The Loan That Saved Russia?

2018 ◽  
pp. 55-84
Author(s):  
Hassan Malik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
Financial History ◽  
Historical Legacy ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
European Banking ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter focuses on the 1905 Revolution, underscoring the price Russia paid for the strategic errors discussed in the previous chapter, and stressing the important financial-historical legacy of this period within the broader story of the revolution. It shows that, given the precarious state in which the Tsarist government found itself at the time and the massive size of the Russian Government Loan of 1906, some began to refer to the deal as “the loan that saved Russia.” However, an examination of business and government documents from both the Russian and Western sides suggests that such an interpretation is overly generous. Based on materials in European banking archives as well as Russian sources, there is reason to question the idea that the 1906 loan played a stabilizing role, and to think of it instead as a deal that played a destabilizing role in Russia and even abroad in the long run. The loan did not just fail to resolve domestic political tensions, it in fact exacerbated them, exposed the regime to attacks from its enemies abroad, and likely contributed to the roots of the Panic of 1907—a seminal event in the financial history of the twentieth century.

The Civil Service

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon Bogdanor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Public Utilities ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines the history of the civil service in Great Britain. It suggests that the revolution in Whitehall during the last two decades of the twentieth century transformed the civil service, and that many of the public utilities nationalised by the post-war Attlee government were privatised. Other major changes include the reduction in the size of the civil service and the application of market disciplines to it.

The Long Space Age

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Space Exploration ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Private Funding ◽  
Large Space ◽  
Human Spaceflight ◽  
Long Run ◽  
History Of

The early years of the twenty-first century have seen the rise to prominence of private-sector American spaceflight. The result is a new phase of space development—one where human spaceflight is no longer the exclusive domain of governments, but an activity increasingly driven by the interests and motivations of individuals and corporations. In order to understand this phenomenon, we need to examine the long-run economic history of American space exploration. This book examines three critical phases of that history. The first phase is the financing and construction of American astronomical observatories from Colonial America to the middle of the twentieth century. The second is the career of Robert Goddard, the American father of liquid-fuel rocketry, whose efforts constituted the world’s first spaceflight development program. The third is the American political history of the Cold War ‘Space Race’ and subsequent NASA human spaceflight initiatives in the twentieth century. Examining these episodes from an economic perspective results in a new view of American space exploration—one where personal initiative and private funding have been dominant long-run trends, where the demand for impressive public signals has funded large space exploration projects across two centuries, and where government leadership in the field is a relatively recent phenomenon.

scholarly journals The Architect and the Revolution: Architectural Life in Russia in Times of Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilya Pechenkin ◽  
Yulia Starostenko ◽  
Anna Vyazemtseva
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Virtual Absence ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Special Studies ◽  
First World ◽  
The Revolution

When describing the history of twentieth-century Russian architecture, it is common to separate (and even oppose) the pre-revolutionary decades and the early Soviet period of the 1920s. Thus, the revolutionary months of 1917 proper have been completely overlooked by researchers as unworthy and capable of shaking the existing historiographical model. Such an approach, dictated by ideological considerations, is no longer justified today and requires revision. The study of periodicals of the second half of the 1910s and archival materials, a great number of which have not been introduced into academic circulation, convince us that the years of the First World War and the revolution were marked by significant changes in the minds of architects. Many things which had previously seemed fundamental for the collective identity of architects became subject to problematisation, and aesthetic categories were replaced by political criteria in the professional press. The architectural process started to be described by its participants in terms of struggle, while the self-identification of members of the architectural corporation lay between the search for survival tactics and taking part in the transformation of the country’s inner life. The novelty of the data presented in this article is due to the virtual absence of special studies devoted to this extremely important period in twentieth-century Russian architectural history.

Algorithm Machine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Broeckmann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of ◽  
Machine Art ◽  
Technical Systems ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Determining Factor

This chapter discusses the ways in which twentieth-century artists have engaged with the aesthetic dimensions of algorithms and machine autonomy. It extends the narrative on the history of machine art from the previous chapter, beyond the program of Hultén’s 1968 “Machine” exhibition. It explains how the dialogue between art and cybernetics has evolved from the 1950s cybernetic artworks of Nicolas Schöffer, through the 1968 exhibition “Cybernetic Serendipity” and Jack Burnham’s concept of Systems Aesthetics, to the more contemporary software and robotic artworks of Max Dean, Seiko Mikami, and others. A focus is placed on the work of Canadian artist David Rokeby who has explored the aesthetics of the human encounter and interaction with technical systems since the 1980s. The analysis aims at adding two further aspects of the aesthetics of machines to the list of five such aspects developed in the previous chapter: one is the aspect of “interactivity”, which adds the dimension of a charged dialogue and exchange between human and machine; and the other is the aspect of “machine autonomy”, which becomes a determining factor in the human experience of increasingly independent and self-referential technical systems.

Confrontation and Reconciliation: Mexicans and Spaniards During the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920

1984 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Mexican Spanish ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

When King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain completed a 1978 tour of Mexico, the occasion was naturally marked by sentimental rhetoric. President José Lóopez Portillo launched an official reconciliation when he visited Madrid the year before. Underlying the whole exercise, however, was a deep psychological resistance on the part of most Mexicans. The King attempted to emphasize to Mexicans the Spanish aspect of their heritage, but the history of Mexican-Spanish relations during the Revolution underlines the history of ethnic hostility between both groups during the first decades of the twentieth century. As in 1917, the Mexican government in 1978 decided that economic gains far outweighed whipping up popular resentment against the Spaniards.

Publications in Accounting History: A Long-Run Statistical Survey

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Financial History ◽  
Searchable Database ◽  
Accounting History ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
Statistical Survey ◽  
Leading Journals

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive survey of the history of publications in accounting history. The paper uses data prior to 1980 from the bibliographies by Parker (1980), together with a new searchable database (available from the author) of accounting history publications compiled from the accounting history publications listed annually in Accounting, Business and Financial History/Accounting History Review from 1989 to 2015. In contrast to previous surveys, the data cover the period from the start of the profession down to the present day and include all the leading journals and historians. The results measure and chart the explosion in output of accounting history in the 1980s and 1990s, which reached a peak in 2000, and the worrying leveling-off of subsequent publications. The decline of interest in early accounting and bookkeeping and the rise of issues driven by the so-called New Accounting History is traced and, in terms of output and personnel, the relative decline of the early leadership of the American historians and the rise of the British and Australians is identified.

scholarly journals On the Task of Creating a Financial History of the CPSU

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 116-135
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Financial History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

The article poses the task of creating a financial history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The Communist Party existed from 1898 to 1991. Though communists declared commitment to Marxism, which acknowledged the precedence of material factors over ideology and policy, the role of finances in the party’s history received little attention. After 1991, the situation in this field remained practically the same. The lack of scientific history generates mythology. The author demonstrates that one of such myths is the concept that the revolution of 1917 was a success thanks to the Bolsheviks having “German money”. The article analyzes the issue of Germany financing the Bolsheviks from the banking point of view. The existing hypotheses of how exactly the Bolsheviks were receiving money are considered. The main “anti-Bolshevik” version implies that finances were being transferred to the Bolsheviks under the guise of operations of an import/export firm, whose representative in Russia was Evgeniya Sumenson. The author investigates three cases which are of prime importance for all these hypotheses: Alexander Parvus’s money, the telegrams intercepted by the French counterintelligence, and the so-called “Sisson Documents”. Based on the analysis of the works of Russian and foreign historians and also on the published archive materials, the author concludes that all the documents currently available do not support the “anti-Bolshevik” version. Moreover, they prove that money movement was backwards: the proceeds from the sales of goods imported into Russia were transferred to Europe. Operations carried out by Sumeson were of a purely commercial nature and were quite in line with the banking practice of that period. The true financial history of the Bolsheviks and the CPSU as a whole is yet to be written. One of such successful investigations is John Biggart’s article on the Nikolai P. Shmit bequest.

Anthology of Russian natural legal thought. vol. 3. The Russian natural legal thought in the first half of the twentieth century

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Александр Чернявский ◽  
Alyeksandr CHyernyavskiy ◽  
Александр Куницын ◽  
Aleksandr Kunicyn ◽  
Андрей Воронцов ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
University Professors ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Legal Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

In the third volume of the anthology contains the proposed evaluation of philosophical and legal views, but also presented entirely or in fragments of works by outstanding Russian scholars I. A. Pokrovsky, I. V. Michael, P. G. Vinogradov, F. V. Taran, A. S. Yashchenko, written or published in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Their authors belong to a generation of proponents of natural law in Russia who had to experience all the hardships of the revolution, the civil war and long years of exile. Many of them did not have a chance to once again see their Homeland, but they were not broken in spirit, remained patriots showed exceptional creativity, their works has greatly enriched the Russian natural legal thought and made a worthy contribution to the Golden Fund of Russian legal science. Their names for many years was unjustly put to almost complete oblivion, and works properly is still not understood and not appreciated. The present publication is intended to promote the "return" to their names. The edition is addressed to students, graduate students, University professors and anyone interested in the history of Russian legal thought.

“Coolie work”: Sir Reginald Johnston at the School of Oriental Studies, 1931–1937

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Bickers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
Frequent Contact ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Professional Business ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oriental Studies ◽  
The Revolution

Surprisingly, the history of Chinese studies in Britain has received little academic attention. In fact, its development in the twentieth century, and its problems and lack of world standing actually tell us much about the background to Sino-British relations, and especially about the resources available to enable those interested, for professional, business, evangelical or plainly academic reasons, to understand China and the Chinese. British sinology in the interwar period, if discussed at all, is routinely condemned by historians. After 1949 China was closed off to outside contacts; not surprisingly, commentators thereafter look back jealously to the opportunities for close and frequent contact that were available before the revolution but which they saw as being apparently wasted. This common judgement does not, however, do full justice to the scale of the underlying problems, especially financial ones, faced by academic institutions that taught Chinese.

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