Viysʹkova Kafedra Lʹvivsʹkoho Universytetu: prosopohrafichna rekonstruktsiya (1944–1991)

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-95
Author(s):  
Larysa Shelestak

This is a study based on archival materials and systematized biographical information about the teachers of the military department, who worked there since its establishment in 1944 up to its disbandment during 1991–1993. The article shows features and specifics of the teaching staff of the military department of the University of Lviv, which were caused by the reforms of military education in the Soviet Union. The prosopographic method, which is used in the research, allows us to learn the different aspects of the activities in the military department. It demonstrates changes in the teaching staff throughout the existence of the department.

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vally Koubi

Because of the nature of modern weapons, significant innovations in arms technology have the potential to induce dramatic changes in the international distribution of power. Consider, for example, the “strategic defense initiative” (SDI), a program initiated by the United States in the early 1980s. Had the program been successfully completed, it might have led to a substantial devaluation of Soviet nuclear capabilities and put the United States in a very dominant position. It should not then come as a surprise that interstate rivalry, especially among super powers, often takes the form of a race for technological superiority. Mary Acland-Hood claims that although the United States and the Soviet Union together accounted for roughly half of the world's military expenditures in the early 1980s, their share of world military research and development (R&D) expenditures was about 80 percent. As further proof of the perceived importance of R&D, note that whereas the overall U.S. defense budget increased by 38 percent (from $225.1 billion to $311.6 billion in real terms) from 1981 to 1987, military R&D spending increased by 100 percent (from $20.97 billion to $41.96 billion). Moreover, before World War II military R&D absorbed on average less than 1 percent of the military expenditure of major powers, but since then it has grown to 11–13 percent. The emphasis on military technology is bound to become more pronounced in the future as R&D becomes the main arena for interstate competition.


Author(s):  
Amin Tarzi

Since its inception as a separate political entity in 1747, Afghanistan has been embroiled in almost perpetual warfare, but it has never been ruled directly by the military. From initial expansionist military campaigns to involvement in defensive, civil, and internal consolidation campaigns, the Afghan military until the mid-19th century remained mainly a combination of tribal forces and smaller organized units. The central government, however, could only gain tenuous monopoly over the use of violence throughout the country by the end of the 19th century. The military as well as Afghan society remained largely illiterate and generally isolated from the prevailing global political and ideological trends until the middle of the 20th century. Politicization of Afghanistan’s military began in very small numbers after World War II with Soviet-inspired communism gaining the largest foothold. Officers associated with the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan were instrumental in two successful coup d’états in the country. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, ending the country’s sovereignty and ushering a period of conflict that continues to the second decade of the 21st century in varying degrees. In 2001, the United States led an international invasion of the country, catalyzing efforts at reorganization of the smaller professional Afghan national defense forces that have remained largely apolitical and also the country’s most effective and trusted governmental institution.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-167
Author(s):  
S.A. TARASOV ◽  

The main purpose of the article is to reveal the features of the organization of work with the leading per-sonnel of the Soviet Union in the 1930-s – 1940-s, as an important component of the effective state man-agement. The article examines the state of work with the highest leading personnelof the Soviet Union in the 1930-s – 1940-s on the example of the personnel bodies’ activities of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)(VKP (b)).The focus of the study is on the Personnel Departmentof the Central Committee, the time of functioning of which falls on the specified chronological period.On the basis of archival materi-als, the organizational structure of the Department and the most important tasks faced by its employees in the process of working with the highest party, Soviet, economic and military leaders of the country are revealed.Brief biographical information of a number of officials who held key positions in this party body is provided.The existing shortcomings in the work, the procedure and the ways of fixing them are highlighted.


Author(s):  
Jane Caplan

‘War’ focuses on German political and military strategies after the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, when Hitler could see the prize of unassailable continental dominance within reach. With Nazi power at its greatest extent in 1942, the chapter discusses the markedly different Nazi occupation regimes in the west and the east, and the turn towards defeat in 1943. Hitler’s insistence on unremitting resistance caused massive loss of life on the military and home fronts, brought to an end only with his suicide and with Germany’s official capitulation on 8 May.


1991 ◽  
Vol 7 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 337-341
Author(s):  
Raymond L. Garthoff

Author(s):  
Barry Buzan ◽  
Lene Hansen

International security studies (ISS) has significantly evolved from its founding core of “golden age” strategic studies. From the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s through to the 1970s, strategic studies virtually was ISS, and remains a very large part of it. The fact that it continues to stand as the “mainstream” attacked by widening/deepening approaches further speaks to its status as a “core.” This core consists of those literatures whose principal concern is external military threats to the state, and the whole agenda of the use of force which arises from that. This core was originally focused on nuclear weapons and the military-political rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union, but has since adapted its focus to changes in the salience and nature of military threats caused by the end of the Cold War and 9/11. It includes literatures on deterrence, arms racing, arms control and disarmament, grand strategy, wars (and “new wars”), the use of force, nuclear proliferation, military technology, and terrorism. Debates within ISS are structured, either implicitly or explicitly, by five questions: (1) which referent object to adopt, (2) whether to understand security as internally or externally driven, (3) whether to limit it to the military sector or to expand it, (4) what fundamental thinking about (international) politics to adopt, and (5) which epistemology and methodology to choose.


Worldview ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Seymour Melman

After twenty-five years of a nuclear-military arms race, it is possible to define significant limits of military power for national security. These limits apply with special force to the nuclear superpowers. These same limits of military power also define new requirements for a disarmament process.Underlying the long discussion of disarmament among nations has been the understanding that lowered levels of armaments produce mutual advantage: the prospect of physical destruction is reduced; and the cost of armaments can be applied to constructive uses. The arms race from 1946 to 1971 between the United States and the Soviet Union has not improved the military security of either nation, and the economic cost to these two countries has exceeded $1,500 billion.


1985 ◽  
Vol 103 ◽  
pp. 489-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy B. Strong ◽  
Helene Keyssar

Anna Louise Strong was part of the first generation of those westerners who reported extensively and sympathetically on socialist revolutions. Born in Nebraska in 1885, she obtained a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1908, became involved in the labour movement in Seattle where she helped organize the general strike in 1919 and went first to the Soviet Union in 1921 on the advice of Lincoln Steffens. She became during the 1920s and 1930s probably the best-known American journalist reporting on the domestic policies of the Soviet Union. Her reportage was unswervingly sympathetic – what doubts she had were hidden in letters to friends, in strained disavowals, in odd turns of phrase in her many articles and books.


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