scholarly journals Accusing Russia of Fascism

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 100-123
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Second World ◽  
With Memory

With memory wars between Central and Eastern European states and Russia, the Second World War has become a useable past instrumentalized as a currency for legitimacy on the international scene. These memory wars focus on who was fascist and who colluded with Nazism—the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1941 or the collaborationist forces in Central and Eastern Europe? And, subsequently, who are the new fascists advancing a revisionist interpretation of the Second World War today: Putin’s Russia or Central and Eastern European countries? What is at stake here is the recognition of Russia as having a legitimate say in European affairs because of the Soviet victory, or its exclusion for refusing to repent of its role in dividing Europe and occupying a part thereof. This article debunks the accusation of fascism attributed to Putin’s regime and offers to look at the label of fascism as a mirror game between the West and Russia in defining what Europe should be like and Russia’s inclusion or exclusion.

International Memory Wars

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-83
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Ukrainian Crisis ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This chapter argues that the perception of Russia as an antifascist power has been reinforced by memory wars that have reshaped the relationship between Russia and its Central and Eastern European neighbors. It examines how the emergence and gradual visibility gained by the narrative of the Soviet Union as an occupier with a totalitarian ideology shocked the Russian elite and public opinion. Given the context of memory wars, the chapter focuses on the issue of defining who was fascist and who colluded with Nazism — the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1941 or the collaborationist forces in Central and Eastern Europe. This chapter then presents Russia's response to the new memories articulated by Central and Eastern European countries on two fronts: legal and historiographical. Ultimately, the chapter highlights how the Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that memories have been instrumental in “real” wars, as all parties claim that their martyrdom and heroism during the Second World War entitle them to some recognition today.

Religion and Social Control in the Soviet Union 1945–1964

1984 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 473-480
Author(s):  
Gavin White
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World ◽  
Do So

Why have churches in the U.S.S.R. been harassed in recent years? It has been supposed by many that if Stalin stopped most persecution during the Second World War, then things under Khrushchev could only improve. Instead they deteriorated, and all liberties of Soviet citizens received more respect except the religious.A common answer has been that the Soviet authorities were horrified by the continued hold of religion which they considered to be a threat to Marxism. Such a view is quite popular in the west where a clash of ideologies, with Christianity triumphing over Marxism, consoles churchmen who cannot find such a triumph in their own society. But this assumes that the Soviet rulers consider Christianity to be a religion based on certain tenets, and as Marxists they cannot be expected to do so. For them religion is primarily an instrument of social control.

The Sino-Soviet Alliance

1960 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Robert C. North
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Union Report ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist China ◽  
Second World

Western visitors to the Soviet Union report a growing Russian anxiety about Communist China and its inclinations and potentialities. The Soviet “man in the street,” who recalls what Leningrad and Kiev and Minsk and Odessa experienced during the Second World War, maintains a sober respect for the world's new weapons—whether nuclear, bacteriological or something even more dreadful that is only whispered about. He is increasingly ready to believe, moreover, that Western capitalist peoples share this sober respect, but Communist China gives him cause for deep uneasiness. Is it possible that China might trigger a war which both the Soviet Union and the West would prefer to avoid?

Adrift

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-117
Author(s):  
David Bosco
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Fishing Rights ◽  
The West ◽  
Rachel Carson ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World

The years following the Second World War saw dramatic national expansion into the ocean. The United States began the process in 1945 by claiming the continental shelf and expanded fishing rights. Other countries followed suit, sometimes with even more ambitious claims. New concerns about overfishing motivated many countries to expand their national waters. National pressure on freedom of the seas combined with a conceptual challenge as newly independent countries argued that the doctrine had aided colonialism by the West. On the environmental front, figures like Rachel Carson warned about the damage humans were inflicting on the oceans. Meanwhile, ocean commerce went through a revolution prompted by the development of container shipping. The Soviet Union became a major maritime power, a transformation that would have major implications for the effort to provide a new legal framework for the oceans.

The Uneasy Relationship: Turkey's Foreign Policy as Regards the Soviet Union at the Outbreak of the Second World War

Belleten ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 67 (250) ◽  
pp. 949-986
Author(s):  
Yücel Güçlü
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Black Sea ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Period ◽  
Sea Ports ◽  
Second World

In view of growing threat of the Axis powers, by the beginning of 1939 a security agreement with the Soviet Union came high on the list of Turkish priorities. Turkey would also co-operate with Britain in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Ankara proposed a triangular Turco-Anglo-Soviet relationship. Turkey sought to search for the illusive Soviet connection to parallel its signing of mutual assistance agreement with Britain on 12 May 1939. But the Germano-Soviet Non-aggression Pact of 23 August 1939 upset the entire international balance and put Turkey into a delicate position. Nonetheless Ankara still considered that arriving at an accord with Moscow would not be incompatible with its engagements towards the West. Saracoğlu's mission to Muscow in the autumn of 1939 failed because of Russia's attempts to unilaterally amend the Montreux Straits Convention and to draw Turkey away from the West. During Saracoğlu-Molotov talks, Kremlin endeavoured to obtain a foothold at the Straits in order at once prevent others from commanding the warm water approach to its Black Sea ports and to place itself in a position to exercise a hand in Mediterranean affairs. Relations between Turkey and Russia thus entered into a new period of mutual distrust and tension.

Moving People

Uprooted ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Thum
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

This chapter considers how the remapping of Central Europe after the Second World War was radical not so much in terms of changes in national borders, as in the broadscale shifting of settlement boundaries. The borders had already been altered after the First World War and new countries created upon the ruins of the fallen Central and Eastern European empires. Prolonged mass migrations also ensued at that time. Many people did not want to live in the countries they found themselves in after the political map was redrawn, or they fled growing discrimination against ethnic minorities. After the Second World War, the Allied powers abandoned the principles to which they committed themselves in 1918. They wanted the territory between Germany and the Soviet Union to be made up of homogeneous nation-states that were no longer burdened by the existence of ethnic minorities.

scholarly journals Two different anniversaries: comprehending three decades of the Velvet revolutions and of the collapse of the USSR

Polylogos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (№ 4 (18)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Denis Letnyakov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Expert Group ◽  
The West ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
30Th Anniversary ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Conceptual Language

The article is a review of two multi-author books, each of which is a result of an international academic project. The first one is a collected volume dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Velvet revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe (The Long 1989. Decades of Global Revolution. Ed. by P.H. Kosicki and K. Kunakhovich. Budapest-NY: CEU Press, 2019. 284 pp.). The second book, dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was published under the auspices of the European Dialogue Expert Group (Dismantling of Communism. Thirty years later / Edited by K. Rogov. Moskow: NLO Publ., 2021. 448 pp.). The key point of the article is that post-Soviet countries remain largely ‘terra incognita’ for the academy. Whereas vector of development of Eastern European countries does not raise doubts among the researchers – it is a case of integration into the West (albeit not a problem-free), the academic consensus regarding the post-Soviet states is only that previous concepts and approaches are out of work. Search for a new conceptual language is at play.  

Hitler's Rassenkampf in the East: The Forgotten Genocide of Soviet POWs

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 839-859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Earl Porter
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian President ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Second World

The sheer enormity of Soviet losses at the hands of German forces during the Second World War staggers the mind. During the immediate post-war period, Stalin did not want the West to know just how badly the Soviet Union had been mauled or the fact that far more Soviet soldiers had died than German ones (up to three times as many); consequently, the Soviets clamed that the total number of dead was 7 million, while Western estimates were between 10 and 15 million Soviet dead. It was only during the Khrushchev era that the true scale of the disaster was revealed and the more accurate figure of 20 million dead was generally accepted. Of these, only half were soldiers. The rest were at least 10 million civilians, including 2 million who died as slave laborers in Nazi Germany. The death toll has more recently been put at 25, 27 and even 30 million, though I suspect the latter figures also take into consideration the decline in birth rates. In April 2009 Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev appointed yet another commission to give a final accounting of Soviet losses.

Implications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

This chapter turns to the present and explains the implications of the current study for the ongoing debate about the Soviet Union in the Second World War and in particular about the role of loyalty and disloyalty in the Soviet war effort. It argues that this study strengthens those who argue for a middle position: the majority of Soviet citizens were neither unquestioningly loyal to the Stalinist regime nor convinced resisters. The majority, instead, saw their interests as distinct from both the German and the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, ideology remains important if we want to understand why in the Soviet Union more resisted or collaborated than elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

Brazilian historiography on the participation of the USSR in the Second World War

2021 ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Boris Martynov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Correct Treatment ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
International Authority ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Second World

The article deals with the evolution of views of the Brazilian authors on the role, played by the Soviet Union in the WWII and its contribution to the victory of the anti-Hitlerian coalition. It contains a historiographical review of the works, written by the Brazilian authors on the theme, beginning from 2004. One follows the process of their growing interest towards clarifying the real contribution of the Soviet part to the common victory, along with the rise of the international authority of Brazil and strengthening of the Russo – Brazilian ties. One reveals the modern attitude of Brazilian authors towards such dubious or scarcely known themes as the Molotov – Ribbentrop pact, the battles for Smolensk and Rhzev, town–bound fights in Stalingrad, liberation of the Baltic republics, the Soviet war with Japan, etc. The author comes to conclusion, that in spite of the Western efforts to infuse the people`s conscience with the elements of the “post – truth” in this respect, the correct treatment of those events acquires priority even in such a far off from Russia state, as Brazil.

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