Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-363). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-363). Also available on the Internet.

In March, 1877, the radical worker Pëtr Alekseev gave his speech at the ‘Trial of Fifty,’ contributing to the social-revolutionary movement one of the founding documents in Russia’s fledgling, working-class history. In the decades that followed, many others of the workers’ circles of the 1870s would compose and contribute their own stories to this revolutionary, ‘workers’ history.’ It was understood that, for workers to ‘speak for themselves’ was one step towards a workers’ revolution, carried out by and for the working people. The ‘workers’ voice’ had been borne by Alekseev in 1877, and was shared by worker-memoirists and other worker-writers through the early twentieth century. Individual workers were called represent, embody, testify to and speak for the mass, or the working-class as a whole. Thus, the notion of the ‘workers’ voice’ tied together the propaganda, the historiography, and the philosophy of the Russian social-revolutionary movement. A study of the ‘workers’ voice’ in history and historiography reveals the connections between these areas of revolutionary thought and practice, and provides a better understanding of the role of individual workers - as activists and as writers - in the Russian socialist movement. Revolutionary historiography developed alongside and in concert with political theories of the social revolution, mass action, social law and social determination, individuality, and consciousness. For a small number of radical democrats-turned-‘rebels,’ anarchists, and social-revolutionaries – most, if not all, born into the educated elite, a few to the families of the high, landed nobility - adherence to the narodnik tenet that ‘the emancipation of the working class should be conquered by workers’ themselves’ made their own, committed or conscious choice of the ‘cause’ over the existing system of things marginal to the historical and social forces driving Russia towards revolution. The ‘going to the people’ movement was aimed at bringing ‘workers themselves’ into their movement. By developing certain working people into carriers of the socialist message, the movement hitherto limited to students, publicists, and the wayward sons and daughters of state officials, merchants and clergymen would become the ‘a working-class matter.’ Thus, a special place was allotted to the ‘self-educated’ or ‘self-developed’ workers who, like the self-styled ‘intelligentsia,’ were consciously committed, synthesising ‘consciousness’ with their own class experience and the social necessity behind it. The political and historical valorisation of the ‘workers’ voice’ extended this idea into the documentation and the history of the popular and workers’ movements. Just as the workers would have to ‘emancipate themselves,’ so too would they speak for themselves and write their own history. This history, it was thought, would eventually belong to the workers by right. Thus, historical writing and the documentation of a workers’ history, informed by judgments regarding individuality, society, class, history, and their relationships, became politically significant for the revolutionary movement as working people began to enter it and ‘speak for themselves.’ Late in the nineteenth century, the worker-revolutionaries of the 1870s began to write their own memoirs of events. Entering the documentary record as individuals, it was their task to testify to working-class experience. Thus, at the point where working people became ‘individuals’ for history and for future historians, marking themselves as different from the mass by leaving their own writings, and stories, and memoirs, they were also tied inextricably to a political viewpoint that identified every and any worker as practically identical. As political figures, ‘conscious’ radicals who had taken responsibility for their own actions, their lives were historically definite; as ‘working men,’ sharing in a victimhood that was common to millions, their lives were indefinite, unhistorical, alienated. In the attempt to explain one part of their lives by the other, in the juxtaposition of class experience with political experience, in the light of a political function that had workers become witnesses rather than writers, the worker-revolutionaries reproduced in their political and historical writings the class categories that their radicalism had contradicted. The awkward position of worker-intelligent – in one half unique, conscious, definite, historical, active, by the other: plural, instinctive, indefinite, and passive – was stamped into ‘workers’ writings.

This paper examines the relationship between Fulgencio Batista and the Communist Party of Cuba. At odds during the first several years of Batista's rule, when strikes and repression were the topics of the day, the two sides eventually saw in each other a means to an end. In efforts to understand the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950's, historians often portray Batista as a dictatorial puppet of American business and policy. Contrary to this image, in his first regime (1934 until 1944), Batista presided over the creation of a nominal constitutional democracy. To do this he needed the support and good conduct of organized labor, in which the Communists could be a powerful force. In 1935 the Communist Party International, based in Moscow, adopted a shift in tactics. So as to combat fascism, the Party turned away from its traditionally isolationist line. It sought to make alliances with like-minded groups and wanted to serve in the government. In mid-1938 an agreement was reached between Batista and Party heads from which sprang a mutually beneficial alliance lasting through the first batistato. The relationship is often overlooked in Cuban historiography and many questions remain.To truly understand its significance we need more information as to origins, conditions, and consequences of the agreements. This paper explores the conditions on both sides, seeking to understand how and why the unlikely bedfellows came together. As well, it traces the relationship until the end of Batista's term in 1944, focusing on the ebb and flow of support concerning major issues of the day, such as organized labor, the constitutional assembly, the election of 1940, and involvement in World War II. Finally, this study shows how the alliance with the Communist Party is a necessary point in a full understanding of Fulgencio Batista and the era.

This is an analysis of the nature and political significance of Russian messianism: the idea that the Russian people or the Russian State is the `chosen people' or the `chosen instrument'. I outline the genesis of the theory of Moscow, the Third Rome and discuss the ideas and activities of the nineteenth-century Slavophils, the pan-Slavists, Dostoevsky and Vladimir Solovyov. I examine the influence of messianism on Russian Communism, considering Berdiaev's views. The main part of the work investigates the rebirth of interest in Russian messianism in the Brezhnev period. I try to investigate the links between this cultural movement and the Russian nationalist elements within the political éite. My main sources for this are samizdat journals and articles, in particular the journal Veche, cultural journals such as Novyi mir, Molodaia gvardiia and Nash sovremennik, Party documents and éigré/ journals. I find that Russian messianism has been especially important at times when the country is in crisis: Russia is in Golgotha, but where there is suffering there is also redemption, not only for Russia but for humanity. It has by no means been always dominant in intellectual thought. It has had little influence (under either tsars or Communists) on the fields of nationality policy, policy towards religion or foreign policy. Today, as in the nineteenth century, its adherents can be opponents or supporters of the existing State structure. The growth of non-Russian nationalism under Gorbachov, combined with glasnost', has fuelled Russian nationalism. This is unlikely to be co-opted into the official ideology, because it would increase the dissatisfaction of the non-Russians.

The end of World War II brought forth many problems for the allies that had not been completely resolved by the victors. One of the most important was what to do with the defeated Germany. Within the first decade after World War II, the division of the former German superpower had become the front line of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the first eight years after the war (1945-53) East Germany, the Soviet controlled sector, quickly became 'Stalin's unwanted child' and was the first communist country to rebel against the imposed Soviet style socialism. The post war build up and Sovietization of East Germany was the catalyst for the 1953 East German uprising, which became the model that other Soviet influenced countries followed (Hungary, Czechoslovakia). After viewing internal Soviet documents sent from East Germany to Soviet Foreign Ministers and reviewing interviews with eyewitnesses, it is clear that the 1953 East German uprising was a worker's revolt triggered by the ill treatment they received from the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was not a popular uprising (a revolt where much of the population is represented by specific groups).

The dissertation analyzes the behavior of post-communist firms and business associations, and explores how business interests and organization are affected by the types of states that firms confront. Focusing on the countries of the former Soviet Union, the project seeks to further our understanding of post-communist political economy and enrich extant theory on business-state relations. I challenge conventional explanations for why business organizes, and why some firms join formal business associations, while others do not. Existing theories draw primarily from the experience of advanced industrial democracies, and thus fail to capture the dynamics of organization when business confronts a corrupt, and frequently predatory, state. Drawing on fieldwork in Russia and Ukraine, and aggregate analysis covering other transition economies, the project identifies the conditions that restructure incentives for firms to participate in business associations, and impede associations from developing as political intermediaries that facilitate interaction between public and private actors. It locates these conditions in the character and structure of the state which differentiates some post-communist states not only from their peers in the region, but also from the advanced industrial states on whose experience conventional theories are built. The presence of incapacitated and highly corrupt bureaucracies cardinally alters the traditional incentives for firms to organize collectively. When firms can expect little of the civil service with respect to public goods provision and policy continuity, but can instead expect public servants to work for private gain, they develop strong incentives to turn to private arrangements in order to lessen the uncertainty and threats bred in the absence of strong state institutions. The structure and character of the state bureaucracy also affects the opportunities for, and constraints on, engagement between business associations and public officials. Corruption within the bureaucracy is most commonly viewed as an opportunity that business can exploit. Instead, I show that the prevalence of corruption hinders the ability of business associations to obtain influence over government agencies. Precisely because corruption enables direct contacts by individual corporate giants with government agencies, it undermines the collective efforts of smaller firms that make up the majority of the private sector. There is, however, an ironic twist to the story. Under some conditions, corruption within the bureaucracy can impel political authorities to empower external, private business groups in order to divest themselves of an ineffective tool of policy implementation. This “divesture rationale” adds an additional consideration to existing arguments about how, when, and for what purposes collective, membership-based organizations emerge in the private sector. / Government

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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No description available.