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This thesis analyzes the work of Vasily Shuksin, an actor, director and writer in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev and early Brezhnev eras, roughly 1958-1974. Shukshin's short stories, in particular, are of great value to anyone interested in Soviet attitudes during this period. The research suggests that Shukshin's work represents a sort of underground history. While the writer's stories are fictional, the issues are very real. Much of Shukshin's work provided the means for discussion on important topics such as gender relationships, alcohol use, and religious worship.Under Communism, nearly all sources of information were unable to tell the truth about Soviet society, but Shukshin's depictions of Soviet life appear to present a truer picture of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras. The author portrays women as "second class citizens" and often equates them with evil, while Shukshin's depictions of drunken males indicate that alcoholism was a serious problem in the Soviet Union. Finally, the author's religious symbolism provides evidence that Russian Orthodoxy was alive and well, despite a Communist government that continued to wage war against religion. / Department of History

This thesis concerns Blessed Vasyl’ Velychkovs’kyi’s first arrest and imprisonment in the years 1945-1955. Based on the evidence in two volumes of SBU archival documents which were obtained in 2009 from the Kyiv SBU archives, it tells the story of his arrest, the investigation process, interrogation, trial and sentencing. The thesis provides the reader with a short introduction to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and its clergy in Galicia. It describes how the Soviet government, after it invaded Galicia in 1939, began to persecute the Catholic population, which was unwilling to switch to Russian Orthodoxy. A close examination of the SBU archival documents proves Velychkovs’kyi’s innocence and provides evidence of fabricated accusations, forced confessions, the use of physical and psychological abuse. These violations of criminal law and human rights were done in order to compel him to cooperate with the Soviet authorities. Velychkovs’kyi’s treatment is an example of what many prisoners who died for their faith suffered. In most cases their life stories will never be told.

This thesis is about the Soviet doctrine used to justify or threaten military intervention since 1945. This interventionist doctrine achieved greater currency in 1968 in the form of the "Brezhnev Doctrine". This doctrine, generally associated with the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, stipulated that Moscow reserved the right to intervene militarily or otherwise if developments in any given socialist country inflicted damage on socialism within that country or the basic interests of other socialist states. The ideological justification for the Soviet invasion was assumed by many observers to have been a quickly engineered reaction to the crisis, rather than a long-standing doctrine. This thesis suggests, however, that the "Brezhnev Doctrine" was not an original formula, but a newer version of a previous doctrine. The thesis traces the origins of the "Brezhnev Doctrine". It examines four crises in Soviet-East European relations for evidence of the doctrine. The thesis looks at how the effectiveness of the doctrine as a tool of Soviet foreign policy began to decline in the mid-1970s. While the doctrine appeared to be extended to the Third World - Afghanistan 1979 - and was "self-administered" by an East European country - Poland 1981 - it proved far less successful than in the past in suppressing opposition. Finally, the thesis examines the demise of the doctrine under Mikhail Gorbachev. The conclusions drawn by this thesis are: that the Soviet interventionist doctrine was not a new phenomenon; that it contained political, ideological, and military components; and, that it served a number of functions within the socialist community.

This thesis examines composer Nicolas Nabokov’s political involvement in the world of music in the 1940s and 1950s. In particular it concerns his attempt to use contemporary art music as a means of countering the influence of the Soviet Union, via the festivals he organised for the CIA-financed Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). To the best of my knowledge both Nabokov and the musical activities of the CCF have previously been ignored by musical scholarship: this thesis therefore makes an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between music and politics in the cold war period. My text divides into two halves: chapters 1 to 4 are broadly chronological, whilst chapters 5 to 8 analyse and evaluate Nabokov's project from various perspectives. The first chapter considers some aspects of his life in the 1940s which are relevant, in various ways, to the later career. Chapters 2 and 3 examine Nabokov's writings on music and politics, which began to appear in 1943, and fell largely within the following decade. The taking up of his CCF post in 1950 represented an opportunity to replace polemic with action, and Chapter 4 is concerned with the Paris festival of 1952 - L 'Oeuvre du XXeme Siecle - Nabokov's rationale for it, and the reactions it provoked. Chapter 5 looks at the CCF as part of an attempt to amend the widespread impression that the USA was ' lacking in culture', whilst chapter 6 examines the split Nabokov's policy produced between the CCF in Paris and its New York-based American affiliate. Finally, chapters 7 and 8 seek to consider whether there might be broader connections between this anti-communist project and the growing concerns of many intellectuals for the health - and even the survival - of high culture in general and art music in particular.

This dissertation analyses the process of the disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which is central to the Soviet collapse. The disintegration process also provides a good opportunity to test existing theories of political regime change. In terms of source use, this dissertation makes extensive use of the party archives that became available after the Soviet collapse. This makes possible a very detailed analysis of work of the party apparat. The importance of the subject and a review of existing theories that offers some hypotheses are discussed in the first chapter. In the second chapter, the reason why the party reform was necessary is considered through analysing the situation within the party before the perestroika period. The analysis makes clear that the CPSU faced a dilemma between monolithic unity and monopolistic control before the perestroika period, which made party reforms necessary. The third chapter deals with party-state relations under Gorbachev’s reform in detail. This chapter discusses the fact that, as a result of the reorganisation of the party apparat that was intended to stop the party’s interfering in the state body, the party lost its traditional administrative functions. This, however, led to a ‘power vacuum’ because no other alternative power centre was established quickly, and complicated further reform attempts. Moreover, the party failed to find a new function as a ‘political party’, as considered in detail in the fourth chapter. Despite attempts at competitive party elections and the emergence of party platforms, Gorbachev failed to transform the CPSU into a ‘parliamentary’ rather than a ‘vanguard party’. Therefore, the CPSU lost its raison d’être, which accelerated a mass exodus of members. The rapid decline in party membership caused a financial crisis which is considered in the fifth chapter. The financial crisis and the soviets’ demands for the nationalisation of party property forced the CPSU to engage in commercial activity. Nonetheless, commercial activity unintentionally caused the fragmentation or dispersal of party property. On the other hand, the ‘power vacuum’ expanded so much that some emergency measures seemed necessary to some top state leaders. The August attempted coup is discussed in the sixth chapter in the context of party-military relations. When Russian president Yeltsin suspended its activity, the CPSU had lost its raison d’être and its property had been fragmented or dispersed. Thus, the CPSU had no choice but to accept the reality that it was ‘dead’ de facto. The final chapter gives an overview of this pattern of developments, and compares it with the experiences of other communist parties’ reforms in East Europe. The theoretical implications are also considered in the final chapter, which argues that existing theories of political regime change are not sufficient and that a further effort of conceptualisation based on the realities considered in the thesis is necessary.

Anna, Ol’ga and Mariia Ul’ianova hold a place in history as Lenin’s sisters, his supporters and helpers, but they played a far greater role in the Russian revolution and the Soviet regime as revolutionaries and Bolsheviks in their own right. However, this aspect of their lives has been consistently overlooked by English-language historians for decades. This thesis aims to redress this imbalanced portrayal of the Ul’ianov women. Although not solely biographical in nature, it traces Anna, Ol’ga and Mariia’s lives from their childhood and education, through their work in the underground revolutionary movement to their careers in the Soviet regime. It also investigates the personality cults that arose around the Ul’ianov women and their portrayal in history since their deaths to the present day. The thesis uses extensive unpublished primary documents from the GRASPI and GARF archives in Moscow and contemporary publications such as Pravda and Proletarskaia revoliutsiia to build a picture of Anna, Ol’ga and Mariia’s lives and to interrogate secondary sources about the sisters. The thesis draws various conclusions about the Ul’ianov women. Ol’ga died when she was twenty, so she features only in two chapters of the thesis. Nonetheless it is clear that like Anna and Mariia she was an intelligent and well-educated young woman, who devoted herself to the study of revolutionary ideas. Anna and Mariia joined the underground movement in the early 1890s and, alongside Lenin, established themselves as competent, dedicated social democrats. Although the sisters have been portrayed as little more than Lenin’s helpers, this thesis shows that Anna and Mariia had independent revolutionary careers before 1917, acting as party correspondents, newspapers workers and agitators. It is also apparent that during the underground years the Ul’ianov family as a whole acted as a mutual support network, exchanging political information, advice and instructions.

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