Academic literature on the topic 'Soviet union, history, 1917-1936'

Introduction. Throughout the shaping of the Soviets, the Armenian nation passed its historical way of development as a union member and grew to be administratively represented by two Soviet Armenian ethnic entities — the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ranked a union republic) and Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (a territory within the Azerbaijan SSR). The First Republic was established in late May 1918 to be replaced by the Second Republic, or Soviet Armenia, in early December 1920. In 1920–1922, the latter was officially referred to as ‘independent Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia’, and then as a territory within the Transcaucasian Soviet Federation (1922–1936) and the Soviet Union (1936–1991). After Transcaucasian Federation was abolished in 1936, Soviet Armenia was incorporated into the USSR as a self-sufficient union republic under the name Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Goals. The study seeks to show the process of nation-state building in the USSR through the example of Armenia. Materials and methods. The article analyzes archival materials represented by official documents and acts dealing with Soviet nation-state building, as well as collections of laws and party decrees. The main research methods employed are the historical/comparative and historical/genetic ones. Results. Soviet Armenia within the USSR, as well as other Soviet republics and autonomies, was no independent state in the conventional sense, but at the same time it was endowed with many attributes and symbols of statehood. Finally, it was Soviet Armenia that — for first time in the history of Armenian statehood — obtained its own Constitution. Conclusions. Soviet Armenia was a nation in the unified Soviet state, and in the conditions of seven decades of unlimited power of the Communist Party preserved and developed the Armenian Soviet statehood to a maximum possible then and there. Most Armenian historians believe the present-day independent Third Republic would never have emerged (since 1991) but for the period of Soviet Armenia.

An introduction to the author’s engagement with the history of historical writing in Russia and the Soviet Union, with special attention to the “new direction” studies in social and economic history that flourished in the last few decades before the revolution of 1917.

The article examines the history of the formation of representative power in Russia: the emergence and development of Soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies and the highest representative institution - the State Duma. The following shows the activities of the State Duma, the range of interests of their deputies, their attention to the problem of whether the Duma is a parliament or not. The process of formation of Soviets since February 1917 as an All-Russian representative authority is shown. The problem of correlation between the theory of Marxism and the practice of its application in the RSFSR is considered. It is shown that the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918 never mentioned the classical formula of Marxism “dictatorship of the proletariat”, blurring it with the dictatorship of workers. However, during the Civil War, in order to retain power, there is a transition to the de facto dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party. The article draws attention to the moral and political level of the members of the CPSU (b), I. V. Stalin’s personnel policy in both party and Soviet organizations. The institute of purges of party and Soviet workers is considered as a way to get rid of both political opponents and embezzlers, thieves, drunkards, etc. of the public. The new Constitution of the USSR of 1936 was to ful ll the task of nally purging the state from the party dictatorship and ensuring the union of party members and non - party members

AbstractThe Mongolian People's Republic (MPR) became the focus of intense competition between the Soviet Union and Japan in the 1930s, when it was more commonly known as Outer Mongolia. The Soviet Union viewed the MPR as an ideological and strategic ally, and was determined to defend that state against the increasingly adventurist actions of the Japanese military based in northern China. Japanese ambitions to solve the so-called ‘Manmo’ (Manchuria-Mongolia) problem led the Soviets to initiate ever-closer links with the MPR, culminating in the 1936 pact of mutual assistance which was intended to constrain Japanese pressure. Using unpublished Japanese materials as well as Russian and Mongolian sources, this article demonstrates how the Soviet leadership increasingly viewed the MPR as strategically crucial to the defence of the Soviet Far East.

The Soviet system replicated the imperial reign it destroyed by establishing the rule of a new elite: the Soviet party bureaucracy. True beneficiary of a revolutionary transformation, this elite came from peasant sons, promoted and rewarded by the Soviet system. This provincial surplus was a major force behind the Soviet empire: many of these young, uprooted individuals were extraordinarily successful. From slums and humble origins, they reached the inner circle of party power and remained there for almost forty years. This article profiles one of the most powerful groups within the upper echelon of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the members of the Central Committee, using statistical database analysis to examine the dramatic social transformation of this demographic group and its evolution to successful power domination.

Analysis of the party, socio-professional, ethnic, educational, gender and age composition of the delegates to the All-Russian and All-Union Congresses of Soviets in 1917–1936 discovered that the revolution brought to power new people. If the majority of the members of the State Duma and the Constituent Assembly belonged to the political cream of the elite and counter-elite, then the majority of the delegates to the Soviets were bone from the bone of the lower orders and reflected the cultural level of the majority of voters and shared socialist ideas and were zealous conductors of them in life. Overrepresented in the Soviets were members and candidates of the CPSU, men, youth and persons of early adulthood, employees, military personnel and intellectuals, Russians, educated; and underrepresented are members of other parties and non-party people, peasants, pro-bourgeois elements and persons from the former privileged strata, women, non-Russians, persons of mature and old age, illiterate. By age and education, delegates were not suitable for serious parliamentary activity, since they lacked education, worldly wisdom and political maturity. The new electoral law of 1918 was of fundamental importance for the creation of a loyal pro-Bolshevik deputy corps. The law established a system of indirect, multistage, class, qualification elections, very similar to the pre-revolutionary electoral law of 1907. Qualifications were introduced that increased the number of pro-Bolshevik voters; the election procedure was changed, allowing the authorities to take control of the nomination of candidates and the voting process. The policy of restriction found a response and approval among the broad masses, gave them a feeling of deep satisfaction, since they began to feel themselves like privileged classes. Many, primarily millions of deputies of the Soviets of various levels, sincerely believed that they were taking part in governing the state.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin’s life (1883–1950) and work of this outstanding Russian mathematician, member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and foreign member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, coincides with a very difficult period in Russian history: two World Wars, the 1917 revolution in Russia, the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the civil war of 1917–1922, and finally, the construction of a new type of state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This included collectivization in the agriculture and industrialization of the industry, accompanied by the mass terror that without exception affected all the strata of the Soviet society. Against the background of these dramatic events took place the proces of formation and flourishing of Luzin the scientist, the creator of one of the leading mathematical schools of the 20th century, the Moscow school of function theory, which became one of the cornerstones in the foundation of the Soviet mathematical school. Luzin’s work could be divided into two periods: the first one comprises the problems regarding the metric theory of functions, culminating in his famous dissertation Integral and Trigonometric Series (1915), and the second one that is mainly devoted to the development of problems arising from the theory of analytic sets. The underlying idea of Luzin’s research was the problem of the structure of the arithmetic continuum, which became the super task of his work. The destiny favored the master: the complex turns of history in which he was involved did not prevent, and sometimes even favored the successful development of his research. And even the catastrophe that broke out over him in 1936 – “the case of Academician Luzin” – ended successfully for him.