The Cold War and the Palestine question determined the course of Egyptian-Soviet entente, a course both tortuous and tragic. In pursuing the completion of Western containment of the Soviet Union, the United States and its allies proposed the inclusion of the Arab world in a Middle Eastern alliance which was directed against the Soviet Union but which ignored Arab anxieties about Israel, at whose hands the Arab nation had recently suffered a crushing defeat. Egypt, under the newly established revolutionary regime led by Jamal Abd al-Nasir, refused to join any military blocs. Instead, it opted for non-alignment. Following Egypt's lead, all Arab states except Iraq refrained from participating in the proposed alliance. In effect, Egypt succeeded in scuttling Western military arrangements, thereby incurring Western displeasure which was manifest in political, economic, and military pressures. The Soviet Union was impressed by Abd al-Nasir 's success. It overcame its initial suspicion of Abd al-Nasir 's military regime and decided to come to its aid in order to withstand Western pressures, thus connnencing a constant view which identified the survival of the Nasirist regime with the security of the Soviet Union. It extended military, economic, and diplomatic support to sustain Egypt's independent, non-aligned, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial foreign policy which, in effect, worked to the detriment of Western interests. The primary determinant of this attitude was the security interest of the Soviet Union as a state involved in a global contest with the United States. Marxism-Leninism took a back seat to political decisions and was utilized to justify these decisions. Soviet ideologues responded to the calls of their political leaders and attempted to establish a lowest common ideological denominator which would justify Egyptian-Soviet cooperation. Accordingly, Egypt was gradually reevaluated until it was identified as a progressive state along the non-capitalist path of social development. Egypt's attitude toward the Soviet Union was equally pragmatic and was governed by strict compartmentalization. Abd al-Nasir never tired of clearly distinguishing between the Soviet Union as a state and the Soviet Union as the fortress and guardian of Marxism-Leninism. With the former he was willing to cooperate because of the convergence of interests. With the latter he consistently retained disdain and hostility. He refused even to tolerate Soviet relations with or Soviet intercession on behalf of Arab communists. When the Soviet Union defended them, it was engaged by Egypt's potent media machine in an unequal and eventually losing propaganda war. Only after the Soviet Union abandoned Arab communists to their fate did relations between the two countries deepen. The best proof of this contention may be found in the non-existence of a communist party in Egypt in 1970. Abd al-Nasir launched a social revolution in Egypt whose ideological underpinning was Arab Socialism. The adherents of Arab Socialism exerted every effort to distinguish it from Marxism-Leninism, both in principle and in application--especially those elements which dealt with Islamic justification, private property, and social harmony. This should be contrasted with the concerted Soviet endeavors to establish affinities between Marxism-Leninism and Arab Socialism. Both the Soviet Union and the United Arab Republic, as Abd al-Nasir 's Egypt was known, pursued opportunistic policies. The Soviet Union exploited UAR-Western conflicts. The UAR, similarly, exploited East-West rivalry. Ironically, however, these same conflicts and rivalries caused them to part company. This became abundantly clear in the aftermath of the UAR's defeat at the hands of Israel in June of 1967. The Soviet Union could not recover what Egypt had lost without a confrontation with the United States which would not permit a Soviet solution to the Palestine question. Conversely, the Soviet Union could not permit an American solution which the United States seemed able to achieve. The community of interests between the UAR and the Soviet Union was transformed by the consequences of the Six-Day War into a conflict of interests of the two states. Thus Egyptian-American rapprochement became inevitable. It was left to Anwar Sadat, Abd al-Nasir 's successor, to carry it out.

The thesis is concerned with the central question of the revolutionary movement: why the methods used by the revolutionaries developed as they did? Specifically, it considers why the method of revoluti,~nary action used by the Southern revolutionaries changed frou; one characterised by a weak interest in propagandising the peasantry to a full-blooded commitment to political terrorism, and why this change took place so early in the 1870' s. The common explanation is that the revolutionaries chose their methods because of extrinsic factors: influence exerted by St.Petersburg and Moscow revolutionaries; the backwardness of the provinces; the lack of response from the peasants; persecution by the government, sparking off a violent response from the hot blooded Southerners. alternatives. The thesis criticises some of these reasons and suggests Underpinning this 'common explanation' for its development is a particular understanding of the wture of the revolutionary movement itself. This understanding is examined in Chapter I since it implicitly denies the possibility of some of the other reasons for the development of the revolutionary movelEent which are advanced 113 ter. Chapter II considers if the Southern revolutionary movement was 'backward' , susceptible to influence from the North, and how this influence coul d ha ve opera ted. ChaptL'r TIl and IV are mainly concerned to examine the composition of the kruzhoks involved in, respectively, propagandist activity amongst the peasants and political tprrorism. Chapter TIl tries to as sess and explain the limited nature of Southern involvement in the 'v narod' movement and to establish the characteristics of those kruzhoks which did or did not participate in it, 1873 - 1876/7. In Chapter IV those revoluti(maries who chose political terrorism are studied. It emerges that a different type of revolutionary was attracted to this method of activity; the supporters of political terrorism were generally likely to be more 'provincial', less well educated etc., than their predecessors. However this does not establish any cau3lil relationship between 'type' of revolutionary and method of acti vi ty, because acti vi ty amongst the peasants and political terrorism dominated the revolutionary movement at different times during the decade under consideration, and so it may have been that the type of revolutionary that was prorr;inent at the end of the seventies and the start of the eighties was unable for some reason to participa,te in rural propagandist activity at the beginning of the seventies. Cons equently, particular attention is pa id in Chapter IV to those revolutionaries who composed the first kruzhoks which turned to political terrorism, and to what they had been doing in the early seventies. Such analysis is of little value for the later kruzhoks since their members had usually been too young in the early seventies to have had the opportunity to go amongst the peasants. Wherever possible, the reasons which these revolutionaries gave for practising political terrorism, rather than propaganda activity amongst the peasantrj, are also examined. Chapter V, VI, and VII look at three areas in which the Southerners were heavily involved: propaganda amongst urban workers, liberal 'society' and Ukrainophilism, and suggest that the revolutionaries were influenced in their choice of revolutionary tactic by the se groups. The thesis is based on an extensive use of memoir material (although little reference has been made to two Southern memoir sources which have been grossly over-exploited), on published documents and on contemporary writings by the revolutionaries in their papers and elsewhere. The originality of the thesi s 1 ies however not so much in the rna terial which sustains it as uiJon its subject and the treatment of that subject. The reasons for the revolutionary movement developing in the South in the way in which it did, over this eleven year period, has not previously been subjected to serious examination. Consequently, a number of those causes which are identified here - the relationship with Ukrainophiles, liberal society, kruzhoks' finances etc., - have also not been scrutinised in detail before. Soviet historians have exardned the leadership of the Chaykovtsy, 'Zemlya i Volya' and the }<;xecutive Committee of 'iJarodnaya Volya', but a systematic longitudinal study - within the severe limits imposed by the sources - of the membership of the kruzhoks which composed the revolutionary movement, is a new approach.

In his bibliographical Chapter, "Selected Readings in Canadian External Policy, 1919-1959", Geddis Smith pointedly remarked that "a scholarly study of Canada's relation with Russia is sorely needed." At the time he made this observation, Arthur Davies' book, Canada and Russia, Neighbours and Friands, was the only publication that dealt with Canadian-Russian relations. [...]

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My thesis analyzes the relationship between Russia and Syria since the Second World War.

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.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 148-155). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Copenhagen, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [436]-448) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.