DOCSLIB.ORG

The Foreign Policy of Russia : Changing Systems, Enduring Interests / by Robert H

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Foreign Policy of Russia : Changing Systems, Enduring Interests / by Robert H RUSSIATHE FOREIGN POLICY OF This page intentionally left blank RUSSIATHE FOREIGN POLICY OF CHANGING SYSTEMS, ENDURING INTERESTS FIFTH EDITION ROBERT H. DONALDSON JOSEPH L. NOGEE AND VIDYA NADKARNI ROUTLEDGE Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2014 by M.E. Sharpe Published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Donaldson, Robert H., author. The foreign policy of Russia : changing systems, enduring interests / by Robert H. Donaldson, Joseph L. Nogee, Vidya Nadkarni.—Fifth edition. pages : maps ; cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7656-4200-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-7656-4201-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Soviet Union—Foreign relations. 2. Russia (Federation)—Foreign relations. I. Nogee, Joseph L., author. II. Nadkarni, Vidya, author. III. Title. DK266.45.D66 2014 327.47—dc23 2013041316 ISBN 13: 9780765642011 (pbk) ISBN 13: 9780765642004 (hbk) ———— Contents ———— List of Maps vii Acronyms and Abbreviations ix Acknowledgments xi 1. Introduction 3 2. The Tsarist Roots of Russia’s Foreign Policy 17 3. Soviet Foreign Policy: From Revolution to Cold War 36 4. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Cold War 72 5. Domestic Factors in the Making of Russia’s Foreign Policy 114 6. Russia and the States of the Former Soviet Union 158 7. Yeltsin and the West 231 8. Russia and the “Non-West” 282 9. Russian Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World: The Putin Era 362 Index 425 About the Authors 437 v This page intentionally left blank ———— List of Maps ———— Commonwealth of Independent States 162 Europe 256 Asia 287 The Middle East 307 vii This page intentionally left blank —— Acronyms and Abbreviations —— ABM Anti-ballistic Missile ANC African National Congress APEC Asian and Pacific Economic Council ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations BTC Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline CACO Central Asian Cooperation Organization CCP Chinese Communist Party CFE Conventional Forces in Europe CIA Central Intelligence Agency (U.S.) CIS Commonwealth of Independent States CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union CRRF Collective Rapid Reaction Force CSCE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe CSS Commonwealth of Slavic States CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organization CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea EBRD European Bank for Reconstruction and Development EU European Union EURASEC Eurasian Economic Community FAPSI Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information FPS Federal Border Service FSB Federal Security Service G-6 Group of Six (States conducting nuclear negotiations with Iran: United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China) G-7/G-8 Group of Seven (the G-8 meeting without Russia)Group of Eight Industrial Nations (Canada, France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Russia) G-20 The Group of 20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ix x ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS GDR German Democratic Republic (East Germany) GNP Gross National Product GPALS Global Protection Against Limited Strikes GRU Soviet Military Intelligence Agency GUUAM Regional cooperation organization: Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan (now GUAM) (until 2005), Azerbaijan, Moldova IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency ICBM Intercontinental Ballistic Missile IFOR Implementation Force IMF International Monetary Fund INF Intermediate Nuclear Forces KFOR Kosovo Force KGB Committee for State Security KLA Kosovo Liberation Army KPD Communist Party of Germany MFN Most Favored Nation MIRVs Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles MPLA Movement for the People’s Liberation of Angola NACC North Atlantic Cooperation Council NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NIS Newly Independent States NKR Nagorno-Karabakh Republic NMD National Missile Defense NPT Nonproliferation Treaty NSA U.S. National Security Agency NTV Independent Television OIC Organization of the Islamic Conference ORT Public Radio and Television Broadcasting OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe PFP Partnership for Peace PLO Palestine Liberation Organization PSI Proliferation Security Initiative RSDLP Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization SDI Strategic Defense Initiative SES Single Economic Space SMF Strategic Missile Forces SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty SPD Social Democratic Party (Germany) START Strategic Arms Reduction Talks SVR Foreign Intelligence Service TCP Trans-Caspian Pipeline UN United Nations UNMOVIC United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission USAID U.S. Agency for International Development USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics WTO World Trade Organization ———— Acknowledgments ———— We thank Daniel S. Papp, who read our original manuscript and made helpful sug- gestions. We alone are responsible for errors of fact or interpretation. We are grateful to Jonathan L. Leitch and Andrew Brooks for helpful research assistance. We also thank our respective institutions, the University of Tulsa, the University of Houston, and the University of San Diego, for their support of our work. Finally, we are grateful to our families for their encouragement and support, and for their tolerance of the many distractions from family life that writing a book entails. xi This page intentionally left blank RUSSIATHE FOREIGN POLICY OF This page intentionally left blank ———— 1 ———— Introduction We attempt in this book to provide both a description and an explanation of the foreign policy of Russia. Our time frame is largely the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first century, although we do reach back into the latter part of the nineteenth century. Especially over such a broad expanse of time, it is easier to describe policy than to explain it, because causality in politics involves multiple factors that are constantly changing in value. For the period of Russian politics dominated by the Soviet system, the basic character of foreign policy seemed simple. Marxist-Leninist doctrine appeared to dictate confrontation with the noncommunist world. However, foreign policy during the Soviet period was never as clear as it appeared to most contemporaries. Nonideological factors produced complex relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and other great powers: at times, cooperation with the West (détente), and at times, hostility to other communist regimes (e.g., Yugoslavia and China). Multiple factors shape foreign policy. Some are internal, such as the govern- ment and its political elites, the culture, economy, geography, and demography of a country. Others are external, such as foreign threats, political vacuums, and changes in the balance of power. These different factors are always changing in substance and weight, thus making it impossible to come up with a formula or model to explain or predict foreign policy. In short, foreign policy, like all politics, is dynamic. One broad generalization about Russian foreign policy that we believe to be valid is that elements of both continuity and change are always at work. Over the course of time, Russian foreign policy has exhibited many profound shifts in direction. Perhaps less obvious has been the continuity in behavior of gov- ernments headed by tsars, commissars, and presidents. In many respects, Rus- sian foreign policy has been similar to that of other great powers, and in other respects it has been unique. We begin this survey of Russian foreign policy with a preliminary analysis of the continuity and change we will be describing in Russia’s relations with the world, and of the degree to which that policy can be deemed distinctive. 3 4 INTRODUCTION Continuity and the International System To begin with the continuities and similarities, we note that as a general rule of statecraft, Russia has pursued balance-of-power policies. (Admittedly, it has not always fared well in these, as evidenced by the disaster of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact,1 but in that respect also, Russia has shared a characteristic with the other great powers in the world.) In principle,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Winners of the Baltic Assembly Prizes 1994 – 2019 1994 1996 1998
    Baltic Assembly Prizes for Literature, the Arts and Science Baltic Innovation Prize Baltic Assembly Medals 6 November 2020 Address by the President of the Baltic Assembly Aadu Must This year the Baltic Assembly, as any contribute to the targeted cooperation of other organisation, has been significantly our states and prosperity of our Baltic affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. region that will be extremely important Despite the difficulties and restrictions to in the years to come. These people meet in person, the traditions of our promote the unity and cooperation of organisation continue but in slightly the Baltic states - we greatly appreciate different format this year. their work. We award the Baltic Assembly Prizes to Unity and cooperation of the Baltic states outstanding people, who have are extremely important for us. We are demonstrated excellence in literature, thankful to all people who feel the same the arts, science and innovation. This way and act in order to bring the countries year’s winners of the Baltic Assembly closer together. The awarding of the Baltic Prizes have used their talent and Assembly Prizes and Medals in Estonia, knowledge to encourage thinking, remind Lithuania and Latvia is our way of saying about the historical milestones of that even though times are tough people are those who hold our nations together Photo by Ieva Ābele (Administration of Parliament of the Republic of Latvia) the Baltic states and make our countries visible in the international arena. Awards and we are grateful for that. We are also have been won in strong competition, as very proud about their achievements.
    [Show full text]
  • Eastern Europe
    * *»t« »t<»»t« ************* Eastern Europe INTRODUCTION FTER A PROTRACTED STRUGCLE, Nikita Khrushchev succeeded in July 1957 AL. in securing the removal from top Communist Party and government positions of Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Georgi Malenkov, and Dmitri Shepilov. At the same time two other lesser party leaders, Mikail Pervukhin and Maxim Saburov, were removed from the Party presidium. The decision to remove them was taken at a plenary meeting of the Com- munist Party Central Committee in Moscow June 22-29, 1957. Khrushchev and the 309-member Central Committee accused the deposed leaders, the so- called "anti-Party group," of wanting to lead the Party back to the pattern of leadership and the political line that had prevailed under Josef Stalin. While there were varying interpretations as to which of the contending men and factions represented what policy, it was clear that in this all-important fight for power a new and significant element had been introduced. In his duel with the oldest and most authoritative leaders of the Party, Khrushchev could not muster more than about half of the presidium votes. The powerful support he needed to break the deadlock came from the Soviet army. The backing of Marshal Georgi Zhukov, according to reliable reports, assured Khrushchev's victory. At the same Central Committee meeting, Zhukov was elevated to full membership in the Party presidium. After the June plenum, the influence of Marshal Zhukov and his role in the government of the Soviet Union seemed to increase, and the marshal's pronouncements indicated that he did not underestimate his newly acquired power position.
    [Show full text]
  • UNU CRIS Working Papers
    1 | P a g e The author Andrea Cofelice served as Ph.D. Intern at UNU-CRIS in 2011. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science – Comparative and European Politics at the University of Siena. He is also a junior researcher at the Interdepartmental Centre on Human Rights and the Rights of Peoples of the University of Padua. United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies Potterierei 72, 8000 Brugge, BE-Belgium Tel.: +32 50 47 11 00 / Fax.: +32 50 47 13 09 www.cris.unu.edu 2 | P a g e Abstract This paper aims at exploring which factors may promote or inhibit the empowerment of international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). According to the literature (Cutler 2006), an IPI may be defined as an international institution that is a regular forum for multilateral deliberations on an established basis of an either legislative or consultative nature, either attached to an international organization or itself constituting one, in which at least three states or trans-governmental units are represented by parliamentarians, who are either selected by national legislatures in a self-determined manner or popularly elected by electorates of the member states. Their origin dates back to the creation of the Inter- Parliamentary Union (IPU) in 1889, but they mushroomed after the Second World War, especially after 1989-1991 (new regionalism, also known as open regionalism especially in literature on Latin America), and today their presence is established almost everywhere in the world. However, they display sensibly different features in terms of institutional and organizational patterns, rules and procedures, legal status, membership, resources, functions and powers.
    [Show full text]
  • Title of Thesis: ABSTRACT CLASSIFYING BIAS
    ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: CLASSIFYING BIAS IN LARGE MULTILINGUAL CORPORA VIA CROWDSOURCING AND TOPIC MODELING Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang Thesis Directed By: Dr. David Zajic, Ph.D. Our project extends previous algorithmic approaches to finding bias in large text corpora. We used multilingual topic modeling to examine language-specific bias in the English, Spanish, and Russian versions of Wikipedia. In particular, we placed Spanish articles discussing the Cold War on a Russian-English viewpoint spectrum based on similarity in topic distribution. We then crowdsourced human annotations of Spanish Wikipedia articles for comparison to the topic model. Our hypothesis was that human annotators and topic modeling algorithms would provide correlated results for bias. However, that was not the case. Our annotators indicated that humans were more perceptive of sentiment in article text than topic distribution, which suggests that our classifier provides a different perspective on a text’s bias. CLASSIFYING BIAS IN LARGE MULTILINGUAL CORPORA VIA CROWDSOURCING AND TOPIC MODELING by Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Gemstone Honors Program, University of Maryland, 2018 Advisory Committee: Dr. David Zajic, Chair Dr. Brian Butler Dr. Marine Carpuat Dr. Melanie Kill Dr. Philip Resnik Mr. Ed Summers © Copyright by Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang 2018 Acknowledgements We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to our mentor, Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Day Holding Hands Changed History Occupation and Annexation of the Baltic States Was Illegal, and Against the Wish of the Respective Nations
    The day holding hands changed history occupation and annexation of the Baltic states was illegal, and against the wish of the respective nations. So at 19:00 on 23 August 1989, 50 years after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, church bells sounded in the Bal- tic states. Mourning ribbons decorated the national flags that had been banned a year before. The participants of the Bal- tic Way were addressed by the leaders of the respective national independence movements: the Estonian Rahvarinne, the Lithuanian Sajūdis, and the Popular Front of Latvia. The following words were chanted – ‘laisvė’, ‘svabadus, ‘brīvība’ (freedom). The symbols of Nazi Germany and the Communist regime of the USSR were burnt on large bonfires. The Baltic states demanded the cessation of the half-century long Soviet occupation, col- onisation, russification and communist genocide. The Baltic Way was a significant step to- wards regaining the national independ- ence of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and a source of inspiration for other region- al independence movements. The live chain was also realised in Kishinev by Ro- manians of the Soviet-occupied Bessara- bia or Moldova, while in January 1990, Ukrainians joined hands on the road from Lviv to Kyiv. Just after the Baltic Way campaign, the Berlin Wall fell, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia began, and the Ceausescu regime in Romania was overthrown. On 23 August 1989, approximately two doomed to be forcedly incorporated into million people stood hand in hand be- the Soviet Union until 1991. The Soviet Un- Recognising the documents of the Baltic tween Tallinn (Estonia), Rīga (Latvia) ion claimed that the Baltic states joined Way as items of documentary heritage of and Vilnius (Lithuania) in one of the voluntarily.
    [Show full text]
  • NATO, the Baltic States, and Russia a Framework for Enlargement
    NATO, the Baltic States, and Russia A Framework for Enlargement Mark Kramer Harvard University February 2002 In 2002, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will be initiating its second round of enlargement since the end of the Cold War. In the late 1990s, three Central European countries—Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland—were admitted into the alliance. At a summit due to be held in Prague in November 2002, the NATO heads-of-state will likely invite at least two and possibly as many as six or seven additional countries to join. In total, nine former Communist countries have applied for membership. Six of the prospective new members—Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and Macedonia—lie outside the former Soviet Union. Of these, only Slovakia and Slovenia are likely to receive invitations. The three other aspiring members of NATO—Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia— normally would stand a good chance of being admitted, but their status has been controversial because they were republics of the Soviet Union until August 1991. Until recently, the Russian government had vehemently objected to the proposed admission of the Baltic states into NATO, and many Western leaders were reluctant to antagonize Moscow. During the past year-and-a-half, however, the extension of NATO membership to the Baltic states in 2002 has become far more plausible. The various parties involved—NATO, the Baltic states, and Russia—have modified their policies in small but significant ways. Progress in forging a new security arrangement in Europe began before the September 2001 terrorist attacks, but the improved climate of U.S.-Russian relations since the attacks has clearly expedited matters.
    [Show full text]
  • Why Are Warm-Water Ports Important to Russian Security?
    JEMEAA - FEATURE Why Are Warm- Water Ports Important to Russian Security? The Cases of Sevastopol and Tartus Compared TANVI CHAUHAN Abstract This article aims to examine why Russia’s warm-water ports are so important to Russian security. First, the article defines whatsecurity encompasses in relation to ports. Second, the article presents two case studies: the Crimean port of Sevasto- pol and the Syrian port of Tartus. This article proves that warm-water ports are important to Russian security because they enable Russia to control the sea, proj- ect power, maintain good order, and observe a maritime consensus. Each of these categorical reasons are then analyzed in the Crimean and Syrian context. The re- sults are compared in regional perspective, followed by concluding remarks on what the findings suggest about Russian foreign policy in retrospect, as well as Russian security in the future. Introduction General discourse attribute ports with a binary character: commercial or naval. However, the importance of ports is not limited to those areas alone. Security in the twenty- first century has come to constitute multidimensional relationships, so this article will approach the importance of warm- water ports for security by us- ing the broad concept of maritime security, rather than naval security alone. Previ- ously, the maritime context covered naval confrontations and absolute sea control, but today, scholars have elaborated the maritime environment to include security missions spanning from war and diplomacy to maritime resource preservation, safe cargo transit, border protection from external threats, engagement in security operations, and preventing misuse of global maritime commons.1 Thus, maritime security has crucial links to political, economic, military, and social elements.
    [Show full text]
  • Read the Full PDF
    en Books published to date in the continuing series o .:: -m -I J> SOVIET ADVANCES IN THE MIDDLE EAST, George Lenczowski, 1971. 176 C pages, $4.00 ;; Explores and analyzes recent Soviet policies in the Middle East in terms of their historical background, ideological foundations and pragmatic application in the 2 political, economic and military sectors. n PRIVATE ENTERPRISE AND SOCIALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST, Howard S. Ellis, m 1970. 123 pages, $3.00 en Summarizes recent economic developments in the Middle East. Discusses the 2- significance of Soviet economic relations with countries in the area and suggests new approaches for American economic assistance. -I :::I: TRADE PATTERNS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, Lee E. Preston in association with m Karim A. Nashashibi, 1970. 93 pages, $3.00 3: Analyzes trade flows within the Middle East and between that area and other areas of the world. Describes special trade relationships between individual -C Middle Eastern countries and certain others, such as Lebanon-France, U.S .S.R.­ C Egypt, and U.S.-Israel. r­ m THE DILEMMA OF ISRAEL, Harry B. Ellis, 1970. 107 pages, $3.00 m Traces the history of modern Israel. Analyzes Israel 's internal political, eco­ J> nomic, and social structure and its relationships with the Arabs, the United en Nations, and the United States. -I JERUSALEM: KEYSTONE OF AN ARAB-ISRAELI SETTLEMENT, Richard H. Pfaff, 1969. 54 pages, $2.00 Suggests and analyzes seven policy choices for the United States. Discusses the religious significance of Jerusalem to Christians, Jews, and Moslems, and points out the cultural gulf between the Arabs of the Old City and the Western­ r oriented Israelis of West Jerusalem.
    [Show full text]
  • Silke Berndsen Outlook on Baltic Cooperation 1945-2004 at the First
    Silke Berndsen Outlook on Baltic Cooperation 1945-2004 At the First Baltic Assembly the Estonian Mati Hint evoked the unity of the Baltic nations in his manifesto “the Baltic Way". The Baltic way soon after became known beyond the three Baltic states when approximately two million people joined their hands to form a human chain across the three Baltic states on 23 August 1989 during a a peaceful political demonstration that carried the same name. In the months that followed, the popular fronts made numerous joint appeals to international organizations and foreign governments. When they had declared independence from the Soviet Union, the governments of the Baltic States were quick to renew the suspended Baltic Treaty on Unity and Cooperation signed on 12 September 1934 with an explicit reference to the "historical experience of our trilateral cooperation" and with the aim to "continue and develop political and economic cooperation among our three states". Only a few years later, the Baltic States argued over border demarcations between their countries, fought "egg wars", "herring wars", "pork wars" and competed as to which of them would be the first to join the EU and NATO. Prominent politicians in Estonia and Lithuania no longer wanted their countries to be labelled as "Baltic", but as “Nordic“ (in case of Estonia) or Central European (in case of Lithuania). So, what had happened? Did Baltic ceased to serve as an identity anchor just within a few years? And what did this mean for cooperation among the Baltic states, which was initiated by the 1990 Treaty and further institutionalised in subsequent years? Based on constructivist approaches in cultural studies, my presentation assumes that territorial spaces are analytical categories with context-dependent attributions.
    [Show full text]
  • Mare Nostrum Strategy: Russian Military Activity in the Black Sea
    SPECIAL REPORT 03/21/2019 MARE NOSTRUM STRATEGY: RUSSIAN MILITARY ACTIVITY IN THE BLACK SEA Warsaw Institute MARE NOSTRUM STRATEGY: RUSSIAN MILITARY ACTIVITY IN THE BLACK SEA SOURCE: MIL.RU l Owing to its geographic location, Russia’s prerequisite to acquire and maintain the status of a superpower has long been to seize and retain control over two maritime „windows to the world.” This strategy was first mapped out by Peter the Great and led to multiple wars in the Baltic and Black Seas. l Russia has in the past focused on intensifying its activities in the south, as exemplified by the conflict with Ukraine and Moscow’s armed intervention in the Syrian civil war. Symbolically, this is illustrated by making the Black Sea city of Sochi Russia’s „summer capital” and a place where Vladimir Putin hosts world leaders and Kremlin officials. l The Black Sea is to become a platform from where Russia is able to exert influence on neighboring regions, including the Middle East, the Balkans and the Mediterranean countries. The Kremlin’s accom- plishments in the Black Sea region and friendly ties with the Turkish authorities successfully obstructed shipping Caspian hydrocarbon supplies to Europe. l Thanks to the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and increased combat capabilities in the immediate vicinity of the peninsula, Russia finally managed to regain dominance across the Black Sea it had lost in 1991. For Russia, it is vital to exert full control over Crimea as it will permit the Kremlin to hold Kiev in check while extending field reconnaissance activities and firing capabilities to the vast area of the Black Sea.
    [Show full text]
  • Collective Identities in Baltic and East Central Europe
    1. Introduction: Collective Identities in Baltic and East Central Europe Norbert Götz After a preoccupation with collective identities culminated in the mass destruction of the Second World War and the Holocaust, and after the post- war remapping and resettlement was enforced, ethnic identity was ‘out’ for many decades as a political vehicle or a proper topic of research.1 The ideas of the behaviour of the individual and his or her gentle civilisation in the spirit of enlightenment took its place. Personal affiliation with a group was regarded as a functional piece in a greater puzzle of general progress; stronger types of identification that did not harmonise with the rationality of light bonds were believed to be doomed to vanish. Such modernism existed in a capitalist and a communist variety, with greater emphasis on the individual and the universal dimension respectively (in its communist version the universalism was a class-based projection). The suggestion that Sweden represents a ‘third way’, with a political culture that has been lauded as ‘statist individualism’ (Trägårdh 1997; see also Berggren and Trägårdh 2006), highlights the country’s peculiar status at the time of the Cold War (see Bjereld, Johansson, and Molin 2008). The lack of independent societal forces has given rise to a conformist, single norm-oriented Nordic Sonderweg (Stenius 2013). During the Cold War, both historical materialism and modernisation theory gave meaning to a bipolar world with its two competing universa- lisms aiming at humankind at large.2 There was an intellectual distance, 1 As a research concept, ‘identity’ was not in use until after the Second World War.
    [Show full text]
  • The Methods of Stalinism Condemned at the Soviet Communist Party Congress' from Il Nuovo Corriere Della Sera (18 February 1956)
    'The methods of Stalinism condemned at the Soviet Communist Party Congress' from Il nuovo Corriere della Sera (18 February 1956) Caption: On 18 February 1956, the Italian newspaper Il nuovo Corriere della Sera speculates on the genuine desire for de-Stalinisation shown by Nikita Khrushchev, the new Soviet leader, on the occasion of his submission of the report on Stalin’s crimes to the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress in Moscow. Source: Il nuovo Corriere della Sera. 18.02.1956, n° 42; anno 81. Milano: Corriere della Sera. "Il congresso del P.C. sovietico condanna i metodi dello stalinismo", auteur:Ottone, Piero , p. 1. Copyright: (c) Translation CVCE.EU by UNI.LU All rights of reproduction, of public communication, of adaptation, of distribution or of dissemination via Internet, internal network or any other means are strictly reserved in all countries. Consult the legal notice and the terms and conditions of use regarding this site. URL: http://www.cvce.eu/obj/the_methods_of_stalinism_condemned_at_the_soviet_com munist_party_congress_from_il_nuovo_corriere_della_sera_18_february_1956-en- d21f39be-519c-497f-9082-49193e08afc6.html Last updated: 05/07/2016 1/3 The methods of Stalinism condemned at the Soviet Communist Party Congress ‘The personality cult, widespread in the past,’ says Suslov, ‘has wrought serious damage’ — Malenkov confirms the principles of collective direction — In a speech, Togliatti endorses Khrushchev’s guidelines on tactics in the ‘capitalist’ countries From our correspondent Moscow 17 February, evening. The Soviet Party Congress has reached its fourth day; mile-long speeches, stuffed with learned citations from Marx and Lenin, have followed one another without respite. Speakers are commenting on Khrushchev’s report or, to be more precise, are praising and paraphrasing it.
    [Show full text]