Bureaucratic Leninism in Cuba

After 1970, Cuba became increasingly dependent on the USSR economically and adopted a Soviet-style management structure for the economy. But the economy ground down over time and crashed after the disappearance of the Soviet subsidy when that country collapsed in 1991. The party-military elite that runs Cuba has tried varieties of domestic and foreign policy adjustments but remains victimized by the US embargo and the inefficiencies of the bureaucratic Leninist model.

The Effect of Differential Attentional Focus Strategies on the Performance of Military Elite Shooters

Background and Objective. The effect of attentional focus strategies on performance has been an interesting area of investigation, especially when the precision of performance is of significance. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of different attentional focus strategies on performance precision of elite military shooters. Methods. This study is semiexperimental with an intragroup design. A number of 10 military marksmen (30-42 years old) with at least 10 years of experience in shooting performed under four attentional focus strategies in a counterbalanced design. In each strategy, two blocks (each consisting of 20 trials) were conducted. Shooters’ performance was recorded using SCATT device and analyzed using the factorial variance analysis with repeated measure. Results. Results showed that the interactional effects of internal-external/relevant-irrelevant focuses of attention were significant on shooting record, shooting accumulation, and stability on the target center. Results suggest that the external-relevant attentional focus strategies were more effective than other focus strategies. Conclusion. The results of the study support the hypothesis that external-relevant attentional focus produced better scores, better accumulation, more stability at the target center, and less average fluctuation. Therefore, this attentional focus strategy improves performance precision of military elite shooters.

Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich and the Russian army after the Decembrist uprising

The article is devoted to the personality of Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, who served in the Russian army from the age of 16, commanded the guard in the wars with France, and formed the Polish army. The victory over Napoleon and the Decembrist uprising led to new trends in the development of the Russian army. The military elite of the Empire sought to rely on simple, uneducated officers in the army. Konstantin Pavlovich noted that he preferred to command completely uneducated officers, rather than “ostensibly educated rioters”.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Islamic scholars of Bukhara during the long nineteenth century. Islamic scholars were among the most influential individuals in their society, and that power rested on their mastery of diverse forms of knowledge rather than birthright. Instead of imagining those varied competencies and practices as embodied by separate professions, this book conceptualizes them as distinct practices and disciplines mastered by a single milieu. Instead of imagining stratified castes of “ulama” as against “sufis” as against “poets,” there is a unified social group of multitalented polymaths selectively performing sharia, asceticism, and poetry as circumstances dictated. These polymaths of Islam were the custodians of the only form of institutionalized high culture on offer in Central Asia. Their authoritative command over many different forms of knowledge — from medicine to law to epistolography and beyond — allowed them to accumulate substantial power and to establish enduring family dynasties. The Turkic military elite relied on these scholars to administer the state, but the ulama possessed an independent source of authority rooted in learning, which created tension between these two elite groups with profound ramifications for the region's history.

The Sovereign and the Sage

This chapter assesses the ulama's relationship with state power. By the long nineteenth century, the ulama stood as a pillar of the state, limited though that state was. Islamic scholars systematically deployed their diverse Persianate skill set and leveraged Islamic knowledge on behalf of the Turkic nobility. Nevertheless, the ulama still envisioned the state as an Islamic state, and they carefully guarded their moral prerogative to speak for the religion both groups agreed had a total monopoly on politics and social life. Although in certain instances evidence exists of this most important of prerogatives — the authority to legitimately speak for religion — shifting in favor of the Turkic military elite, the ulama cultivated a spirit of moral independence and superiority to the state.