scholarly journals The Second Party Secretary and his Personal Networks in Soviet Lithuania after 1964: Towards the Localisation of the ‘Second’

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saulius Grybkauskas

Abstract This article deals with the personal network of Second Secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (LCP CC of the LSSR), which in the Soviet system of governance was under competitive tension and represented a certain alternative for Moscow (the Centre) with regard to the titular (Lithuanian) nomenklatura. Unlike the heads of the Lithuanian nomenklatura, who could capitalise on relations with family, fellow countrymen or others, when forming their networks, the base on which second secretaries sent from Moscow had to rely in network building consisted of formal powers and institutional resources, namely their previous experience as functionaries in Moscow or other Soviet republics, direct links with the central party apparatus in Moscow, and the supervision of the most significant departments of the LCP CC. Cadre stagnation and a policy of trust in the cadres evidenced in the period of Brezhnev’s rule changed the situation of second secretaries as agents of Moscow. The second secretary had to refer in his activities to the interests of the titular nomenklatura leading to the beginning of his localisation (domestication) within the party nomenklatura, which contravened the logic of the institution of the Second Secretary, who was intended to be Moscow’s representative in a Soviet republic.

Author(s):  
O. Iliin

The work researches essential reasons for spreading anti-Soviet public sentiments among local inhabitants of Izmail Region, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the post-war period, describes their specific features and forms of counteraction to Soviet reformation and Communist totalitarian regime. Source basis of the said research is represented by documents of the Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine and the State Archives of Odessa Region. General reports and statements of activities from Regional Attorney Office Fund, SAOR, as well, as statistics data, reports and accounts in cases of special jurisdiction of Regional Attorney Office. Furthermore, reports of Soviet Administration and Communist Party figures, special notifications referring to armed force censorship, reports by PCHA about local inhabitants' sentiments, documentation describing the course of operation of kulaks' deportation. Documentation of Organization and Instruction Section of Communist Party of Ukraine Central Committee, CSAPO fund was also used: reports about the activities of military section of Communist Party Regional Committee, internal memoranda, statements of completed work. Special attention has been paid to review of display of discontent in matters of religious policy, particularly, activities of underground religious associations. Author also describes resistance of the local population to mobilization to Soviet industrial enterprises, specified number of deserters from enterprises of military industry. Author also revealed and described social and political sentiments in the first months of Soviet power implementation and changes in such sentiments which occurred due to drop in social standards and housing problems. It was discovered also that illegal actions of local Communist Party and Soviet Administration and individual public figures formed additional factors, which contributed to popular discontent.


Letonica ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 43-52
Author(s):  
Madara Eversone

Between 1962 and 1963 the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev launched several campaigns against abstractionists and formalists in Moscow, thus marking the end of the so-called Thaw throughout the Soviet Union. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia also started a campaign against national abstractionists and formalists. On the 22nd and 28th of March 1963 the works of the new poets Vizma Belševica, Monta Kroma, Ojārs Vācietis as well as writer Ēvalds Vilks came under the criticism cross-fire at the Intelligentsia Meeting of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the criticism from the Communist Party the above mentioned authors also had to be discussed at the Board meetings of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the local organization meetings of the Party. The article examines the attitude of the Board of Soviet Writers’ Union towards the campaign initiated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia in March 1963 by looking at the documents of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the Union’s local organization of the Communist Party that are available at the State Archives of Latvia. Crucial and artistic aspects of the works of the above-mentioned authors have not been included in the analysis. Examining the debates that evolved in the Writers’ Union within the ideological campaign, it is possible to state that the Board, which was loyal to the Communist Party, kept its official stance in line with the Party principles, hereafter paying special attention to the ideologically artistic achievements of particular authors. Generally, the position of the Board of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union in respect to the criticized authors can be evaluated as passive, because no repressions were carried out against the new authors and no creative activities were completely suspended by the Board. The campaign of 1963 strongly demonstrates the differences between the generations and the views of the writers. It also reveals the older generation’s struggle for keeping their position and prestige in the field of literature while the younger generation took an increasing opposition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Pavlo Viktorovych Satskyi

In the current article the analysis of the mechanisms of the providing of management of the building process of the Southern-Ukrainian and Northern-Crimean channels in the command-administrative system of USSR during the late Stalinist period has been made. The building of Southern-Ukrainian and Northern-Crimea channels had a particular political value for USSR in the beginning of 1950s, while the realization of this project was supposed to create the prerequisites for the economic development of the Southern regions of Ukraine (until 1954) and the Northern regions of the Crimea. The General Directorate 'Ukrvodstroy" of the Ministry of Cotton of USSR was supposed to be responsible for the building of the Southern-Ukrainian and Northern-Crimean channels. However, the Ministry of Cotton as well as other union ministries turned out to be ineffective in the process of administering of "communism construction". On the other hand, the Council of Ministers of Ukrainian SSR and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were very effective in providing of the building of the Southern-Ukrainian and Northern-Crimean channels. Due to the effective activity of the leadership of Ukrainian SSR related to the providing of the building of Southern-Ukrainian and Northern-Crimean channels, the revival of the social-economic development of the Crimea took place, particularly in the far end regions of the Crimea it happened due to the development of capital investments required for the program of channels building. Thus, the Council of Ministers of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Central Committee of Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine was actively expanding its territory competence on the territory of the Crimea.


1967 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-288
Author(s):  
John H. Hodgson

In the summer of 1917, while under the protective wing of Finnish socialists, including Kustaa Rovio – chief of the Helsinki police force and later first secretary of the Communist Party apparatus in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic – Lenin completed his treatise State and Revolution, rejecting with vehemence the notion that a capitalist nation could be transformed without violence into a higher form of society. The one possible exception was a small country sharing a common frontier with a large country which had already successfully undergone the transition.


1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Crowther

During the late 1980s the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia, like many other regions within the former USSR, entered into a period of political turmoil. As the grip of the Communist Party weakened, increasingly serious conflict broke out between the Romanian-speaking majority and minority activists. Separatist forces quickly established themselves in two of the republic's regions, Transnistria on the east bank of the Dnestr river and the Gagauz districts in the south. Both claimed sovereignty and forcibly resisted the authority of the central government. By 1992 severe fighting was underway, especially in Transnistria, and Moldova appeared to be on the verge of a spiral into unrestrained civil conflict. Yet, by 1995, nationalist forces in Moldova had declined, and one of the two separatist conflicts, that in the Gagauz region, had been resolved by the peaceful reintegration of the Gagauz into Moldova. The second conflict, in Transnistria, was at least partially defused, and escalation was avoided.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Ilze Boldāne-Zeļenkova

Abstract This study, based on archive document research and analysis of publications by Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR) ethnographers, discusses the process of invention and implementation of Socialist traditions and the role of scientists in this. The introduction of Soviet traditions in Latvia did not begin immediately after the Second World War when the communist occupation regime was restored. The occupation regime in the framework of an anti-religious campaign turned to the transformation of traditions that affect individual’s private sphere and relate to church rituals – baptism, confirmation, weddings, funerals, Latvian cemetery festivities – in the second half of 1950s, along with the implementation of revolutionary and labour traditions. In order to achieve the goals set by the Communist Party, a new structure of institutions was formed and specialists from many fields were involved, including ethnographers from the Institute of History at the LSSR Academy of Sciences (hereinafter – LSSR AS). Ethnographers offered recommendations, as well as observed and analysed the process, discussing it in meetings of official commissions and sharing the conclusions in scientific publications, presentations, etc.


Author(s):  
Adrian Brisku

Arguably, an account of modern Georgia is one about the country’s emergence as a political nation (independent republic and nation-state) in the region of the Caucasus—geographically straddled in between the Eurasian landmass—and the challenges of redefining, developing, and preserving itself. It is also about how it was forged under and often against its powerful neighbors, most notably the tsarist Soviet and Russian state, and about its equally uneven interactions with other neighboring nations and nationalities within its political borders. And while one cannot put a precise date on the cultural and political processes as to when this modern Georgia emerged, the late 19th century is that period when people within the two tsarist governorates of Tbilisi and Kutaisi interacted more intensively among themselves, but also within the imperial cultural and political centers of St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as beyond the imperial confines, in Central and Western European capitals. This in turn—following impactful events: the 1861 tsarist Emancipation of Serfs, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the First World War, the February and October Revolutions of 1917, the brief making of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (1918)—led to a diffusion of and reaction to political, economic, and cultural ideas from European and imperial metropoles that on May 26, 1918, culminated with the establishment, for the first time, of Georgia as a nation-state: the Georgian Democratic Republic. A social democratic nation-state in its political content, the political life of this first republic was cut short on February 25, 1921, by the Red Army of a re-emerging Russian (Soviet) state. In the ensuing seventy years in the Soviet Union—initially, from 1922 to 1936, as a constitutive republic of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and then as a separate Soviet Socialist Republic until the implosion of the union in 1991—the republic and its society experienced the effects of the making and unmaking of the Soviet Marxist-Leninist modernization project. Especially impactful for the republic and its society was the period of the 1930s and 1940s under the hyper-centralized rule of the Georgian-born Soviet Communist Party leader Joseph V. Stalin: a period marked by implementation of a centrally planned economic model and political purges as well as a consolidation of the nation’s ethnocultural and territorial makeup. Also important was the late Soviet period, particularly that under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whereby thanks to the economic and political reforms undertaken in the later 1980s, calls for the recovering of the republic’s political independence were intensified and ultimately realized. This happened on April 9, 1991—with the first Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, declaring the independence of the Republic of Georgia before the Soviet Union’s dissolution on December 26, 1991—and its international recognition would come easily and fast. But what would prove difficult and slow, from the outset, was building a European-style nation-state—meaning a liberal democratic order based on the rule of law and a market society—as was the case in the brief presidency of Gamsakhurdia (1991–1992). The latter’s term was marred by an ethnopolitical war in the South Ossetian region and brought to an end by a civil war fought in the capital city of Tbilisi and the Megrelian region. It continued to be difficult during the long and interrupted presidency of the former Georgian Communist Party boss, Eduard Shevardnadze (1995–2003)—the 1995 Constitution established a semi-presidential system of government—in which an ethnopolitical war with Abkhazia started and ended (1992–1993), state institutions stabilized, and a pro-Euro-Atlantic as opposed to a pro-Russian foreign policy was articulated, but state corruption also thrived. A European-style republic appeared closer during the full-term “hyper-presidency” of the Western-educated president Mikheil Saakashvili (2004–2013), marked by concrete steps toward Euro-Atlantic integration (NATO membership and EU partnership/toward membership) and a distancing from Russia as well as top-down neoliberal domestic reforms. But the republic was scarred by a war with Russia in August 2008 and a growing authoritarianism at home. It remains so despite a shift, since 2013, from a presidential to a parliamentary republic with the last directly elected president being the first woman president, Salome Zurabishvili (2018–). Since 2012, the Georgian Dream Party—established by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili (prime minister, 2012–2013)—governs the republic by pursuing Western-oriented domestic reforms, EU and NATO integration, and a nonconfrontational position against Russia. The latter continues to undermine the country’s territorial integrity, having recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s independence in 2008 and maintaining its military bases there.


1985 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-170
Author(s):  
G. A. Alekseev

Immediately after the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, the Party and the Government of the country set a responsible task for the Chuvash Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the Chuvash ASSR - to organize 1 evacuation hospitals in the deep rear for the treatment of the wounded and sick.


Author(s):  
Anna Ostapenko

The article briefly analyzed the biography of the students of I.P.Lviv, the associate professor of the Chernihiv Pedagogical Institute. The purpose of our article was to show the biography of the students of the lecturer I.P.Lvov, who was known all the world. Our graduates were born and grew up in the Chernihiv region. We briefly wrote about the graduates of I.P.Lvov, and there are P. Tychyna, H. Verevka, F. Los and V. Dyadychenko. All of them grew up and lived in difficult times, when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. I. P. Lvov’s students made an outstanding contribution to science, culture of pedagogy in Ukraine. P. Tychyna was a famous Ukrainian poet, interpreter, public activist, academician, and statesman of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. He was born in a big family. His father was a village deacon and a teacher in the local grammar school. In 1900, he became a member of an archiary chorus in the Troitsky monastery near Chernihiv. Simultaneously P. Tychyna studied in the Chernihiv theological school. In 1907−1913 P. Tychyna continued his education in the Chernihiv Theological Seminary. In 1913−1917, he was studying at the Economics department of the Kiev Commercial Institute. At the same time, he worked on the editorial boards of the Kiev newspaper Rada and the magazine Svitlo. In the summer, he worked for the Chernihiv statistical bureau. In 1923, he moved to Kharkiv, entering the vibrant world of early post-Revolution Ukrainian literary organizations. Later he started to study Georgian, and Turkic language, and became the activist of the Association of Eastern Studies in Kyiv. P. Tychnya printed many works, but we viewed only Major works Clarinets of the Sun, The Plow, Instead of Sonnets or Octaves, The Wind from Ukraine, Chernihiv and We Are Going into Battle, Funeral of a Friend, To Grow and Act. H. Veryovka was a Ukrainian composer, choir director, and teacher. He is best known for founding a folk choir, and he was director it for many years, gaining international recognition and winning multiple awards. Veryovka was also a professor of conducting at the Kyiv Conservatory, where he worked alongside faculty including B. Yavorsky, M. Leontovych. H. Veryovka was born in town of Berezna. In 1916, he graduated from the Chernihiv Theological Seminary. In 1918−21 H. Veryovka studied at the Lysenko music school studying a musical composition by B. Yavorsky. In 1933, he received an external degree from the institute. Since 1923 Veryovka continued to work at the Lysenko institute and later Kiev Conservatory. In 1943 in Kharkiv, H. Veryovka organized his well-known choir and until his death was its art director and a main conductor. In 1948-52 he headed the National society of composers of Ukraine. F. Los was born in the village of Pivnivchyna. He studied at the Chernihiv Institute of Social Education. He taught at the secondary school of Volochysk then at the Gorodiansky Pedagogical College of the Chernihiv Region. In 1935, he was a post-graduate student to the Institute of History of the All-Ukrainian Association of Marxist-Leninist Institutes. He researched on the rural community of the early twentieth century. F. Los worked in institutes at such departments: the head of the Department of History of the USSR and Ukraine of the Kiev Pedagogical Institute, the lecturer of the Higher Party School by the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik), Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and the professor of the History Department. He published over 200 scientific papers, such as: 15 textbooks on the history of Ukraine co-authored about 20 collective monographs, collections of articles, collections of materials and documents. He buried in Kiev. V. Dyadychenko was a researcher, lecturer and methodologist. He was born in Chernihiv in a family of statistician. He graduated from the Chernihiv Institute of Public Education. Having received a diploma of higher education, he taught at the Mykolaiv Pedagogical Institute. Later V. Dyadychenko moved to Kiev and worked at the Institute of History of Ukraine Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv V. Dyadychenko worked at such chairs: the Department of History of the USSR, the history of the Middle Ages and the ancient history, archeology and museology. Professor V. Dyadychenko collaborate in the writing of school-books on the history of Ukraine for students in grade 7-8. V. Dyadychenko was social and political active worker. In 1973, he died.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Khomyakov

The life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, had acquired more and more mythological features with each new decade after his death until it finally transformed into a symbol of the demiurge leader – the creator of the new world (by the will of political leadership and by the transformation of mass consciousness). This process began already in 1924, with the erection of the first wooden mausoleum on Red Square. In contrast to the ideologically advanced teams of industrial enterprises in the autonomy's capital city of Verkhneudinsk, the image of Lenin for whom, despite staying in a template form, had still acquired interpretations of a common man, for a significant number of rural residents of the Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, his personality had remained almost unknown and only vaguely associated with the Revolution and Communists. Interpretations of Lenin's personality by the rural population of Buryatia during the 1920s are analysed in this article. The aim of the article is to study the transformation of the image of Lenin in the perception of the rural population of Buryatia during the 1920s, which will make it possible to follow more fully the initial stage of the dogmatisation of the teachings of the founder of the Bolshevik Party.


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