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.

It is the object of this dissertation to attempt a possible explanation of the American lack of success in the ideological battle for the peoples of the world. This is done by exploring the nature of the American ideology of democracy in relation to the characteristics necessary to make it a successful political weapon, by identifying and investigating the nature of the ideologies that oppose American democracy, and by exploring the background and expectations of the people who are being fought for - the peoples of the Third World. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This thesis examines propaganda and educational campaigns in the Brezhnev-era USSR, where the Party-state continued the longstanding Soviet attempt to form the country's youth into conscientious builders and defenders of communism. Focusing on the military, military-historical and physical-cultural activity that the state identified as areas of strategic importance in a period of intensifying competition with the capitalist world, the thesis analyses the interactions between propaganda and its producers, and the ordinary and extraordinary young people at whom it was aimed. It finds that state agencies and organisations of the Brezhnev era followed tradition in employing heroic motifs and discourses to elicit heroic behaviour amongst the population, often seeking to apply themes and material from earlier periods directly to the situation of late-1960s and 1970s youth. In particular, propaganda emphasised the importance of both models of wartime heroism, and the characteristics articulated in the 1961 Moral Code of the Builder of Communism - but in a political and social environment now much changed from those in which they had originally emerged. The thesis begins with a study of material surrounding the reinstatement of universal conscription after Khrushchev's army reforms, before examining youth involvement in one of the flagship military-patriotic education campaigns of the period. The second part of the thesis then shifts the focus to a more symbolic, yet no less significant site of the 'defence of the honour of the Motherland': the international sporting arena, particularly during the 1972 Olympiads in 'hostile' West Germany and Japan. Through a case study of coverage of the gymnast Olga Korbut, the thesis argues that, while propaganda-makers still sought to control the Soviet definition of 'heroism', conditions increasingly allowed for the emergence of celebrity and a popular heroism based more on self-advancement and public acclaim than on established Soviet ethical models.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the root causes of Russia’s recent aggressive regionalism. Russia’s revival and corresponding military, political, and informational offensives have shaken European security in a way few thought it was capable of following the USSR’s dissolution and Russia’s subsequent fall into ineptitude. At first glance, this shift in Russia’s posture appears to come as a result of an uptick in nationalism driven by the chauvinistic revanchism of its leader, Vladimir Putin. However, this thesis finds that the eastward expansion of NATO’s membership and transition to a more offensive force posture, augmented by the placement of missile defense infrastructure in Europe, has contributed to a Russian impression of besiegement and corresponding sense that its security and sovereignty are threatened. Russia’s perception that NATO is acting to replace Russia in its perceived sphere of influence has been shaped by the fall of the Soviet Union and Soviet security considerations. This thesis recommends that, to prevent the further deterioration of the relationship between Russia and the West, the following policies should be enacted. First, NATO should reestablish relations with Russia and partner with it on the European ballistic missile defense shield as a confidence building measure. Second, NATO should halt the eastward expansion of its traditional collective security membership and instead rely on NATO’s Partnership for Peace program to support democratization efforts in the former Eastern Bloc. While these policies cannot eliminate the historical context that the NATO-Russia relationship is shaped by, they can serve as the beginning of a shift away from mutual antagonism by defusing tensions between NATO and Russia.

The thesis compares Western and Soviet approaches to creating the image of state in the Cold War period. Terms public diplomacy, propaganda and agitation are explained and the Cold War period is covered in the first section. Second chapter depicts American and British approach to the public diplomacy after WW2 and deals with Western methods and tools used to create the image of state abroad. Third section describes Soviet propaganda and its machine of the stated period and the fourth section compares and judges Western and Eastern approaches. It seems that although the differences of democratic and totalitarian form of state are relevant, the structure and institutions used to creating the image of state during the Cold War were similar on both sides of the iron curtain.

Thesis advisor: Robert S. Ross / This dissertation presents a structured and focused comparison of how Chinese leaders and academics have perceived the security cooperation of states on China’s periphery. This study examines three cases: the U.S.S.R.-Vietnam Alliance (1978-1989); the U.S.-Japan Alliance (1990-2016) and the U.S.-South Korea Alliance (1990-2016). They exemplify adversarial alliances in that they represent security cooperation that threatened or potentially threaten Chinese vital interests. Similarly, they all represent adversarial alliances of an asymmetric power relationship between a larger and smaller state. I gathered this data from Chinese journal articles and books related to the three cases, interviewed Chinese academics and think tank analysts, and compared the Chinese perceptions with non-Chinese primary and secondary sources. The research explores how well four concepts describe alliance behavior in the evidence. The first three concepts relate to how China views the alliances’ intentions, capabilities, and cohesion. The fourth concept relates to China’s self-perception as a rising state relative to the adversarial alliances. Knowledge of Chinese past and present perceptions of adversarial alliances should assist academics and policy makers in understanding the implications of security cooperation of states that are in close proximity to the Chinese mainland. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Cette thèse est inspirée d’un phénomène paradoxal dans l’histoire politique récente de la Russie, soit le soutien d’un grand nombre de figures célèbres de l’intelligentsia libérale, au début des années 1990, à la concentration des pouvoirs dans les mains d’une élite « éclairée », contribuant ainsi à l’épuisement de la démocratie qu’ils cherchaient à consolider. Sur la base d’une étude contextualiste de la pensée politique d’auteurs qui sont au cœur des débats de la perestroïka, cette recherche met en lumière la perspective morale de l’intelligentsia libérale soviétique. Elle montre aussi comment ces postulats et idéaux moraux sont mis à l’épreuve de l’émergence de la vie politique pluraliste à partir de 1989. L’une des principales conclusions de cette étude est de remettre en question une fréquente présomption de similarité entre la pensée politique des libéraux soviétiques et le libéralisme tel qu’il est communément défini en Occident. Le projet moral de la perestroïka porté par les libéraux soviétiques, en effet, ne vise pas à assurer l’indépendance individuelle par la neutralité de l’État : c’est un projet perfectionniste confié à un pouvoir étatique réformateur visant à l’épanouissement d’un bien moral substantiel par le démantèlement du système communiste. Cela ne signifie, pour autant, que la vision politique des libéraux soviétiques soit simplement « immature » ou « utopique », comme on leur reproche parfois. Leur réflexion sur le renouvellement moral nécessaire à la démocratisation s’inscrit au contraire dans une riche tradition de réflexion, dans la philosophie politique occidentale, sur les conditions morales et institutionnelles de la fondation de la liberté. / This dissertation is inspired by a paradoxical phenomenon in recent Russian political history: the support for the concentration of power in the hands of an “enlightened elite” by a large numbers of distinguished figures of the liberal intelligentsia, who thus favored the conditions of the demise of their own political project. Based on a contextual study of the political thought of authors who were at the heart of the debates at the time, this research sheds light on the specific moral perspective of the liberal intelligentsia. It also demonstrates how these moral assumptions and ideals were challenged in the crucible of pluralist politics, from 1989 on. One of the main conclusions of this study is to question a pervasive presumption of similarity between the ideas of Soviet liberals and the Western liberal canon. Indeed, the moral project of perestroika, as it was conceived by Soviet liberals, did not aim at the guarantee of individual independence and state neutrality about the definition of the good. It was rather a perfectionist project in which the reformers were expected to create the political and economical conditions of the thriving of a substantial good, by way of the dismantling of the administrative and ideological control of the communist system. This does not mean, however, that Soviet liberals were merely ‘immature’ or ‘utopian’ in their understanding of politics, as they are also accused of. We argue that it is more fruitful to situate their association of democratization with moral renewal in a long tradition of reflection, in Western political philosophy, on the institutional and moral conditions for the foundation of freedom.

Sovietinio laikotarpio Lietuvos istorijai skirtuose tyrimuose savo vietą atranda naujos arba ankščiau mažai tyrinėtos temos. Viena tokių temų – žydų tapatumas sovietų okupacijos Lietuvoje laikotarpiu – atskleidžiama ir šiame darbe. Keliamas tikslas – remiantis šaltiniais bei istoriografija probleminiu būdu išanalizuoti sovietinio laikotarpio Lietuvos žydų tapatumą bei jo santykį su repatriacijos į Izraelį procesu XX a. aštuntuoju ir devintuoju dešimtmečiais. Tokios chronologijos pasirinkimas sąlygotas būtent paskutiniaisiais SSRS gyvavimo dešimtmečiais padidėjusio iš Lietuvos bei kitų sovietinių respublikų išvykstančių žydų skaičiaus. Tokį pagausėjimą nulėmė sušvelninta Sovietų Sąjungos emigracijos politika, kuria siekta sumažinti įtampą tarp jos ir Vakarų valstybių, o ypač JAV. Suvokiant, kad Izraelio valstybė bei persikėlimas į ją nuolatiniam gyvenimui – aliyah – yra glaudžiai susiję su žydų tapatumo klausimu, darbe tam skiriamas pagrindinis dėmesys. Siekiama nustatyti, kaip Lietuvos žydų bendruomenė apibrėžė savo tautinį tapatumą paskutiniaisiais SSRS gyvavimo dešimtmečiais, kaip jis kito ir ar kito. Į žydų tautinį tapatumą mėginama žvelgti per keletą žymenų: kalbą, pačios žydų bendruomenės sudėties kaitą bei visuomenės, valdžios požiūrį į juos. Jeigu pirmieji du aspektai akcentuoja vidinius bendruomenės gyvenimo procesus, tai pastarajame išskiriamas individo ir jų grupių santykis su supančia aplinka bei jos poveikis individualaus, bendruomeninio tapatumo kaitai. Darbe... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Nowadays new or less known historical topics easily find their place in researches of Soviet Lithuanian history. One of these new topics – Jewish identity during Soviet occupation period in Lithuania – has been revealed in this research. The main goal of this research is to analyze the identity of Lithuanian Jews and its‘ relations with the process of repatriation to Israel on 8th and 9th decades of the 20th Century. This chronology was chosen because of strong increase in numbers of Jews emigrating from Soviet Union during last two decades of Soviet state existence. This increase was conditioned by subdued USSR emigration policy, as an attempt to reduce tension between Soviet Union and the West, especially United States of America. State of Israel and resettlement to this place for constant living – aliyah – are closely linked with Jewish identity topic, on which we will be concentrating the most. The aim is to determine how Lithuanian Jewish community defined their ethnical identity on the last decades of USSR existence, how did it change, if it did at all. Ethnical identity is analyzed through language, inner changes of Jewish community, society and authority attitude towards them. While the first two mentioned aspects emphasize inner processes of community life, the other one highlights the relation of individuals and their groups with surrounding environment and its‘ effect to personal or communal identity transformation. This research seeks to unpack the motives which... [to full text]

Les relations franco-soviétiques font l'objet de nouvelles études depuis l'ouverture des archives russes après la chute du communisme au début des années 1990. La présente étude vise à cerner comment la presse française percevait l'URSS et ses relations avec la France entre 1932 et 1934. Cette période est cruciale, car elle correspond à l'arrivée du nazisme en Allemagne et à un certain rapprochement franco-soviétique. La prise du pouvoir par Hitler eut un impact majeur sur les relations entre les deux pays, mais ce ne fut pas toujours compris rapidement en entièrement. Les journaux analysaient la situation avec une perspective compromise par leurs opinions politiques ou leurs intérêts financiers. Néanmoins, nous observons une nette évolution de leurs points de vue sur les 21 mois étudiés ici. Cela est dû à l'aggravation de la menace allemande et à la politique menée par l'URSS et par une partie du corps politique français. Afin d'avoir un échantillon viable, nous nous intéresserons à quatre quotidiens majeurs : Le Figaro, Le Temps, Le Populaire et L'Humanité. Mis ensemble, ces journaux représentent l'essentiel du panorama politique français. Les journaux de droite se firent de moins en moins critiques vis-à-vis de l'URSS, sans pour autant abandonner leur méfiance. Ceux de gauche soutinrent le rapprochement, tout en restant incrédules quant à la situation réelle. Cette recherche en est une de la perspective de l'autre, du rôle des médias dans la société et de l'influence de l'idéologie politique. / Franco-soviet relations have been the object of new studies since the opening of Russian archives after the fall of communism in the early 1990's. This study aims to comprehend how the French press perceived the USSR and its relations with France between 1932 and 1934. This is a crucial period, as it corresponds to nazism's rise in Germany and to an improvement in franco-soviet relations. Hitler's seizure of power had a major impact on both countries relationship, but this wasn't always fully or rapidly understood. Newspapers analyzed the situation through lenses tinted with political prejudice or financial interests. However, we observe a real evolution of their points of view over the 21 months studied here. This is because of the aggravation of the German threat, the policy than the USSR followed and the one of some of the French political leaders. To provide a relevant sample, we will look at four major newspapers : Le Figaro, Le Temps, Le Populaire and L'Humanité. Put together, these newspapers represent most of the French political panorama. Right-wing newspapers became less and less wary of the USSR, but never totally gave up their apprehensions. The left-wing ones, though favorable to the improvement of the franco-soviet relationship, kept being skeptical about its outcome. This study is about perspective of the other being, medias role in a given society and the influence of political ideology.

This study, by focusing on the economic reform attempts in the USSR and the privatization process in the Russian Federation, will question the scope of political change in Russia during the capitalist transformation process until the end of the Yeltsin period. It will be argued that the determination of the political processes on property relations during the time of the USSR persisted in the Yeltsin period since after the collapse of the USSR, main political actors of the Soviet system such as the Party and ministry officials and the enterprise managers maintained their dominant positions within the property relations. As will be shown in the thesis, this was ensured through their successful interventions in the privatization processes. Hence, people who had important positions in the former Soviet Union, became whether the new owners of state assets, or had the authority to determine the new owners.