvedev and the problems with Ukraine and Crimea. With the fall of the communism, which incited the divide of the balances from the bipolarity of the Cold War, the changing economic world, in the midst of other alterations, presented a new equilibrium of power. As a descendent of the communist empire, Russia is fully convinced that it has the right of rebuilding of the empire through expansion. It also knows that the main part is not the will, but the ability. If it can, Russia will rebuild the destroyed empire through a constant expansionist policy. And if they can, the USA and the west will hinder the building of this empire.

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