scholarly journals When the West is far away: Romanian attempts to withdraw from World War II (1943-1944), Finnish views

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-205
Author(s):  
Silviu-Marian Miloiu
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Source Of Information

This article approaches the Romanian foreign policy stakes in the aftermath of the Stalingrad Battle as seen from the perspective of a comrade-in-arms country, Finland, which shared with Romania many of the assumptions, fears and anxieties with regard to the outcome of the war. The article is shaped in Stephen M. Walt’s understanding of balancing and bandwagoning, Romania and Finland choosing Germany over the Soviet Union mainly for the reason that the latter was perceived as the biggest security threat and the former as the only possible deterrent and support. The material focuses on the analysis of Eduard Hjalmar Palin’s diplomatic dispatches from Bucharest. On one hand, they were the main source of information for the Finnish decision-makers with regard to the Romanian international situation and its foreign and domestic policies. On other hand, Palin was an experienced diplomat, with excellent connections in the Romanian society and enjoyed access to confidential information in the governmental circles due to a Romanian-Finnish agreement of summer of 1941. We can see, for instances, cases when Ion and Mihai Antonescu confided to the Finnish envoy Führer Adolf Hitler’s statements which could affect the situation in Finland or help its leaders to take decisions. The article shows how divided Romanian governmental and opposition circles were, not only between but also among themselves. By reading these diplomatic reports, we could also acknowledge the widening split between the views of the two most prominent Romanian governmental leaders, Ion and Mihai Antonescu, thus complementing other sources of information already published. We can also learn about some peace plans of Romanian opposition groups, some of whom are little known from other documentary sources.

Choice in the West

1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Working Out

The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.

Bibliographic Article: Baltic Émigré Publishing and Scholarship in the Western World

1988 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-241
Author(s):  
David Crowe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western World ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

The Soviet absorption of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during World War II caused hundreds of thousands of Baltic immigrants to come to the West, where they established strong, viable ethnic communities, often in league with groups that had left the region earlier. At first, Baltic publishing and publications centered almost exclusively on nationalistic themes that decried the loss of Baltic independence and attacked the Soviet Union for its role in this matter. In time, however, serious scholarship began to replace some of the passionate outpourings, and a strong, academic field of Baltic scholarship emerged in the West that dealt with all aspects of Baltic history, politics, culture, language, and other matters, regardless of its political or nationalistic implications. Over the past sixteen years, these efforts have produced a new body of Baltic publishing that has revived a strong interest in Baltic studies and has insured that regardless of the continued Soviet-domination of the region, the study of the culture and history of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will remain a set fixture in Western scholarship on Eastern Europe.

2. World War II begins

2014 ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Gerard L. Weinberg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union

The German attack on Poland began on September 1 1939, and triggered the declaration of war on Germany by Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa. Germany and the Soviet Union were agreed on a dual attack on Poland from the West and East, which left Poland unable to defend itself. An important aspect of the war between Germany and the Allies was the war of the oceans. The battles between warships, targets on merchant ships, and the use of submarines in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans continued from 1939 up until Germany's surrender in May 1945 and drew in many Baltic and Scandinavian countries.

Czy w ZSRR kręcono thrillery?

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (XXIII) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Marcin Cybulski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Modern Sense

This article is an attempt to answer the question whether, in the specific conditions in which the cinematography of the Soviet Union was created and developed, we can talk about the production of thrillers. The notion of the thriller is considered and attention is paid to the problem of the definition of the term itself and the fact that some researchers do not treat the thriller as a genre at all. The thriller, associated by the Soviet decision-makers with Western culture (and thus also American), was perceived as a bourgeois creation, which made it an undesirable genre in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, for many years immediately after the end of World War II and at the very end of the existence of the historical empire, a series of films were created and they could be called thrillers in the general modern sense of the word. Titles of Soviet films created in the years 1947–1991 have been chosen from the rich resources of cinematography of our eastern neighbours. At the cinema historian’s workshop, there were both images of well-known and popular Soviet directors (Boris Barnet, Stanisław Goworouchin, Eldar Riazanow), as well as slightly less known personalities, (Gieorgij Nikulin, Boris Durow).

A Soviet West: nationhood, regionalism, and empire in the annexed western borderlands

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Risch
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Baltic

This article considers the role the Soviet Union's western borderlands annexed during World War II played in the evolution of Soviet politics of empire. Using the Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine as case studies, it argues that Sovietization had a profound impact on these borderlands, integrating them into a larger Soviet polity. However, guerrilla warfare and Soviet policy-making indirectly led to these regions becoming perceived as more Western and nationalist than other parts of the Soviet Union. The Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine differed in their engagement with the Western capitalist world. Different experiences of World War II and late Stalinism and contacts with the West ultimately led to this region becoming Soviet, yet different from the rest of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet West was far from uniform, perceived differences between it and the rest of the Soviet Union justified claims at the end of the 1980s that the Soviet Union was an empire rather than a family of nations.

Anti-Westernism on the European Periphery: The Meaning of Soviet-Turkish Convergence in the 1930s

Slavic Review ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel J. Hirst
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Order ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Ideological Conflict ◽  
European Periphery

A number of recent comparative works have drawn attention to parallels and similarities between the Soviet Union and the early Turkish Republic. In this article, Samuel J. Hirst takes a firmly transnational approach to Soviet-Turkish interactions in the 1930s to demonstrate that the similarities were not merely circumstantial. The manifest ideological conflict between nationalist Turks and internationalist Bolsheviks has led many historians to dismiss Soviet- Turkish cooperation as a necessary response to geopolitics, a pragmatic alliance against the west. Hirst argues that opposition to the western-dictated international order was a coherent element in Soviet-Turkish exchanges that stretched beyond diplomacy into the economic and cultural spheres. The antiwestern elements of Soviet-Turkish relations suggest that convergence was more than a case of homologous responses to similar conditions; it was part of a broader narrative that, in the Soviet case at least, continued to shape international relations beyond World War II.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

Atskaņotājmākslas attīstība Liepājā un Otrā pasaules kara ietekme uz mūziķu likteņiem

2021 ◽  
pp. 338-351
Author(s):  
Vēsma Lēvalde
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Soviet Union

The article is a cultural-historical study and a part of the project Uniting History, which aims to discover the multicultural aspect of performing art in pre-war Liepaja and summarize key facts about the history of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. The study also seeks to identify the performing artists whose life was associated with Liepāja and who were repressed between 1941 and 1945, because of aggression by both the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. Until now, the cultural life of this period in Liepāja has been studied in a fragmentary way, and materials are scattered in various archives. There are inaccurate and even contradictory testimonies of events of that time. The study marks both the cultural and historical situation of the 1920s and the 1930s in Liepāja and tracks the fates of several artists in the period between 1939 and 1945. On the eve of World War II, Liepāja has an active cultural life, especially in theatre and music. Liepāja City Drama and Opera is in operation staging both dramatic performances, operas, and ballet, employing an orchestra. The symphony orchestra also operated at the Liepāja Philharmonic, where musicians were recruited every season according to the principles of contemporary festival orchestras. Liepāja Folk Conservatory (music school) had also formed an orchestra of students and teachers. Guest concerts were held regularly. A characteristic feature of performing arts in Liepaja was its multicultural character – musicians of different nationalities with experience from different schools of the world were encountered there. World War II not only disrupted the balance in society, but it also had a very concrete and tragic impact on the fates of the people, including the performing artists. Many were killed, many repressed and placed in prisons and camps, and many went to exile to the West. Others were forced to either co-operate with the occupation forces or give up their identity and, consequently, their career as an artist. Nevertheless, some artists risked their lives to save others.

Military Industry Evacuation at the Beginning of World War II and the NKVD

2020 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 142-151
Author(s):  
Uta G. Lagvilava ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Technical Equipment ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Industry ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Internal Affairs

A few months after the fascist Germany’s attack on the USSR, under harsh wartime conditions, at the end of 1941 military industry of the Soviet Union began to produce such a quantity of military equipment that subsequently was providing not only replenishment of losses, but also improvement of technical equipment of the Red Army forces . Successful production of military equipment during World War II became one of the main factors in the victory over fascism. One of the unlit pages in affairs of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) is displacement and evacuation of a huge number of enterprises and people to the east, beyond the Urals, which were occupied by German troops at the beginning of the war in the summer of 1941. All this was done according to the plans developed with direct participation of NKVD, which united before the beginning and during the war departments now called the Ministry of Internal Affairs, FSB, SVR, the Russian Guard, Ministry of Emergency Situations, FAPSI and several smaller ones. And all these NKVD structures during the war were headed by Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria.

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