Academic literature on the topic 'Union of Young Communist of Czechoslovakia'

This article reviews the political history of Czechoslovakia as a vital part of the Soviet-dominated “Communist bloc” and its repercussions for the journalist associations based in the country. Following an eventful history since 1918, Czechoslovakia changed in 1948 from a liberal democracy into a Communist regime. This had significant consequences for journalists and their national union and also for the International Organization of Journalists (IOJ), which had just established its headquarters in Prague. The second historical event to shake the political system was the “Prague Spring” of 1968 and its aftermath among journalists and their unions. The third landmark was the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989, which played a significant part in the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe and led to the closing of the old Union of Journalists in 1990, followed by the founding of a new Syndicate which refused to serve as the host of the IOJ. This led to a gradual disintegration and the closing down of what in the 1980s was the world’s largest non-governmental organization in the media field.

During World War II, the Soviet media featured both male and female military heroes as part of an effort to mobilize the entire nation for the protection of hearth and home. The wartime hero cults inspired post-war commemoration in both the Soviet Union and in countries it `liberated' from Nazism. However, no single Communist/Soviet model of commemoration and heroism was imposed on post-World War II Eastern Europe. The relative lack of female heroes constituted one of the most striking differences between the `cults' of the war in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. The difference can be explained in part as a consequence of the very different Soviet and Czechoslovak wartime experiences. The absence of female heroes also points to post-war differences in how the two states' leaders understood and employed the legitimizing potential of the war. These differences in turn shaped the post-Communist fate of hero cults in both countries.

Based on archival materials in Italy and the Czech Republic, the article examines the history of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) radio programme ‘Oggi in Italia’, which was broadcast from Prague to Italy throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The programme was produced clandestinely by former partisans who had fled to Czechoslovakia in order to escape prosecution during the ‘trial of the Resistance’ (processo alla Resistenza). ‘Oggi in Italia’ was a central element in the PCI's media strategy, particularly during the Cold War, when access to the official airwaves was circumscribed. The programme was thus a key element of the long-term legacy of the Resistance movement, but also played a highly significant role in the wider process of negotiation between the Communist parties of Italy, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

Literature in many languages (documentary, monographic, memoir-like and periodical) is abundant on the sovietization of Czechoslovakia, as are the reasons advanced for it. Some observers have argued that the Soviet takeover of the country stemmed from an excessive preoccupation with Panslavism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by a few Czech and Slovak intellectuals, politicians, writers and poets and their uncritical affection and fascination for everything Russian and Soviet. Others have attributed the drawing of Czechoslovakia into the Soviet orbit to Franco-British appeasement of Hitler's imperial ambitions during the September 1938, Munich crisis. At Munich, Czechoslovakia lost its sovereignty and territory, France its honor, England its respect and trust; and the Soviet Union, by its abstract offer to aid Czechoslovakia (without detailing how or in what form the assistance would come) gained admiration. Still others have pinned the blame for the sovietization of Czechoslovakia on machinations by top leaders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, who, as obedient tools of Moscow, supported Soviet geopolitical designs on Czechoslovakia, who sought and received political asylum in the USSR during World War II, and who returned to Czechoslovakia with the victorious Soviet armed forces at the end of World War II as high-ranking members of the Soviet establishment. Finally, there are some who maintain that the sovietization of Czechoslovakia commenced with the 25 February 1948, Communist coup, followed by the tragic death of Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk on 10 March 1948, and the replacement, on 7 June 1948, of President Eduard Beneš by the Moscow-trained, loyal Kremlin servant Klement Gottwald.

This article compares the patterns of breakdown of communist rule and the processes by which power was transferred to new ruling groups in four countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the GDR. In the countries covered in this paper, two paths to systemic crisis and breakdown are identified: the path of failed reform in Hungary and Poland, and the path of intransigent resistance to reform in Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic. The lesson of the Czechoslovak and East German experience was clearly that those regimes which totally rejected reform, because they saw it as incompatible with communist power, faced total and rapid collapse when confronted with the challenge of Gorbachev's perestroika and when deprived of the support of the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’; but the experience of Poland and Hungary suggests that those regimes which embarked on reform were no more successful in preserving communist power — half-way reform turned out in many ways to be even worse than no reform at all, while radical reform, that is, reform which would bring about the intended economic results, in the end could not be achieved without sweeping away communist power. Gorbachev himself now seems to be impaled on the horns of this same dilemma in the Soviet Union.

Abstract The cooperation of Czechoslovakia (and other socialist countries) with the Soviet Union was an important phenomenon during the period of socialism. It represented one form of building and consolidating socialism within socialist countries. Relationships with the Soviet Union affected political, ideological, economic and cultural domains, including education. This study follows points of departure and forms of building children’s positive relationship with the Soviet Union in the period of socialism. The content analysis of the Pioneer Organisation chronicles shows that the most frequently identified forms of activities were regularly organised (celebrations of memorial days and public holidays, politically motivated commitments, correspondence, games, expeditions, competitions, etc.). Some identified activities could be considered occasional, as they reflected current events in the Soviet Union (showing Soviet films, deaths of prominent politicians, anniversaries of birth/death of politicians, etc.). The proclaimed “diversity and attractiveness of content and forms” can characterise the process, and it affected many domains of children’s lives. However, the (in)direct power interest of the Soviet Union was hidden in the proclamation of “children’s well-being”, while the programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was implemented to reinforce the communistic ideology and actual political interests.

The text of the paper aims to analyse selected educational patterns from contemporary visual media (Czechoslovakia 1948–89) – postage stamps, posters, comics or caricatures aimed at the target group of young people. For the totalitarian communist regime, the youth represented an easily educated bearer of ideas and the prospects of maintaining the regime in the generations to come. The didactic application of these patterns in history education represents a suitable alternative to media education.

This article examines the break-ups of post-communist Czechoslovakia and the Union of Serbia and Montenegro under consociationalism. According to Arend Lijphart, social divisions may be neutralized at the elite level with power-sharing mechanisms. Lijphart's theory has been abundantly criticized, particularly because, while its intention is to induce cooperation, consociationalism does not give leaders actual incentives to cooperate. Czechoslovakia and the Union qualified as consociations; however most favorable factors were absent. The states failed to overcome their divisions and broke apart. Both states were going through a democratization period, experienced differently in each republic. The article argues that the application of consociationalism at this time magnified the divisions. Stirring up the ethnic sensitivity of the population was the most reliable strategy for politicians to secure popular support. In this context, and with the EU enlargement prospect, the consociational structure, instead of bringing elites together, weakened the federal power and provided elites the opportunity to defend republican interests at the expense of the federations. Hence, while a consociation requires certain conditions and favorable factors, the context in which consociationalism is implemented, and particularly democratization periods, may have a decisive influence on the leaders’ ability to cooperate, on their decisions, and thereby on the state.

In August, 1968 nearly 3000 geologists from 91 countries gathered in Prague for the XXIIIrd International Geological Congress. Geology was in a state of major transformation and the Congress was the opportunity for the nascent International Union of Geological Sciences to involve the world geological community. But a brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia by its Communist allies frustrated all plans. Over 500 papers, more than 50 field trips, dozens of colloquia, meetings of affiliated societies etc. were canceled. Thousands of geologists who might have disseminated a uniquely global science to the classrooms and boardrooms of 91 countries's, were scattered by the winds of war. In rump sessions within the dying Congress and immediately after, a handful of West bloc geologists, committed agents of the new developments, struggled to pick up the pieces. The IUGS had to wait four years for another plenary session with the world geological community.

The given article, based on archival documents, provides the analysis of socio-political, socio-cultural, and educational activities of the Union of Rusyns-Ukrainians in the Slovak Republic, the updated name of which was adopted at the extraordinary Congress of the Cultural Union of Ukrainian workers of Czechoslovakia in January 20, 1990 in Prešov. The Cultural Union of Ukrainian Workers of Czechoslovakia of cultural orientation (founded in 1951), which was the predecessor of the new organization, is mentioned. According to the decision of the Congress, the reformed organization focused on strengthening the friendship and cooperation with the Slovak people, other nationalities in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, etc. It is noted that the return to the old name was seen by the Rusyn-Ukrainians of Eastern Slovakia as one of the means of identity struggle against the accelerated slovakization in the context of aggravation of interethnic relations in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in the late 1980s and 1990s. The analysis of the adopted documents in which the Congress stated its intentions and requirements is given including: Program Proclamation of the Congress, the Memorandum of Rusyns-Ukrainians of Czechoslovakia to the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Slovak National Council and the SSR Government, the Statute of the Council of Rusyns-Ukrainians of Czechoslovakia, “Organization’s Work Plan for the Near Future”, which expressed the need to give priority to working with young people in and out of schools. The catastrophic decrease in the number of schools with the Ukrainian language of instruction is stated. The paper also notes the numerical grow and revitalization of other Ukrainian national associations and institutions in Slovakia willing to work in the field of cultural and national life of Rusyns-Ukrainians (Oleksander Dukhnovych Society, Rukh, “OBRUCH” Organization, Association of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic, Carpathians Youth Union, etc.)

The present study focuses on the activity of the Young Communist League (Komsomol) to promote the communist project during the so-called Thaw period in the Soviet Union (1953-1964). The term ‘communist project’ describes the complex temporal triangle in which the relevance of the present was rooted in its relationship to the heroic past and the bright future. Young people were supposed to emulate the heroism of previous generations while fighting remnants of the undesired past. This was presented as a precondition for achieving the communist future. The structure of this study reflects the chronology of the communist project. It analyzes the rhetoric used by the Young Communist League to promote the communist project and explores the strategies used to mobilize youth for building communism. The first chapter focuses on the organizational structure of the Komsomol and assesses its readiness for this task. Despite attempts to strengthen horizontal communication and control, streamline administration and reorganize its structure, the Komsomol remained hierarchal and bureaucratic. The second chapter explores the promotion of past heroism in rituals, social practices and the use of public space. The third chapter is also concerned with the past; it describes the Komsomol’s fight against ‘remnants of the past’, primarily religion and deviant behaviour such as hooliganism, heavy drinking and laziness. The final chapter focuses on the Komsomol’s attempts during the Thaw to bring about the future: its efforts in the economy, moral, political and cultural education, and the realm of leisure.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.
1 electronic text (136 p.) : digital, PDF file. Title from title screen. Clifford Kuhn, committee chair; Ian C. Fletcher, committee member. Description based on contents viewed Apr. 5, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-136).

The Diploma thesis focuses on youth structures that profess to the largest far-right and far-left parties representatives in the Czech Republic. In the far-right milieu it is the Worker's Party Youth, who are closely associated with the Worker's party of Social Justice. On the far-left side of the spektrum, there are formally two entities, that profess to the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia: the Communist Youth Union and the Union of Young Communists of Czechoslovakia. The aim of this thesis is to clarify the extent of real interdependence of these civic associations with a political party, and on the other side, to examine their political extremism level, both in theory and also in the terms of security forces. The thesis further explores to what extent, therefore, these entities are a real threat to the existing democratic system in the Czech Republic.

Humor as a Mirror of Political Reality: Anti-Communist humor in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in comparative perspective Author: Arevik Zadoyan Supervisor: Janusz Salamon, Ph.D. Academic Year: 2019/2020 Abstract Humor is an important part of our daily lives though sometimes it is overlooked by historians and those studying politics. This thesis explores anti-communist jokes in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in order to answer the question of whether or not humor is able to accurately mirror the political reality of a given country. After an extensive research, this thesis supports the argument that political humor in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia provided an accurate description of the regime, meaning jokes were not only meant to humor the audience but they were also informative and touched upon questions such as foreign policies, domestic life, ethnic and religious issues, personality cults of their leaders, propaganda and censorship, and much more. But even though both countries had anti-communist jokes, some characteristics (e.g., context, form, length) varied. Furthermore, since jokes are time specific, the pattern of differentiation is also present chronologically.

Abstract The Master thesis Czechoslovakia in 1960s from the point of view of theory non- democratic regimes deals with the analysis of political, economic and social development, especially with the so-called Prague Spring of 1968. The 1968 reform was an attempt to transform the Czechoslovak communist regime. The aim was to transform Czechoslovakia into a modern industrial society, break free from the total subordination to the Soviet Union, yet with the leading role of the Communist Party. For this reason, the year 1968 holds an important position in our post-war history. The thesis is divided into two main parts and seven chapters. The first part is devoted to non-democratic theories, particularly to totalitarianism and authoritarianism. The second part describes the events in the communist Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1960. And subsequently, the remaining part is devoted to the main topic of the thesis, to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. The aim of my thesis was to describe the situation in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, identify the causes and consequences of the so-called Prague Spring of 1968 and try to match Czechoslovakia to a certain type of non-democratic regime in the 1960s and thus determine where Czechoslovakia was on the imaginary scale from totalitarianism to democracy in this period.

The present thesis is dedicated to the thematic agenda of the magazine "Svět Sovětů" ("The World of Soviets") during the pre-war period (1934 - 1938) and the post-war years (1945 - 1946) as well as the image of the Soviet women, that this magazine was forming. Fundamental intention of this research was to process complex set of topics of this magazine during mentioned time intervals, then capture differences (in case there were any) in the description during those periods and subsequently analyze the portion of articles that was dedicated to a Soviet woman, especially with regard to the following analysis of her image that was artificially constructed in the given magazine. The aim of this paper was to reconstruct the image of the "look" of the Soviet women and make comparison of its development during the period before World War II and subsequently after it was over. The assumption was that her portrayal depended on promotional and agitational politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union itself, and that this image was changing depending on the political objectives of the Communist Party and the Soviets, which varied in accordance with the historical events that were taking place. This thesis therefore presents image of Soviet women deliberately formed as means of...

The present thesis is dedicated to the thematic agenda of the magazine Svět sovětů (The World of Soviets) during the pre-war period (1934 - 1938) and the post-war years (1945 - 1946) as well as the image of the Soviet women that this magazine was forming. Fundamental intention of this research was to process complex set of topics of this magazine during mentioned time intervals, then capture differences (in case there were any) in the description during those periods and subsequently analyze the portion of articles that was dedicated to a Soviet woman, especially with regard to the following analysis of her image that was artificially constructed in the given magazine. The aim of this paper was to reconstruct the image of the "look" of the Soviet women and make comparison of its development during the period before World War II and subsequently after it was over. The assumption was that her portrayal depended on promotional and agitational politics of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union itself, and that this image was changing depending on the political objectives of the Communist Party and the Soviets, which varied in accordance with the historical events that were taking place. This thesis therefore presents image of Soviet women deliberately formed as means of agitation and...

This diploma thesis focuses on the appropriate and effective use of film and serial adaptations of topics falling into the period of communist totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia (that is between 1948 and 1989, with emphasis on the period 1948-1969). The thesis is divided into four chapters, whereas the main part, which is didactic, is described in the third and fourth chapter. The first chapter describes the basic historical context of the communist government in Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989. It also shows and explains the origin of the idea of communism, the further development of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia during the First Republic, and the postwar Third Republic. This chapter was put together using found edited sources and secondary literature. The second chapter deals with individual film and serial processing of topics related to the period. It presents specific films and series which were produced in the most recent years (or the post-revolutionary period), but also materials produced during the totalitarianism before 1989. In this chapter some works are discussed in greater detail, others are presented as selected alternative options for interaction for educational purposes. The third chapter summarizes the didactic and historical potential of the discussed topic, it also...

Around 1968 communism expanded as a global movement, especially in the developing world, while hitting a crisis of legitimation in Europe. In the Western world the late 1960s saw young people aspiring to revolutionary change that involved both individual liberation and social justice. Generational identity underpinned a revolt against authority, leading to acute political crises in France, Italy, and elsewhere. While presenting opportunities to communist parties, this revolt threatened, from Moscow’s perspective, a dangerous proliferation of ‘heterodox’ Marxist thought. In Eastern Europe rebellious populations in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia demanded greater rights of expression, causing the Soviet Union to intervene militarily in Czechoslovakia. By contrast, Maoism was able to capture the revolutionary, anti-imperialist spirit of the times. Claiming to offer an anti-bureaucratic alternative to the Soviet model, and resituating heroic agency at the heart of communist politics, Maoism appealed to Third World revolutionary leaders and radicals in the West.

This article focuses on the ideas of interviewing on both sides of a conflict, those who prevailed and those who were replaced. It traces the political upheavals that raged Czechoslovakia after the Second World War to understand and analyze interviewing on both sides of a conflict. Czech historians who are investigating our country's contemporary history using oral history methodology have made research into the development of society during the Communist era, including the period of normalization, one of our top priorities. This article also refers to how Czech historians recorded one hundred student revolutionaries. They recorded the narratives of approximately one hundred young people who, as university students during the crucial November days of 1989, had been a driving force in the popular uprisings that swept through Czechoslovakia in the first few days of the revolution. This article winds up by analyzing ways of interviewing ex-communist functionaries.

World War II has never ended for the citizens of the former Soviet Union. Nearly 27 million Soviet citizens died in the course of what Joseph Stalin declared to be the Great Patriotic War, half of the total 55 million victims of the world war. The enduring personal trauma and grief that engulfed those who survived, despite the Red Army's victory over fascism, was not matched by Stalin's state of mind, which preferred to forget the war. Not until the ousting of Nikita S. Khrushchev in October 1964 by Leonid Brezhnev was official memory of the war really resurrected. This article elaborates a thesis about the place of World War II in Soviet and post-Soviet collective memory by illuminating the sources of the myth of the Great Patriotic War and the mechanisms by which it has been sustained and even amplified. It discusses perestroika, patriotism without communism, the fate of the wartime Young Communist heroine Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the battle for Victory Day, the return of ‘trophy’ art, the Hill of Prostrations, and Sovietism without socialism.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

The student movement came to President Roosevelt’s doorstep on February 20, 1937, when some 3000 young demonstrators marched on the White House. The protesters, representing student and youth organizations from across the nation, sought to dramatize the economic hardships of youth in Depression America. Marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, they waved banners and chanted their demands. “Pass the American Youth Act—We want jobs;” “Scholarships not Battleships;” “Homes not barracks.” One group dressed in prison garb, carried a sign “We never had jobs.” Others costumed as pilgrims, miners, and farmers made the same point. The California delegation rode in oil a covered wagon bearing the battered sign “Go East Young Man.” To the tune of Yankee Doodle, the protesters—carrying signs that identified their college, school, religious group, or trade union affiliation— sarig “American youth is on the march for jobs and education.” This was, as the Washington Post observed “a line of marchers such as Washington has never seen before.” This march on the White House was part of a three day Youth Pilgrimage for Jobs and Education. The protesters did more than parade down Pennsylvania Avenue; they also lobbied Congress on behalf of greater federal assistance to the millions of young Americans hurt by the Great Depression. The pilgrimage attested that even though peace was the most popular cause on campus, the student movement of the 1930s was not merely an anti-war crusade. It was also a movement for social justice, whose leaders cared so much about the plight of low-income youth that they chose to make this, rather than war, the focus of the movement’s first sizable national march on Washington. The pilgrimage symbolized the student movement leadership’s commitment to building a more egalitarian America. The movement’s leaders envisioned a society where education would be a right rather than a privilege; they thought Washington should ensure that no one would be—as millions of Depression era youth had already been—forced to drop out of school because of insufficient funds. The student movement sought to make America a nation free of unemployment, poverty, and racism.

This chapter flashes back to the early 1930s, when liberal and socialist leaders of Local 5 brought charges against young communist activists for disrupting the union and challenging the authority and judgment of its leadership. The “trial” of six communist union members, in preparation for their expulsion, was led by liberal philosopher and educational reformer, John Dewey, a friend and supporter of Local 5 president Henry Linville. In pushing the so-called “Dewey Trial” in spring 1933, Linville and Dewey set the persecution of communist teachers on a track that would eventually lead to the Coudert inquisition, by exploiting accusations of bad faith and misrepresentation against radical union members. Linville, a conservative socialist, joined in emerging efforts to isolate and defeat the growing communist activism of the Popular Front.

On New Year’s Day 1993 Czechoslovakia was dissolved, giving place to two new European countries, Czechia and Slovakia. Czechs and Slovaks lived under Habsburg rule for centuries, then, between 1918 and 1938 and between 1945 and 1993, under a common state. Their coexistence, their shared culture and their common experience of Communism provided them with a similar background for the development of democratic party politics. Their new political institutions (parliamentarism, proportional electoral system, etc.) and their membership in the European Union (EU) after 2004 enhanced the forces of convergence. Yet, in the mid-2000s the Czechs were considered to have one of the most stable party systems in post-Communist Europe, while the Slovaks had a rather chaotic party landscape....

Leadership in the collegiate transition from political apathy to activism came from the Left and initially it came with a New York accent. Almost all of Depression America’s early eruptions of student protest—including the student expedition to Harlan County, the Columbia free speech strike, and the City Colleges’ anti-tuition movement during the 1932 spring semester—either occurred on or were launched from campuses in New York City. Though consisting of only a small minority of the student body in New York, the city’s campus radicals were the best organized, most politically ambitious and militant student activists in the nation. New York’s emergence as the center of the student revolt of the early 1930s was largely the work of the National Student League (NSL), the New York-based radical organization responsible for orchestrating the first political protests by collegians during the Depression decade. The birth of the NSL in December 1931 marked the organizational beginning of student activism in the Depression era. Coming at a time when nationally militant political protest did not yet exist on campus, the NSL’s founding in New York attested that the city’s student activists were ahead of their time and of the rest of American undergraduates on the road to mass protest. The role that New York’s campuses played in igniting the student movement was facilitated by the city’s unique political climate. New York was the capital city of American radicalism during the Depression decade. Here the Communist Party, which during this decade became America’s largest radical organization, had its national headquarters and strongest following. The city was also a stronghold for the Socialist Party, which had considerable influence in metropolitan area labor unions. The radical intelligentsia too made New York its home and used the city as a base for publishing the nation’s most important leftist magazines and journals. Evoking the intense radicalism and heated ideological debate in New York during the Depression, Lionel Abel recalled that intellectually the city’s leftists “went to Russia and spent most of the decade there . . . . New York became the most interesting part of the Soviet Union . . .

The international threat posed by fascism became the central concern of the student movement during the second half of the Depression decade. For this generation of college students not a year passed without some ominous reminder of the rising strength, belligerence, arid brutality of European fascism. There was Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s military support of the Spanish fascist revolt in 1936 and 1937, Germany’s anti-Jewish pogrom and conquest of Austria in 1938, and the Nazi invasion of Czechoslavakia and Poland in 1939. These events, along with Japan’s escalating war on China, prodded many student activists to rethink the isolationist assumptions their anti-war movement had popularized on campus in the early 1930s. The increasing aggression of the fascist powers led these activists to worry that the very neutrality that their movement had urged upon the United States to promote peace, instead, bred war by preventing America from orchestrating an international effort to thwart fascist expansionism. This mindset facilitated the rise of a major challenge to isolationism within the student movement, which by 1938 pushed the movement’s largest organizations to abandon their isolationist policies and embrace collective security. The first influential group within the student movement’s leadership which sought to shift the movement away from isolationism was the communists. These radicals had the earliest and clearest vision of the student movement’s need for a more explicitly anti-fascist foreign policy. Their thinking on this matter had been strongly influenced by deliberations of the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International (CI) in August 1935. The CI became concerned about the triumph of Nazism in Germany, its spreading influence in Europe, and the potential threat these developments posed to the U.S.S.R.’s security. The Seventh World Congress therefore urged the formation of broad national coalitions and international collective security arrangements on behalf of a Popular Front against fascism. For communists in the American student movement, this implied the need to turn the movement’s foreign policy away from American neutrality and toward the endorsement of collective efforts among the United States, the Soviet Union, and other anti-fascist states to prevent military aggression by Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Matthew Worley’s essay on the Communist Party of Great Britain offers a fascinating insight into how the CPGB and the Young Communist League sought to engage with Punk at a time when the Party was losing membership rapidly in the decade or so before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Stimulated by the writings of Martin Jacques, and other prominent members of the Party, the attempt to embrace the anti-commercial music establishment of the emerging youth culture in the 1970s led to serious debate within the CPGB between those still committed to mass class conflict based upon industrial struggle as a basis of political consciousness (economism) and those who sought to enact the ‘cultural turn’, by embracing gender and race as well as class. The CPGB failed in its efforts, and was rather less successful than the Socialist Worker’s Party with its ‘Rock against Racism’ campaign, but at least there was a vibrancy of campaigning within a declining organisation which did leave an impact upon subsequent interpretations of punk rock and youth culture..

This epilogue concludes the narrative by examining the effects of World War II on the Tri-State mining district. The National War Labor Board ultimately facilitated the unionization of most district miners in the CIO. As federal support waned at war’s end, however, the district rapidly collapsed. Although now unionized, Tri-State miners opted for the conservative, anti-Communist unionism of the American Federation of Labor. But no union could stop the closure of the mines by the late 1950s. Rather than go into mining, young working-class men. such as the district’s favorite son, Mickey Mantle, now chose other occupations. The epilogue also surveys the books core arguments and reiterates its historiographical significance.

On my third evening in Russia, the world changed. I was in Stavropol, a city founded by Prince Gregory Potemkin at the time of the American Revolution as one of ten fortresses to defend the borders of the expanding Russian Empire. To the south were the Caucasus, formidable mountains and myriad peoples. Stavropol grew as an administrative center of tsarist and later Soviet power. It briefly fell to the Wehrmacht in 1942 as the invading army drove unsuccessfully toward the oilfields of Baku. Later, a popular young party secretary from the area got noticed in Moscow, joined the Politburo, and in 1985 became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms would inadvertently lead to a geopolitical earthquake, the end of the Cold War in Europe, and the unthinkable—the collapse of the Communist empire built by Lenin and Stalin. That evening the provost of Stavropol State University toasted the health of the international academics attending the conference starting the next morning. Many other benevolent toasts were exchanged, and a singularly somber one. A researcher with the Memorial Human Rights Center reminded us that a war raged nearby in Chechnya, an “inner abroad” of Russia. Here Russia’s new president had approved the indiscriminate shelling of a Russian city and a dirty war against citizens redefined as “terrorists.” Returning to our hotel that evening in a bus under armed guard, a Croatian friend and I were chatting when told to turn on the television. Russian television was broadcasting footage of airplanes crashing into skyscrapers in lower Manhattan on what seemed like a continuous loop. The full magnitude of what had happened was only apparent the next day. Like many, the Twin Towers were entwined with personal memories—first seeing them in rural Ireland on a pennant my uncle brought back from his vacation to New York, and later visiting the observation deck with my parents and friends. Furthermore, the attack on the Pentagon was only two miles from my home, a few more from where I worked, and all too close to some former students who worked in the building.