scholarly journals Service and Life of British and Soviet Women in the Navy during World War II

2021 ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
N. Zaletok

Comparative studies on the experiences of female representatives of different countries in WWII remain relevant today. They not only deepen our understanding of the life of women at war, but also allow us to explore the power regimes of different states at one stage or another. After all, the government organized the activities of various groups of the population aimed at winning the war. Women were no exception in this respect, regardless of whether they worked in the rear or defended their homeland with weapons in hand. For centuries, the navy for the most part represented a purely masculine environment, and the presence of a woman on a ship was considered a bad omen. However, the scale of hostilities during the world wars and, as a consequence, the need for a constant supply of personnel to the armed forces made their adjustments – states began to gradually recruit women to serve in the navy. The article compares the experiences of Great Britain and the USSR in attracting women to serve in the navy during WWII. The countries were chosen not by chance, as they represent democracy and totalitarianism, respectively, and studying their practice of involving women in the navy can deepen our knowledge of these regimes. After analysing the experience of women’s service in the navy in 1939-1945, the author concludes that their recruitment to the navy in Great Britain took place through a special organization – the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS). Its personnel were trained mostly separately from men and then sent to military units of the navy. The USSR did not create separate women's organizations for this purpose; women served in the same bodies as men. The main purpose of mobilizing women to the navy in both the USSR and Great Britain was initially to replace men in positions on land to release the latter for service at sea. However, in both countries there were cases when women also served at sea. The range of positions available to them in the navy expanded during the war, and in the USSR reached its apogee in the form of admission of women to combat positions. In Great Britain, women in the navy did not officially perform combat roles, and there was a ban on them from using lethal weapons.

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Tomasz Nowak

Abstract The mainstream fields of Polish dance research were defined in 1818–1847 by Józef Elsner, Kazimierz Brodziński, Łukasz Gołębiowski and Karol Czerniawski, who broadly characterized some elements of the dances considered as national (the polonaise, mazur, krakowiak and kozak). Oskar Kolberg knew very well the works of all these authors and referred to them many times. However, he was unique in his extensive documentation of dance melodies, information about their geographic origin, and local terminology. He also characterized the dances with regard to their sequence in the traditional context and described the dance technique in an instructive manner. Oskar Kolberg’s documentation for quite a long time remained outside the scope of mainstream research and publications about dance in Poland. In the 1930s Polish representatives of the newly defined field of ethnochoreology were the first to include examples from Kolberg in their works on the ritual dances, regional dances and characteristic dance behaviour types and forms. Kolberg’s works increased in popularity after the World War II. Today the materials left by Oskar Kolberg allow us to establish to a large extent the geographic range and perspective on the changes of dance repertoire, both with regard to choreographic technique and dance types, or a more detailed and critical perspective on the problems of folk terminology in dance phenomena. It may also serve as the point of departure for wider retrospective or comparative studies – which may not be very fashionable today, but which have never been adequately conducted in Poland.


2018 ◽  
pp. 130-138
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Chornyi

The article analyses one of the most grievous chapters in the history of Ukrainian nation – the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–1933. It is referred to the massive famine that was deliberately organized by the Soviet authorities, which led to many millions hu-man losses in the rural area in the territory of the Ukrainian SSR and Kuban. Planned confiscation of grain crops and other food products from villagers by the representatives of the Soviet authorities led to a multimillion hunger massacre of people in rural area. At the same time, the Soviet government had significant reserves of grain in warehouses and exported it abroad, since without collectivization and Ukrainian bread it was impossible to launch the industrialization that demanded Ukrainian grain to be contributed to foreigners in return for their assistance. Ukrainian grain turned into currency. The authorities of that time refused to accept foreign assistance for starving people and simultaneously banned and blocked their leaving outside the Ukrainian SSR. The so-called “barrier troops” were organized in order to prevent hungry people from flee to the freedom and not let anyone enter the starving area. The situation is characterized by the fact that the idea and practice of barrier troops tested on Ukrainians were lately used on the battlefields of the World War II. Among three Holodomors, the government did not conceal only the first one (1921–1922), as it could be blamed on the tsarist regime that brought the villagers to the poverty, and post-war devastation. The famine of 1946–1947 was silenced, but the population generally perceived it as a clear consequence of two horrendous misfortunes – the World War II and dreadful drought. Especially rigid was position of the government regarding the very fact of genocide in 1933–1933 not only its scale. The author emphasizes that the Great Famine is refused to be admitted not because it was unreal but to avoid the assessment of its special direction against Ukraine and Ukrainian nation, saying instead that it affected the fate of all nations. The article describes the renovation of internal passports system and the obligatory registration at a certain address that took place in the USSR in 1932. Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR stipulated the fact that people living in rural areas should not obtain passports. Therefore, collective farmers of the Ukrainian SSR actually did not obtain passports. The villagers were forbidden to leave collective farms without signed agreement with the employer, that deprived them of the right to free movement. Even after the introduction of labour books the collective farmers did not obtain them either. The author describes the destruction of the collective farms system that his parents dedicated their entire labour life to. Instead of preserving productive forces, material and technical base and introducing new forms of agrarian sector management and the whole society to the development path, this system has been thoughtlessly destroying and plundering. Keywords: Holodomor, Ukrainian villagers, collectivization, genocide, confiscation, barrier troops.


Author(s):  
Eric K. Yamamoto

This chapter unravels the World War II majority and dissenting opinions in Korematsu v. United States, describing the recited factual foundations of the Court’s ruling (along with the dissenters’ sharp counterpoints) and detailing the Court’s announced strict scrutiny standard alongside its actual extremely deferential judicial review. In closely examining the Japanese American internment (exclusion and incarceration) case, it concisely examines the documents and written and oral arguments about military necessity advanced by the government (and accepted by the Court majority), along with Justice Murphy’s factual rejoinders and condemnation of the majority’s complicity in the government’s descent into “the ugly abyss of racism.” It closes by examining Justice Jackson’s Korematsu “loaded weapon” warning, along with contemporary views of the warning’s relevance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 322-324
Author(s):  
Elsa Haxha

Abstract As is known historically, part of the World Anti-Fascist Grand Coalition was also another great ally, United States. Even the allies had issued the Declaration of December 1942, for recognition of the anti-fascist resistance of the Albanian people, as well as Great Britain and the Soviet Union, making it part of the International Coalition and part of his war against the common enemies nazi and fascists. Nevertheless, beyond the lack of these interests, the Americans under the World Anti-Fascist Grand Coalition few months after the british began in the tiny Balkan military missions, although few toward British ally.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Alekseev

The purpose of the article is to study the anti-corruption policy in Russia and abroad, identify and characterize the main anti-corruption strategies. Comparative studies were chosen as the main method of scientific research, and case studies were used to analyze the anti-corruption strategies of a number of countries: the United States, great Britain, Germany, New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, China, Japan and Singapore; in comparison with Russia. The causes of corruption are analyzed, and measures aimed at preventing it are identified. It is hypothesized that only by using various anti-corruption strategies in combination, it is possible to effectively resist corruption. Three main strategies are identified: systematic elimination of the causes of corruption, aimed at reducing the risks and losses from corruption; a strategy of war, based on the use of punitive measures against corrupt officials; a strategy of conscious passivity, when the government does not actually take measures to eliminate corruption. In Russia during the 90's and up to 2008. the strategy of conscious passivity was applied, then we switched to a strategy of systematic elimination of the causes that generate corruption. The theoretical significance of the research results presented in the article is a review of the world and Russian experience in countering corruption and the measures used, and an assessment of their effectiveness in fighting it.


2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 157-166
Author(s):  
Tapani Harviainen

In the years 1989–1944 two different wars against the Soviet Union were imposed upon Finland. During the Winter War of 1989–1940 Germany remained strictly neutral on the basis of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact&&Great Britain and France planned intervention in favour of Finland. When the second, so-called Continuation War broke out in the summer of 1041, Finland was co-belligerent of Germany, and Great Britain declared war on Finland in December 1941. De jure, however, Finland was never an ally of Germany, and at the end of the war, in the winter 1944–1945, the Finnish armed forces expelled the German troops from Lapland, which was devastated by the Germans during their retreat to Norway. Military service was compulsory for each male citizen of Finland. In 1939 the Jewish population of Finland numbered 1 700. Of these, 260 men were called up and approximately 200 were sent to serve at the front during the Winter War.


1970 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-404
Author(s):  
Albert A. Blum ◽  
J. Douglas Smyth

ONE of the more perplexing problems facing the United States in the twentieth century has been that of selecting fairly which citizens shall serve in the armed forces. Today controversy surrounds the application of the Selective Service System to them raising of troops for the Vietnam War. Thus far, however, the hostilities in Vietnam have not posed one difficulty for the Selective Service System that existed during World War II, namely, the necessity of granting substantial numbers of industrial and occupational deferments, except insofar as educational deferments are a form of industrial ones. Such deferments have grown more important during the world wars of the twentieth century as nations engaged in full-scale hostilities have been forced to rely heavily on them in order to maintain the industrial and economic strength of the nation.


Author(s):  
Amanda L. Tyler

The book concludes by arguing that the current state of American habeas jurisprudence should trouble anyone who cares about the Constitution. As the chapters of the book reveal, the War on Terror Supreme Court decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and the World War II internment of Japanese Americans stand entirely at odds with everything the Founding generation sought to achieve with the Suspension Clause. Specifically, the origins and long-standing interpretation of the Suspension Clause understood it to prohibit the government, in the absence of a valid suspension, from detaining persons who can claim the protection of domestic law outside the criminal process, even in wartime.


2021 ◽  
pp. 200-209
Author(s):  
Mykola Tymoshyk

The article is based on the author’s processing of the archives of Ukrainian emigration during his research internship in Great Britain. His task was to find out and clarify the means and ways used by the Ukrainian diaspora in its struggle against Moscow’s information and propaganda offensive against the Western community’s positive resolution of the “Ukrainian question” after World War II.That was the time when the Russian governmental machine intensified its counter-propaganda work in the Western direction. Under those conditions, the world continued to perceive Ukrainians as part of the “great Soviet people” who unanimously built communism, and Ukraine itself as only a formal state declaratively writing its name in UN documents as a country with a significant contribution to the victory over fascism.Under the conditions of statelessness, Ukrainian public institutions abroad replaced state embassies and official representations and took on the responsible task to constantly plant the Ukrainian information field.The Ukrainian diaspora used the following means in its struggle against Moscow’s information and propaganda offensive against the Western community’s positive solution of the “Ukrainian question”.In particular, it was a matter of checking the presence of materials on Ukrainian studies in the main libraries of the countries where Ukrainian emigrants lived compactly. Foreign authors’ interpretation of mentions was said about Ukraine and Ukrainians in those few texts was analyzed.Representatives of Ukrainian public organizations established personal contacts with directors of libraries in cities with a compact residence of Ukrainians. The goal was to create Ukrainian book and press departments there. In 1948, a centralized network was established in Munich to provide major foreign libraries with Ukrainian publications.The successful breakthrough of the Moscow information blockade on the issue of the Holodomor of 1933 happened due to publication of a series of English-language brochures on this issue at the expense of the Ukrainian Youth Association abroad.


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