Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Albany, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-271).

In 1919, the Bolshevik Party of Russia formed the Communist International (Comintern) to lead the international communist movement. As part of its efforts, it maintained a strong commitment to supporting colonial liberation, self-determination of nations, and racial equality. Many scholars of the Comintern and the Soviet Union assume that Moscow demanded firm discipline of all member parties and these parties largely followed its lead. But the Comintern was not as monolithic as is often presumed. Colonial affairs frequently were overlooked and European Communist Parties often skirted their commitment to supporting their colonial counterparts. Individual communists took it upon themselves to promote anti-imperialism or racial equality, but their efforts were frequently hampered by the tactical shifts of the Comintern and eventually, the erosion of Moscow’s interest. Frequently, the prioritization of certain issues in the Comintern proved to be the most important factor in determining Comintern interference in member parties. This dissertation includes the first comparative analysis of the Communist Parties of South Africa, Canada and Australia on issues of anti-imperialism, nationality, and race. In comparing these parties, this study explores the limits of Moscow’s control of other Communist Parties, while detailing the similarities and differences in the efforts of these three parties to combat imperialism, support colonial liberation, and fight for national rights and racial equality. This dissertation is the first to detail the Canadian and Australian communism’s efforts, sometimes on their own initiative, on anti-imperialism, nationality and racial equality during the interwar period, to provide new conclusions about Comintern intervention in South Africa, and to highlight the prioritization of the Comintern as each party sees Moscow’s intervention on these issues to very different degrees. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In 1919, the Bolshevik Party of Russia created the Communist International, an organization to lead communist parties throughout the world. Through this body, the Bolsheviks and international communists promoted colonial liberation, racial equality, and self-determination of nations. This dissertation uses the examples of the Communist Parties of South Africa, Canada, and Australia to show that each party dealt with these issues differently, saw different levels of intervention from the Communist International, and the severity of this intervention is directly tied to the priorities of the Soviet Union and the Communist International. Also included in this study is a comparative analysis of the tactics of all three parties, including the efforts of individual communists in each nation in developing platforms unique to the local conditions they were facing.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

No description available.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned addresses the question of the proper role of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union in the Soviet state. The political leadership has two alternatives in seeking a remedy to this civil-military question. They may either control the military establishment by granting strict professional autonomy or by integrating the armed forces into the civil structure.

The Russian invasion of Chechnya in December 1994 represented the culmination of a crisis that was perceived to threaten the very foundations of federal security. The conflict is intrinsic to an understanding of post-communist Russia and this study identifies the issues behind the evolution of Russia's conflict with Chechnya, investigating why a political crisis was permitted to deteriorate into a full-scale war. Existing studies of the causes of the conflict contain little theoretical interpretation regarding the role of Russia's transitional status. Given that Russia has been undergoing democratisation throughout the duration of its contemporary struggle with Chechnya, it is pertinent to investigate the link between the process and the potential for internal conflict. Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder are the most notable advocates of the proposition that the characteristic instability of a transitional period greatly increases the likelihood of both international and intrastate war. They ascribe the increased risk of conflict to domestic political competition between old and new elites, who exploit nationalistic sentiments in order to mobilise popular support for their faction, facilitated by the weak institutionalisation of the democratising state. The lack of any formal regulatory mechanisms encourages abuse of power within state structures, as officials and members of the ruling elite cannot be held fully accountable to the electorate. Thus, in order to assess the impact of the transition process upon the deterioration of Russian-Chechen relations and provide a more rigorous theoretical framework against which to examine the causes of the war, existing models of transition, particularly the democratisation and war thesis, are analysed and applied to the case-study of Russian decision-making with regards to Chechnya. The persistent crisis is investigated within the context of the Federation's transition away from communist rule, focusing on the extent of any potential correlation between the Russian democratisation project and its violent struggle with a constituent part. The study reveals that the conflict is attributable to both the democratisation project and the wider concept of systemic transformation, and conclusions are drawn on the process of post-communist democratic transition.

This thesis examines a little studied aspect of the Soviet Union’s history, namely the activities of the mass membership of the Communist Party during the interwar period, specifically 1926-1941. Based on extensive research in central and regional party archives, it revisits a number of specialised scholarly debates by offering an account of key processes and events of the period, including rapid industrialisation and mass repression, from the viewpoint of rank-and-file communists, the group of people who had chosen to profess active support for the regime without however acquiring positions of political power. The account provided is in the form of an in-depth case study of the party organisation of the Red Putilov – later Kirov – machine-building plant in the city of Leningrad, followed by a shorter study of communist activism in another major Leningrad institution, the Red-Banner Baltic Fleet. It is shown that all major political initiatives of the leadership generated intense political activity at the bottom levels of the party hierarchy, as the thousands of rank-and-file members interpreted and acted on central directives in ways that were consistently in line with their and their colleagues’ interests. As these interests were hardly ever in harmony with those of the corresponding level of the administrative state apparatus, the result was a nearly permanent state of tension between the executive and political branches of the Soviet party-state at the grassroots level. The main argument offered is that ultimately, the rank-and-file organisations of the communist party were an extremely important but contradictory element of the Soviet Union’s political system, being a reliable constituency of grassroots support for the regime while at the same time placing significant limits on the ability of state organs to actually implement policy. This thesis therefore challenges interpretations of Soviet state-society relations based on binary narratives of repression from above and resistance from below. It identifies instead an element of the Soviet system where the line between society and the state became blurred, and grassroots agency became possible on the basis of a minimum level of active support for the regime. It is further argued that the ability of the mass membership to influence the outcome of leadership initiatives was predicated on the Marxist-Leninist ideological underpinnings of most major policies. In this way, this thesis also contributes to the recent literature on the role of ideology in the Soviet system. The concluding chapter considers the value of the overall findings of this thesis for the comparative study of 20th century socialist states.

Orientador: Alexandre Mate / Banca: Rosangela Patriota / Banca: Lúcia Romano / Resumo: O texto de Eles não usam black tie foi concluído em 1956 e sua primeira encenação ocorreu dois anos depois no Teatro de Arena de São Paulo, causando sensação imediata entre o público e chamando a atenção de parte dos meios intelectuais e acadêmicos. O protagonismo de uma família carioca operária, pobre e favelada era uma novidade bem-vinda ao cenário teatral brasileiro, assim como as inovadoras técnicas de representação em arena. Os anos 1950 fervilhavam politicamente com a conturbada sucessão de Getulio Vargas e a euforia coletiva advinda do nacional-desenvolvimentismo de Juscelino Kubitschek. O Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCB) tentava reorganizar-se diante dos desafios internos e do cataclismo vindo de fora: as denúncias de Nikita Kruschev em relação aos crimes perpetrados sob ordens de Josef Stálin. A década também foi marcada pela introdução em terras brasileiras do épico brechtiano e por um intenso debate sobre o papel político da dramaturgia nacional. Até que ponto a militância política e a sensibilidade dramatúrgica de Gianfrancesco Guarnieri sofrem tais influências? O texto Eles não usam black tie pode ser pensado como uma fonte histórica privilegiada a dialogar com a conjuntura política e estética em que foi elaborada? A militância política do autor surge em uma relação dialética com as diretrizes do PCB, os princípios do drama burguês e do épico brechtiano, em um texto embebido dos dilemas e contradições do Populismo / Abstract: The play Eles não usam black tie (They don't wear black tie) was finished in 1956. Its first performance occurred two years later in Arena Theatre in São Paulo, causing immediate impact in the public and catching intellectual and academic circles attention. The protagonism of a poor labor family in Rio de Janeiro was a welcome innovation to the Brazilian theatrical scenario, as well as the innovative techniques of performing in arena. In the fifties, the political environment was agitated over the difficult succession of Getulio Vargas and the collective euphoria coming from the national-development plan of Juscelino Kubitschek. The Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) was trying the reorganize itself in the face of internal challenges and crisis coming from outside: the speech delivered by Nikita Kruschev denouncing Stalin's crimes in the Soviet Union. This decade was also important for the introduction of brechtian epic theatre and for an intense debate over the political role of national dramaturgy. To which extent the political militancy and the dramaturgic sensibility of Gianfrancesco Guarnieri were affected by those influences? Can the play Eles não usam black tie be thought as a privileged historical source to dialogue with the political and esthetic conjuncture in which it was conceived? It can be observed a dialectical relation between Guarnieri's political militancy and the guidelines given by PCB at the time, the principles of bourgeois drama and the brechtian epic theatre in a text full of dilemmas and contradictions of Populism. / Mestre

Biliana Velkova-The Musical is a personal story about coming of age within two distinct ideologies, communism and capitalism and the impact of immigration and assimilation. It also gives a glimpse of my two worlds and my navigation between them. And lastly, I hope that it adds to our collective memory of communism, no matter what the reality of it was. My project becomes part of the dialogue that is currently surfacing around the relevance of post communist realities and discourse.

Biliana Velkova-The Musical is a personal story about coming of age within two distinct ideologies, communism and capitalism and the impact of immigration and assimilation. It also gives a glimpse of my two worlds and my navigation between them. And lastly, I hope that it adds to our collective memory of communism, no matter what the reality of it was. My project becomes part of the dialogue that is currently surfacing around the relevance of post communist realities and discourse.