The present thesis aims to examine how the Russian General Staff observed and assessed the Russian Empire’s Asiatic frontier during the period of its greatest extent (between 1860 and 1917). By providing an overview of the entire length of the Asiatic frontier it aims to provide an original addition to the existing historiography. Through analysis of the original records of the Asiatic Department of the Russian General Staff, it furnishes insight into areas of response by the Russian General Staff towards crisis situations where previously little or no scholarly work has been carried out. Thus, to cite just two examples, the thesis contains the first detailed coverage on the posting of the first Russian military agents to China during the so-called ‘Ili Crisis’ of 1881, and of the response of the General Staff to the revolt of Ishaqu Khan in northern Afghanistan in 1888. These new additions are complemented by detailed analysis of more conventional aspects of the existing historiography. For example, by studying the prelude to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 it provides for the first time in English a detailed analysis of the specific difficulties experienced by Tsarist military intelligence in the Far East in the years immediately preceding that conflict. The overall form of analysis is in the main geographically determined, but with the sections examining individual sections of the Russian Asiatic frontier preceded and followed by more general chapters surveying the development of doctrinal, organisational and ideological currents within the General Staff as a whole at both the beginning and end of the period under review. Chapter one in its first par surveys the development of the General Staff system itself in the Russian army. It provides in addition an analysis of available sources alongside a basic military history of the expansion of Russia’s Asiatic frontiers across this period. The first part of chapter two provides an overview of the instruments and ideas that had evolved and that were available to the Russian General Staff in its study Asia on the eve of the major Central Asian conquests of the 1860s. The second section of chapter two analyses how some of these currents, both cultural and doctrinal, intermingled and responded between approximately 1859 and 1873, with the characters of Prince Bariatinskii, Viceroy of the Caucasus during this period, providing a central focus and case study. Chapters three examines how some of the purely tactical and technical tools employed by the Russian army in its Asiatic conquests evolved over time and again looks at the role of individual thinkers in this evolutionary process. Chapter four, the main body of the work, in three major sub-sections analyses the fully developed use of all these instruments and trends in the Russian General Staff’s plans and threat-assessments for the three major areas of their Asiatic frontier - the Far East, the Caucasus, and the region of Central Asia-Afghanistan. The conclusion seeks to contribute a new perspective to current levels of analysis by setting the Tsarist military’s orientalist activities within the context of the current debates regarding European colonialism and the nature of orientalism in general. In doing so it also seeks to draw together the three underlying themes running throughout the work - the development of the General Staff’s analysis of Asia by 1917, the still unresolved conflict of centre-periphery relations that afflicted every aspect of Russian Asiatic policy, and the growing consciousness of a ‘knowledge crisis’ that afflicted the Tsarist General Staff as a whole, a crisis reflected in the press and academic organs of the day. This last phenomenon, along with many of the tools and approaches to tackle it, would form one of Tsarist Russia’s largest legacies to the Soviet Union. The thesis will prove useful to students of military history, Russia-Asia diplomatic relations, and those interested by the development and evolution of the ‘knowledge-state’ between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. Above all it seeks to provide a prism through which the reader can appreciate many of the difficulties attached to the development of military intelligence and the modern ‘knowledge economy’, difficulties that continue to afflict many states, not least Russia, even today.

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Using an array of original materials from Russian regional and central archives this detailed study of Soviet Karelia from 1918-1919 is the first to appear in English after the fall of the Soviet Union. It adds to the still limited number of regional studies of the civil war period and using the Karelian districts as a case study discusses how the Bolsheviks consolidated power on the periphery, what factors hindered this process and what were the sources of resistance. Karelia is unique for a combination of reasons. First, it is a grain deficit region and so was always in need of help with the supply of grain from the Volga and other parts of central Russia. Second, the political influence of the Left Socialist Revolutionary party (Left SRs) continued for a considerable time after the events of July 1918. The thesis explores how power was transferred in the region following the October revolution and how the planned political objectives of the Bolsheviks were stalled by the lack of political control in the districts not least of all, for most of 1918, because of the influence of the Left SRs. However, despite political, economic, social and military crises the Bolsheviks gained more experience in power as the civil war progressed and a semblance of order emerged from the chaos. They gained enough control over the food supply shortages for the population to subsist and increased their control in key Soviet institutions, such as the provincial security police (the Cheka) and the Red Army, which ultimately ensured the survival of the Bolshevik regime and victory in the civil war.

This thesis analyses the development of oil and natural gas in the Soviet Union and Eastern European full members of the Council for Futual Economic Assistance (Comecon) from the end of the Second World War to 1975 and assesses the likely role of hydrocarbon fuels in the Comecon energy balance to 1980. The major part of the thesis is concerned with developments in the 1971- 1975 period, when the Soviet Union, the bloc's principal producer and supplier, experienced a number of technical and economic difficulties in the oil and gas industries and when world prices of oil showed a fivefold increase, which was reflected in turn in increasing prices of other energy raw materials. The objectives of the study are therefore to identify the problems faced in utilising Comecon oil and gas resources, to assess their impact on energy developments in the bloc and on the pattern of Soviet trade in oil and gas, and on relations with other hydrocarbon producers in the changing world market. There exists a number of western studies of Comecon energy developments, published in the early to mid-sixties, some of which suggested that the era of Comecon energy autarchy would come to an end and that the group might become increasingly involved in the world market as a competitive purchaser. This view was maintained in some quarters after the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed substantial increases in the selling prices of their crude oil in October 1973 and subsequently. However study of Soviet and Fast European techno-economic material has revealed that before the aforementioned price rises Comecon planners were assessing the possibilities of adjusting energy policy to cope with these difficulties, with the objectives of at least maintaining the export surplus of oil and of developing export trade in gas. Such theories of an impending "Comecon energy crisis" are re-examined, taking into account the capacity of the logistic system to allow planners to re-assess the relationship of oil to coal, gas and other fuels. The examination suggests that although considerable difficulties are known and acknowledged to exist in the Comecon oil and gas industries, the bloc has the opportunity of retaining self-sufficiency in hydrocarbon energy to 1980 and that current policy is directed to the attainment of this objective. The thesis is written almost entirely from Soviet and Post European technical and economic sources. Official Comecon statistical material, supplemented by Ii~ECt OBeD and United Nations publications, have been used to provide basic data. The metric system has been adopted throughout the thesis.

This thesis explores the repopulation of Leningrad following the blockade of the city during the Second World War. In the years after the lifting of the siege blockade survivors remaining in Leningrad were joined annually by hundreds of thousands of incomers. However, while the siege has recently been the subject of a number of scholarly and literary treatments, much less attention has been paid to what happened next in terms of the mass resettlement of the city. Accounts of the consequences of the blockade that touch upon the postwar population have deployed the term ‘Leningraders’ as shorthand for a cohesive community of blockade survivors, embedded in the culture and landscape of the city. Even pieces of work that have portrayed post-siege Leningrad as a ‘city of migrants’ have concentrated on the impact of the loss of the prewar population rather than on the multifarious experiences of its itinerant populations. The thesis addresses the role of widespread experiences of displacement and resettlement in structuring relationships among individuals and between citizens and the authorities in the post-siege civic environment. It examines the repopulation in the context of evolving Soviet practices of population management after the war and in terms of the intersection of population movements with the re-affirmation of a civic community in a city which had lost a vast proportion of its population, just as it gained the basis for a powerful new narrative of belonging. It demonstrates how competing visions of the desired postwar order on a national and local scale were constructed and contested in relation to displaced people who were often targeted as a potentially transgressive presence in the postwar landscape.

This thesis of 84,616 words uses the Eastern Crisis of 1875-78 to consider the Press in Great Britain and Russia. 5 case-study chapters consider respectively the reaction to the Bosnian and Hercegovinian revolt of 1875, the Bulgarian 'Atrocity Campaign' of 1876, the outpouring of public sympathy in Russia for the cause of the Serbs in 1876, the involvement of Greece in Eastern crisis, and the British 'Jingo' movement. For each case study, the relationship of the mass activity to the newspaper and periodical press is considered, as well as tracing the interplay between government and Press, and examining whether the Press was able to act as an intermediary between people and government. As this is a comparative study, these movements are considered not only through their own national Press, but through that of the other nation. A recurring theme throughout, is the running current of suspicion existing between Britain and Russia throughout this period, which is analysed in some detail, and shown to have been a highly significant factor in much of what was undertaken by both governments and individuals in Britain and Russia at this time.

Destalinisation was the process of enormous change that began in the wake of Stalin’s death. Whilst it has been heavily studied from the Soviet perspective, it has not been examined from the American standpoint. This thesis fills that gap. It took until 1956 for Eisenhower and Dulles to alter their perceptions of the USSR and its ideology despite the years of change that followed Stalin’s death. This thesis explains how the majority of policymakers rejected signals of change in the USSR until 1956. There were numerous reasons for this: domestic politics, relations with allies, and public opinion all played a role. But the key factor in preventing a change in mindset was an engrained perception of the Soviet leaders as Stalinists. While the Soviet leadership after 1953 rejected the hallmarks of Stalinism, the Eisenhower administration understood such signals of change within a mindset that saw the Soviets as unreconstructed communists, expansionist in aims, conspiratorial in methods, and, above all, out to destroy the West. This perception was in effect a mental ‘dam’, which held back any substantial perception change in Washington. By 1956, however, a new perception of destalinisation, and by extension Soviet Communism, came into being. The Eisenhower administration no longer rejected out of hand the changes the Soviet leadership enacted both domestically and in foreign relations. Eisenhower and Dulles found sufficient evidence to question whether the rigid view of Soviet Communism and its aims was accurate or useful. The 20th Party Congress caused serious cracks in the ‘dam'. Two of these ‘cracks’ were in the minds if Eisenhower and Dulles, who by the end of 1956 had changed their view of the Soviet leaders, and no longer regarded them as Stalinist. This change in perception would ultimately allow détente to take hold.

In 1961, a series of uprisings exploded in Angola, Portugal’s largest colony in Africa. A struggle for the independence of all the Portuguese colonies in Africa followed, organized by the national liberation movements: the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, and the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau. The wars would end in 1974, following a military coup d'état in Lisbon and the dissolution of the Portuguese dictatorship during the Carnation Revolution. This thesis explores fourteen years of anti-colonial campaigns: the people who led the liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies, the cadres these leaders encountered in Moscow, East Berlin, Prague, Sofia, and Warsaw, and the international environment they faced. It begins by looking at contacts forged between Soviet cadres and African nationalist leaders from Portuguese colonies in the late 1950s, before offering detailed analysis of why the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia offered assistance to the MPLA and the PAIGC in 1961, the same year Angola erupted into spasms of racial violence and the Soviet Union and the United States locked horns over the status of West Berlin. The subsequent chapters analyze the evolution of Soviet relations with the liberation movements during the 1960s and 1970s, the role this relationship played in shaping Soviet attitudes and policy in Africa, and the significance of Soviet bloc assistance in anti-colonial campaigns. This thesis also looks at the diplomacy of the liberation movements and their ideological and organizational transformations over fourteen years of guerrilla war. The final chapter evaluates the Soviet role in the decolonization of Portuguese Africa following the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship and investigates why the Soviets decided to intervene on behalf of the MPLA in the pivotal event of this thesis – the beginning of the civil war in Angola in 1975.

My general premise is that sports and recreations are among the most revealing mirrors of many societies, offering a distinctive insight into social patterns, cultural values and even economic conditions. From this it follows that research on the USSR, using the sport-system as a case-study, may throw light on important characteristics of social processes in Soviet-type societies -- all the more so because the place of sport is evidently more central in the Soviet social system. This study attempts to show the extent to which the forms of recreation which developed in the USSR have or have not coincided with the predictions and aspirations of Marxist writers about playful activities in the society of the future. The study contains a historical account of sport in Russia and the USSR, with sections devoted to each of the main periods into which Russian and Soviet history is conventionally broken down according to the stages of its economic and political development. In addition, a special section is devoted to Soviet sport as s reflection of Soviet foreign policy. Sport is taken in the widest sense to include, too, the systems of physical education which developed in Russian and Soviet schools and colleges. The Introduction examines the various western and Soviet concepts of physical culture, sport and recreational activities.

In 1589, the government of Tsar Feodor I of Muscovy returned the gift of golden medals received from Queen Elizabeth I, describing the offending objects as neither commendable nor agreeable. The rejection was accompanied with opprobrious public speeches about the gift's unsuitability and a threat to transfer Muscovite favour unto other European nations if Elizabeth offered no immediate redress. In her defence, Elizabeth argued that diplomatic gifts were to be accepted not in respect of the object itself, but of the royal majesty from whom it was presented. While the episode appears to show a petty squabble over material trinkets, its diplomatic repercussions were significant as the following five years would be dedicated to the repair of Anglo-Muscovite relations. Clearly, gifts were integral to the mechanics of early modern diplomacy. This thesis explores an intriguing, but as yet scarcely studied, facet of diplomatic history: the operation of Muscovite diplomacy prior to the reign of Peter the Great. It focuses on Muscovy's long-term relations with England (Muscovy's first continual diplomatic relationship with a Western European power in the sixteenth century) and examines the exchange of sovereign gifts between the two royal courts. The principal novelty of this research lies in its departure from the anthropological definition of the gift as a 'material' object, instead it argues that non-tangible components, such as royal favours, were also 'gifts', provided they were given willingly, were reciprocated− if not necessarily symmetrically, and created emotional, political and social bonds between the participants. As an example of such intangible gift, this thesis uses the Muscovite zhalovannaia gramota (a charter of mercantile privileges). In this way, the research explores the full range and complexity of diplomatic gift-exchange between the two monarchies in a crucial period of dynastic change in both countries. Frequently, gift-giving is interpreted as either a means of intercultural communication par excellence or, in the case of a rejected gift, as evidence of an inevitable clash of cultures. This thesis, however, demonstrates that diplomatic gift-exchange was a multi-faceted process. Royal intentions were complex and, therefore, required different levels of engagement; their transmission was reliant upon intermediaries (ambassadors), and the reception of gifts was intrinsically linked to diplomatic aims. Secondly, in contrast to the widespread assumption that the diplomatic cultures of England and Muscovy were discordant, day-to-day diplomatic exchanges (including gift-giving) drew the Tsars into a shared ceremonial arena, where other rulers competed for the symbolic resources of sovereignty. The exchange of gifts between the two states facilitated the process of gradual integration of the apparently alien Muscovite Tsar into the English (and essentially European) standardised codes of diplomatic behaviour and ceremonial communication. It was not until the reign of Peter I, however, that the Tsars fully became prominent members of the European society of princes. Diplomatic practice was neither universal nor culturally specific; such assumptions are obstructive to a better understanding of the mechanics of cross-cultural interactions. Ultimately, diplomatic ceremony and gift-giving were driven by notions of sovereign honour and the symbolic language of the court society, and not by political, national or cultural incommensurability. Thus, the foundations of Muscovy's gradual integration into European codes of diplomatic behaviour can be traced to the reign of Ivan IV, and specifically, to the continuous Muscovite diplomatic relationship with the English Crown.