To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: DK Russia.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'DK Russia'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'DK Russia.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Savli, Tulay. "Russia." Master's thesis, METU, 2012. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614324/index.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of this study is to analyze and discuss Russia&rsquos Asia-Pacific policy after the end of the Cold War by focusing on Moscow&rsquo
s bilateral relations with the major regional countries and its overall multilateral approach and policies towards the Asia-Pacific region. Contrary to the views of scholars who claim that Russia has already emerged as a major power in the Asia-Pacific, the thesis argues that Russia&rsquo
s strategy of becoming a great power in the Asia-Pacific Region has significant limitations stemming from its competitive and assertive policies that ignore the role of multilateralism and international cooperation. Although Russia has been actively engaged in the region at the bilateral level and through its participation in the regional organizations in the post-Cold war era, this region has its own particular dynamics which necessitate a greater level of regional economic integration and a liberal approach to multilateralism rather than a realist &ldquo
power politics&rdquo
approach. Russia&rsquo
s policy of aligning itself with China militarily in the region has counterproductive consequences as it intensifies geopolitical competition in the region, and marginalizes Moscow further. The thesis is composed of six chapters. After the introduction, the second chapter examines origins of Russia&rsquo
s presence in the Asia-Pacific Region. The following chapter discusses the sources of Russia&rsquo
s increasing interest in the Region. The fourth chapter is concerned with Russia&rsquo
s relations with main actors of the Asia-Pacific Region while the fifth chapter focuses on Russia&rsquo
s involvement in theregional organizations. The last chapter is the conclusion.
2
Üre, Pınar. "Byzantine heritage, archaeology, and politics between Russia and the Ottoman Empire : Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople (1894-1914)." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/1005/.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation will analyse the history of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, which operated between 1895 and 1914. Established under the administrative structure of the Russian Embassy in Constantinople, the institute occupied a place at the intersection of science and politics. Focusing nearly exclusively on Byzantine and Slavic antiquities in the Ottoman Empire, the activities of the institute reflected the imperial identity of Russia at the turn of the century. As was explicitly expressed by Russian diplomats, bureaucrats, and scholars, the establishment of an archaeological institution in the Ottoman capital was regarded as a foreign policy tool to extend Russia’s influence in the Near East, a tool of “soft power” in modern parlance. On the Ottoman side, foreign archaeological activities were regarded with suspicion especially in the later part of the 19th century. In an attempt to preserve its vulnerable sovereignty, Ottoman Empire closely monitored foreign archaeological activities on its territories. For the Ottoman Empire, archaeology was also a way of projecting its image as a modern, Westernised empire. For both Russian and Ottoman archaeologists, European scholarship was regarded as an example that should be followed, and a rival at the same time. Russian archaeologists had to close down their office with the outbreak of World War I. The complications that arose with the disintegration of the institute were solved only in the late 1920s between the Soviet Union and Republican Turkey, under completely different political circumstances.
3
Sumner, Laura Marie. "Ideology and identity : 'knowing' workers in early Soviet Russia, 1917-1921." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48484/.
Full textAbstract:
The period 1917-1921 provides an insight not only into the policies of the new Soviet state but the mindset of its leaders. These four years were a time of intense political struggle and socio-economic disruption, which exposed the tension between ideology and practice in Bolshevik discourse and policy making. Workers, specifically metalworkers, were a focal point of Bolshevik ideology and policies in this period. This thesis will explore how the Soviet state conceptualised metalworkers, through ideology, and how this informed their engagement with workers, through policy. This will be done through an examination of state statistical data and how prominent state polices, cultural policy and treatment of dissent, and discourse changed over this period. It will also focus on a case study of Sormovo Metalworks, a suburb of Nizhnii Novgrorod, and use local sources to investigate how the tension between ideology and practice played out on a local level. It will explore how local Bolsheviks conceptualised and engaged with Sormovo workers and how this was shaped by three things: Bolshevik ideology, the context of the Civil War and the specific local conditions of Sormovo and its workforce. The Civil War period witnessed a change in the discourse and policies of the Soviet state, which became more coercive, interventionist and repressive as the war progressed. Sormovo Metalworks was a large metalworking complex in a largely rural province; it had a skilled workforce with a tradition of labour activism through striking and was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The move towards an increasingly centralised state was utilised by local Bolsheviks in Sormovo in an attempt to end the labour activism of its workforce and crush political opposition. However, despite the increasingly assertive discourse about the identity of metalworkers and the state’s drive for economic, political and cultural centralisation, Sormovo workers had the ability to challenge, subvert and negotiate state labels and even policies. This case study reveals that although Sormovo workers suffered repeated challenges to their identity by the state, local government and the economic crises of the Civil War, they continued to utilise self-identification based on their skill and shared socio-economic experience. This in turn shaped their vertical and horizontal social, economic and political relationships with those around them. Although the central state became politically and economically centralised and authoritarian, the identity of the grassroots in Sormovo remained diverse and fluid.
4
Hearne, Siobhan. "Female prostitution in urban Russia, 1900-1917." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47901/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the social history of female urban prostitution in the final years of the Russian empire (1900-1917). During this period, the tsarist authorities legally tolerated prostitution under a system named regulation (reglemantatsiia) or the medical-police supervision of prostitution (vrachebno-politseiskii nadzor za prostitutsiei). The stated aim of regulation was to reduce levels of venereal disease, yet in practice the system functioned rather to control the movement and settlement of prostitutes by making them known to the authorities. This thesis focuses on the different groups that the rules of regulation directly affected, including prostitutes, their clients, their managers, and wider urban communities. It examines specific urban spaces, the state-licensed brothel, and the lives of registered prostitutes and their clients. This approach allows an exploration of how the system operated in practice and how the regulation of prostitution fitted within wider attempts by the imperial state to monitor lower-class people. In doing so, this thesis contributes to the growing literature on sexuality, on the intersections of gender and class, and on the experiences of lower-class people in late imperial Russia. To illuminate the diversity of both state practice and social experience, this thesis draws on a wide range of correspondence from ‘above’ and ‘below’, including letters between central and provincial government institutions and petitions written by lower-class people to those in authority. This research moves away from focusing solely on the capital of St Petersburg to examine how the regulation of prostitution functioned at a local level, drawing on archival material from Arkhangel’sk, Riga, and Tartu. It argues that responses to the regulation system were rooted in the specific social, environmental and economic circumstances of a particular place and strongly influenced by the socio-economic transformations of the final decades of tsarist rule. In light of this, the thesis maps official and unofficial reactions to regulation onto the shifting social and economic landscape of modernising Russia. It explores how early twentieth-century urbanisation, industrialisation and transportation developments posed further challenges to the ambitions of the tsarist authorities to ‘know’ and monitor all the women who sold sex.
5
Kim, Seongjin. "Regionalism in the Congresses of People's Deputies of the USSR and Russia : a case study of Siberia and the Russian Far East." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2000. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2447/.
Full textAbstract:
This study is concerned with the influence of regionalism in the Congresses of People's Deputies of the USSR and Russia between 1989 and 1993 and its implications for future reform including the development of federal relations in Russia. In particular, emphasis will be placed on regionalist tendencies developed in Siberia and the Russian Far East. After perestroika, the discussion of federal relations showed varieties of possible developments, ranging from a unitary system to a confederation. Despite these varieties, it appears to be generally perceived that stable and 'genuine' federal relations are required in Russia. However, little attention has been paid to the role of the newly re-emerging political actor, the deputies of the central legislature, who are directly engaged in the establishment of such federal relations. This study reaches three main conclusions. First of all, regional socio-economic disparities affected the attitudes of deputies towards reform, including changes in centre-periphery relations. Secondly, the analysis suggests that at least two main streams of regionalism were developed during 1989-1993: one developed in the Congress by the regional deputy groups, and the other outside the Congresses by regional political leaders. Thirdly, despite growing regionalist tendencies in Russia at that time, regional political actors were not strong enough to initiate a federal structure of their preference, lacking horizontal and vertical coordination. This discussion of regionalism in the Congress leads us to a further conclusion that regional interest articulation was rather chaotic, hampering legislation of policies and thus facilitating the regionalisation of reform. Despite strong regionalist tendencies in some sub-national units, particularly based on ethno-nationalist sentiments, such a development may erode the legacy of reform as well as regional autonomy itself.
6
Hutcheson, Derek S. "The development of party activism in Russia : a local perspective." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2001. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3933/.
Full textAbstract:
One of the great opportunities afforded to the political scientist since the fall of the Soviet Union has been that of examining politics ‘on the ground’ in non-metropolitan areas. The current study addresses the development of regional and local political party organisations in post-communist Russia. Focusing on the six movements which won representation in the 1999 election to the State Duma, it uses three case study regions in the middle Volga - the Republic of Tatarstan and the provinces of Samara and Ul’yanovsk - to examine party activity at the regional and district levels. Based on extensive fieldwork in Russia, the investigation utilises a broad range of local sources and interviews in its analysis. However, in order to avoid the danger of simply providing an observational study of local politics, wide use is also made of national opinion survey and focus group data. The study begins by examining the context of party activity in Russia, giving a brief history of the party system and its institutional framework. Thereafter, examination is made of the role of parties in regional and local politics, based mainly on official electoral statistics from 1995-2001. This analysis begins by looking at the Russian Federation’s eighty-nine regions in a comparative context, before narrowing the focus to the three case study regions. Parties’ activities, and their interactions with the respective political systems in each region, are examined in detail. Thereafter, the functioning of parties at three levels - federal, regional and district - is examined, using both theoretical and empirical methods. The study goes on to examine the role played by members in Russia’s political parties, most specifically at a regional and local level, utilising survey and focus group material (undertaken specifically for this study) to case new light on the entry patterns, bases of activism, and attitudes of party members in the middle Volga. Furthermore, parties are examined in the context of the 1999-2001 electoral cycle. This analysis concludes that, in the federal elections, particularly that to the State Duma in December 1999, regional nuances dominated over the national campaign; but that party participation was limited in region-specific elections.
7
Civelik, Ismail. "Russia And The Western Missile Defense Initiatives: Towards A Partnership In The Making?" Master's thesis, METU, 2012. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614197/index.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis analyzes the Western missile defense initiatives and their role in Russia's relations with NATO and the U.S. The main question of this thesis is whether the Western missile defense initiatives have paved the way for a new era of cooperation between Russia and the West or not. The main argument of this thesis is that Russia has failed to collaborate with NATO in a meaningful manner on missile defense issue as Russia has not adjusted its security policies and nuclear strategy, which are still based on the Cold War thinking, to the changing conditions of global security in the post Cold War era. The missile defense initiatives have a negative impact on the relations between Russia and the West due to the intransigent stance of Russia on this issue. A robust cooperation can only be achieved between Russia and NATO if Moscow changes its Cold War mentality about global security issues.
8
Peeling, Siobhan. ""Out of place" in the postwar city : practices, experiences and representations of displacement during the resettlement of Leningrad at the end of the blockade." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2010. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11700/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores the repopulation of Leningrad following the blockade of the city during the Second World War. In the years after the lifting of the siege blockade survivors remaining in Leningrad were joined annually by hundreds of thousands of incomers. However, while the siege has recently been the subject of a number of scholarly and literary treatments, much less attention has been paid to what happened next in terms of the mass resettlement of the city. Accounts of the consequences of the blockade that touch upon the postwar population have deployed the term ‘Leningraders’ as shorthand for a cohesive community of blockade survivors, embedded in the culture and landscape of the city. Even pieces of work that have portrayed post-siege Leningrad as a ‘city of migrants’ have concentrated on the impact of the loss of the prewar population rather than on the multifarious experiences of its itinerant populations. The thesis addresses the role of widespread experiences of displacement and resettlement in structuring relationships among individuals and between citizens and the authorities in the post-siege civic environment. It examines the repopulation in the context of evolving Soviet practices of population management after the war and in terms of the intersection of population movements with the re-affirmation of a civic community in a city which had lost a vast proportion of its population, just as it gained the basis for a powerful new narrative of belonging. It demonstrates how competing visions of the desired postwar order on a national and local scale were constructed and contested in relation to displaced people who were often targeted as a potentially transgressive presence in the postwar landscape.
9
Phillips, James Peter. "The Eastern Crisis, 1875-1878, in British and Russian press and society." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13629/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis of 84,616 words uses the Eastern Crisis of 1875-78 to consider the Press in Great Britain and Russia. 5 case-study chapters consider respectively the reaction to the Bosnian and Hercegovinian revolt of 1875, the Bulgarian 'Atrocity Campaign' of 1876, the outpouring of public sympathy in Russia for the cause of the Serbs in 1876, the involvement of Greece in Eastern crisis, and the British 'Jingo' movement. For each case study, the relationship of the mass activity to the newspaper and periodical press is considered, as well as tracing the interplay between government and Press, and examining whether the Press was able to act as an intermediary between people and government. As this is a comparative study, these movements are considered not only through their own national Press, but through that of the other nation. A recurring theme throughout, is the running current of suspicion existing between Britain and Russia throughout this period, which is analysed in some detail, and shown to have been a highly significant factor in much of what was undertaken by both governments and individuals in Britain and Russia at this time.
10
Wright, Alistair S. "The establishment of Bolshevik power on the Russian periphery : Soviet Karelia, 1918-1919." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3105/.
Full textAbstract:
Using an array of original materials from Russian regional and central archives this detailed study of Soviet Karelia from 1918-1919 is the first to appear in English after the fall of the Soviet Union. It adds to the still limited number of regional studies of the civil war period and using the Karelian districts as a case study discusses how the Bolsheviks consolidated power on the periphery, what factors hindered this process and what were the sources of resistance. Karelia is unique for a combination of reasons. First, it is a grain deficit region and so was always in need of help with the supply of grain from the Volga and other parts of central Russia. Second, the political influence of the Left Socialist Revolutionary party (Left SRs) continued for a considerable time after the events of July 1918. The thesis explores how power was transferred in the region following the October revolution and how the planned political objectives of the Bolsheviks were stalled by the lack of political control in the districts not least of all, for most of 1918, because of the influence of the Left SRs. However, despite political, economic, social and military crises the Bolsheviks gained more experience in power as the civil war progressed and a semblance of order emerged from the chaos. They gained enough control over the food supply shortages for the population to subsist and increased their control in key Soviet institutions, such as the provincial security police (the Cheka) and the Red Army, which ultimately ensured the survival of the Bolshevik regime and victory in the civil war.
11
Schulte, Theo J. "The German army and National Socialist occupation policies in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union 1941-1943." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1987. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4158/.
Full textAbstract:
During the Second World War, with the failure of the German invasion of the Soviet Union to maintain its momentum, large areas of captured Russian territory remained under German Army jurisdiction for the entire duration of the conflict; rather than being turned over to National Socialist civilian administrators. Evidence drawn from the files of two of the military government rear areas (KorOcks) is used in order to consider the institutional response of the Army towards this unanticipated problem. Methodological approaches associated with 'history from below' are combined with orthodox 'history from above' in order to reassess the findings of secondary literature on the topic. Particular consideration is given to primary data which describes the war from the perspective of the German soldiers who conducted policy on the ground. Initially, the controversial historical debate which has developed as to the Wehrmacht's role in the occupied areas is discussed and set against the wider background of the place of the armed forces within the Third Reich. The character and organisation of military government in the Soviet Union is then described so as to indicate the complex and difficult conditions under which the German troops operated. Following on from this, a range of diverse issues are discussed, including economic policy, anti-partisan warfare, the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, army relations with the civilian population, Wehrmacht co-operation with the SS, criminal behaviour amongst the German soldiers, and troop morale and fighting power. A number of highly critical interpretations of Wehrmacht activities are thus re-evaluated; especially those which emphasise the extent to which members of the German armed forces were influenced primarily by ideological considerations. Overall, while full regard is given to the weight of evidence which seeks to demythologise 'apologist' arguments that deny the calculated involvement of the German Army in the racial war of annihilation conducted in the East, equal attention is drawn to the varied responses and conduct of the German troops directly involved in implementing such policies. Accordingly, due regard is also given to the importance of social, socio- psychological and institutional factors in influencing individual and group behaviour within the Third Reich.
12
Bertelsen, Olga. "Spatial dimensions of Soviet repressions in the 1930s : the House of Writers (Kharkiv, Ukraine)." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2013. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13390/.
Full textAbstract:
This study examines spatial dimensions of state violence against the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1930s, and the creation of a place of surveillance, the famous House of Writers (Budynok Slovo), an apartment building that was conceived by an association of writers “Slovo” in Kharkiv. This building fashioned an important identity for Ukrainian intellectuals, which was altered under state pressure and the fear of being exterminated. Their creative art was gradually transformed into the art of living and surviving under the terror, a feature of a regimented society. The study explores the writers’ behavior during arrests and interrogation, and examines the Soviet secret police’s tactics employed in interrogation rooms. The narrative considers the space of politics that brought the perpetrators of terror and their victims closer to each other, eventually forcing them to share the same place. Within this space and place they became interchangeable and interchanged, and ultimately were physically eliminated. Importantly, the research illuminates the multiethnic composition of the building’s residents: among them were cultural figures of Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish origins. Their individual histories and contributions to Ukrainian culture demonstrate the vector of Stalin’s terror which targeted not Ukrainian ethnicity as such but instead was directed against the development of Ukrainian national identity and Ukrainian statehood that were perceived as a challenge to the center’s control and as harbingers of separatism. The study also reveals that the state launched the course of counter-Ukrainization in 1926 and disintegrated the Ukrainian intellectual community through mass repressive operations which the secret police began to apply from 1929. The study also demonstrates that, together with people, the state purposefully exterminated national cultural artifacts—journals, books, art and sculpture, burying human ideas which have never been and will never be consummated. The purpose was to explain how the elimination of most prominent Ukrainian intellectuals was organized, rationalized and politicized. During the period of one decade, the terror tore a hole in the fabric of Ukrainian culture that may never be mended.
13
Marshall, Alexander Graham. "Dar Al-Harb : the Russian general staff and the Asiatic frontier, 1860-1917." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2001. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4077/.
Full textAbstract:
The present thesis aims to examine how the Russian General Staff observed and assessed the Russian Empire’s Asiatic frontier during the period of its greatest extent (between 1860 and 1917). By providing an overview of the entire length of the Asiatic frontier it aims to provide an original addition to the existing historiography. Through analysis of the original records of the Asiatic Department of the Russian General Staff, it furnishes insight into areas of response by the Russian General Staff towards crisis situations where previously little or no scholarly work has been carried out. Thus, to cite just two examples, the thesis contains the first detailed coverage on the posting of the first Russian military agents to China during the so-called ‘Ili Crisis’ of 1881, and of the response of the General Staff to the revolt of Ishaqu Khan in northern Afghanistan in 1888. These new additions are complemented by detailed analysis of more conventional aspects of the existing historiography. For example, by studying the prelude to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 it provides for the first time in English a detailed analysis of the specific difficulties experienced by Tsarist military intelligence in the Far East in the years immediately preceding that conflict. The overall form of analysis is in the main geographically determined, but with the sections examining individual sections of the Russian Asiatic frontier preceded and followed by more general chapters surveying the development of doctrinal, organisational and ideological currents within the General Staff as a whole at both the beginning and end of the period under review. Chapter one in its first par surveys the development of the General Staff system itself in the Russian army. It provides in addition an analysis of available sources alongside a basic military history of the expansion of Russia’s Asiatic frontiers across this period. The first part of chapter two provides an overview of the instruments and ideas that had evolved and that were available to the Russian General Staff in its study Asia on the eve of the major Central Asian conquests of the 1860s. The second section of chapter two analyses how some of these currents, both cultural and doctrinal, intermingled and responded between approximately 1859 and 1873, with the characters of Prince Bariatinskii, Viceroy of the Caucasus during this period, providing a central focus and case study. Chapters three examines how some of the purely tactical and technical tools employed by the Russian army in its Asiatic conquests evolved over time and again looks at the role of individual thinkers in this evolutionary process. Chapter four, the main body of the work, in three major sub-sections analyses the fully developed use of all these instruments and trends in the Russian General Staff’s plans and threat-assessments for the three major areas of their Asiatic frontier - the Far East, the Caucasus, and the region of Central Asia-Afghanistan. The conclusion seeks to contribute a new perspective to current levels of analysis by setting the Tsarist military’s orientalist activities within the context of the current debates regarding European colonialism and the nature of orientalism in general. In doing so it also seeks to draw together the three underlying themes running throughout the work - the development of the General Staff’s analysis of Asia by 1917, the still unresolved conflict of centre-periphery relations that afflicted every aspect of Russian Asiatic policy, and the growing consciousness of a ‘knowledge crisis’ that afflicted the Tsarist General Staff as a whole, a crisis reflected in the press and academic organs of the day. This last phenomenon, along with many of the tools and approaches to tackle it, would form one of Tsarist Russia’s largest legacies to the Soviet Union. The thesis will prove useful to students of military history, Russia-Asia diplomatic relations, and those interested by the development and evolution of the ‘knowledge-state’ between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. Above all it seeks to provide a prism through which the reader can appreciate many of the difficulties attached to the development of military intelligence and the modern ‘knowledge economy’, difficulties that continue to afflict many states, not least Russia, even today.
14
Ōgushi, Atsushi. "The disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2005. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4406/.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation analyses the process of the disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which is central to the Soviet collapse. The disintegration process also provides a good opportunity to test existing theories of political regime change. In terms of source use, this dissertation makes extensive use of the party archives that became available after the Soviet collapse. This makes possible a very detailed analysis of work of the party apparat. The importance of the subject and a review of existing theories that offers some hypotheses are discussed in the first chapter. In the second chapter, the reason why the party reform was necessary is considered through analysing the situation within the party before the perestroika period. The analysis makes clear that the CPSU faced a dilemma between monolithic unity and monopolistic control before the perestroika period, which made party reforms necessary. The third chapter deals with party-state relations under Gorbachev’s reform in detail. This chapter discusses the fact that, as a result of the reorganisation of the party apparat that was intended to stop the party’s interfering in the state body, the party lost its traditional administrative functions. This, however, led to a ‘power vacuum’ because no other alternative power centre was established quickly, and complicated further reform attempts. Moreover, the party failed to find a new function as a ‘political party’, as considered in detail in the fourth chapter. Despite attempts at competitive party elections and the emergence of party platforms, Gorbachev failed to transform the CPSU into a ‘parliamentary’ rather than a ‘vanguard party’. Therefore, the CPSU lost its raison d’être, which accelerated a mass exodus of members. The rapid decline in party membership caused a financial crisis which is considered in the fifth chapter. The financial crisis and the soviets’ demands for the nationalisation of party property forced the CPSU to engage in commercial activity. Nonetheless, commercial activity unintentionally caused the fragmentation or dispersal of party property. On the other hand, the ‘power vacuum’ expanded so much that some emergency measures seemed necessary to some top state leaders. The August attempted coup is discussed in the sixth chapter in the context of party-military relations. When Russian president Yeltsin suspended its activity, the CPSU had lost its raison d’être and its property had been fragmented or dispersed. Thus, the CPSU had no choice but to accept the reality that it was ‘dead’ de facto. The final chapter gives an overview of this pattern of developments, and compares it with the experiences of other communist parties’ reforms in East Europe. The theoretical implications are also considered in the final chapter, which argues that existing theories of political regime change are not sufficient and that a further effort of conceptualisation based on the realities considered in the thesis is necessary.
15
Turton, Katy. "Forgotten lives : the role of Anna, Ol'ga and Mariia Ul'ianova in the Russian revolution 1864-1937." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2594/.
Full textAbstract:
Anna, Ol’ga and Mariia Ul’ianova hold a place in history as Lenin’s sisters, his supporters and helpers, but they played a far greater role in the Russian revolution and the Soviet regime as revolutionaries and Bolsheviks in their own right. However, this aspect of their lives has been consistently overlooked by English-language historians for decades. This thesis aims to redress this imbalanced portrayal of the Ul’ianov women. Although not solely biographical in nature, it traces Anna, Ol’ga and Mariia’s lives from their childhood and education, through their work in the underground revolutionary movement to their careers in the Soviet regime. It also investigates the personality cults that arose around the Ul’ianov women and their portrayal in history since their deaths to the present day. The thesis uses extensive unpublished primary documents from the GRASPI and GARF archives in Moscow and contemporary publications such as Pravda and Proletarskaia revoliutsiia to build a picture of Anna, Ol’ga and Mariia’s lives and to interrogate secondary sources about the sisters. The thesis draws various conclusions about the Ul’ianov women. Ol’ga died when she was twenty, so she features only in two chapters of the thesis. Nonetheless it is clear that like Anna and Mariia she was an intelligent and well-educated young woman, who devoted herself to the study of revolutionary ideas. Anna and Mariia joined the underground movement in the early 1890s and, alongside Lenin, established themselves as competent, dedicated social democrats. Although the sisters have been portrayed as little more than Lenin’s helpers, this thesis shows that Anna and Mariia had independent revolutionary careers before 1917, acting as party correspondents, newspapers workers and agitators. It is also apparent that during the underground years the Ul’ianov family as a whole acted as a mutual support network, exchanging political information, advice and instructions.
16
Dobrenko, Vladimir. "Conspiracy of peace : the Cold War, the international peace movement, and the Soviet Peace Campaign, 1946-1956." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2016. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3479/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis deals with the Soviet Union’s Peace Campaign during the first decade of the Cold War as it sought to establish the Iron Curtain. The thesis focuses on the primary institutions engaged in the Peace Campaign: the World Peace Council and the Soviet Peace Committee. Chapter 1 outlines the domestic and international context which fostered the peace movement (provisional title) and endeavours to construct a narrative of the political and social situation which the Soviet Union found itself in after World War II (as a superpower and an empire leading the Socialist Bloc) in order to put forward the argument that the motivations for undertaking the project of the 'peace movement', above all, were of an international-political nature, rather than of an internal and domestic nature. Chapter 2 starts off with the Soviet project of establishing an international peace movement, including firstly the World Peace Congress, which simultaneously convened in Paris and Prague, and then proceeds with the institutional, political and social development of the Campaign up to the dissolution of the Cominform in 1956. The task of this chapter is not merely to chronicle the history of the Soviet Peace Campaign, but to extract from the narrative underlying themes and organise them accordingly. Finally, Chapter 3 deals with internal Soviet Peace Campaign. The task here is to construct a historical account of the Soviet anti-war movement from 1949 to 1956 through the institutional history of the Soviet Peace Committee. Furthermore, the aim is to demonstrate the relationship between the Soviet Peace Committee and party and state institutions and its dependency on and implications for political decision-making processes within the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Finally, this chapter will also examine the role of the Soviet Peace Committee and its affiliated institutions in the advancement of Cold War propaganda through the media (i.e. press, journalism, etc.), literature (i.e. novels, poems, etc.), film and political art (i.e. posters, caricature, etc.).
17
Keçeci, Serkan. "The grand strategy of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus against its southern rivals (1821-1833)." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2016. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3512/.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation will analyse the grand strategy of the Russian empire against its southern rivals, namely the Ottoman empire and Iran, in the Caucasus, between 1821 and 1833. This research is interested in explaining how the Russian imperial machine devised and executed successful strategies to use its relative superiority over the Ottomans and the Qājārs and secure domination of the region. Russian success needs, however, to be understood within a broader context that also takes in Ottoman and Iranian policy-making and perspectives, and is informed by a comparative sense of the strengths and weaknesses of all three imperial regimes. In this thesis, the question of why Russia was more successful than the Ottoman state and Iran in the Caucasus between 1821 and 1833 is explained in three main ways: the first and most important factor in this process was the well-functioning fiscal-military machine of the Russian empire; the second factor was the diplomatic and military skill of the Russian leadership which helped to avert any effective political and military alliance between the Ottoman empire and Iran and defeated its rivals in two separate and successive wars; the last main factor in Russian success was its geopolitically superior position.
18
McGaughey, Aaron. "The Irkutsk cultural project : images of peasants, workers & natives in late imperial Irkutsk province, c.1870-1905." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2015. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28435/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores depictions of established Russian-Siberian peasants, settlers from European Russia, non-agricultural workers, indigenous Buriats and Jews in Irkutsk province during the late imperial period. In particular, it focuses on characterisations of these groups that were created by the Irkutsk 'cultural class' (kul'turnogo klassa) in the late imperial period. The sources it uses are print media such as journals and newspapers produced in or associated with Irkutsk to create a 'microhistorical' study. It is structured around categories of analysis that were used at the time in scientific and literary treatments of lower class peoples, such as social mores, cultural activity, economic function, physiognomy and sexuality. It also studies how these images informed the development of a transformationist culture of government in rural, urban and colonial environments. Using theories of imperial networks and cultural projects borrowed from human and cultural geography and adapting them to an anthropocentric study of Russian colonialism, these debates are situated within the wider context of pan-European, inter-imperial frames of reference. The portrayals of population groups in both domestic and colonial settings that lay within these frameworks rested on common core signs and assumptions found across other pre-war European empires, which made both the frameworks and the images highly portable. This anthropocentric comparative is used to "bring the empire back in", both in recognising the imperial frames of reference within which its culture played out, and also as a means of furthering historiographical analyses that argue against Russian exceptionalism.
19
Ullrich, Weston. "American perceptions of destalinisation and leadership change in the Soviet Union, 1953-56 : from Stalin's death to the Hungarian uprising." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3059/.
Full textAbstract:
Destalinisation was the process of enormous change that began in the wake of Stalin’s death. Whilst it has been heavily studied from the Soviet perspective, it has not been examined from the American standpoint. This thesis fills that gap. It took until 1956 for Eisenhower and Dulles to alter their perceptions of the USSR and its ideology despite the years of change that followed Stalin’s death. This thesis explains how the majority of policymakers rejected signals of change in the USSR until 1956. There were numerous reasons for this: domestic politics, relations with allies, and public opinion all played a role. But the key factor in preventing a change in mindset was an engrained perception of the Soviet leaders as Stalinists. While the Soviet leadership after 1953 rejected the hallmarks of Stalinism, the Eisenhower administration understood such signals of change within a mindset that saw the Soviets as unreconstructed communists, expansionist in aims, conspiratorial in methods, and, above all, out to destroy the West. This perception was in effect a mental ‘dam’, which held back any substantial perception change in Washington. By 1956, however, a new perception of destalinisation, and by extension Soviet Communism, came into being. The Eisenhower administration no longer rejected out of hand the changes the Soviet leadership enacted both domestically and in foreign relations. Eisenhower and Dulles found sufficient evidence to question whether the rigid view of Soviet Communism and its aims was accurate or useful. The 20th Party Congress caused serious cracks in the ‘dam'. Two of these ‘cracks’ were in the minds if Eisenhower and Dulles, who by the end of 1956 had changed their view of the Soviet leaders, and no longer regarded them as Stalinist. This change in perception would ultimately allow détente to take hold.
20
Telepneva, Natalia. "Our sacred duty : the Soviet Union, the liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies, and the Cold War, 1961-1975." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3081/.
Full textAbstract:
In 1961, a series of uprisings exploded in Angola, Portugal’s largest colony in Africa. A struggle for the independence of all the Portuguese colonies in Africa followed, organized by the national liberation movements: the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, and the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau. The wars would end in 1974, following a military coup d'état in Lisbon and the dissolution of the Portuguese dictatorship during the Carnation Revolution. This thesis explores fourteen years of anti-colonial campaigns: the people who led the liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies, the cadres these leaders encountered in Moscow, East Berlin, Prague, Sofia, and Warsaw, and the international environment they faced. It begins by looking at contacts forged between Soviet cadres and African nationalist leaders from Portuguese colonies in the late 1950s, before offering detailed analysis of why the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia offered assistance to the MPLA and the PAIGC in 1961, the same year Angola erupted into spasms of racial violence and the Soviet Union and the United States locked horns over the status of West Berlin. The subsequent chapters analyze the evolution of Soviet relations with the liberation movements during the 1960s and 1970s, the role this relationship played in shaping Soviet attitudes and policy in Africa, and the significance of Soviet bloc assistance in anti-colonial campaigns. This thesis also looks at the diplomacy of the liberation movements and their ideological and organizational transformations over fourteen years of guerrilla war. The final chapter evaluates the Soviet role in the decolonization of Portuguese Africa following the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship and investigates why the Soviets decided to intervene on behalf of the MPLA in the pivotal event of this thesis – the beginning of the civil war in Angola in 1975.
21
Talks, Florence Louisa. "André Gide's companions on his journey to the Soviet Union in 1936 : Jacques Schiffrin, Eugène Dabit, Louis Guilloux, Jef Last and Pierre Herbart." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1987. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/79693/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is not primarily concerned with Andre Gide's interest in and subsequent disillusionment with communism and the Soviet Union for this has been sufficiently dealt with elsewhere but is concerned with the five companions he invited to accompany him on his journey to the Soviet Union in 1936: Jacques Schiffrin, Eugene Dabit, Louis Guilloux, Jef Last and Pierre Herbart. Chapter I examines French interest in the Soviet Union during the Interwar period. Four main areas of interest are defined in respect of Gide and his travelling companions: the growth of French interest in Russian culture; the impact of the Revolution and the Soviet Union in France in terms of both literature and literature-based organisations, as well as in terms of political ideology; the rise of fascism in Europe, and the attraction of the Soviet Union as the land of sexual freedom. Chapters 11 to VI examine each of the five figures, highlighting their literary and political development and outlining their interest in the Soviet Union. Chapter 11 outlines the activities of Jacques Schiffrin (1892-1949), an important figure in the Parisian publishing world, who founded the Editions de la Pleiade, translated Russian classics into French (sometimes in conjunction with Gide) and introduced what is now known as the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. Chapter III covers the career of Eugene Dabit (1898-1936) which spanned a period that saw intense literary and political debate and shows how he was caught up in the inevitable mix of politics and literature as he was involved successively in various groupings. Chapter IV concentrates on Louis Guilloux (1899-1980) and outlines the development in his literary work from works based on a depiction of le peuple to a more personal aesthetics taking in part as its inspiration the breadth of great nineteenth-century Russian authors. It also outlines how he came to terms with his role as a writer in society. Chapter V outlines the activities of Jef Last (1898-1972) who, as a Dutchman, had a wider knowledge of the European political world. He was a militant communist who had already visited the Soviet Union three times before he met Gide. His attraction to communism and the Soviet Union was based on several reasons: economic, political, religious, sexual and cultural. Pierre Herbart (1903-1978) is the subject of Chapter VI. He was an intimate member of Gide's circle and he influenced Gide politically. A member of the communist party, his literary output was, at certain times, influenced by his political commitment. Prior to Gide's journey to the Soviet Union he worked in Moscow as a redacteur on the La Litterature Internationale. The final chapter examines the journey itself, suggesting reasons for what went wrong, causing Guilloux and Schiffrin to return early and an account is given of Dabit's death in Sevastopol. The responses of the travelling companions both to the journey itself and to Gide's publications on his return provide a much more complicated and diverse picture than is normally available while the conclusion shows that the position of Western intellectuals to the situation in the Soviet Union in 1936 was often obscured by immediate tactical concerns such as the Spanish Civil War.
22
Ozbas, Mustafa. "Historical Origins Of Academic Orientalism In Russia." Master's thesis, METU, 2006. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12607040/index.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
The objective of this thesis is to examine the history of Oriental studies in Russia from the beginning of the first Russian interaction with Oriental societies to the end of the 19th century. In particular, the thesis attempts to explain under what conditions Russia had started conducting research on the language, history, geography and culture of the East and how Russian Oriental studies evolved from the practical aims to the academic goals. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that there is a close relationship between Russian Oriental studies and Russia&rsquos expansion to the East. Therefore, this thesis is an attempt to understand effects of Russian diplomatic, religious, military and of course academic goals on the Oriental studies.
23
Yalcin, Deniz. "Federal Bargaining In Post-soviet Russia: A Comparative Study On Moscow'." Master's thesis, METU, 2005. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12606062/index.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
The objective of this thesis is to examine the nature of federal bargaining in post-Soviet Russia by comparing Moscow&rsquos negotiations with Russia&rsquo
s two oil-rich republics in the Middle Volga: Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. In particular, the thesis attempts to explain how Bashkortostan was able to gain autonomy from Moscow that is very close to the level of autonomy enjoyed by Tatarstan, despite the fact that Bashkortostan is clearly in a disadvantageous position when compared to Tatarstan and the Bashkorts form only the third largest ethnic group in the Republic after the Russians and the Tatars. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that sometimes the relatively disadvantageous party in federal bargaining might be given more autonomy not because of its bargaining power, but because of the general bargaining strategy of the federal center. Therefore this thesis is an attempt to understand how Moscow, fearing that Tatarstan might emerge as the hegemonic power in the Middle Volga, sought to strengthen the position of Bashkortostan against Tatarstan, and how the success of the Bashkort political elite to manipulate the weaknesses of Moscow in the post-Soviet arena provided Bashkortostan with more or less same degree of autonomy compared to that of Tatarstan&rsquo
s.
24
Kalgin, Alexander. "Implementation of performance management in regional government in Russia." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5718/.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of this project is to find whether the national system of performance measurement in the Russian public sector is affected by deliberate data manipulation. Using mixed methods I demonstrate that locally generated data are more likely to be manipulated than data reported by external agencies. Instead of improving managerial decisions, performance indicators have become a tool of symbolic bureaucratic accountability not linked to real managerial activities. 25 current and former civil servants from three regional governments in Russia were interviewed (including three ministers of economic development); quantitative data were obtained from a publicly available performance dataset covering the period of 2007-2011 (with data for a unified list of over 300 indicators from 83 regional governments). Two strategies of data manipulation were identified: a “prudent bureaucrat” strategy consisted in minimizing long-term risks by reporting “more-normal-than-real” figures; a more ambitions “reckless bureaucrat” strategy aimed at inflating figures to maximise credit. Systematic application of these two strategies has produced a detectable bias in the overall performance data with “prudent bureaucrat” strategy dominating. Performance reporting creates a “bureaucratic panopticon” and resulting behaviour may be understood using Michel Foucault’s notion of normalisation.
25
Roberts, Sean. "Dominant-power politics and ‘virtual’ party hegemony : the role of United Russia in the Putin period." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/952/.
Full textAbstract:
This case study examines the role of the political party United Russia in the rise of ‘dominant-power politics’, also termed ‘electoral authoritarianism’, that characterises the Putin period (2000-2008). Comparative literature identifies parties as important independent or explanatory variables in a range of regime outcomes, including the successful consolidation of democracy, but also in the establishment and consolidation of authoritarian rule. The impressive rise of United Russia in the Russian political system from late 2001 onwards, together with its co-occurrence with the growing strength of the Putin regime, suggests that the party was a factor in the outcome of the latter. This research first develops a theoretical framework to understand the role of parties in modern political systems and then applies this framework to explore the Russian case. Although a component of power in the Putin period, this research argues that the origins of United Russia in the ‘party of power’ phenomenon limit its value as an explanatory variable. Rather than a principal power in the emerging post-Yeltsin political order, United Russia is an agent of a powerful civilian executive, which remains beyond the control of any party. In this sense, the rise of United Russia in the Putin period is misleading. United Russia is an example of ‘virtual’ party hegemony; a reflection of the intentions and ability of non-party power-holders to project their power onto party-agents. This research contributes to existing literature on party politics in the post-Soviet space and Russian politics in the Putin period. In comparative terms, this study contributes to existing notions of party dominance and emerging literature on divergent regime trajectories in the post-Cold War period.
26
Blackburn, Matthew. "National identity, nationalist discourse and the imagined nation in post-Soviet Russia." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30590/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis attempts to account for post-Soviet Russian national identity and nationalism ‘from below’, employing the ‘thick descriptions’ of the nation reproduced by ordinary Russians across social and generational lines. It examines the current equilibrium in mainstream nationalist hegemonic discourse, shedding light on the vitality of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. In doing this, nationalism is viewed as a set of discursive formations that make claims about how or what the nation is or should be. A central aim in this research is to highlight what discursive constructions are shared or contested across a representative sample of the Russian population. In order to offer a meaningful assessment of nationalist discourse, this research employs ethnographic fieldwork driven by a grounded theory approach. With fifteen months of fieldwork in three Russian cities, this permitted room for exploration and siginificant redirection of the research focus. This helped reveal the interconnections between certain common, foundational elements of national identity and the structure of a dominant nationalist discourse. Previous research has often focused on the challenges of Russian nation-building given the complicated heritage bestowed by the Romanov and Soviet empires. This thesis identifies certain historical and cultural factors vital to the shaping of Russian national identity today. It also identifies a current hegemonic nationalist discourse and unpacks how it is relevant to the majority. This dominant discourse is built on certain myths and versions of normality, much of which takes the late Soviet as ‘normal’ and the wild nineties as ‘abnormal’. The thesis also explores how the above is contested. What is argued is that, at the current moment, the challenge of anti-hegemonic nationalist discourses is, for many people, neutralised by the appeal of a particular geopolitical vision. This research outlines how visions of the nation are weaved into commonly shared notions of identity and underlines how the current status quo is held together.
27
Puglisi, Rosaria. "Power to the pragmatists : the role of the economic elite in relations between Russia and Ukraine 1994-1998." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2001. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2025/.
Full textAbstract:
This work discusses the role of the economic elites of Russia and Ukraine in the development of relations between the two countries in the period between 1994-1998. A “Pragmatist approach” to bilateral relations, that emerged in Kyiv and in Moscow in the mid-1990s, and the doctrine of CIS integration are identified as the ideological underpinnings for the participation of the economic elites in the process of foreign policy-making. According to these approaches, economic elites in Russia and Ukraine share similar economic interests derived from the necessity to restore a post-Soviet common economic space. Convergent interests of the economic elites are assumed to be powerful incentives to increase bilateral co-operation and eventually foster economic and political reintegration between the two countries. In an analysis based on the study of domestic sources of foreign policy, the author contests these approaches. This work argues that, contrary to expectations, the consolidation of nation-based economic elites led to the emergence of conflicting rather than convergent interests. The redistribution of national wealth, following the demise of the Soviet structure of state-ownership, sparked a struggle between domestic and economic elites for the control of economic resources. The penetration of external economic actors was viewed, in this perspective, as a factor that might upset the delicate balance of power between domestic institutions and economic agents. A nationalist vocabulary, resulting from a century-long struggle for independence, was used in Ukraine to express a protectionist mood against Russian competitors. This research contributes to the debate on co-operation between states and the role that domestic factor play in encouraging or hindering such a process. In particular, this study supports the argument that recently established independent states are less prone to join co-operation schemes, especially when a process of redistribution of national resources follows the demise of the previous regime. The economic elites may be identified in this process as active participants or even promoters of nationalist movements.
28
Regelmann, Ada-Charlotte. "Social integration processes in Estonia and Slovakia." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3321/.
Full textAbstract:
Studies of interethnic integration in Central Eastern Europe have sought to account for the impact that institutional settings, structural conditions and elite-level interaction have on the accommodation of and conflict resolution between ethnic groups. Much existing literature has placed particular emphasis on the importance of institutional factors, both domestically and as a result of international pressure. Simultaneously, scholarship on the issue has left out of focus the contributions of non-dominant minority actors to the dynamics of interethnic relations. Where minorities are taken into account, this happens largely in terms of their failure to recognise structural opportunities for their inclusion into majority society. This study analyses interethnic integration in the Central Eastern European context from the perspective of structuration theory. Structuration theory provides a sound theoretical foundation in order to study non-dominant agency and its impact on the structures of integration, owing to its ability to reconcile dichotomies. The thesis comprises a comparative case study of interethnic interaction in Estonia and Slovakia, focusing on the Russian-speaking and the Hungarian minority respectively. A structuration approach is applied to the empirical findings in order to problematise practices of integration and their constraints that lie in the institutional and interaction context of Estonian and Slovak post-Communist society. I argue that although Russian-speakers in Estonia and Hungarians in Slovakia are constrained by institutional environs and majority-dominated structures, minority members actively participate in and shape institution-building and group formation in their interaction with majorities. Minority integration is analysed in terms of the minorities’ co-operation within, counteraction against and formulation of alternatives to the status quo structures of interethnic relations.
29
Zhukova, Tatyana Alexandra. "The gift-giving culture of Anglo-Muscovite diplomacy, 1566-1623." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/55471/.
Full textAbstract:
In 1589, the government of Tsar Feodor I of Muscovy returned the gift of golden medals received from Queen Elizabeth I, describing the offending objects as neither commendable nor agreeable. The rejection was accompanied with opprobrious public speeches about the gift's unsuitability and a threat to transfer Muscovite favour unto other European nations if Elizabeth offered no immediate redress. In her defence, Elizabeth argued that diplomatic gifts were to be accepted not in respect of the object itself, but of the royal majesty from whom it was presented. While the episode appears to show a petty squabble over material trinkets, its diplomatic repercussions were significant as the following five years would be dedicated to the repair of Anglo-Muscovite relations. Clearly, gifts were integral to the mechanics of early modern diplomacy. This thesis explores an intriguing, but as yet scarcely studied, facet of diplomatic history: the operation of Muscovite diplomacy prior to the reign of Peter the Great. It focuses on Muscovy's long-term relations with England (Muscovy's first continual diplomatic relationship with a Western European power in the sixteenth century) and examines the exchange of sovereign gifts between the two royal courts. The principal novelty of this research lies in its departure from the anthropological definition of the gift as a 'material' object, instead it argues that non-tangible components, such as royal favours, were also 'gifts', provided they were given willingly, were reciprocated− if not necessarily symmetrically, and created emotional, political and social bonds between the participants. As an example of such intangible gift, this thesis uses the Muscovite zhalovannaia gramota (a charter of mercantile privileges). In this way, the research explores the full range and complexity of diplomatic gift-exchange between the two monarchies in a crucial period of dynastic change in both countries. Frequently, gift-giving is interpreted as either a means of intercultural communication par excellence or, in the case of a rejected gift, as evidence of an inevitable clash of cultures. This thesis, however, demonstrates that diplomatic gift-exchange was a multi-faceted process. Royal intentions were complex and, therefore, required different levels of engagement; their transmission was reliant upon intermediaries (ambassadors), and the reception of gifts was intrinsically linked to diplomatic aims. Secondly, in contrast to the widespread assumption that the diplomatic cultures of England and Muscovy were discordant, day-to-day diplomatic exchanges (including gift-giving) drew the Tsars into a shared ceremonial arena, where other rulers competed for the symbolic resources of sovereignty. The exchange of gifts between the two states facilitated the process of gradual integration of the apparently alien Muscovite Tsar into the English (and essentially European) standardised codes of diplomatic behaviour and ceremonial communication. It was not until the reign of Peter I, however, that the Tsars fully became prominent members of the European society of princes. Diplomatic practice was neither universal nor culturally specific; such assumptions are obstructive to a better understanding of the mechanics of cross-cultural interactions. Ultimately, diplomatic ceremony and gift-giving were driven by notions of sovereign honour and the symbolic language of the court society, and not by political, national or cultural incommensurability. Thus, the foundations of Muscovy's gradual integration into European codes of diplomatic behaviour can be traced to the reign of Ivan IV, and specifically, to the continuous Muscovite diplomatic relationship with the English Crown.
30
Tamman, Tina. "Stateless envoy: the life and times of August Torma (1895-1971)." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2010. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1541/.
Full textAbstract:
This is a study of the life and activities of August Torma, an Estonian diplomat. He was born in 1895, well before his country broke free from Tsarist Russia, and died in 1971, in London, when Estonia was back in the Russian, by then Soviet, fold. Although a biography, it has the capacity to provide fresh insights into Estonian history.The study begins with Torma s early years and his activities during the First World War, observes his subsequent progression through the ranks at the Foreign Ministry in Tallinn and thereafter follows him to Rome, Bern and Geneva where he was appointed ambassador. The focus of the study falls on his years in London where he was posted in 1934. With the help of archival material the study sheds new light on a difficult period in Estonian history, particularly on the years leading up to the 1940 loss of independence, the Second World War and its aftermath. Torma s final three decades in England were a struggle for survival as financial problems persisted and his diplomatic position was gradually eroded.The study concludes that although Torma did not live to see Estonia regain its independence in 1991 he kept the idea of Estonian sovereignty very much alive during the Cold War and maintained the concept of legal continuity which was to form the cornerstone of the country s resurrection.
31
Duncan, Peter John Stuart. "Russian messianism : a historical and political analysis." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1989. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6873/.
Full textAbstract:
This is an analysis of the nature and political significance of Russian messianism: the idea that the Russian people or the Russian State is the `chosen people' or the `chosen instrument'. I outline the genesis of the theory of Moscow, the Third Rome and discuss the ideas and activities of the nineteenth-century Slavophils, the pan-Slavists, Dostoevsky and Vladimir Solovyov. I examine the influence of messianism on Russian Communism, considering Berdiaev's views. The main part of the work investigates the rebirth of interest in Russian messianism in the Brezhnev period. I try to investigate the links between this cultural movement and the Russian nationalist elements within the political éite. My main sources for this are samizdat journals and articles, in particular the journal Veche, cultural journals such as Novyi mir, Molodaia gvardiia and Nash sovremennik, Party documents and éigré/ journals. I find that Russian messianism has been especially important at times when the country is in crisis: Russia is in Golgotha, but where there is suffering there is also redemption, not only for Russia but for humanity. It has by no means been always dominant in intellectual thought. It has had little influence (under either tsars or Communists) on the fields of nationality policy, policy towards religion or foreign policy. Today, as in the nineteenth century, its adherents can be opponents or supporters of the existing State structure. The growth of non-Russian nationalism under Gorbachov, combined with glasnost', has fuelled Russian nationalism. This is unlikely to be co-opted into the official ideology, because it would increase the dissatisfaction of the non-Russians.
32
Hudson, Victoria Ann. "A study of the civilisational aspects of Russian soft power in contemporary Ukraine." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5134/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis contributes to an in-depth understanding of the concept of soft power, which according to Joseph Nye indicates the ability to achieve foreign policy goals through cultural attraction. For the purposes of this study of Russian cultural influence in Ukraine, soft power is rearticulated to highlight the ability to engage in mean-making and cultural-ideational leadership on the international stage. A critique of Nye justifies a reframing of soft power, which is supplied by drawing on the analytical power of post-Marxist hegemony and discourse theory. The methodology through which this concept is operationalised empirically emphasises outcomes over inputs, thus appraisals of soft power must account for whether the discourses promoted by mean-making initiatives resonate favourably with target audiences. Desk-based and field research supports an argument that Moscow acknowledges the need for soft power, understood here in terms of ‘sovereignty of spirit’. This civilisational approach is explored further, and the target narratives advanced by significant proponents of the discourse, namely the Russkiy Mir Foundation, the Russian Orthodox Church and foreign policy officials, are identified. Insights into the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to promote spiritually-infused discourses are provided, and new developments observed. Finally, the extent of Russian ‘civilisational’ soft power is estimated through surveys and focus groups gauging audience reception to the ideational narratives promoted.
33
Biletska, Yuliya. "Factors Shaping Ethnic Identity Among Crimean Tatars, Russians And Ukrainians In Crimea." Master's thesis, METU, 2009. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12611099/index.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of this thesis is to define factors that are influential in the ethnic identification process of Crimean Tatars, Russians and Ukrainians in Crimea. To better understand the current ethnic situation in Crimea, Soviet nationality policy as well as Soviet ethnos theory are reviewed. The divergence of the definitions in Soviet and Western traditions is shown. Crucial historical events that took place in Crimea are examined from the viewpoints of Russian, Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar, Soviet and Western historiographies. The influence of the historical myths on shaping ethnic boundaries of these ethnic groups in Crimea is shown. Main factors such as the cultural, political, economic, and global ones which are shaping the ethnic self-consciousness of Crimean Tatars, Russians and Ukrainians in Crimea are studied. Therefore the thesis helps us to understand the meaning of being a Russian, an Ukrainian and a Crimean Tatar in Crimea.
34
Barnett, Vincent. "At the margins of the market : conceptions of the market and market economics in Soviet economic theory during the new economic policy, 1921-1929." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1992. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2162/.
Full textAbstract:
The period of the New Economic Policy was a time when the Bolshevik government was forced to reconsider its attitude towards the market, as NEP involved the introduction of market elements into Soviet society. This thesis is a comparative study of eleven Soviet economic theorists from this period; Bukharin, Preobrazhenskii, Strumilin, Bazarov, Groman, Kondrat'ev, Oparin, Sokol'nikov, Yurovskii, Chayanov, and Blyumin. It asks two basic questions: how did each theorist conceive of the market, and how did they relate this conception to socialism? The primary source material used is the works of these theorists, and in many cases this material has not been previously discussed by scholars. A theoretical framework places these conceptions into a historical context. The basic result obtained is that there were many diverse conceptions of the market prevalent in this period. The bulk of the thesis investigates these various conceptions, and suggests that their theoretical roots lie in various currents of economic thought: classical, neo-classical, Marxist, and socialist. During NEP these currents were allowed to mix freely to a certain extent, although pressure to censor them began to build towards the end of the 1920s.
35
Croll, Kirsteen Davina. "Soviet-Polish relations, 1919-1921." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2009. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/663/.
Full textAbstract:
The Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 was a direct consequence of the ideological objectives pursued by the belligerents. Ideology shaped the political agenda and the diametrically opposed war aims of both states, and was implemented through the foreign policy, diplomatic negotiation and military engagements pursued. This proved to be the principal obstacle to the establishment of cordial relations. As western democracy and Russian Marxism battled it out, war was inevitable. Externally, the Paris Peace Conference provided the necessary conditions for the resumption of traditional Russian-Polish hostilities, whilst the Allied States consistently demonstrated their absolute inability to directly influence either the development, or outcome, of the conflict. Redressing the balance of historiography, this thesis includes a greater examination of the conflict from the perspective of the Soviet regime. This firmly controlled the Russian decision-making process. By charting the war, it becomes clear that both states deliberately pursued a dual offensive: traditional diplomatic negotiation and military campaign as conditions dictated. However, in addition, Soviet Russia developed a unique and innovative, revolutionary, agit-prop, diplomatic medium. This enabled adept Soviet diplomats to win the majority of diplomatic battles during the conflict, although often negotiating from a militarily weak position. Nevertheless, the regime ultimately failed in its objective: to ignite socialist revolution in western Europe. The mistaken Soviet decision in July 1920 to cross the ethnographic border to forcefully sovietise Poland, in opposition to Marxist doctrine, irreversibly altered the complexion of the war and proved its pivotal turning point. This culminated politically with the short-lived establishment of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee in Białystok, and militarily, with the decisive defeat of the Red Army at the Battle of Warsaw. It is now certain that the Red Army offensive into Poland in July 1920 aimed not only at the sovietisation of Poland, but at spreading the socialist revolution to Western Europe and overthrowing the Versailles settlement. The European revolutionary upsurge had largely extinguished during the previous year and in August 1920, Communist ideology ultimately failed to inspire the vast majority of the Polish population. Thus, by utilising the Soviet military to secure its war aims, Lenin and the Politburo inadvertently signed the death-warrant of socialist revolution in Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century.
36
Callum, Douglas R. "Soviet society and law : the history of the legal campaign to enforce the constitutional duty to work." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1995. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6553/.
Full textAbstract:
In both the 1936 and 1977 USSR Constitutions conscientious labour in socially useful activity was decreed to be a "duty and matter of honour" for every Soviet citizen. This study examines the various approaches adopted by successive Soviet leaderships in their determined efforts to reinforce that ethos. It focuses, in particular, on the so-called "anti-parasite" laws dating back to 1957, when as a part of Khrushchev's attempt to revive popular justice, several smaller republics experimented with enactments that permitted peer justice institutions in the form of amorphous social assemblies to exile "parasites" via a procedure which bypassed the existing court system. Special attention is devoted to the criticism lodged against the laws (during their adoption and spread to the other union republics in 1961) by members of the legal profession, who complained that the wide punitive given to the extra-judicial bodies and the attitudes and behaviour encouraged in them would erode the respect for "socialist legality" which they had been charged with enhancing in the minds of the mass public. Although as a result of such criticism, the Khrushchev regime modified the peer justice institutions in the early 1960's, and even though his populism was absorbed by or subordinated to the normative sector of social control in Brezhnev's legal policy, the study highlights the fact that complaints of abuses and inconsistencies in anti-parasite proceedings continued to be levelled against the prosecution process. This, it is contended, was due in large part to the extreme vagueness of the notion of social parasitism itself, although the lack of a precise and consistent definition of this peculiar offence (and of the key elements which were deemed to constitute it) was actually seen as necessary and even desirable since it allowed the authorities to use the anti-parasite legislation as a weapon of suppression against a broad spectrum of socially, politically, and economically inconvenient groups within Soviet society.
37
McMahon, Margery A. "Changing relations : Russia's relations with Ukraine and Belarus." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2000. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2457/.
Full textAbstract:
In the period of transition which followed the collapse of the USSR, the states of that region were forced to make many political and economic adjustments. A crucial part of the processes was the restructuring of relations among these formerly fraternal republics and as they became in 1991, independent states. For most states structuring relations with Russian became a priority since it is the largest and most dominant regional actor. Such relations are shaped by a number of factors including historical development, economic legacies and geopolitical concerns. These issues have impacted upon the evolving relationship between Russia and its Slav neighbours, Ukraine and Belarus. Drawing on a common background in terms of historical political, economic and cultural development, Russia's relations with these states developed to the point where they were formalized in a Russian Belarusian Community (1996) and a Russian Ukrainian Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation (1997). The impetus for Russia to renegotiate its relations with the states on its western borders was strengthened by the proposed eastward expansion of NATO. Belarus and Ukraine however benefited from this. Belarus was guaranteed cheap supplies of Russian natural resources, vital for its economy, even if this came at the cost of ceding a degree of sovereignty. Ukraine, still excluded from European political and economic organizations was recognized by Russia as an independent state with significant regional influence. Russia secured a buffer zone on its western borders. Russia's relations with Ukraine and Belarus are now qualitatively different. Ukraine has emerged as a potential ally and even future rival to Russia while Belarus has opted to become a Russian client state with, it appears, the ultimate goal of union with Russia.
38
Fodor, Neil. "The Warsaw Treaty Organisation : a political and organisational analysis." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1987. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4359/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis describes the political-military alliance of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation (WTO) from its origins and founding in 1955 to its 30th Anniversary in 1985, and after. In showing how the WTO has developed and operated, its practical application in the fields of joint foreign policy and military affairs is described and discussed. In the light of this analysis, the WTO is placed in its context within the socialist community. The origins of the WTO are shown to be part of a general trend towards closer co-operation between the European socialist countries. The states were formally brought together as a public response to the London and Paris Agreements of 1954, which officially rearmed the Federal Republic of Germany and incorporated it into the Western military alliance system and NATO. The structural development is described and analysed, showing the practice of the official structure largely to be a response to existing ad hoc arrangements. The limitations placed on the Organisation's political and military roles are explained, detailing how the WTO is formally restrained from operating as an efficient or effective multilateral co-ordinating body. Where it does operate, the WTO is shown principally to be a political organisation. The documentary history of the WTO is analysed, to show how the structure works in practice. Particular stress is placed on the role of the WTO in carrying out its claimed purpose of co-ordinating the foreign policies of the members. The conclusion is suggested that the WTO at most co-ordinates the `basic principles' rather than the diplomatic practice of its members' foreign policies. The participating states are shown not to be significantly bound by the WTO in the practice of their national foreign policies, though they are bound by bilateral factors external to the structure of the Warsaw Treaty. The 30th Anniversary of the signing of the WTO, potentially a historic landmark, is shown to have passed with very little pomp or celebration. The treatment of the Anniversary in the Soviet Union and amongst its allies was low-key. The issues covered by the Anniversary speeches and articles are described, and are analysed both for what they said about the WTO, its origins, practice, ansd significance, and for what was not said or done. Changes are analysed that have taken place under the new Soviet leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, whose accession occurred just before the signing of the Protocol extending the Treaty. The 30th Anniversary soon followed. Structural changes were hinted at but never took place, though the documents issued by the existing bodies have become much more open in their description of the discussions and disagreements that took place. These events, coinciding with other changes in Soviet internal and externalpolicies, were shown to be part of an apparent attempt by the Soviet authorities to consult and co-ordinate its actions with its allies, or at least to appear to be doing so. It is also shown where past practices, such as unilateral Soviet moves on foreign policy and arms control, have not changed. The conclusion is that the real significance of the WTO is ideological, serving to give the impression of unity. The Warsaw Treaty Organisation is just another means in the many forms of alliance indicating, and used to justify, the `socialist community'. Other forms of alliance, both political and military, take precedence over the WTO in all its functions. These are principally bilateral, rather than multilateral, forms, and in many cases they are party, rather than state, forms of alliance. Research into the WTO has not been fruitless, but has proved to be the study of issues other than the foreign or defence policies of a multilateral alliance.
39
Robinson, Sarah. "Pastoralism and land degradation in Kazakhstan." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3683/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis looks at the major factors, both environmental and institutional, which haye affected pastoralism in Kazakhstan throughout this century, concentrating in particular on the changes which have occurred since the end of the socialist period. The recent reforms were found to be highly negative for the livestock sector, leading to a crash in livestock numbers, high levels of poverty and the abandonment of many pasture areas. Winter fodder as a limit to livestock production has gained importance as it is no longer provided free by the state. There have been many reports of overstocking and land degradation in Kazakhstan. The literature on this was reviewed, and stocking rates in the Soviet periods compared with forage availability in different vegetation zones. From this, the regions of the study area which were probably most seriously affected by grazing regimes were identified. It was found that land degradation did not have negative effects on meat production at regional scales in the Soviet period. Since 1994 Kazakhstan's rangelands have undergone a transition from being highly stocked to being virtually empty of livestock. The potential for monitoring vegetation recovery using both biomass data and NDVI from the AVHRR satellite was investigated. Relationships with rainfall were explored for both datasets in order to determine the relative importance of climatic and human influences on forage availability. The NDVI data was found to have poor relationships with rainfall due both to its low sensitivity to the biomass changes involved, and the low rainfall variability. Better relationships between net primary production and rainfall were found using the biomass data. A severe drought occurring just after the stock crash was detected by the NDVI, but confounded any detection of vegetation recovery.
40
Moreton, Elly. "Mapping memories and rebuilding identities : understanding post-conflict reconstruction in Osh (Kyrgyzstan)." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6304/.
Full textAbstract:
Following the devastating riots that took place there in June 2010, the city of Osh (Kyrgyzstan) has been the subject of a number of post-conflict reconstruction projects aimed at rebuilding its damaged urban fabric. As well as being varied in form and approach, these interventions have had a significant impact on the ways that Osh's citizens experience the city. Whilst some residents have welcomed the changes that have been brought about in Osh, others are concerned about what these might mean for their continued wellbeing in the city. By interrogating the shifting relationships between place, identity and collective memory, this thesis explores post-conflict reconstruction in Osh between 2010 and 2013. It seeks to build a clearer picture of urban change in the city over this period, and to unpack the diverse motivations that underpinned the reconstruction projects that were pursued or proposed at that time. Above all, it asks what these changes have meant for Osh residents, many of whom were still reeling from the violence that ripped the city apart in 2010.
41
Engmann, Dorothy. "Corruption, taxation, and loan conditionality : a contribution to the macroeconomics of reform and transition with reference to Russia." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2002. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2324/.
Full textAbstract:
The primary objective of this thesis is to contribute to the debate on the reasons behind Russia's poor economic performance in its first decade after the fall of communism, by examining the role of IMF economic programs in the reform process.In particular, we are interested in the failure of neo-classical models of the market economy, upon which economic reform programs were based, to predict the outcomes in Russia. The purpose of the work is to offer a number of theoretical models which incorporate certain characteristics, such as political and economic motivations of both the IMF and Russian government, large-scale public sector corruption, a substantial underground economy, and a weak tax base, and which are capable predicting the resulting failings in the IMF-Russia economic reform program. In chapter 2, we present a theory of conditionality in which the recipient, aware that the lender faces political and economic motivations in the conditional development lending process, undertakes a game with the lender in which the recipient attempts to undertake the least amount of compliance that guarantees it future loans. There is an exogenous conflict between economics and politics within the lending agency that determines its degree of tolerance for policy (non-) compliance. We then analyse how the donor, in an attempt to regulate its internal conflict, may adopt "rules of thumb" in the lending process which pre-define the actions it will take in response to the lender's level of compliance. The recipient's strategy depends on the payoffs it obtains from the actions available to the lender under each "rule of thumb". We examine how the IMF-Russia relationship from 1992-2002 has elements of the games we model. In chapter 3, we model corruption a proportional tax on labour income in a three-sector economy with a corrupt bureaucracy, a legitimate private sector, and a shadow economy, and examine how tighter fiscal policies may result in a rise in corruption. The rise in corruption negatively affects legitimate private sector employment and output. We suggest that the Russian economy has a similar three sector structure and analyse the impact of reduced spending and increased taxation on corruption and employment. In chapter 4, we modify Alesina and Tabellini's (1987) model of time inconsistency to allow for a weak tax base and then apply it to post-communist Russia. In particular we examine two non-consecutive time periods in which, for different reasons, public debt could not be used to finance the government's budget deficit: 1992-94 and post August 17 1998. We suggest that Russia did in fact move from one sub-optimal position to another, and we raise questions about the optimality of Russia's current monetary policies. In chapter 5, we examine the optimality of monetary policy in the presence of bureaucratic corruption. We model corruption as a proportional tax on firm revenue and a positive function of the official tax rate. The higher the official tax, the higher the corruption tax levied by public bureaucrats in order to supplement their decreasing official net wage, and the lower is output. We find that under both discretion and commitment, inflation is higher, and output and taxation are lower, than when there is no corruption.
42
Swain, Alison. "The development of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, 1993 - 2008." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2010. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1839/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis considers the development of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), from its foundation in 1993 to the Presidential election of 2008. The study begins with a discussion of the context of change for the CPRF in the post-Soviet world from the perspective of political transitions of other communist parties and their development in the post-Soviet world. The final years of the party’s predecessor, and that predecessor’s collapse contribute a sense of perspective to the party’s development and this is followed by a consideration of the need for ideological change in order to transform the party, the electorate’s support for the CPRF in recent parliamentary elections and the political views of members of a branch of the party with particular emphasis on the opinions of younger members: those who may be guiding the party’s development in the future. How does the transformation of the CPRF compare with that of other communist parties in the region? Organisational change, including the inheritance of political control and resources by former communist parties in some countries where they were in power, has greatly aided some parties in their return to government while the lack of such advantages has hindered others. The ban on the party in Russia adversely affected the unification of communists in Russia from 1991 to 1993 while the CPRF’s counterparts in other countries faced no such difficulties. The electoral successes of other communist and former-communist parties serve to highlight the increased problems the CPRF faces after the splits the party has undergone in recent years. Ideological change across the post-communist world has been very varied in terms of moves towards social democracy, towards nationalism or the retention of a more orthodox communism depending on the local circumstances in individual countries. How has the legacy of the CPSU influenced the formation and development of the successor party? The origins of the CPRF can be seen in the divisions that formed in the CPSU in its final years. The scale of ideological change in the final years of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union can be seen in the radical differences between the 1986 Party Programme and 1991 draft Programme. Documents from the era reveal a failure to understand the depth of the reaction against communism in Eastern Europe and what it could mean for the Soviet Union as well as concern about the effects of glasnost’ on support for the regime and the thinking behind attempts to use electoral change to increase the party’s legitimacy. These changes did not have the anticipated effect for the CPSU and resulted in the loss of party control over those elected and over electors with the formation of platforms in the CPSU and parties outside the CPSU leading the way to the demise of the party. When the ideology a party represents appears to have been comprehensively rejected, how does that party reposition itself in the political landscape in order to survive? With the election of a new leader prepared to lead the party in a new direction, the CPRF has recast itself as a nationalist party that sees communism as a Russian tradition. Zyuganov’s repositioning of the party has been characterised by the acceptance of democracy, which has arguably kept the CPRF in the public eye as the party has been represented in every Duma since 1993, and the search for means of uniting various political groups under a broad ‘patriotic’ banner in order to return the party to power at the head of a coalition. Zyuganov’s reworking of communist theory includes a heavy reliance on geopolitics to argue for the re-establishment of the Soviet Union and support for the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian culture as cornerstones of the patriotic cause. Which members of the Russian electorate now define themselves as communist? The party’s relationship with the electorate is examined through the results of public opinion surveys conducted just after the 1999 and 2003 Duma elections to see what views communist voters hold in common and whether it is possible to determine what political opinions can be said to predict a vote for the CPRF. A CPRF supporter could be predicted to be older and with more strongly held political views than the average Russian citizen. As many previous studies have found, age is clearly one of the most significant factors in predicting support for the CPRF but this factor is outweighed in these surveys by party identification and ideological conviction. If a voter identified with a political party and an ideology, there was a greater probability that that voter supported the CPRF than any other political party. Are members of the party able and willing to defend the change in direction of the party leadership? Interviews with members of the St Petersburg branch of the CPRF indicated that members were willing to accept the nationalist stance of the party as a temporary necessity to extend electoral support for the party. In view of the fact that party membership has fallen drastically in recent years, members were asked what was drawing them to join the CPRF or remain in the party when others had left. With an ageing and falling membership, the Komsomol is playing an important role by recruiting young people to the party. Members were asked for their views on the possibility of the party changing course and their attitudes to Zyuganov’s leadership. However, with support for the party from the electorate in decline, party members were divided about what they felt needed to change. This thesis concludes that the party remains popular with a minority of voters who were impoverished by the transition and that the current strategies of democratic participation and a nationalist stance have been accepted by the membership as the achievement of communism is seen as a very distant prospect. The party, however, still believes that communism is inevitable.
43
Anikin, Vasiliy. "Skills training and development : Russia in comparative perspective." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/21789/.
Full textAbstract:
The acquisition and maintenance of human capital are considered key drivers of productivity and economic growth. However, recent literature shows that in the case of Russia, this relationship is not obvious, which raises a question concerning the nature of human capital accumulation, despite the significant expansion of tertiary education in this country. The existing literature, much of it relying on a theory of market imperfections, tends to explain low incidences of training by the lack of employer incentives to invest in the human capital of their employees. This dissertation adds to this view confirming the negative role of ‘bad’ jobs and social origins in obstructing employees from skills development in BRIC-like countries. Skills training in Russia is constrained by stratifying occupational forces comprising jobs with low requirements to skills development, which conserves the working population in generic labour. This reveals the phenomenon of skills polarisation ‘at the bottom’ in a late-industrial country, thus, contributing to the growing critique of the knowledge society theory. For those few workers who occupy ‘good’ jobs, skills training is strongly linked to personal-specific traits, such as qualifications and computer and language skills; and this is common in both Russia and India. However, in contrast to Russia, India is still forming their knowledge society. This is confirmed by the statistically significant impact of socio-demographic origins (e.g. age, household size, marital status, and religion) on the incidence of training, which reveals a crucial role of ascription in human capital acquisition in contemporary India. The present thesis contributes to the growing literature on structural prerequisites for successful advancement and the contradictory development of the BRIC countries.
44
Croll, Neil Harvey. "Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Russian Civil War." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2002. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1577/.
Full textAbstract:
Much has been written about Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky. His development of the “Deep Battle” military theory in the late 1920s and 1930s, the attendant mechanisation of the Red Army and his role in the development of the Soviet military/industrial complex have been well-researched. The “Tukhachevsky Affair”, the discussion surrounding his execution in the military purge of 1937, continues to attract interest. However, a detailed analysis of his early life and Civil War command career has never been completed. This gap is filled by this thesis. Tukhachevsky’s early life is explored to provide background, but also to provide a biographical account and to illustrate who he was when he joined the Red Army and Bolshevik Party in 1918. The thesis demonstrates that he was not a communist at this stage. However, his command experiences during the Civil War, combining military tactics of continuous manoeuvre warfare with constant frontline mobilisations, political agitation and repression, allowed him to develop a theory of class warfare and saw his conversion to a belief in the efficacy of Marxist principles when applied to military methods. Tukhachevsky’s success in the Civil War is compared to his failure in the Polish-Soviet War and the basis for the latter is that his continuation of class warfare methods were unsuitable for the conflict in Poland. The success of Tukhachevsky’s class warfare methods is explained by their relevance to the situation and social fabric of Russia at the time. The retention of these principles to form the basis of the operational side of “Deep Battle” is argued, as is Tukhachevsky’s openness to innovation in weaponry and tactics gleaned during his Civil War command. Tukhachevsky’s role in the early Red Army formulation is detailed, as is his development of the concept of “unified command” involving the creation of Red Commanders. The Communist Party leadership’s use of Tukhachevsky as a “troubleshooter” to deal with prioritised areas during the Civil War, leading to his service on every major Front at crucial stages is highlighted, as are the connections he made on the Civil War battlefields, friendly and hostile. It is shown that during his Civil War commands he met with those with whom he would later work and that their collaboration and experimentation began almost immediately.
45
Betz, David J. "Politics of mimicry - politics of exclusion : comparing post-communist civil-military relations in Poland and Hungary, Russia and Ukraine, 1991-1999." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2002. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3891/.
Full textAbstract:
The dissertation looks at the transformation of civil-military relations in Poland and Hungary, Russia and Ukraine between the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in July 1991 and the enlargement of NATO in March 1999. It presents new qualitative data based on approximately 120 elite interviews conducted by the author of politicians, military officers, defence analysts, and journalists in the countries in the study. In general, the focus is on the civilian side of the civil-military equation. Specifically, the work assesses the state of civil-military relations on the basis of three interconnected indicators: the making of security policy and defence reform as a test of civilian control, the role of civilians in the ministry of defence, and the strength of agencies of civilian oversight. It is argued that the differences observed in the state of civil-military relations among the states in the study can be explained by the interaction of three main factors. In Poland and Hungary, the external incentives to establish democratic control of the armed forces reform were positive, while in Russia and Ukraine the impact of external actors - of which NATO was by far the most significant - was negative or ambiguous. The attitude of the political and military elite in Poland and Hungary was more open to the adoption of new norms of civil-military relations than was that of the elite in Russia and Ukraine. And in Poland and Hungary the state of the polity and economy presented a less significant internal constraint on reform. The central finding of the dissertation is that in Poland and Hungary reformers tried - with mixed success - to adopt the forms of democratic civil-military relations as part of their drive to integrate with Western politico-military structures without seeking to understand the logic behind them. The result was a "politics of mimicry", a process of imperfect copying of liberal-democratic norms of civil-military relations which, nonetheless, culminated in these countries being admitted to NATO in 1999. In Ukraine and Russia, by contrast, in a time of profound budgetary exigency, the armed forces were left to solve their own problems absent much civilian control except that exercised infrequently and arbitrarily by the head of state.
46
Yukselen, Hasan. "Actors In The South Caucasus: Stability Providers Or Instability Exploiters." Master's thesis, METU, 2004. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12605385/index.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis analyses the developments in the South Caucasus region since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The disintegration brought about the decleration of independence from teh states in the region, namely Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. However, the conflicts in the aftermath of independence drawing the region into instability brought about the question of whether the instability in the region is an end result of teh policies of regional actors in the region. Whether teh stability in the South Caucasus is directly bound to teh constructive policies of the main actors? Whether actors act as stability providers or instability exploiters in the region? Are the actors especially since 9/11 Russia and the United States while expressing intentions on regional stability, with their differing interests acts as instability exploiters? In fact, these questions stems from the dilemma of discourse and commitment.
47
Cashman, Laura. "Integrating Romani communities in the Czech Republic : an analysis of policy implementation at the local level." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1525/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis provides an analysis of the national integration strategy developed in the Czech Republic to address the social exclusion of Romani communities. Based on a careful study of policy documents and interviews with the key actors involved in implementing the integration policy in České Budĕjovice and Ostrava, this thesis identifies the main barriers which exclude Roma from the education system and the labour market and describes how national policy in the spheres of education and employment is being implemented at the local level. By discussing the integration strategy with the people responsible for its implementation, it was possible to look at the policy from a new perspective. These people are experts in dealing with the realities of social exclusion in Romani communities and are in the best position to assess the effectiveness of the different programmes which together make up the integration policy. This study reveals that Romani communities continue to suffer from discrimination and that local authorities play a vital role in ensuring that the policies designed by central government become a reality. Communication between policy makers and those responsible for implementation is crucial to ensure that the programmes that form the core of the integration strategy are implemented fully. Some programmes have been more effective in certain places because local political and economic circumstances have a great deal of influence over the likely success of the policy. Anti-Romani prejudices in wider society and the apathy of Roma who are not interested in the programmes designed to help, remain significant obstacles, but creating an inclusive society and addressing the mistrust which has developed over generations takes time and persistence. Therefore, for the integration policy to succeed, all the key agencies, policy makers and practitioners working with Romani communities must cooperate and share the same agenda.
48
Kim, Dae Soon. "A political biography of Hungary's first post-Communist President, Árpád Göncz." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2578/.
Full textAbstract:
Hungary's political transformation of 1989 has been generally regarded as a peaceful revolution negotiated between the ruling Communists and the opposition. During the National Roundtable Negotiations, the fundamental framework of governance - including the amendment of the Constitution - was decided by members of Hungary's political elite. Hungary's mode of transition to democracy was an elite-led transformation and this was distinct from Czechoslovakia and Poland where the interests of society had been represented - to a large degree - by the likes of Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa. In view of this, some critics argued that compared to Poland and Czechoslovakia, Hungary had no equivalent high-profile figure who could break with the Communist past and claim the ideas of a new democracy. Hungary, however, had its own figure with democratic credentials. Árpád Göncz, who came to prominence during the inter-war period has been one time or another, a student resistance leader during Nazi occupation in Hungary, a steelworker, an agriculturalist, a literary translator and, he subsequently became the first post-Communist President of Hungary. He experienced the major events of Hungarian history first hand, including the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. During this pivotal time, Göncz undertook a significant role in the resistance that followed the suppression of the Revolution; he was sentenced to life imprisonment as a result. His democratic activities were widely acknowledged by political elites and the general public alike. This, in turn, contributed to his election to the Presidency. Significantly, however, much of the existing literature on Hungary's post-Soviet political development has not attached a high degree of importance to Göncz's role in Hungarian history or his political achievements. At present, there are no biographies of Göncz either in English or Hungarian. Thus this thesis, as the first English language scholarly biography, addresses a gap in the literature through the narration of the story of Göncz's life; an expansive account of Göncz's life is situated within a framework of the wider historical, political and social concerns of his generation. Specifically, the following questions are addressed: how were Göncz's political beliefs developed and how did these beliefs later inform his term as the first post-Communist President of Hungary? Narrative analysis and elite interviewing are employed as the main research methods in order to explore the development of Göncz's political beliefs and their significance for the understanding of Hungarian politics. It is argued that as a whole, Göncz made important contributions to the development of Hungarian democracy. Though not born into a political family and constrained by external forces beyond his control, Göncz attempted to address some of the key social and political problems of the age. It is also argued that the decade of Göncz's Presidency was crucial for the shaping of the basic institutional tenets of governance in post-Soviet Hungary. Despite his lack of experience of governance, Göncz created a template for the role of President and significantly affected the demarcation of powers between president and government in the ever-evolving context of the process of political transformation. While his interpretation of the presidential powers and responsibility was not, and could not be regarded as positive in all respects, Göncz's Presidency was imbuded by his liberal and democratic values.
49
Karadeli, Sedat Cem. "Legitimacy and the post-communist Hungarian political change." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2077/.
Full textAbstract:
Legitimacy is a key but a-changing concept in political science. It has evolved in parallel with the changing political realities throughout history. In the current political environment, legitimacy of a political order depends on its approval by people at the domestic level. However, this domestic approval has to be sustained by an international approval, an attribute underlined especially during the Cold War era. Latin American crises of legitimacy and the more recent East European crises of legitimacy provide concrete examples for this. Hungary, as one of the East European countries which underwent the post-communist systemic transformation faces a renewed crisis of legitimacy. The grounds of legitimation have changed in comparison with the grounds of legitimation of the ancien regime, especially under the Kádárist rule. This thesis analyses the Kádárist attempts at legitimation, and then focuses on the post-communist system in Hungary to compare it with the ancien regime in search of the answer to the question what has changed during the transformation. This study focuses on legitimacy with its domestic and international dynamics, taking into consideration the systemic, institutional and social changes in the post-communist era. It concludes that a combination of political, economic and social improvements will ensure the new system’s legitimate status in both domestic and international arenas.
50
Merridale, Catherine Anne. "The Communist Party in Moscow 1925-1932." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1987. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1409/.
Full textAbstract:
The thesis examines the Communist Party in Moscow between 1925 and 1932. Its structure, role and membership are studied, together with its relationship with the population of Moscow. A study is also made of politics in the period, with special reference to the oppositions of the 1920's. Four broad problems are discussed. The first is the relationship between the central Party leadership and the Moscow Committee. Second is the role of the grassroots activist in political life. Thirdly, the failure of the oppositions is studied in detail. Finally, popular influence over the Party is examined with a view to discussing how far the revolution had been 'betrayed' in this period. It is found that the Moscow Committee was less autonomous than other regional organs, but that grassroots initiative played an important part in political life. In general, people were reluctant to engage in formal opposition. This largely explains the defeat of the Left and Right oppositions, who failed to attract significant support. The majority of Muscovites remained apathetic or hostile to the Party, but a core of committed activists within it was responsible for many of the period's achievements. To the extent that they supported and even initiated policy, Stalin's 'great turn' included an element of 'revolution from below'.