Search

Begin New Search Political Geography Soviet Union Publication Year within 25 Years Publication Year within 10 Years

1. Starr Forum: The Collapse of the Soviet Empire and the seeds of the new European war

Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
Vladislav Zubok is professor of international history, with expertise on the Cold War, the Soviet Union, Stalinism, and Russia’s intellectual history in the 20th century. His most recent books are Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union (2021), The Idea of Russia: The Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev (2017), Dmitry Likhachev. The Life and the Century (in Russian, 2016) A Failed Empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007) and Zhivago’s Children: the Last Russian Intelligentsia (2009). Co-chairs: Carol Saivetz is a senior advisor in the MIT Security Studies Program. She is the author and contributing co-editor of books and articles on Soviet and now Russian foreign policy issues. Elizabeth Wood is professor of history at MIT. She is the author most recently of Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine. She is co-director of the MISTI MIT Russia Program, coordinator of Russian studies, and adviser to the Russian Language Program.
Topic:
Cold War, Governance, Leadership, Conflict, and Empire
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Soviet Union

2. Collective Memory In The Context of Content Reconfiguration: The Anecdotes of the Soviet and Post-Soviet Era

Author:
Nataliia Komykh and Yatoslav Zharko
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
Institution:
Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
Abstract:
he article considers the phenomenon of collective memory as a resource of social interaction, legitimization of social practices. In particular, attention is paid to aspects of reconfiguration of the content of the collective memory of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Societies remember differently. Ukrainian society has a traumatic social experience gained as a result of the transformational processes of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the formation of an independent state, a democratic politicalorder. The phenomenon of memory is considered in more detail on the example of the results of the study of collective memory reflected in anecdotes. The authors noted that the anecdote is a mechanism for translating cultural meanings intothe memory of societies. The anecdote represents the symbolic systems of objective manifestations of collective memory. Based on the analysis of the results of the research by the method of content analysis using the online program Voyant Tools, reconfigurations of the content of anecdotes were recorded: from political to private; from local toponymic discourse to global; from ridiculing the policy of the state to the experience of society through the humor of the historical events of the formation of independent Ukraine.
Topic:
Memory, Social Order, Identity, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
Europe and Soviet Union

3. Book Talk. Stalin's Millennials: Nostalgia, Trauma, and Nationalism

Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Stalin’s Millennials examines Joseph Stalin’s increasing popularity in the post-Soviet space, and analyzes how his image, and the nostalgia it evokes, is manipulated and exploited for political gain. The author argues that, in addition to the evil dictator and the Georgian comrade, there is a third portrayal of Stalin—the one projected by the generation that saw the tail end of the USSR, the post-Soviet millennials. This book is not a biography of one of the most controversial historical figures of the past century. Rather, through a combination of sociopolitical commentary and autobiographical elements that are uncommon in monographs of this kind, the attempt is to explore how Joseph Stalin’s complex legacies and the conflicting cult of his irreconcilable tripartite of personalities still loom over the region as a whole, including Russia and, perhaps to an even deeper extent, Koba’s native land—now the independent Republic of Georgia, caught between its unreconciled Soviet past and the potential future within the European Union.
Topic:
Nationalism, Governance, Leadership, Trauma, and Memory
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Soviet Union, and Georgia

4. Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Culture by Edward Tyerman

Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Following the failure of communist revolutions in Europe, in the 1920s the Soviet Union turned its attention to fostering anticolonial uprisings in Asia. China, divided politically between rival military factions and dominated economically by imperial powers, emerged as the Comintern’s prime target. At the same time, a host of prominent figures in Soviet literature, film, and theater traveled to China, met with Chinese students in Moscow, and placed contemporary China on the new Soviet stage. They sought to reimagine the relationship with China in the terms of socialist internationalism—and, in the process, determine how internationalism was supposed to look and feel in practice. Internationalist Aesthetics offers a groundbreaking account of the crucial role that China played in the early Soviet cultural imagination. Edward Tyerman tracks how China became the key site for Soviet debates over how the political project of socialist internationalism should be mediated, represented, and produced. The central figure in this story, the avant-garde writer Sergei Tret’iakov, journeyed to Beijing in the 1920s and experimented with innovative documentary forms in an attempt to foster a new sense of connection between Chinese and Soviet citizens. Reading across genres and media from reportage and biography to ballet and documentary film, Tyerman shows how Soviet culture sought an aesthetics that could foster a sense of internationalist community. He reveals both the aspirations and the limitations of this project, illuminating a crucial chapter in Sino-Russian relations. Grounded in extensive sources in Russian and Chinese, this cultural history bridges Slavic and East Asian studies and offers new insight into the transnational dynamics that shaped socialist aesthetics and politics in both countries.
Topic:
Nationalism, Arts, Culture, and Identity
Political Geography:
Europe and Soviet Union

5. Rusia en África. Nuevas dinámicas desde el Kremlin

Author:
Sebastián Ruiz-Cabrera
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista UNISCI/UNISCI Journal
Institution:
Unidad de investigación sobre seguridad y cooperación (UNISCI)
Abstract:
Hace menos de una década, el continente africano era prácticamente la última prioridad de la política exterior de Rusia. Atrás quedaron las décadas doradas en las que el peso de la URSS se hacía notar en niveles como la ideología, las infraestructuras, la economía, la política o el sector educativo. Ahora bien, ante el creciente aislamiento internacional, Rusia vuelve a apostar por el apoyo del continente mientras Occidente mira con preocupación tales esfuerzos. En 2019 tuvo lugar en Sochi (Rusia) el primer foro económico entre la potencia dirigida por Putin y África, un foro en el que se definieron las líneas maestras en política exterior del Kremlin. Era un claro anuncio: Rusia estaba de vuelta en el continente africano después de una larga ausencia, en concreto desde la disolución de la Unión Soviética en 1991. El artículo analiza si su presencia en África es una presencia tan alarmista como se presenta por la Unión Europea o la Casa Blanca.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, History, Infrastructure, Neoimperialism, and Economy
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, and Soviet Union

6. Women’s Liberation in Soviet, Sino, and American State Building: Theory and Practice

Author:
Emily B. Finley
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Humanitas
Institution:
The Center for the Study of Statesmanship, Catholic University
Abstract:
Women’s liberation is a concept that is almost always found at the heart of revolutionary thinking. Plato, devising the ideal state in which all perform work according to inborn ability and hold goods in common according to the dictates of justice, very soon discovers that marriage and the nuclear family are hindrances to the perfectly just republic. Plato’s plan for abolishing the traditional family pertains to the guardian class and exemplifies a deep suspicion of the family as fostering attitudes detrimental to building the just state. Plato was the opposite of an egalitarian, but the view of the family as a harbinger of “private morality” would in the modern period characterize radically egalitarian philosophies that envision an all-dominating public consciousness and a corresponding collective activism. Family life, especially for women, is not naturally suited to this political objective. The construction of Plato’s perfectly just city entails the assurance that women worthy of being “guardians” can outsource childcare and can freely produce guardian-worthy children.
Topic:
Women, Feminism, State Building, Gender, and Liberation
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, Soviet Union, North America, and United States of America

7. Telling America’s Story in Communist Times

Author:
Jonathan B. Rickert
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
During my three tours of duty in communist Eastern Europe (USSR 1960s, Romania 1970s, and Bulgaria 1980s), U.S. diplomats were inhibited in their contacts with local citizens. Most of us spoke the local languages and longed to establish links with a broader range of people. Although that was not impossible, any relationship that was outside of accepted channels was likely either terminated by the local authorities or came to be controlled by them. Visits to post by American experts in the cultural, educational, scientific, and other fields were always welcome, since they helped open doors to people whom it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to meet otherwise. In the case of the USSR, the 1958 U.S.-Soviet Cultural Agreement was a great boon. The size and importance of the Soviet Union meant that relatively large numbers of prominent Americans, including politicians, passed through Moscow. Those visits gave at least some local citizens a window on our country that helped to contradict the pervasive anti-American propaganda that the government promoted. Traveling U.S. exhibitions during my time there, such as “Hand Tools U.S.A.”, exposed ordinary citizens in provincial cities to Russian-speaking American guides and to our culture and values.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Soviet Union, and United States of America

8. Remembering Mikhail Gorbachev and the 1991 Coup

Author:
Renee M. Earle
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Monday, August 19, 1991. The morning started like most of my days as a press officer at Embassy Moscow. I rose early, made coffee, and turned on the TV to check the news. The similarity of routine quickly vanished. Instead of the news, Soviet state TV was broadcasting the Swan Lake ballet, often a sign in the Soviet Union that something was amiss. Through the open window, I heard a strange, rumbling noise coming from the direction of the Ostankino TV tower, located just a few minutes from my apartment complex. I thought they might be having technical difficulties. Thirty-one years ago, there were no home computers or cell phones to help me unravel what was going on. I went to my car in the outside parking lot and started the half-hour drive south to the embassy. It was only then that I saw the Soviet military tanks, which rolled alongside the busy morning traffic past the embassy in central Moscow to their nearby destinations, including the “White House,” the Russian Parliament building, not far from the back of the embassy.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Coup, Memoir, and Soviet Union
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and United States of America

9. Ukrainians to Putin’s Empire: Hell No!

Author:
Dick Virden
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Watching Ukrainians bravely risk life and limb for their country, I’m reminded of what I saw during assignments as a diplomat in Poland and Romania. For more than four decades after World War II, those countries—and the others of Eastern Europe—were governed mainly by Soviet puppets. I recall friends tapping their shoulders to mock the epaulettes of collaborators playing for the other side. These were oppressed lands then. Political rights were scant, and stagnant economies made regime claims of a socialist paradise transparent nonsense. The government had long since lost the respect of the governed, what Chinese call the mandate of the people. U.S. policy in those days was to try to keep hope alive by quietly encouraging those opposed to the communist regime and using the leverage we had to help them gain greater space to operate. For example, our diplomats sought to identify independent-minded leaders to include in our Fulbright, International Visitor, and other exchange programs. We chipped away at the regime’s information monopoly through short-wave radio, personal contact, and distribution of uncensored material such as bootleg copies of Newsweek. And we appeared at events like the annual opening of the academic year at the Catholic University of Lublin, then the only independent institution of higher learning in Eastern Europe.
Topic:
Diplomacy, History, Memoir, Vladimir Putin, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and United States of America

10. Gorbachev: Humanism and Hubris

Author:
Raymond F. Smith
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The recent death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, revived interest in his legacy. Praised by the West for his reforms and role in bringing the cold war to an end, in Russia he is often seen as responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, an event described by Vladimir Putin as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Gorbachev received the Western accolade of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. Less than a year later, in August, 1991, a group of senior Communist Party and government officials launched a coup d’état to depose him. Gorbachev might have forestalled that attempt if he had taken more seriously information that the U.S. government had passed to him two months earlier.
Topic:
Diplomacy, History, Memoir, and Mikhail Gorbachev
Political Geography:
Soviet Union and United States of America

11. Zumwalt, Holloway, and the Soviet Navy Threat: Leadership in a Time of Strategic, Social, and Cultural Change

Author:
John T. Kuehn
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
This article examines the strategic challenges faced by Admirals Elmo Zumwalt and James Holloway as chiefs of naval operations in the 1970s. Zumwalt’s charter was to reform the U.S. Navy, but it included a charge to address Navy strategy in the face of a growing Soviet maritime threat. He succeeded, but his successor, Admiral Holloway, who is less known, provided much needed stability for the fleet in the wake of Zumwalt’s reforms. Holloway continued to refine the ideas of Zumwalt and Admiral Stansfield Turner that eventually became the maritime strategy of the 1980s. The challenges they overcame provide insights for similar challenges today.
Topic:
History, Navy, and Maritime
Political Geography:
Soviet Union

12. A Soviet Diplomat’s Memories of Beijing 1973-1975

Author:
Simon Schuchat
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Editor’s Note: This excerpt from a Soviet diplomat’s memoir of his China service is translated by Simon Schuchat. The diplomat, Aleksei Arkadevich Brezhnev (1930-2008, no relation to Leonid Brezhnev), worked on Sino-Soviet affairs from 1953 until 1978, in Beijing and Moscow, including serving as acting head of the USSR embassy during part of the Cultural Revolution in China. In 1998 he published China: A Thorny Path to Neighborly Relations. Memoirs and Reflections, from which this excerpt is taken.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, International Affairs, and Memoir
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Soviet Union

13. When the KGB Sends Its B Team

Author:
Jonathan B. Rickert
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
During my foreign service tour in Moscow 1966-1968, embassy security regulations prohibited employees from traveling alone within the Soviet Union. We were warned that we risked being targeted by the KGB, whose operatives might attempt to compromise us in any number of ways. Among those often needing a travel companion to comply with this regulation were the embassy’s Publications Procurement Officers (PPOs), who traveled extensively within the country buying all sorts of books and other publications for various U.S. government organizations. And that is how I came to be invited to join PPO Bill Pryce on a book-buying trip to Ufa and Kazan in early December 1966.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, Memoir, and KGB
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and United States of America

14. Red Tape in Russia

Author:
Peter Bridges
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Russia is famous for red tape, with paperwork required for just about any activity. I had my own first-hand experiences with this obstructive bureaucracy during my assignment to the USSR 1962-1964. As assistant general services officer during my first year in Moscow, I ordered forms and furniture, supervised the motor pool, got broken toilets fixed, and tried to keep in operation our creaky Soviet elevators, which liked to break down late on Friday afternoons. While this was not glamorous diplomacy, it probably taught me more about Russia than what I gained as a political officer during my second year in the post.
Topic:
Diplomacy and Memoir
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Soviet Union, and United States of America

15. Jack F. Matlock and American Diplomacy with Russia

Author:
Olga Krasnyak
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Editor’s note: Dr. Krasnyak’s research was supported by the Matlock Archives Short-term Fellows in Residence Grant. The grant was provided by the Center of Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies (CSEEES) of Duke University. US-Russia relations are currently at a low point without promise for improvement in the short term. Russia and the US once again seem more likely to be talking about each other than with each other. Research into the career of Jack F. Matlock, a long-term diplomat and an Ambassador to the Soviet Union, offers insights into ways to conduct diplomacy to advance American interests with Russia. Ambassador Matlock’s contributions to diplomacy are important for understanding the history of US diplomacy with Russia; the Matlock archive collection at Duke University is a rich source for researching and teaching diplomacy.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, History, and Literature
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and United States of America

16. Did Alcohol Policy Really Cause the Postsocialist Mortality Crisis? Revisiting the Rebound and Affordability Hypotheses

Author:
Aytalina Azarova, Gabor Scheiring, Michael Ash, and Lawrence King
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
This paper reexamines the argument that alcohol policies were the major factor behind the mortality crisis in postsocialist Russia. We show that the correlation between the Gorbachev anti-alcohol campaign (rebound hypothesis), alcohol prices in the 1990s (affordability hypothesis), and mortality reported in previous analyses is not robust to splitting oblasts into Far- East and the rest of Russia. Our analysis conducted on a sample of 534 towns in the European part of Russia also finds no robust evidence supporting the two hypotheses. In contrast, findings linking privatization to mortality are robust to controlling for the anti-alcohol campaign and the affordability of alcohol.
Topic:
Health, Political Economy, Mortality, Alcohol, and Affordability
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

17. Exchange and Cooperation in Music and Art between the Soviet Union and North Korea (1948–1990)

Author:
Byong-Jo Lee
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, an extensive number of cultural exchange visits were made between the Soviet Union and North Korea in various fields including the arts. Mutual visits paid by delegates of the respective countries served as an opportunity to introduce cultural techniques and receive training by experts of the other country. In this Research Review, Lee Byong-Jo, Professor at Al-Farabi (Kazakh) National University, explains the exchange of arts between the two countries. While most of them have been made with the intentions of praising the North Korean regime, findings show that there have been exchanges in folk music as well. In addition, research shows that Koryoin artists in Central Asia led cultural exchange between two countries. According to articles on the Lenin Gichi, exchange visits started with the founding of North Korea and persisted until the 1960s. Art groups reflected the sorrow of the Koryoin community, encouraged them to preserve their national identity, and contributed to the development of the arts in both countries.
Topic:
History, Arts, Culture, and Music
Political Geography:
Asia, North Korea, and Soviet Union

18. The Long Shadow: Immediate and Downstream Consequences of the Collapse of the USSR

Author:
George W. Breslauer
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
For most Russians, the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991 was highly disorienting, if not traumatizing. They were sud- denly living in a new world. Many appreciated the newfound freedoms (of speech, association, religion, travel, and limited economic entrepreneurship) bequeathed by Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. Still, however much they appreci- ated Gorbachev’s ending of the Cold War, Russians had to get used to a long list of shattering losses. Their country was no longer a distinct, multi-ethnic civilization or an acknowledged “great power” that could take pride in its history. The economy was collapsing amidst deepening shortages of consumer goods, while organized crime climbed above ground to demand protection money and collude with state and party officials to strip state assets.1 Abroad, the country was a lonely “has-been.” The states of Eastern Europe were no longer military allies or vassals, and Russia could no longer claim to be the virtuous leader of an anti-imperialist “world communist movement.” The USSR’s prior claims of being a “global power” were nullified by the parlous state of the Russian military and the country’s economic dependence on the West in the wake of the collapse. The only international status indicator that remained was the claim of being a nuclear “superpower.”
Topic:
History, Economy, Vladimir Putin, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

19. 30 Years Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Democracy, Community, and Russia

Author:
Jerzy Buzek
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
I am a man of Solidarity—Solidarność. That is the name of the mass social movement that began in Poland in 1980 and brought freedom and democracy to not only my country but to all of Central and Eastern Europe. 1989 marked the end of the Eastern Bloc, and 1991 brought the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, there was hope it would indeed be “the end of history” and that there would be no going back to the past. The fall of the communist empire seemed to be the ultimate proof for us in Poland and Central Eastern Europe, but also for the entire world, that there was no more place for authoritarian regimes and that oppressive governments would perish sooner or later. Such was the experi- ence of generations that lived through the twentieth century. Three decades prior, the air we breathed was full of democracy; we needed that air once more.
Topic:
Communism, Democracy, Community, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

20. The USSR and its Influence on Developments in the Right to Self- Determination

Author:
Robert McCorquodale
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
On a cold day in early March 1990, a phone call was made from the office of an economics minister in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (Lithu- anian SSR) to a junior academic at the University of Cambridge. The question was asked: what laws should the government of Lithuanian SSR pass to declare itself independent from the Soviet Union? After a few days, the junior academic proposed a potential course of action to the Lithuanian caller. His proposal, combined with other, more expert opinions, was adopted by the government of the Lithuanian SSR as part of its declaration of (renewed) independence proclaimed on 11 March 1990.1
Topic:
Development, Independence, Post-Soviet Space, and Self-Determination
Political Geography:
Soviet Union