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Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University

abstract: The first official history of the Great Patriotic War appeared in the Soviet Union in 1960-1965. It evolved into a six-volume set that elicited both praise and criticism from the reading public. This dissertation examines the creation of the historiographical narrative of the Great Patriotic War in the decade following de-Stalinization in 1956. The debates historians, Party and state representatives engaged in, including the responses they received from reviewers and readers, shed new light on the relationship between the government, those who wrote state-sponsored narratives, and the reading public. The narrative examined here shows the importance and value placed on the war effort, and explores how aspects of the Stalinist period were retained during the Thaw. By focusing on previously unexplored archival material, which documents debates and editorial decisions, an examination of how officials sought to control the state’s explanation of events, motivations and consequences of the war can be examined in-depth. To date, the periodization, terminology and areas of concentration that define the course of the Great Patriotic War are fixated on topics that Stalin’s war narrative favored, assigning significance to events according to Stalinist preferences rather than objective analysis. My study of the war’s historiography shows how contentious its memory became at every level, making it difficult to clearly discern who represented and opposed the party line throughout Soviet society. The author argues that the collective memory of the war, as propagated by the state, became so all-encompassing that it was often the preferred version, infiltrating individual memories and displacing or blending with personal recollections and factual documentation. Because the war touched the entire population of the Soviet Union, its story became the foundational myth of the USSR, replacing the October Revolution, and was used as a legitimizing tool by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Most recently, it has experienced a revival in the post-Soviet period by Vladimir Putin as a way to unify Russia and build popular support for his administration. Viewing how the public interacted with representatives of the state over the creation of the official history of the war suggests that like no other event, war compels any state, even a totalitarian state, to reexamine its foundations, historical memory, foreign and domestic policies and views on censorship. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2016

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The purposes of this study were (1) to identify the reasons for and the processes of underground communication in Russia since the seventeenth century and (2) to utilize the information to interpret the clandestine media's significance. The study concluded: (1) underground media have evolved because Russian governments have oppressed free speech; (2) dissidents have shared similarities in the methods of illicit communications; (3) whereas the earlier clandestine press tended to be either literary or political, today's samizdat is a synthesis of many varieties of dissent; (4) underground media have reflected the unique characteristics of Russian journalism; and (5) the Chronicle of Current Events is unparalleled as a news journal in the history of Russian dissent.

This Thesis attempts to be an overview of the so far achievements accomplished in the fight against the Afghani rebels and in the reconstruction and state-building in Afghanistan. The author seeks to analyse strategies applied by the Soviets during the Cold War invasion (1979- 1989) and the Western allies under the U.S. leadership in cooperation with NATO (2001- present). The paper describes tactics of the invaders in the two wars and identifies "tipping points" when the conventionally stronger invading powers had to resort to counterinsurgency tactics. The author applies counterinsurgency warfare theory presented by David Galula and others in those phases of conflicts in order to evaluate the success or failure of given strategies. The theoretical framework consists of the theory of asymmetrical conflicts, insurgency warfare and counterinsurgency theory with special focus on its implications when applied in Afghanistan. The main goal of the work is to analyse the weaknesses of the Soviet strategy and to inquire whether the Western allies are not repeating the same mistakes their Cold War counterparts committed.

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