Academic literature on the topic 'Victorious February'

In February 1944, as the victorious Red Army was preparing to clear the Nazi German forces from the rest of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a surprise official announcement stunned the population. The radio and the newspapers announced amendments to the Soviet constitution, which would enable the union republics to establish their own armies and maintain diplomatic relations with foreign states. While the Kremlin did not elaborate on the reasons for such a reform, Radianska Ukraina, the republic's official newspaper, proceeded to hail the announcement as “a new step in Ukrainian state building.” Waxing lyrical, the paper wrote that “every son and every daughter of Ukraine” swelled with national pride upon learning of the new rights that had been granted to their republic. In reality, the public was confused. In Ukraine's capital, Kiev, the secret police recorded details of rumors to the effect that the USA and Great Britain had forced this reform on Stalin and that Russians living in Ukraine would be forced to assimilate or to leave the republic. Even some party-appointed propagandists erred in explaining that the change was necessitated by the fact that Ukraine's “borders have widened and [it] will become an independent state.”

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.

Abstract From the cultural and art point of view, the year 1948 in Czechoslovakia was not just the so-called “Victorious February” of the working people. The remarkable phenomenon of this era, which was related to the post-war political and social movement, was the phenomenon of female emancipation and feminization of the stage production. During the two consecutive theatre seasons 1947/1948 and 1948/1949, at The New Scene Theatre of the National Theatre in Bratislava, several women, led by the director Magda Husaková-Lokvencová created several productions. For the first time, a sovereign feminine alliance had emerged in our performance art, proving that conceptual and thoughtful theatrical production may not be just the domain of men. These women contributed to deconstructing the beliefs of typically male and typically female professions as well as transforming traditional views of the role and position of both sexes in society and the arts. The attention of theatre historiography in the recapitalization of the impacts of the breakthrough events of the Czechoslovak post-war politics of the forty years on cultural events so far focused mainly on the issues of dramaturgy and poetics, the process of ideological transformation and the sovietisation of art in the spirit of socialist realism. The subject of socialist emancipation and theatre was at the edge of the interest of our theatrology. Ten years ago, a collective monograph, dedicated to the first lady of the Slovak theatre directors, Magda Husaková-Lokvencová, managing to free her forgotten personality and work and return her to the context of Slovak theatre history in the second half of the 20th century. There is still room for further research, complementing the knowledge and reflection of the advent of women in the sphere of theatre directory, dramaturgy and scenography artwork, as part of the history of gender relations in Slovakia. Increased interest in the history of women provokes a new reflection on the issue of emancipation and theatre.

In his book Awangarda w cieniu Jałty (In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989), Piotr Piotrowski mentioned that Polish and Czechoslovakian artists were not working in mutual isolation and that they had opportunities to meet, for instance at the Arguments 1962 exhibition in Warsaw in 1962. The extent, nature and intensity of artistic contacts between Poland and Czechoslovakia during their coexistence within the Eastern bloc still remain valid research problems. The archives of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art which I have investigated yield information on thirty-fi ve exhibitions of art produced in Czechoslovakia that took place in Warsaw in the period of the People’s Republic of Poland. The current essay focuses on exhibitions organised in the late 1940s. The issue of offi cial cultural cooperation between Poland and Czechoslovakia was regulated as early as in the fi rst years after the war. Institutions intended to promote the culture of one country in the other one and associations for international cooperation were established soon after. As early as in 1946, the National Museum in Warsaw hosted an exhibition entitled Czechoslovakia 1939–1945. In 1947 the same museum showed Contemporary Czechoslovakian Graphic Art. A few months after “Victorious February”, i.e. the coup d’état carried out by the Communists in Czechoslovakia in early 1948, the Young Czechoslovakian Art exhibition opened at the Young Artists and Scientists’ Club, a Warsaw gallery supervised by Marian Bogusz. It showed the works of leading artists of the post-war avant-garde, and their authors were invited to the vernissage. Nine artists participated in both exhibitions, i.e. at the National Museum and at the Young Artists and Scientists’ Club. A critical analysis of art produced in one country of the Eastern bloc as exhibited in another country of that bloc enables an art historian to outline a section of the complex history of artistic life. Archival research yields new valuable materials that make it impossible to reduce the narration to a simple opposition contrasting the avant-garde with offi cial institutions.

In February 1948 a spirited presidential race sparked a political powderkeg in normally tranquil Costa Rica. The opposition candidate, Otilio Ulate, unexpectedly defeated former president Rafael Angel Calderón. Calderón's National Republican Party, the Communist Partido Vanguardia Popular (Vanguard), along with incumbent President Teodoro Picado immediately overturned the results. The opposition responded by launching an armed struggle to install Ulate in power. Led by José Figueres, the rebels defeated the government army and its auxiliaries composed primarily of calderonista and vanguardista militiamen. In late April Figueres victoriously entered San José and established a revolutionary junta that ruled the country for eighteen months. At the end of this period, he stepped down and allowed Ulate to serve his full four-year term.

В статье прослеживается эволюция костюма лидеров России и Советского государства начиная с Февральской революции до Перестройки, показана связь между образом руководителя государства и эпохой, которую он воплощает. Главным и основным образом вождя, лидера государства победившей революции стал образ «силовика», одетого в стиле милитари и ведущего аскетичный образ жизни. Характерными объектами образа силового лидера стали френч, высокие сапоги (краги), фуражка военного образца, защитного или серого цвета плащ реглан, кожаная куртка, курительная трубка и усы шеврон. После победы в Великой Отечественной войне власть отказалась от упрощенческого образа в пользу патетичного, церимониального. Была реставрирована дореволюционная символическая атрибутика власти. В армии были восстановлены офицерские звания, погоны, лампасы, вновь появились генералы, маршалы, и даже генералиссимус. Для строительства важных госучреждений был разработан специальный архитектурный стиль, неформально называемый советский (сталинский) ампир. Имперская помпезность и тяжеловесность вплоть до ХХ съезда КПСС стала характерной чертой послевоенной эпохи. В эпоху оттепели началась десакрализация власти. Лидер страны Н. С. Хрущев отказался от стиля милитари, стал одеваться исключительно в гражданскую одежду, напоминающую повседневную домашнюю одежду или одежду сельскую, выдержанную в славянском этностиле. Характерной частью его наряда стала душевная украинская вышиванка, имплицитно указывающая на его славянскую ориентацию и приверженность к демократичному стилю правления. Десакрализация власти, демократизация общества, ослабление цензуры, расширенная возможность самовыражения подрывали основы могущества чиновничье-бюрократического аппарата. Это неизбежно должно было привести к противостоянию чиновников и Хрущева, которое закончилось свержением Первого Секретаря ЦК КПСС. Последующая эпоха застоя характеризуется внутренней стабильностью, небывалой коррупцией, низкой производительностью труда, всеобщим дефицитом и зависимостью от экспорта ресурсов. Застойные явления поразили экономику, науку, культуру и общественно-политическую жизнь страны. Характерной чертой этой эпохи стали введенные еще при Сталине, но достигшие небывалого размаха при Брежневе привилегии для партийной номенклатуры и госчиновников, выделявшие их из общей массы населения. В это время окончательно восторжествовал чиновничье-бюрократический дресс-код, с преобладанием черных и темных цветов. Этот стиль остается неизменным и в наши дни. The article shows the evolution of the costume of the leaders of Russia and the Soviet state, from the February Revolution to Perestroika, and the connection between the image of the head of state and the era that it embodies. The image of the leader of the state of the victorious revolution was the image of the “silovik” (power man), dressed in the military style and leading an ascetic lifestyle. Typical objects of the image of a power leader are a french, high boots (leggings), a military-style cap, a khaki or gray raglan cloak, a leather jacket, a smoking pipe, and a chevron mustache. After the victory in the Great Patriotic War, the government abandoned the ascetic image in favor of a pathetic, ceremonial one. In the army, officer ranks, shoulder straps, and stripes were restored, and generals, marshals, and even the Generalissimo reappeared. A special architectural style, informally called the Soviet (Stalinist) Empire, was developed for the construction of important state institutions. Imperial pomp and heaviness, until the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, became a characteristic feature of the post-war era. In the era of the Thaw, the de-Stalinization and desacralization of power began. The leader of the country, Nikita Khrushchev, abandoned the military style and began to dress exclusively in civilian clothes, reminiscent of everyday home clothes or rural clothes in the Slavic ethnic style. A characteristic part of his outfit was the soulful Ukrainian embroidered shirt, implicitly indicating his Slavic orientation and adherence to a democratic style of government. The desacralization of power, the democratization of society, the weakening of censorship, the broader-than-ever possibility of self-expression undermined the foundations of the power of the bureaucratic apparatus. This inevitably had to lead to a confrontation between officials and Khrushchev, which resulted in the overthrow of the latter. The subsequent era of stagnation is characterized by internal stability, unprecedented corruption, low productivity, general deficit, and dependence on resource exports. Stagnation affected the economy, science, culture, and sociopolitical life of the country. A characteristic feature of this era was the privileges for the party nomenclature and state officials, which distinguished them from the general population. At this time, the official-bureaucratic dress code, with a predominance of black and dark colors, finally prevailed. This style remains unchanged today.

2012 was a year of significant developments for Kosovo: on 24 February, Serbian and Kosovo-Albanian negotiators reached an EU-mediated agreement on the representation of Kosovo in regional fora. Whereas this agreement enabled Serbia to gain the coveted status as EU candidate in March, it opened the way for Kosovo to participate in international meetings at regional level as an entity in its own rights. As stipulated in this agreement, the European Commission on 10 October also delivered a Feasibility Study on the conclusion of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) between Kosovo and the EU, which concluded that there would be no legal obstacles for the EU to sign an SAA (a mandatory pre-requisite for EU accession) with Pristina, in spite of the non-recognition by five EU Member States. However, it can be asked whether these measures were genuine diplomatic victories for Pristina or just rather symbolic measures without a real potential of opening a realistic accession perspective for both Kosovo and Serbia.

The Peace Treaty of Tartu that was signed on 2 February 1920 is unquestionably one of the pillars of Estonian statehood – it was a victory for the nation-state that only the biggest idealists had dared to dream of only a couple of years beforehand. At the same time, there were a few things in the peace negotiations between Estonia and Soviet Russia that were seemingly incomprehensible. Firstly, all of the peace overtures starting from the spring of 1919 came from the Soviet Russian side. Secondly, both sides at the peace negotiations emphatically considered themselves to be in a defensive war and although this may be arbitrary if we assess the proportions, both sides were actually right. While the Estonian side stressed during the Tartu peace negotiations that Estonia had no connection to Russia’s Civil War and that Estonia was fighting for its independence, then viewed from the east, that is certainly not how it appeared to be. Estonia was by far not alone in waging war against Soviet Russia. The Bolsheviks were at war with all of their neighbours that were aspiring towards independence and, needless to say, also with ‘internal enemies’, in other words the Russian Whites, whom the victorious countries of World War I (the Entente) supported for their own part. Thus, these numerous wars started conflating. Estonia fought partially in response to pressure from the Entente as well, but broadly speaking, due to practical considerations, Estonia also fought in the same sector of the front together with the Northern Corps of the Russian Whites, the later North-western Army, for almost the entire period of the Estonian War of Independence. For precisely this reason, the war between Estonia and Soviet Russia cannot be isolated from the broader sequence of post-World War I continuation wars, which had very many participants and vastly different interests. Thus, today’s ally could become tomorrow’s enemy. The only thing that joined Estonians and the Russian Whites together was their common enemy and not much else.
 Estonia succeeded in emerging from this chaos as a victor and in gaining its independence, and this regardless of the wishes of the Russian Whites, but also the wishes of the countries of the Entente, to preserve ‘a single and undivided Russia’. Yet in this regard it should not be forgotten that Estonia played a particularly important role, together with ohter border states, in impeding the spread of the Bolshevik world revolution to Europe. Since this was the main objective of the Bolsheviks, then solely for this reason, the repeated peace overtures that the Bolsheviks made to Estonia should be viewed precisely in this context. It can altogether be said that by the spring of 1919, the war had ground to a halt for the Bolsheviks. Bearing their broader objective in mind, their hands were tied on several ‘unnecessary fronts’, where the final solution could be postponed for tactical considerations.
 Hence Estonia’s military might was certainly not what forced Soviet Russia to repeatedly make peace overtures. The fact that the more concrete peace overtures were made to Estonia in situations where the Red Army held the initiative and the actual situation at the front would not appear to have implied desires for peace is particularly noteworthy. Yet at the same time, Soviet Russia’s peace overtures are far from proving Russia’s peaceful plans. First and foremost, the contradiction between theory and practice turned out to be a major problem for the Bolsheviks: the ‘revolutionary situation’ was awfully slow to develop, while on the other hand every military commander’s nightmare took shape, in other words war on several fronts and against many enemies. At the same time, the large number of enemies with many quite different interests provided the Bolsheviks with the chance to neutralise them one by one and thus remove them from the very notional, if not to say non-existent joint front. They hoped to solve the matter by way of peace treaties with those enemies whom they were unable to overpower by force yet with whom they did not have irreconcilable ideological differences. They first needed to destroy the Russian Whites and Poland, which was in their way on the road to Europe (primarily Germany). The Bolsheviks quite likely calculated that the future progress of the world revolution would provide the answer to how eternal or binding those agreements that had been signed with the ‘bourgeoisie’ were.

ON FEBRUARY 18, 1845, Robert Browning sent a poem entitled “The Tomb at Saint Praxed’s” to the acting editor of Hood’s Magazine. He writes: “I pick it out as being a pet of mine, and just the thing for the time — what with the Oxford business, and Camden society and other embroilments” (DeVane and Knickerbocker 35–36). Because of this letter, the immediate historical context for the poem has commonly been taken as the Oxford (Tractarian) movement and Newman’s retraction in 1843. The Cambridge Camden Society (not the London antiquarian society of the same name, which is sometimes thought to be Browning’s reference) was also associated with Romanism, being accused of popery in 1844 and subsequently dissolved by the Cambridge authorities in February 1845, the same month Browning submitted his poem. (It continued as the Ecclesiological Society.) Through its journal, The Ecclesiologist (1841–), the Cambridge Camden Society aimed to study ecclesiastical architecture, following Pugin’s Contrasts (2nd edition, 1841) in complaining about the moral corruption of church architecture and promoting an ethical-spiritual basis for reform.1 Journal items focussed on a range of issues from the symbolic function of church layout to the details of epitaphs and tombs, generally mixing visual values with ecclesiology. Kenneth Clark in The Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History of Taste (139–44) and John Morley in Death, Heaven, and the Victorians (52–62) detail these issues. Browning’s “other embroilments” may well refer therefore to the growing controversy in the 1840s about sepulture and sepulchral style, about the appropriateness or otherwise of ornate tombs and canopies. Hence this poem about a deathbed scene and a Bishop’s tomb may be clearly located within the broadly enveloping mid- Victorian network of cultural practices related to death: distinctively encoded rituals of mourning, debate about gravestones and epitaphs, depictions of deathbed scenes (in painting as well as literature), and widespread discussion of what came to be known as the four last things — death, judgement, heaven, and hell.

Abstract This article reviews the causes, contours and potential consequences of President Donald J. Trump’s 234 appointments to the federal judiciary. The causes will be familiar to political scientists who are fond of reminding people that “elections have consequences” and that the “Supreme Court [and by extension entire federal judiciary] follows the election returns.” The contours of the Trump Judiciary are congruent with Trump’s campaign promise to appoint judges “in the mold of Justice Scalia,” the conservative legal icon who died suddenly in February 2016. We show how Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made good on this promise with the help of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, appointing ideologically conservative, young, and mostly male and white judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. In laying out the potential consequences of Trump’s remaking of the federal judiciary, we outline three areas where these judges are likely to make an impact on law and politics in the coming decades: rolling back liberal and progressive victories in the culture wars, likely in more subtle ways that align with Alison Gash’s concept of “below-the-radar” legal change; extending the federal deregulation campaign that began in earnest with the Reagan Administration; and issuing rulings in the areas of voting rights, campaign finance, and redistricting that tip the scales of democracy in favor of Republican electoral outcomes.

On 3 February 2020, the High Court of Malawi sitting on constitutional matters nullified the presidential election that was held on 21 May 2019. That decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal on 8 May 2020. Various reforms were ordered by the courts and legislated by Parliament, most notably a change in the electoral system, from a simple majoritarian, or first-past-the-post (FPTP), system to a two-round system where the winner must receive over 50 per cent of the votes. A fresh presidential election was held on 23 June 2020 under the supervision of a new commission, and Malawi made history in Africa on 27 June when the opposition candidate was announced victorious in the fresh presidential election. The repeat election was held in a largely peaceful environment, and the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) did not receive any complaints following the announcement of the result. Given the remarkable events that took place in Malawi, the Executive Committee of the Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC countries (ECF-SADC) recommended that the MEC should be given the opportunity to share its experience regarding the fresh presidential election of 23 June 2020 with other member commissions. The ECF-SADC in collaboration with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) organized a webinar on 31 August 2020 to strengthen peer review among electoral management bodies (EMBs) in the region of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The webinar provided a platform for peer-learning concerning both the conduct of the fresh presidential election in Malawi and emerging regional trends in electoral justice.

Within the Yarra River catchment area nestles the valley of Steels Creek, a small shallow basin in the lee of Kinglake plateau and the Great Dividing Range. The escarpment walls of the range drop in a series of ridges to the valley and form the south-eastern boundary of the Kinglake National Park. The gentle undulations that flow out from the valley stretch into the productive and picturesque landscape of Victoria’s famous wine growing district, the Yarra Valley. 
 Late on the afternoon of 7 February 2009, the day that came to be known as Black Saturday, the Kinglake plateau carried a massive conflagration down the fringing ranges into the Steels Creek community. Ten people perished and 67 dwellings were razed in the firestorm. In the wake of the fires, the devastated residents of the valley began the long task of grieving, repairing, rebuilding or moving on while redefining themselves and their community. 
 In Living with Fire, historians Tom Griffiths and Christine Hansen trace both the history of fire in the region and the human history of the Steels Creek valley in a series of essays which examine the relationship between people and place. These essays are interspersed with four interludes compiled from material produced by the community. In the immediate aftermath of the fire many people sought to express their grief, shock, sadness and relief in artwork. Some painted or wrote poetry, while others collected the burnt remains of past treasures from which they made new objects. These expressions, supplemented by historical archives and the essays they stand beside, offer a sensory and holistic window into the community’s contemporary and historical experiences. 
 A deeply moving book, Living with Fire brings to life the stories of one community’s experience with fire, offering a way to understand the past, and in doing so, prepare for the future.

For the survivors of the defeated Confederacy, the first issue was simple survival. The war had wrecked the Southern economy with total direct and indirect costs of the war for the South estimated as close to $13.6 billion. ‘Arrogance, March 1867–May 1868’ describes the victorious Northerners push for free labor to support the new economy, as well as the Southerners struggle to accept changing attitudes to their former slaves. Four Reconstruction bills were passed between February 1867 and March 1868, but Andrew Johnson used his military authority to undermine them. An attempt to impeach the president in May 1868 ultimately failed.

This chapter examines an example of how minjian memories and minjian historiography transform our knowledge of the history of the Cultural Revolution. In the case of the end of the Rustication movement, many unofficial sources contradict the official version, represented by the press of the time or by the recent TV series Deng Xiaoping. In February 1979, while the People’s Daily published a speech criticizing the Yunnan educated youth who had come to Beijing to demand the right to return to their native cities, on the ground in Yunnan, the educated youths were in fact packing up and going back home by the thousands, after a victorious petitioning movement. This movement of historical importance was never officially acknowledged. In the TV series, the sudden end of the rustication movement is attributed to the wisdom of Deng Xiaoping and the petitioning movement (including strikes, hunger strikes and the sending of delegations) is replaced by the individual petition of a female educated youth wanting to go back home to take care of her gravely ill father who succeeds in touching the heart of a good cadre. The contribution of unofficial sources is thus particularly obvious in this case.

The success of the D-Day landing on June 6, 1944 began the last stage of World War II that culminated in victory in Europe in May 1945 and Asia in August 1945. While Roosevelt did not live to see the final victories, his actions in 1944 and early 1945 shaped much of the postwar period. The month after the landings at Normandy beach, forty-four nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire where they established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In August, delegates from around the world gathered at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington to begin the establishment of the United Nations. In February, 1945, the Big Three met again at Yalta to plan for the end of the war, occupation of Germany, and postwar peace.