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.

This thesis addresses the substantive problem: how does variation in energy wealth impact upon the foreign policies of major energy-producing states? To answer this question, the thesis draws upon the ‘resource curse’ literature, as well as existing works of foreign policy analysis, to formulate a new theory. Based on a framework of neoclassical realism, this energy impact theory of foreign policy proposes that energy wealth, conceived as a national capability, has a significant and reliable effect on major energy-producing states’ foreign policies. Specifically, it is hypothesised that increases in energy capabilities amplify the scale and scope of these states’ international activity; promote boldness, ambition, and aggression; and encourage the adoption of unilateralist approaches to foreign policy. Decreases in energy capabilities are anticipated to have the opposite effects. Having delineated the core features of this middle-range theory, the model is tested using an initial, most-likely case study of the Soviet Union and Russian Federation, 1970 to 2010. The results of this empirical study are enormously encouraging since, following meticulous qualitative analysis of events data, the theory is concluded to have significant explanatory value in this context, as well as substantial promise as a more general model. In this way, the thesis endeavours to make a distinctive contribution, not only to research into the factors shaping Moscow’s international conduct, but also to the broader theoretical literatures on the ‘resource curse’ and foreign policy analysis. It is anticipated that this thesis marks only the beginning of a much more extensive programme of research.

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This thesis discusses multi-national cooperation in space operations and its dependence on the human component. It includes a discussion of the history of U.S.-Russian cooperation, specifically the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the Shuttle-Mir Program and finally the origins of the International Space Station (ISS). This thesis goes into detail about the communication process between the International Space Station, the Mission Control Center-Houston (MCC-H) and the Mission Control Center-Moscow (MCC-M) with emphasis on the human component. This thesis further discusses the impact of personal relationships in the daily operation of the International Space Station. Finally, this thesis discusses lessons learned and additional applications where personal relationships can affect multi-national operations.

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.

Thesis advisor: Roberta T. Manning / Although born in Prague under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and dying before Stalin took control of the USSR, Kafka clairvoyantly understood the full paradox of Soviet authoritarianism. His short parable “Before the Law” provides an interesting intellectual exercise for anyone wishing to study Soviet law, for in Russia it evokes tragic truth. The man who futilely attempted to reach the law is a metaphor for Russian masses seeking the same goal. Just as the doorkeeper with his air of conscious superiority and vacillating temperament mirrors the nature of Soviet rulers. The absurdity that underpins Kafka's work poignantly and painfully parallels the arbitrary ‘justice' of Stalin's rule. The man's futile search is symbolic of the many purge victims who, while wasting away in the gulags, clung to the slim hope of using legal means to exonerate themselves. Through an intellectual and visceral response, Kafka conveys the authoritarian split between the elite and the masses in Russia. No one knows how many countless Russian and Soviet citizens' lives were wasted in the same shadow of indifferent omnipotence. And we are forced to ask why the law was kept from them. And yet, what fueled the insatiable pursuit of the law in the face of certain futility? Even the Purges took place within a legal framework, as perverse as it may have been. But was Communist legality simply an oxymoron, or was there something more? / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2003. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: Gerald Easter / This is a study of education policy and practice in Russia and the Soviet Union during periods of revolutionary social and political change. It begins with the late tsarist era and moves through the Soviet era into the modern Russia state, a period of time spanning from the late 19th century through to the present period of educational reform. The modern educational system of Russia is still adapting to the post-Soviet world in many ways. Modern Russia inherited a confusing and contradictory educational tradition marked by high standards of learning and achievement along with ineffective traditions of student uniformity and standardization. The attempt at democratization, decentralization, and individualization seen in the immediate post-Soviet period was derailed by an absence of regional or local administrative infrastructure and a deep and scarring economic crisis. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.