O desmantelamento da URSS foi um dos processos políticos mais importantes do século XX, tendo sido causado, em grande medida, pelas demandas por independência, oriundas do seu tipo mais importante de entidades federadas, as Repúblicas. Antes da Perestroika eram poucos os especialistas, mesmo dentre os chamados sovietólogos ocidentais, aqueles que arriscariam fazer previsões sobre um possível e iminente colapso, seguido de desintegração, do poderoso Estado soviético, cuja estatura política, militar e demográfica era capaz de rivalizar com os Estados Unidos ao menos desde o término da II Guerra mundial. Neste trabalho apresentamos e analisamos o trabalho de autores ocidentais que chegaram a cogitar a possibilidade de fragmentação política do Estado Soviético, levando em consideração a gravidade da questão etnonacional para a antecipação de um cenário desintegracionista, analisando quais fatores influenciaram no menor ou maior grau de precisão dos cenários prospectivos traçados. / The dismantling of the Soviet Union was one of the most important political pro-cesses of the twentieth century, having been caused, to a large extent, by demands for independence arising from its most important type of federated entities- the Republics. Before perestroika there were few western specialists, even among the so-called \"sovietologists\", who would risk making predictions about a possible and imminent col-lapse, followed by desintegration, of the mighty Soviet State, whose political, military and demographic stature was able to rival the United States at least since the end of World War II. In this paper we present and analyze the work of western authors who have come to consider the possibility of political fragmentation of the Soviet State, taking into ac-count the seriousness of the ethnonational question for the anticipation of a disintegra-tionist scenario, analyzing which factors influenced the lower or greater degree of accu-racy of the prospective scenarios which they designed.

In Russia today women use traditional forms of birth control at unusually high rates, whereas, conversely their use of modern contraceptives is unusually low. During the Soviet period, women's access to modern contraceptive methods may have been limited. However, one would postulate that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nature of the new reforms that developed would have lent itself to an increase in modern contraception usage on par with other countries. In Russia today there is not a lack of availability of modern contraceptives. Yet, women are still not using modern contraception at a rate that is congruent with an increase in availability. What then is influencing Russian women's decisions? The contraceptive acceptance of Russian women today is shaped by cultural legacies of the Soviet Union surrounding both contraceptives themselves and sex and sex education.

The breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991 has had a variety of significant repercussions on Chinese politics, foreign policy, and other aspects. This doctoral project examines the evolution of Chinese intellectual perceptions of the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s, before and after the collapse. Relying on a larger body of updated Chinese sources, this thesis will offer re-evaluations of many key issues in post-Mao Chinese Sovietology. The following topics will be explored or re-examined: Chinese views of Soviet policies in the early 1980s prior to Mikhail Gorbachev’s assumption of power; Chinese perceptions of Gorbachev’s political reform from the mid-1980s onward, before the outbreak of the Tiananmen Incident in 1989; Chinese scholars’ evolving views on Gorbachev from the 1980s to 1990s; the Chinese use of Vladimir Lenin and his policies in the early 1980s and early 1990s for bolstering and legitimizing the CCP regime after the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Incident, respectively; and the re-evaluations of Leonid Brezhnev and Joseph Stalin since the mid-1990s. First, the thesis argues that the changing Chinese views on the USSR were not only shaped by the ups-and-downs of Sino-Soviet (and later Sino-Russian) relations, China’s domestic political climate, and the political developments in Moscow. Even more importantly, views changed in response to the earth-shaking event of the rise and fall of world communism in the last two decades of the 20th century. Second, by researching the country of the Soviet Union, Chinese Soviet-watchers did not focus on the USSR alone, but mostly attempted to confirm and legitimize the Chinese state policies of reform and open door in both decades. By examining the Soviet past, Chinese scholars not only demonstrated concern for the survival of the CCP regime, but also attempted to envision the future direction and position of China in the post-communist world. This included analysis of how China could rise to be a powerful nation under the authoritarian one-party rule, without succumbing to Western democracy and the sort of collapse that doomed the USSR. In short, Chinese research on Soviet socialism has primarily served to trace the current problems of Chinese socialism, in order to legitimize their solutions – rather than a truth-seeking process devoted to knowledge of the Soviet Union.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / Turkey emerged from the Lausanne Conference free but isolated. The Lausanne Treaty gave her, within her narrowed borders, a sovereignty that the later Ottoman Empire had not known. The economic and judicial capitulations were abolished. The British, French and Italian zone were forgotten. But the Allied Powers remained hostile; they begrudged the Angora regime the treaty revision which it had wrestled from them. Soviet Russia was friendly, but the much vaunted Russo-Turkish relation was largely a solidarity of outcasts. The young Republic's isolation was brought into relief by its first diplomatic crisis. In December 1925, the Council of the League of Nations awarded the Mosul Vilayet to Great Britain's protege Iraq. There was speculation whether the Turks would try to recover the province by force. France announced her solidarity with Britain. Greece appeared ready for a war of revenge; and Mussolini left his balcony to speak from the deck of a battleship. Soviet Russia promised neutrality, nothing more [TRUNCATED]

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.

No description available.

The present thesis looks at the Soviet economy in the 1940s-1960s period. It specifically focuses on the influence of economic policy and thought developed in the late 1940s on the post-Stalinist era. The thesis' aim is to prove that several key elements of 1950s-1960s economic reforms had already been conceptualised, proposed or implemented during the Stalinist period. The pillars of this 1940s-1960s reforming continuity which the research deals with are khozraschet, economic levers (profit, value, market, prices, credit, bonuses), perspective planning, the balance of the national economy method, as well as the debates concerning the law of value and the repeated attempts at drawing up a General Plan and at drafting a new Party Programme. The key figure this thesis focuses on is N.A. Voznesensky, top Soviet planner in 1939-1949. In the late 1930s he revived practices and methods discontinued after 1928, while under his aegis, policies and debates that later influenced post-Stalinist reforms were developed in the late 1940s. The thesis relies on primary evidence gathered at four Russian state archives (RGAE, GARF, ARAN, RGASPI) and on research carried out at British, Russian, Italian and German libraries.

This thesis explores depictions of established Russian-Siberian peasants, settlers from European Russia, non-agricultural workers, indigenous Buriats and Jews in Irkutsk province during the late imperial period. In particular, it focuses on characterisations of these groups that were created by the Irkutsk 'cultural class' (kul'turnogo klassa) in the late imperial period. The sources it uses are print media such as journals and newspapers produced in or associated with Irkutsk to create a 'microhistorical' study. It is structured around categories of analysis that were used at the time in scientific and literary treatments of lower class peoples, such as social mores, cultural activity, economic function, physiognomy and sexuality. It also studies how these images informed the development of a transformationist culture of government in rural, urban and colonial environments. Using theories of imperial networks and cultural projects borrowed from human and cultural geography and adapting them to an anthropocentric study of Russian colonialism, these debates are situated within the wider context of pan-European, inter-imperial frames of reference. The portrayals of population groups in both domestic and colonial settings that lay within these frameworks rested on common core signs and assumptions found across other pre-war European empires, which made both the frameworks and the images highly portable. This anthropocentric comparative is used to "bring the empire back in", both in recognising the imperial frames of reference within which its culture played out, and also as a means of furthering historiographical analyses that argue against Russian exceptionalism.

O desmantelamento da URSS foi um dos processos políticos mais importantes do século XX, tendo sido causado, em grande medida, pelas demandas por independência, oriundas do seu tipo mais importante de entidades federadas, as Repúblicas. Antes da Perestroika eram poucos os especialistas, mesmo dentre os chamados sovietólogos ocidentais, aqueles que arriscariam fazer previsões sobre um possível e iminente colapso, seguido de desintegração, do poderoso Estado soviético, cuja estatura política, militar e demográfica era capaz de rivalizar com os Estados Unidos ao menos desde o término da II Guerra mundial. Neste trabalho apresentamos e analisamos o trabalho de autores ocidentais que chegaram a cogitar a possibilidade de fragmentação política do Estado Soviético, levando em consideração a gravidade da questão etnonacional para a antecipação de um cenário desintegracionista, analisando quais fatores influenciaram no menor ou maior grau de precisão dos cenários prospectivos traçados. / The dismantling of the Soviet Union was one of the most important political pro-cesses of the twentieth century, having been caused, to a large extent, by demands for independence arising from its most important type of federated entities- the Republics. Before perestroika there were few western specialists, even among the so-called \"sovietologists\", who would risk making predictions about a possible and imminent col-lapse, followed by desintegration, of the mighty Soviet State, whose political, military and demographic stature was able to rival the United States at least since the end of World War II. In this paper we present and analyze the work of western authors who have come to consider the possibility of political fragmentation of the Soviet State, taking into ac-count the seriousness of the ethnonational question for the anticipation of a disintegra-tionist scenario, analyzing which factors influenced the lower or greater degree of accu-racy of the prospective scenarios which they designed.

Drawing on the Western feminist tradition to analyze modern childcare advice as part of the "institution of motherhood" (Adrienne Rich), this dissertation explores the role played by the advice literature on childcare in the construction of normative motherhood in Russia from the late Imperial period through Soviet times, from 1890 to 1990. The study focuses on the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy (the OMM) movement, launched by medical professionals at the turn of the twentieth century as a philanthropic project aimed at combating high infant mortality in the country, and follows its transformation after 1917 into the state-sponsored and state-regulated system of medical and economic support for Soviet mothers and children. The fragmented notion of femininity in the Soviet Union, which incorporated both the ideology of women's emancipation (constructed primarily as women's participation in the labor force) and the pronatalist emphasis on women's roles as mothers created a complex interplay between the "emancipatory" and the traditionalist discourses of motherhood in childrearing literature. Due to the uneven character of Russian modernization and the lack of cultural homogeneity between urban and rural populaces, childrearing manuals perpetuated cultural hierarchy between medical specialists and mothers, which resulted in the didacticism of Soviet childrearing advice. Childcare manuals constructed the reader not as a peer, but as, essentially, a student, who needed tutoring and disciplining. The "privatization of the modern" ethos that started to characterize family life in the wake of the housing reform of the 1960s reinforced the notion that mothering was a private and highly personalized experience. This emphasis on the individual resulted in the emergence in the 1970s and in the 1980s of the figure of parent-expert and in the reversal of traditional hierarchical expert-parent framework typical of earlier periods.