Thesis advisor: Jennifer Erickson / Policymakers are faced with filtering, understanding, and assessing an overwhelming, and often conflicting, amount of information on a constant basis. States signal resolve over issues, such as during a crisis, or to demonstrate intentions by sending reassurance signals of benign or defensive intentions. But states also have incentives to keep some information private or manipulate the information it sends. Whether or not policymakers believe an adversary’s signals influences, and often determines, the prospect of cooperation or competition. This dissertation examines how policymakers believe the reassurance signals of an adversary. Costly signaling theory argues states can cut through these issues by attaching costs to their signals. Only a sincere state would attach and accept these costs, thus demonstrating the sender is sincere and credible. I argue costly signaling theory is unable to explain variation in why policymakers believe signals in certain situations and not others, despite having costs attached. In this dissertation, I argue policymakers look to see whether sender policymakers risk their own political position to send signals. To risk political vulnerability, sender policymakers must demonstrate they have reduced their control over domestic political processes to send reassurance signals. This is done by sending signals which go against the interests of important domestic constituencies, such as the military or members of the elite. In doing so, sender policymakers demonstrate they are committed to the success of the signal, and will not deflect the costs imposed by signaling failure onto the population or state itself. When sender policymakers demonstrate political vulnerability, target policymakers will believe the signal is genuine. If sender policymakers do not demonstrate political vulnerability, target policymakers will not believe the signal is genuine. I test the domestic political vulnerability thesis by examining how U.S. policymakers believed Soviet reassurance signals during the Cold War. Studying cases of reassurance signaling also allows me to examine for the ability, or inability, of U.S. policymakers to update assessments of Soviet intentions. I select nine cases of Soviet reassurance signaling across three signaling strategies identified by costly signaling theory: strategic arms control (tying hands); conventional troop reductions (sinking costs); and de-escalation signaling. The cases were chosen to test the explanatory power of my theory against the alternative explanations. I use extensive archival research and process tracing to study these cases and find support for the theory of domestic political vulnerability. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

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In his short essay about Chopin (1945), Pasternak poses the question:What does realism in music mean?The answer to this question is far from obvious. And certainly the answer given byPasternak, in which he points to Chopin, together with Bach, as one of the great realistsin music; realist, that is, in the same meaning of the word as was Lev Tolstoj  - this answer can of course be disputed. But perhaps even more interesting than theanswer is the question, what it was in Chopin's music that for Pasternak made it into analmost paradigmatic example of realism, not only in music, but in art in general?To try to get an understanding of the possible motives behind such a view, we need totake a closer look at the biography of Boris Pasternak, the development of his views ofart and music in particular, his philosophical view of reality (the possible lastinginfluence from Hermann Cohen and the Marburg school), his idea of realism in generaland his relationship to the ruling idea of socialist realism. In particular, analyzingPasternak's view of realism, as it is expressed in Lejtenant Shmidt (1927), and theviews expounded in Shopen (1945) we will try to discern the development - if any -that has taken place in the 18 years that separate these two works. Other works byPasternak that are central to getting closer to understand his views on realism are Neskol'ko polozhenij (1922), Okhrannaja gramota (1931), which is a kind ofminiature autobiography, as is also Ljudi i polozhenija (1956), equally important.

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Approximately 250 nursery schools and 600 schools were destroyed during the First Karabakh War in Azerbaijan in 1988–94, interrupting the education of over 210,000 school-aged children. Of the 111,043 children until age 5, only 8,300 (7.5%) were registered in preschool, with around 90,000 children out of school and never enrolled. The purpose of this qualitative narrative research study was to explore how the protracted 30-year occupation of around 20% of Azerbaijani lands by Armenian armed forces impacted the educational journey of displaced Azerbaijani school-aged children, who are now adults, during and after the First Karabakh War in 1988-94. It also examined the extent it has affected their full economic integration into society today. Three participants took part in this study. Data collection included one semi-structured interview, a questionnaire, and a follow-up interview. All participants received interview questions prior to their main interview to facilitate reflection of lived experiences. The results indicated that despite years of displacement, hardship, and trauma, the children (now adults) were able to achieve economic prosperity with resilience and high family expectations. This finding suggests that despite experiencing hardship during war, children may be able to achieve economic prosperity if they acquire critical skills to succeed in the labor market with active family involvement, becoming contributing members of society and enjoying financial stability as adults.