Browsing by Subject "Soviet Union"
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Item An economic comparison: the Soviet Union, 1917-1937 and Communist China, 1949-1962(Texas Tech University, 1966-08) Black, Harold TyroneThis thesis is an attempt to compare the progress of Communist China and the U.S.S.R. from the time of the communist take-overs to the end of their Second Flve-Year Plans. For China this period Includes the years from 1949-1962, for the U.S.S.R., 1917-1937. The emphasis is on the Chinese economy. The Chinese attempt to industrialize is, of course, the more recent attempt and is today more significant in terms of growth strategy for the other underdeveloped nations of the world. Thus since the Chinese experience is more recent and more relevant to today's underdeveloped areas, this segment of the paper draws the most attention.Item Becoming the vanguard : children, the Young Pioneers, and the Soviet state in the Great Patriotic War(2009-05) deGraffenried, Julie K.; Wynn, Charters, 1953-This dissertation combines institutional history and social analysis to provide a more nuanced depiction of the Soviet experience in the Great Patriotic War, a portrait which considers the experience of children, the state’s expectations of children, and an exploration of the institution responsible for connecting child and state, the V.I. Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization. It argues that the state’s expectations for children during the Great Patriotic War were issued primarily in order to save the floundering Young Pioneer organization. Though the Pioneers were supposed to lead children in all sorts of tasks and behaviors – a role they had fulfilled since their inception in 1922 – the organization nearly collapsed under the strain of wartime conditions in the early years of the war. In order to resurrect its image and secure its rightful place in the vanguard of children, the Pioneers launched a concerted effort to reassert its leadership. Language, values, and models of heroism were revamped to more accurately reflect the war. The internalization of these standards by children supported the Pioneers’ claim to leadership. Campaigns of action were launched to allow the Pioneers to claim ownership of children’s accomplishments. To guarantee success, the organization drew its ideas from preexisting activities – activities children were already doing in 1941-42, largely on local initiative. What had been conceived of and run as a prescriptive organization for two decades became a descriptive organization, subsuming all appropriate acts into the task of reestablishing the Pioneers at the forefront of Soviet childhood. This suggests that children had far more agency than previously assumed, and their many roles complicate the typical “child-victim” normally associated with the Great Patriotic War and its propaganda. The post-Stalingrad turnaround allowed the Pioneers the opportunity to reassert themselves. Becoming the vanguard, the organization established the foundations for a Pioneer-led heroism storied in Soviet history. Though internal problems continued to dog the Pioneers for years, the foundational story was established in the latter years of the war. Beginning in 1943, the organization began writing itself into the post-war victory narrative, alleging successful leadership among children and ignoring the near-catastrophe they had averted.Item Burden of the Cold War: The George H.W. Bush Administration and El Salvador(2012-02-14) Arandia, Sebastian ReneAt the start of the George H.W. Bush administration, American involvement in El Salvador?s civil war, one of the last Cold War battlegrounds, had disappeared from the foreign policy agenda. However, two events in November 1989 shattered the bipartisan consensus on US policy toward El Salvador: the failure of the FMLN?s largest military offensive of the war and the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter by the Salvadoran military, the FAES. Despite more than one billion dollars in US military assistance, the war had stalemated, promoting both sides to seek a negotiated political settlement mediated by the United Nations. The Jesuit murders demonstrated the failure of the policy of promoting respect for democracy and human rights and revived the debate in Congress over US aid to El Salvador. This thesis argues that the Bush administration sought to remove the burden of El Salvador from its foreign policy agenda by actively pushing for the investigation and prosecution of the Jesuit case and fully supporting the UN-mediated peace process. Using recently declassified government documents from the George Bush Presidential Library, this thesis will examine how the Bush administration fundamentally changed US policy toward El Salvador. Administration officials carried out an unprecedented campaign to pressure the FAES to investigate the Jesuit murders and bring the killers to justice while simultaneously attempting to prevent Congress from cutting American military assistance. The Bush administration changed the objective of its El Salvador policy from military victory over the guerrillas to a negotiated political settlement. The US facilitated the peace process by pressuring the Salvadoran government and the FMLN to negotiate in good faith and accept compromises. When both sides signed a comprehensive peace agreement on January 16, 1992, the burden of El Salvador was lifted.Item Cultural identity and the people of the North Caucasus(2011-05) Pressley, Brandon Alan; Garza, Thomas J.; Jordan, Bella B.During Soviet Russia, there was an active policy of forced assimilation of minorities into one cultural identity: Russian. This loss of cultural identity came in many forms of resettlement, deportation, discriminatory language policies and economic practices. All of these policies and actions led to large groups of people from the North Caucasus giving up their unique cultural identity and adopting the Russian cultural identity. Many of the policies and actions of the Soviet Union reflected the actions of the United States during the forced assimilation process of the Native Americans. Throughout this process of losing their cultural identity, the people of the North Caucasus could have maintained their unique cultural identity at home or in the local school system, but chose not to for various reasons. This choice to shed their own cultural identity and adopt the Russian identity has had detrimental effect s on the region and some cultures are on the brink of extinction. Not all the people of the North Caucasus willingly assimilated and accepted the Russian way of life; the Chechens have fought the Russians since their first excursion into the North Caucasus and continue to fight to this day for independence and freedom.Item Kurt Vonnegut in the U.S.S.R.(2012-08) Skorobogatov, Yana; Neuberger, Joan, 1953-; Lawrence, Mark ASince the mid-twentieth century, Kurt Vonnegut has enjoyed a permanent spot on the list of history’s most widely read and beloved American authors. Science fiction classics like Cat’s Cradle (1963) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) turned Vonnegut into a domestic counter-cultural literary sensation in the United States at mid-century. The presence of a loyal Vonnegut fan base in America, and in the west more broadly, is a well-documented fact. What is less well known among scholars and those familiar with Vonnegut’s work is his popularity in a far more distant place: the Soviet Union. Beginning in the late 1960s, Soviet citizens developed a voracious appetite for Vonnegut’s. Translations of his novels appeared regularly in daily newspapers and highbrow literary journals alike; a play adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five enjoyed a multi-season run in the Moscow Army Theater; average citizens competed for membership in Vonnegut’s karass. These examples are suggestive of the ways that Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction literature can serve as a gateway for scholars seeking to understand the Soviet Union during the 1970s. This report contends that Soviet interest in Vonnegut’s dystopian science fiction reflected larger shifts in Soviet attitudes towards pacifism, technology, individual wellbeing, human rights, and past and present wars. It situates these ideas in the context of domestic and global events to illustrate how the peculiar political conditions of the 1970s made this ideological convergence possible. It employs original American and Russian language sources, including Russian newspapers and journals, letters written by Vonnegut’s Russian translator, and Kurt Vonnegut’s own fan mail. At its core, this report challenges the assumption that political and ideological differences precluded Soviet and American citizens from identifying the conditions necessary for ensuring social and technological progress and a future without war.Item Lessons in Central Asian Islamic resistance : the Basmachi movement (1918-1931) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (1991-present)(2007-08) Abizaid, Dana Edward; Wynn, Charters, 1953-This study examines the Basmachi resistance against Soviet power in the 1920s in order to provide insight into the motives and aims of their rebellious progeny, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), who currently oppose the governments of former Soviet Central Asia. To this point, the majority of studies concerning the IMU have made only scattered comparative references to the Basmachi. This neglect, combined with the current repressive policies of Central Asia’s governments, hinders the successful termination of Islamic inspired resistance in the region. The study first provides a brief history of the destabilizing military and political events that occurred in the decades preceding the appearance of the Basmachi. The following six sections examine the main similarities between the Basmachi and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan’s struggle from which a greater understanding of Islamic resistance in Central Asia may be extracted. These sections will look closely at 1) the chaos of the post-October Revolution and fall of the USSR in Central Asia that created the conditions in which the Basmachi and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan emerged; 2) the goals and hardships of the respective movements, including internal disagreements in political/religious ideology and the feasibility of the Islamist dream of a Central Asia ruled by Shari’a law; 3) the vital role of leadership 4) significance of the groups’ persistence; 5) the part that neighboring nations, particularly Afghanistan and Tajikistan, played in supporting and harboring Central Asian radicals; and 6) local sentiment concerning the role that political and educational reform and more effective use of western aid can play in improving present day Central Asian security. By way of conclusion, the last section will reflect on the common Basmachi and IMU experience and the strategies that Central Asian governments could employ to avoid the repetition of violent conflict that engulfed parts of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and threatened Soviet power in the 1920s.Item Petropolitics and foreign policy : fiscal and institutional origins and patterns of Russian foreign policy, 1964-2012(2014-08) Weber, Yuval; Trubowitz, Peter; Moser, Robert G., 1966-Russian foreign policy from the mid-1960s has vacillated between periods of expansion and retrenchment in which the military and diplomatic reach of the state has extended to continents or been retracted to very modest conceptions of national defense. During this period, the financial centrality of energy exports has come to dominate the Russian economy, leading scholars and observers to draw a causal link between the two: as energy revenues go up, expansionism does as well, while declines in revenues lead Russia to behave less assertively. This dissertation outlines an alternative argument for petrostate foreign policy in which positive or negative revenue environments determine the menu of policy options available to policymakers, but that internal politics determine the content of those foreign policy choices. I argue that foreign policy choices are conditional on the mediating political institutions and circumstances existing at the time of booms and busts, namely that how energy revenue shocks affect foreign policy decision-making in a petrostate after a revenue shock depends on the political environment before the shock. The petropolitics foreign policy theory thus provides insight as to when the expansionism might occur. By focusing on revenue yet allowing politicians to retain agency, this “petropolitics” foreign policy theory links structural theories of foreign policy to leadership-driven models of political decision-making. This petropolitics theory then reassesses Russian foreign policy by analyzing leadership tenures from Leonid Brezhnev to Vladimir Putin. I show that Soviet expansionism in the Third World in the 1970s was not simply because of a positive revenue shock, but because of Brezhnev’s political weakness after his installation in a palace coup. Similarly, I show that Mikhail Gorbachev’s retrenchment of foreign policy commitments arose not solely from a lack of energy revenues, but from his political strength in light of the poor performance of his predecessors. Finally, I show that Vladimir Putin’s selective expansionism and retrenchment emerges in a skillful consolidation of domestic political strength, a fortuitous influx of energy revenues, and a willingness to change foreign policy strategies to serve a single preference of maintaining power.Item Soldiers into Nazis? : the German infantry's war in northwest Russia, 1941-1944(2007-05) Rutherford, Jeffrey Cameron, 1974-; Crew, David F., 1946-This work seeks both to modify and challenge the prevailing view of an ideologically-driven Army intent on realizing Hitler's racist goals in the Soviet Union. One way of measuring the ideological commitment of the Army's soldiers is through an examination of the divisional level. Each of the three divisions under examination was recruited from a geographically and culturally distinct area, allowing the soldiers of the 121st, 123rd and 126th Infantry Divisions to recreate the sense of community unique to their home region: East Prussia, Berlin and Rhineland-Westphalia, respectively. The differences between social classes, traditional political allegiances and confessions found in these regions was thus transferred to these divisions and these distinctions allow for a more precise investigation of what types of men were more or less likely to subscribe to the German war of annihilation in the Soviet Union. Unlike much of the literature which examines the ideological nature of the war and the military conflict separately, this study looks at combat and occupation in tandem. Through the use of official military records, ranging from the Army down to the regimental level, as well as previously unused diaries and letters written by the men of these three divisions, a complex and varied picture of the German Army's activities and motivations arises. Firstly, while ideological concerns certainly played a role in determining the actions of these divisions, other more tangible problems, such as food and clothing shortages and numerical weakness, were more important issues in determining the Army's frequent savage interactions with civilians. Second, instead of the war serving to increasingly radicalize the behavior of the troops, the German Army began to significantly modify its conduct in hopes of winning the cooperation of Soviet civilians in late 1942 and 1943 before reverting to Scorched Earth policy in 1944. Internal mechanisms within the Army led to these changes in behavior: when a conciliatory policy was viewed as necessary to win the war, it was implemented; when the Army believed unadulterated violence was the means to victory, radical policies were carried out its forces.Item Surviving total war in Kherson Region, Ukraine in 1941 - 1945(2013-05) Alexander, Vladyslav Christian; Wynn, Charters, 1953-; Bychkova Jordan, BellaWhile there are plenty of published materials concerning survival in Ukraine during World War II, most of those bypass the Kherson region and focus primarily on the German occupation. This thesis is an attempt to study the complex history of people's survival in Ukraine during a large portion of the twentieth century, through a micro-history of the city of Kherson and the neighboring villages, and towns of the region. The study analyzes the actions and the consequences for the various social, political and ethnic groups of changes in the ruling regimes, emphasizing the period of the return of the Red Army to the region in 1943-1944. This work attempts to provide an answer to the question of why the population of a provincial city, which endured no major combat, was reduced from about 100,000 residents in 1941 to less than a hundred on the day of return of the Soviets in 1944?Item The Carmen-Suite: Maya Plisetskaya Challenging Soviet Culture and Policy(2014-04-24) Kalashnikova, AnnaOn April 20 1967, the Carmen-Suite ballet, starring Maya Plisetskaya in the leading role, premiered in Moscow?s Bolshoi Ballet Theatre. The production was immediately banned by the Soviet Ministry of Culture for perceived violations of classical ballet canons. In a unique case of artistic resistance within the Soviet system of production, Plisetskaya negotiated the ballet?s return to the stage. Following the initial scandal, performance ban and a media blackout, the Carmen-Suite was subsequently reintegrated into Soviet repertoire and projected as a symbol of Soviet creativity and innovation. The history and legacy of the Carmen-Suite serves as a unique instance of successful artistic resistance within a framework of a repressive political system. In my archival study I examine the unique role of Maya Plisetskaya as a Soviet cultural actor. I argue that her role in the production, premiere and legacy of Carmen- Suite may serve as a proxy for insight into the undercurrents of Cold War and post-Cold War politics in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia. The evolution of Carmen-Suite from a symbol of protest to an integral part of the established cultural system illustrates both political protest on the part of its creators and artistic repossession on the part of the authorities. The incident is revealing of long-term processes of ballet exploitation and adaptation within the field of power. Today, as the United States enters a period of strained relationship with Russia, which many have described as a dawn of the second Cold War, research into the artistic, cultural and political significance of the 1967 Carmen-Suite may be of particular significance.