Historical Changes in the Design of Beijing Social Housing

2013 ◽  
Vol 742 ◽  
pp. 122-126
Author(s):  
Xu Jia Li ◽  
Ying Wei Cui

This paper centers on the changes in the interior configuration of typical social housing in Beijing in the past 63 years. This history is divided into three distinct stages, and comparisons are made between social housing in Beijing and its models for each stage. The models for the three stages were chronologically, the Soviet Union, Hong Kong, and western countries. The rationale for this study is to find the historical origins of the broad contemporary changes in the interior configuration of Beijings social housing. The theoretical framework is based on the three stages of social housing in Beijing; each stage has a unique political, economic, cultural, and urban background, which influences the social housing greatly. The goals and objectives are to make a clear historical line of the social housing, and the intended readers are professional designers and individuals who are interested in social housing history. The study will be in the form of a literature review and a series of case studies, and its scope will be within typical social housing.

Author(s):  
Geoff Eley

Certain facts about postwar Europe seem self-evidently true. Undoubtedly the most salient was the division of Europe and the political, economic, social, and cultural antinomies that separated western capitalism from Soviet-style communism in the overarching context of the Cold War. If the Cold War itself stretched across four decades, from the heightening of international tensions in 1947–1948 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989–1991, the postwar settlement's reliable solidities had already been breaking apart in the 1970s. The global economic downturn of 1973–1974 ended the postwar boom, shelving its promises of permanent growth and continuously unfolding prosperity. In those terms, the core of the postwar settlement lies in the years 1947–1973. This article explores the single most striking particularity of the post-1945 settlement, namely the centrality acquired by organised labour for the polities, social imaginaries, and public cultures of postwar European societies. First, it discusses democracy as a cultural project during 1945–1968. The article then looks at corporatism and social democracy, and concludes by assessing patterns of stability in Europe during the postwar period.


Author(s):  
Ellen A. Ahlness

Tajikistan has experienced numerous barriers to economic and political development over the past 100 years. Pressured into joining the Soviet Union, which lasted nearly 70 years, Tajikistan sank into a civil war upon achieving its independence. This resulted in numerous deaths, displacement, and infrastructural devastation. Since the conflict, Tajikistan has experienced tremendous economic growth and positive social developments; however, Western media overwhelmingly focuses on isolated incidences of violence and socioeconomic trends that casts Tajikistan in a negative light. This also creates a “horn effect” that frames the Tajik socioeconomic situation as underdeveloped and lacking freedoms. A narrative analysis of stories on Tajikistan from the United States' top 10 news outlets from 1998 to 2018 portrays unrepresentative and paternal pictures of Tajikistan's political, economic, and social developments.


Author(s):  
HIROSHI KIMURA

This article examines why Soviet-Japanese relations since 1945 have been so poor at the political, economic, and military levels. It first analyzes recent changes in Moscow's foreign policy toward Japan and then looks at the major determinants shaping this policy. Kimura assesses recent Soviet policy and concludes that the Soviet Union has few diplomatic options open to improve the Soviet-Japanese relationship. Soviet diplomacy in the past has been heavy-handed, clumsy, and inflexible, especially as regards the so-called Northern Territories. Soviet attitudes must evidence greater flexibility and a willingness to negotiate before the relationship can be significantly improved.


2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-380
Author(s):  
Jeff Rutherford

During the past two decades, focus on the German-Soviet war has shifted from a nearly exclusive fascination with field marshals and their battles—“chaps and maps”—to one more concerned with the social aspects of the war. Issues of resistance and collaboration, German occupation policies and everyday life under Nazi rule, and the Soviet Union's recovery from the catastrophe of 1941 and its subsequent unprecedented mobilization during the latter stages of the war now constitute the main emphases of research. Many of these new lines of investigation revolve around the implementation and results of the German Vernichtungskrieg, the war of annihilation carried out by the Wehrmacht, SS, and myriad other German agencies against the Soviet state and population. As the army was the largest and most powerful German institution operating in the Soviet Union, it has recently attracted the most attention and generated the most controversy. Historians have reached a rough consensus concerning the German High Command's complicity in implementing the Vernichtungskrieg; here, the set of orders commonly referred to in the literature as the “criminal orders” illustrate the army's means of achieving Hitler's goals. More recently, scholars have begun to investigate the army's responsibility for starving millions of Soviet civilians. While some dissenting voices have been heard, it is clear that the German High Command willingly and even enthusiastically participated in the war of annihilation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Pajala

In critical studies on historical television programmes, the affective qualities of televisual memory have been discussed mainly in terms of nostalgia. This article argues that conceptualizing the affective modes of relating to the past in more varied ways can help us to better understand the politics of memory on television. As a case study, the article analyses Finnish Broadcasting Company Yleisradio’s historical drama and documentary series that deal with the relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union. The article identifies three affective modes in the programmes: irony, nostalgia and melodrama. Each of these modes offers different possibilities for critiquing, understanding and justifying the past. By studying televisual memories of the Soviet Union in a non-socialist country with important political, economic and cultural ties with the socialist bloc, the article moreover questions a clear East–West binary in studies on post-socialist memory.


1991 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janine Ludlam

The concept of “social contract” is useful in understanding the process of reform currently under way in the Soviet Union. The social contract “concluded” by Khrushchev and Brezhnev provided the population with economic guarantees but deprived it of any political power. Their contract was geared primarily toward less educated, blue-collar workers. During the past seventy years Soviet society has become industrialized, urbanized, and educated. Gorbachev has understood that the well-being of the Soviet economy will in the future rest on the labor and know-how of skilled and educated professionals. He must therefore conclude a new contract that will be advantageous to this sector of society in order to ensure its participation in his efforts to reform the economy.


Author(s):  
N. D. Borshchik

The article considers little-studied stories in Russian historiography about the post-war state of Yalta — one of the most famous health resorts of the Soviet Union, the «pearl» of the southern coast of Crimea. Based on the analysis of mainly archival sources, the most important measures of the party and Soviet leadership bodies, the heads of garrisons immediately after the withdrawal of the fascist occupation regime were analyzed. It was established that the authorities paid priority attention not only to the destroyed economy and infrastructure, but also to the speedy introduction of all-Union and departmental sanatoriums and recreation houses, other recreational facilities. As a result of their coordinated actions in the region, food industry enterprises, collective farms and cooperative artels, objects of cultural heritage and the social and everyday sphere were put into operation in a short time.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-145
Author(s):  
Coleman Mehta

After relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia broke down in 1948, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) devoted a good deal of attention to Yugoslavia. Initially, however, the Truman administration was reluctant to provide extensive security assistance to the regime of Josip Broz Tito, who until 1948 had been a brutal Stalinist. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the situation. The United States developed much closer political, economic, and military ties with Yugoslavia, and the CIA established a formal agreement of cooperation with the Yugoslav Ministry of State Security, especially on intelligence-sharing and covert operations. U.S. officials were particularly concerned about ensuring that Yugoslavia would be able to defend itself, if necessary, against a Soviet invasion.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Hösle

AbstractThe essay begins by discussing different ways of evaluating and making sense of the Soviet Revolution from Crane Brinton to Hannah Arendt. In a second part, it analyses the social, political and intellectual background of tsarist Russia that made the revolution possible. After a survey of the main changes that occurred in the Soviet Union, it appraises its ends, the means used for achieving them, and the unintended side-effects. The Marxist philosophy of history is interpreted as an ideological tool of modernization attractive to societies to which the liberal form of modernization was precluded.


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