An Open Steppe under Lock and Key

Author(s):  
Sören Urbansky

This chapter explores impacts of the Sino-Soviet conflict of 1929 and the 1931 Japanese occupation of Manchuria that affected the Argun borderland, compelling the regimes to considerably increase their peripheral power. Strictly speaking, the fourteen subsequent years of Japanese rule in Manchuria might be regarded as an interlude in the borderlands' development since, in a political sense, the Soviet Union did not encounter China at its borders. This rupture notwithstanding, that decade and a half might also be regarded as extending or perhaps even accelerating the process of border formation and the alteration of the borderland because many of the changes inscribed by the Japanese remained after their defeat in 1945. The history of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo was not a repetition of seemingly similar developments of the imperial expansion of Russia or the West but something that can be called “new imperialism.” Therefore, the chapter shifts the perspective away from borderlanders' lives to policies imposed by the metropoles.

Author(s):  
Yuriy Makar

On December 22, 2017 the Ukrainian Diplomatic Service marked the 100thanniversary of its establishment and development. In dedication to such a momentous event, the Department of International Relations of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University has published a book of IR Dept’s ardent activity since its establishment. It includes information both in Ukrainian and English on the backbone of the collective and their versatile activities, achievements and prospects for the future. The author delves into retracing the course of the history of Ukrainian Diplomacy formation and development. The author highlights the roots of its formation, reconsidering a long way of its development that coincided with the formation of basic elements of Ukrainian statehood that came into existence as a result of the war of national liberation – the Ukrainian Central Rada (the Central Council of Ukraine). Later, the Ukrainian or so-called State the Hetmanate was under study. The Directorat (Directory) of Ukraine, being a provisional collegiate revolutionary state committee of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, was given a thorough study. Of particular interest for the research are diplomatic activities of the West Ukrainian People`s Republic. Noteworthy, the author emphasizes on the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic’s foreign policy, forced by the Bolshevist Russia. A further important implication is both the challenges of the Ukrainian statehood establishing and Ukraine’s functioning as a state, first and foremost, stemmed from the immaturity and conscience-unawareness of the Ukrainian society, that, ultimately, has led to the fact, that throughout the twentieth century Ukraine as a statehood, being incorporated into the Soviet Union, could hardly be recognized as a sovereign state. Our research suggests that since the beginning of the Ukrainian Diplomacy establishment and its further evolution, it used to be unprecedentedly fabricated and forged. On a wider level, the research is devoted to centennial fight of Ukraine against Russian violence and aggression since the WWI, when in 1917 the Russian Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, started real Russian war against Ukraine. Apropos, in the about-a-year-negotiation run, Ukraine, eventually, failed to become sovereign. Remarkably, Ukraine finally gained its independence just in late twentieth century. Nowadays, Russia still regards Ukraine as a part of its own strategic orbit,waging out a carrot-and-stick battle. Keywords: The Ukrainian People’s Republic, the State of Ukraine, the Hetmanate, the Direcorat (Directory) of Ukraine, the West Ukrainian People`s Republic, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, Ukraine, the Bolshevist Russia, the Russian Federation, Ukrainian diplomacy


Author(s):  
Levon Hakobian

This chapter deals with the history of Soviet music’s relations with the outside world from the mid-1920s until the end of the millennium. During all these decades the Soviet musical production of any coloration was perceived by the free Western world as something largely strange or alien, often exotic, almost ‘barbarian’. The inevitable spiritual distance between the Soviet world and the ‘non-Soviet’ one resulted in some significant misunderstandings. Though some important recent publications by Western musicologists display a well qualified view on the music and musical life in the Soviet Union, the traces of past naiveties and/or prejudices are still felt quite often even in the writings of major specialists.


1988 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-241
Author(s):  
David Crowe

The Soviet absorption of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during World War II caused hundreds of thousands of Baltic immigrants to come to the West, where they established strong, viable ethnic communities, often in league with groups that had left the region earlier. At first, Baltic publishing and publications centered almost exclusively on nationalistic themes that decried the loss of Baltic independence and attacked the Soviet Union for its role in this matter. In time, however, serious scholarship began to replace some of the passionate outpourings, and a strong, academic field of Baltic scholarship emerged in the West that dealt with all aspects of Baltic history, politics, culture, language, and other matters, regardless of its political or nationalistic implications. Over the past sixteen years, these efforts have produced a new body of Baltic publishing that has revived a strong interest in Baltic studies and has insured that regardless of the continued Soviet-domination of the region, the study of the culture and history of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will remain a set fixture in Western scholarship on Eastern Europe.


2006 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 3-41
Author(s):  
Séamus Séamus Mac Mathúna ◽  

In recent years there has been a remarkable burgeoning of interest in Celtic scholarship in the Slavic countries. Much of the work carried out by Slavic scholars, however, is written in the Slavic languages and is not readily accessible to Western scholars. The result is that the scope and achievement of Celtic scholars in these countries is not widely known and appreciated. The aim of this paper is to give a short history of this tradition and of some of the major scholarly landmarks. While the emphasis will be primarily on Celtic Studies in Russia, reference will also be made to the work of scholars in other Slavic countries. Several centuries before Christ, the Proto-Slavic dialect area appears to be north of the Carpathian mountains between the Rivers Oder and Vistula in Poland and the River Dnepr in the Ukraine. It is in a kind of intermediate zone which includes other language areas, including Illyrian, Thracian and Phrygian, and is bordered to the west by Germanic, Celtic and Italic, and to the east by Scythian and Tocharian. The paper will examine briefly the history and contribution of Celtic Slavic scholars to the question of the links between Proto-Slavic and Celtic in this region. The writings of the famous academicians A.A. Schachmatov (1864–1920) and A.N. Veselovsky (1838–1906) are taken as points of departure in outlining the history of Celtic linguistic and literary scholarship in Russia, and both their work and methodologies, and the work of other scholars, such as V. Propp, E. Meletinsky, Yu. Lotman, V.N. Toporov and A.Ya. Gourevitch, are considered in light of their influence on modern Celtic scholarship in the Slavic countries. Consideration is also given to the work and influence of deceased Celtic scholars A.A. Smirnov, V.N. Yartseva, A.A. Koroljov and V.P. Kalygin, the work of scholars such as T.A. Mikhailova and S.V Schkunayev, and the development of a new generation of very able and productive younger scholars.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Elena Kochetkova

This article examines the nature of Soviet consumption and technological development through the history of milk and milk packaging between the 1950s and 1970s. Based on published and archival materials, the paper focuses on the role that milk played in Soviet nutrition and the role that packaging played in Soviet consumption. The article also examines the modernization of technology for making packaging as well as technology transfer from the West. It concludes that, as in many Western countries, both the Soviet state and Soviet specialists saw it as important to increase the consumption of milk after the war, but the meaning of milk changed. Milk, a basic staple for nutrition, became a matter of science and specialists sought to explain its positive effects. In addition, due to the development of the paper and chemical industries, new forms of milk packaging, more practical in their uses, were introduced in the West. Soviet leaders and specialists saw the new packaging as a desirable feature of modernity, but were unsuccessful in launching domestic technologies for manufacturing such packaging. While experimenting with domestic technology, Soviet producers also received foreign equipment for making milk packaging. Nevertheless, the capacity of such foreign equipment was not enough to satisfy growing demand and the consumption of “modern packaging” remained lower than in the West until the introduction of capitalism and, with it, foreign companies into the Russian market in the 1990s.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietmar Waterkamp

Beginning in the twenties of the previous century, the writings of Anton Semjonovitch Makarenko, an educator who was born in the Ukranian part of the former Russia and mainly spoke and wrote in Russian, attracted much attention among educators not only in the Russian-speaking world and in communist states but also in the Western world and other countries. He lived from 1888-1939, which means that the bulk of his writings were published in the Stalinist period of the Soviet Union. The most detailed investigations into his writings and professional and private life were accomplished by the West German researcher Götz Hillig (born 1938) at the University of Marburg. He dedicated his professional life to the famous educator and produced a critical edition of Makarenko’s important works together with a multitude of analyses and commentaries covering most of the disputed questions regarding his life and work. To most of them he found a convincing answer. So far, Hillig’s immense, yet diversely published work has not been explored to see which new picture of Makarenko can be drawn from Hillig’s scrutiny. He himself did not finish this task as he focussed on delivering a fully clarified basis of texts and a complete history of Makarenko’s life. This article underpins the necessity of drawing conclusions from Hillig’s works and gives a first idea of the change in our picture of Makarenko which flows from Hillig’s work.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 380-394
Author(s):  
Taras Boyko

The article explores the reception of Boris Uspenskij’s writings and ideas outside of the Soviet Union, primarily in Western European and North American academic contexts. The present brief overview of Uspenskij’s academic reception covers the translations of his best-known scholarly works [first and foremost “Historia sub specie semioticae” and “Istoriya i semiotika (Vospriyatie vremeni kak semioticheskaya problema)”] into English, French, Spanish, German and other European languages, as well as various references to Uspenskij’s ideas on what nowadays would be categorized as ‘semiotics of history’, or thoughts at least in some way related to the ‘cultural-semiotic approach to history’ of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.


Author(s):  
René van der Veer

AbstractThe article sketches the history of the study of Vygotsky’s legacy in the Soviet Union and the West and then switches to a brief discussion of the origin of the book Understanding Vygotsky published 30 years ago. Several features and shortcomings of the book are discussed and it is shown that recent publications partly fill the gaps in our knowledge. This is illustrated by a succinct discussion of the contributions to the special issue which show that Vygotsky’s legacy continues to inspire the modern researcher.


Author(s):  
Anne E. Gorsuch

Focusing on the transnational flow and exchange of ideas, rather than on divisions and borders, this chapter emphasizes the ways in which early debates about ‘Sovietness’ related to multiple imaginings, understandings, and experiences of the ‘West’. This perspective builds on work that has reconsidered the history of the Soviet Union within the larger framework of European and North American modernity. ‘Being Soviet’ in the formative years of Bolshevism included ideas, technologies, and cultures that were ‘Western’. Some were openly and positively identified as such; others were covert or unacknowledged. The relationship was deeply ambivalent. But the resultant heterodoxy was notably different from Cold War concepts of the Soviet Union as rigid and impermeable.


Author(s):  
Vadim Moldovan ◽  
Eugeniu Rotari ◽  
Vadim Tarna ◽  
Alina Zagorodniuc

The Republic of Moldova is a small post-Soviet country that has been “transitioning” from a socialist to capitalist economy since the 1990s. Once a prosperous region of the Soviet Union, it is now among the poorest countries in Europe, facing many social problems that call for a strong social work profession. However, social work is new to the country and the profession is challenged by low societal status, meager resources, and lack of cohesion. Social work in Moldova is struggling to meet these challenges with the help from the West and the emergence of an indigenous model of professionalization. Child welfare, elder care, mental health, as well as the history of social work in Moldova, current state of social work education with its obstacles to and opportunities for progress will be discussed.


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