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The thesis analyses Britain's political involvement in Bulgaria during 1943 - 1949. It explores Britain's motives for seeking increased influence in the country and traces the most significant British attempts to shape Bulgarian politics. It examines British strategic decisions and diplomatic activities in Bulgaria against the background of the evolving domestic political situation and of Soviet objectives in the Balkans. Evidence from British archives is tested against recently released Bulgarian and Russian sources. The study clarifies problems central to the interpretation of post-war Bulgarian developments and addresses the question of British attitudes to the whole of Eastern Europe. Bulgaria's marginal place in British political and military thinking is found to be at odds with the country's recognised strategic importance. Towards the end of the Second World War, Bulgaria attracted the attention of the British Government occasionally, mostly in the context of broader regional issues such as that of the Balkan Federation. Although the realisation of limited capabilities to influence Bulgarian developments coloured Britain's wartime approach, never did British policy makers disavow interest in Bulgarian affairs. The research establishes that in the armistice period British policy towards Bulgaria was overwhelmingly governed by traditional geopolitical factors. These focused around Bulgaria's potential military threat of British imperial positions in the Eastern Mediterranean and overshadowed any proclaimed British commitment to democracy. Britain's priorities were complicated by the emerging Cold War as a Soviet-dominated Bulgaria was perceived as a springboard for Communist penetration of Europe. Ironically, British unwillingness to challenge Soviet influence in the northern Balkans exacerbated the very dangers Britain was striving to alleviate. Wavering British support for the Bulgarian anti-Communist Opposition only served to expose Britain's weaknesses and further antagonise the Soviet Union. This engendered continuous restraint and gradually led to the isolation of Britain from Bulgarian politics after British recognition of the Bulgarian Communist Government in 1947.

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<p> While Joseph Stalin is commonly reviled in the West as a murderous tyrant who committed egregious human rights abuses against millions of his own people, in Russia he is often positively viewed as the symbol of Soviet-era stability and state power. How can there be such a disparity in perspectives? Utilizing an ethnographic approach, extensive interview data, and critical discourse analysis, this study concludes that the political elite in Russia are able to control and manipulate historical discourse about the Stalinist period in order to create a version of the past that bolsters their own political preferences. Appropriating the Stalinist discourse, they minimize or ignore outright crimes of the Soviet period, and instead focus on positive aspects of Stalin's rule, such as leading the Soviet Union to victory in the Second World War. Advancing concepts of 'preventive' and 'comprehensive' co-optation, this study analyzes how the political elite in Russia inhibit the emergence of groups that provide alternate narratives or narratives that contradict the elite-driven discourse, while promoting message-friendly groups that bolster elite preferences. Bringing the resources of the state to bear, the Russian elite are able to co-opt multiple avenues of discourse formulation and dissemination. Elite-sponsored discourse positions Stalin as a symbol of a strong, centralized state that was capable of many achievements, enabling favorable portrayals of Stalin as part of a tradition of harsh rulers in Russian history, along the lines of Peter the Great. Implicitly, this strong state discourse is used to legitimize the return of authoritarianism that Russia has experienced. </p>

Studying the last century and a half of Ukrainian linguistic history reveals relentless attempts to stifle the development of Ukrainian as well as to suppress translation activities under both the tsarist and Soviet regimes. Exploring the morphological evolution of the Ukrainian language discloses evidence of terminological inconsistencies due to the lexical russification of Ukrainian during the Soviet regime, leading to inconsistencies between the standard of Ukrainian used in the Soviet Union versus that used in the diaspora. Additional examination of Ukrainian linguistic history discloses political motives for banning translations, refusing the right to translate, censoring translations, and punishing translators who rejected the mandatory Soviet literary norm of Socialist Realism. In order to further understand the implications of translation practices in the Ukrainian SSR, it is important to examine the language policies, political agendas and translation practices prior to and throughout the Soviet regime. This thesis explores and analyses the russification of Ukrainian through translation policies designed to fulfil Soviet political and ideological agendas. It compares power differentials between Russian and Ukrainian, as well as between Russian and other minority languages in translation, and examines the resulting terminological inconsistencies. It shows unequivocally how translation, transliteration, and censorship were used to foster linguicide and assimilate Ukrainian minorities, from the late tsarist era to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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In August of 1978, Japanese and Chinese officials reached agreement on a Peace and Friendship Treaty which had been the subject of sporadic negotiations since the two sides normalised relations in 1972. But Japan also signed a Joint Declaration in 1956 with the Soviet Union, a bilateral agreement which also called for a future Peace and Friendship Treaty, which still has not been signed. The first section of the thesis deals with domestic historical, political, economic and cultural factors which affect foreign policy in each of the three countries and which have particular bearing on the treaty negotiations. Major emphasis is placed on those developments which have affected national security, or which have a bearing on collective perceptions of national security, including the strength of the armed forces. The second and longer portion of the thesis deals with Japan's bilateral relations with each of its two neighbours historically, and in more recent times in economic, political, military and cultural terms, and with key issues and developments in bilateral negotiations on the treaties. Throughout this section the primary focus is on Japan, its political parties and factions and the positions these have taken on the treaties and issues related to the treaties throughout the years. It also deals with the key issues dividing Japan and its negotiating partners on the two treaties, as well as Japan's 'equidistance policy' and 'its 'special relationship' with the United States. Conclusions at the end of part one in Section Two include points about the special constraints imposed upon the USSR in its negotiations, the importance of fishing rights in the Russo-Japanese relationship, the impact of the Ussuri River incidents of 1969 on the policies of Moscow and Peking and the phenomenon of two separate foreign policy goals working at cross-purposes on both sides in the bilateral relations between Moscow and Tokyo. Conclusions at the end of the thesis deal with the trilateral relationship and with such questions as why one treaty was signed and why the other has not been at this writing, whether there is any real substance to the new treaty, whether its signing is a setback to Soviet foreign policy and a threat to Soviet security and finally, what prompted Japan to abandon its 'equidistance policy'. The role of the White House and the State Department, and the question of how Japan came to be in the uncomfortable position of pawn or 'prize' in the Sino-Soviet rivalry are also examined.

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PhD / This thesis explores the lives of key female members of the Bolshevik elite from the revolutionary movement’s beginnings to the time of Stalin’s death. Through analysing the attitudes and contributions of Bolshevik elite women – most particularly the wives of Lenin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Bukharin – it not only provides for a descriptive account of these individual lives, their changing attitudes and activities, but also a more broad-ranging, social handle on the evolution of elite society in the Soviet Union and the changing nature of the Bolshevik elite both physically and ideationally. Chapters one and two focus on the physical and ideological foundations of the Bolshevik marriage. Chapter one traces the ideological approach of the Bolsheviks towards marriage and the family, examining pre-revolutionary socialist positions in relation to women and the family and establishing a benchmark for how the Bolsheviks wished to approach the ‘woman question’. Chapter two examines the nature of the Bolshevik elite marriage from its inception to the coming of the revolution, dwelling particularly on the different pre-revolutionary experiences of Yekaterina Voroshilova and Nadezhda Krupskaya. Chapters three and four then analyse two key areas of wives’ everyday lives during the interwar years. Chapter three looks at the work that Bolshevik wives undertook and how the nature of their employment changed from the 1920s to the 1930s. Chapter four, through examining the writings of wives such as Voroshilova, Larina and Ordzhonikidze, focuses upon how wives viewed themselves, their responsibilities as members of the Bolshevik elite and the position of women in Soviet society. The final two chapters of this thesis explore the changing nature of elite society in this period and its relationship to Soviet society at large. Chapter five investigates the changing composition of the elite and the specific and general effects of the purges upon its nature. Directly, the chapter examines the lives of Zhemchuzhina, Larina and Pyatnitskaya as wives that were repressed during this period, while more broadly it considers the occupation of the House on the Embankment in the 1930s and the changing structure of Bolshevik elite society. Chapter six focuses on the evolution of Soviet society in the interwar period and how the experiences of Bolshevik elite wives differed from those of ‘mainstream’ Russian women. While previous studies of the Bolshevik elite have focussed upon men’s political lives and investigations of Soviet women’s policy and its shifts under Stalin have mainly concentrated upon describing changes in realist terms, this thesis demonstrates that not only is an evaluation of wives’ lives crucial to a fuller understanding of the Bolshevik elite, but that by comprehending the personal attitudes and values of members of the Bolshevik elite society, particularly with regards to women and the family, a more informed perspective on the reasons for changes in Soviet women’s policy during the interwar period may be arrived at.