Links in the Chain

Author(s): Zoltán Lakner / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The conceptual apparatus of the mafia state desires to attain a circumstance when not only “ordinary” corruption dominates the government, and not“simply” the occurrence of state capture has to be taken into account. The essence of the “octopus” is political and economic power that builds onto and within itself. It is not an external interest group that puts the management of the state under its control, but a coterie that acquires it “directly,”with the goal of mobilizing the complete array of assets of the state, from financial resources to legislation, for its private benefit. In this world of legalized corruption, the far-reaching and unquestionable supremacy of the central government takes precedence over the rule of law.

The Social Policy of the Mafia State and Its Impact on Social Structure

Author(s): Balázs Krémer / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The author is trying to prove that although the economic crisis resulted in the polarization of inequality almost everywhere, the dramatic growth of the income gap in Hungary happened differently there than in other countries.

Amerykańska dyplomacja publiczna w okresie zimnej wojny

Author(s): Justyna Arendarska / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Edward R. Murrow – postać amerykańskiej dyplomacji publicznej

Author(s): Michał Karbowiak / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Dyplomacja publiczna Organizacji Narodów Zjednoczonych

Author(s): Magdalena Panońko / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Polityka historyczna jako narzędzie polityki zagranicznej Rosji na obszarze byłego ZSRR. Przypadek Ukrainy

Author(s): Oleksii Polegkyi / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Zagraniczna polityka historyczna w dyplomacji publicznej Litwy

Author(s): Justyna Ziobroń / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Zagraniczna polityka historyczna: Polska między Niemcami a Rosją

Author(s): Beata Ociepka / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Third Way Utopianism

Author(s): András Bozóki,Miklós Sükösd / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In this chapter we examine hybrid political ideas that bridged or even blended allegedly incompatible ideologies and created a new texture. The ideas to be discussed are “anarcho-democracy” and “liberal socialism” in twentieth-century Central Europe. These ideas came close to utopian thinking in that their representative proponents tried to find a non-existent third way between clear-cut models. Instead of hewing to either anarchism or liberal democracy, they tried to figure out a third way solution between the two. Instead of taking sides in the historic debate between liberalism and socialism, they tried to find a new blend, liberal socialism. Therefore it is not unjustified to call them variations of third way, or hybrid, utopianism. Refusing to accept “either/or” solutions, third way thinkers wanted to discover a new road to human paradise that incorporated all the good sides of opposing ideologies and eliminated their negative aspects. In approaching this topic, we suggest that a utopia does not always represent a clear and coherent single idea. On the contrary, a utopian vision might appear as a positive way out of two or more sometimes negative (but often contradicting) perspectives by merging and transcending them.

George Orwell, Soviet Studies, and the “Soviet Subjectivity” Debate

Author(s): Dmitry Halavach / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

One of the most recent and important contributions to Soviet history is that of “Soviet subjectivity” literature. This approach originates in the works of Igal Halfin and Jochen Hellbeck, for both of whom Michel Foucault and post-structuralist theory are major sources of inspiration. Halfin and Hellbeck use the Foucauldian analysis of the creation of subjectivity by power to look at the Stalinist purges in a new way. The self that they write about is not a Cartesian or Kantian self, but rather an intersection of discourses and mechanisms of power. This is a radical version of the linguistic turn in history, and the questions that Halfin and Hellbeck raise are equally radical. What potential for resistance was there in the USSR? What were the limits and peculiarities of the new “Soviet self”? And what were the sources of the uniquely confessionary nature of Stalinist terror?

What They Were Going to Do About It

Author(s): Ákos Farkas / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In 1936, two years after the establishment of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), Britain’s largest pacifist organisation of the twentieth century, one of the organization’s founders, Aldous Huxley, undertook to write a pamphlet to promote the Union and its cause. In the thirty-one-page booklet, Huxley set out to persuade hard-headed opponents of pacifism that peace was not only a desirable, but also a practicable alternative to war. He pleaded that any kind of peace was preferable to any kind of war, even at the cost of rewarding the aggressor: Italy attacking Abyssinia, Japan devastating Manchuria and Germany bent on annexing “Middle Europe”and overrunning Russia.1 Assessing the lessons of ancient and modern history, post-Darwinian biology, advanced economics, and even modern ethnography, Huxley formulated three major postulates: that war is alien to human nature; that war is always the problem and never the solution; and that lasting peace can only be achieved through fairness, mutual understanding, and the generosity of the powerful. The specific conclusion was that Great Britain, one of the “satisfied” powers of the international community—to use, somewhat anachronistically, a term introduced into Britain’s political discourse by George Lansbury a year later, one of the “haves,”—should set a political example to the rest of the world by addressing the justifiable complaints of the “dissatisfied” countries—the “have nots.”2 In the meantime, fair-minded Englishmen and Englishwomen were exhorted by Huxley to set a personal example to their government by supporting the Peace Pledge Union. The answer to the question in the pamphlet’s title, What Are You Going to Do About It? is thus simple: embrace the cause identified in the subtitle by taking immediate action to achieve “Constructive Peace.” Or, as the opening of the booklet advances its thesis, act in the belief that “what is called the utopian dream of pacifism is in fact a practical policy.”

Totalitarianism and Ideological Hubris

Author(s): Vladimir Tismăneanu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The main pillars of totalitarianism were the monopolistic party, the ideological utopian project, and the leader. Totalitarianism was also based on direct or indirect terror. The secret police was the instrument that maintained the population in a state of universal fear, distrust, and suspicion. Even if the concept has been criticized, sometimes justifiably, for its neglect of societal components and everyday life under ideocratic regimes, it still has an impressive descriptive force. Totalitarian regimes yearned for the establishment of “perfect societies” and engaged in endless campaigns to achieve their goals. In this chapter, I map out the main features of these new forms of political radicalism, looking for both similarities and differences.

From Facts to Words

Author(s): Emilio Gentile / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Plato counted the farmer-philosopher Myson of Chen among the Seven Sages of Greece, and the Oracle of Delphi declared him one among the wisest of all Greeks. Yet very few traces of his thought survive. Among these rare fragments, one confirms his wisdom: “We should not investigate facts by the light of words, but words by the light of facts.” More than to philosophers, Myson’s maxim ought to be suited to historians, who study the genesis and development of past human experiences, which almost always entail new words and concepts—hence new arguments. These new words are used by the people directly affected in order to name and describe their experiences, and later to pass them down to posterity.

Stalin the Statesman

Author(s): Vladimir O. Pechatnov / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Stalin’s macabre figure has long been a model for the interpretation of the phenomenon of totalitarianism, and of the role that its founders and leaders played in it. For quite some time, starting with the classic works of Hannah Arendt and the other seminal authors of the theory of totalitarianism, this interpretation matured within the confines of the totalitarian paradigm.

Stalin’s Dictatorship

Author(s): Oleg V. Khlevniuk / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The Stalinist period is the last phase of Soviet history that may be studied with the contribution of significant, if sometimes limited or patchy, archival resources. Investigations carried out from archival records in recent years have yielded remarkable results. The outpouring of information, consisting of previously unpublished documents and research material, has been so profuse that even specialists are finding it hard to keep up. Indeed, the opening of the archives has spurred a change in methodological approaches.

The “National Question” in the Soviet Union

Author(s): Andrea Graziosi / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

As his works prove, and as those who knew him remember, Victor Zaslavsky was sensitive with regard to the “national question” in the USSR. Nor could it have been otherwise, given the part this question played in his life. After the war, his mother, a medical officer in Leningrad during the Nazi siege, endured persecution in the dark season of Stalinist “anti-cosmopolitanism.” And he too was barred from carrying out the studies he loved because he was a Jew. Later, his deep knowledge of the country and its diversity—made possible by his work as a mining technician, which he had been forced to pursue because of the barriers placed on his desired path—strengthened his awareness of the importance of the “national question” in the USSR. At the time, a large part of Europe’s left, as well as many specialists of Soviet history and society, preferred to underestimate this issue, or to ignore it altogether.

The Katyn Case

Author(s): Inessa S. Yazhborovskaia / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The Katyn case has haunted the post–World War II bilateral relations between Russia and Poland, affecting the two countries in different ways. This chapter does not describe the events of Katyn historically,but rather analyze the Katyn discourse or, more precisely, how the issue has been described, internalized, and dealt with in Russia since World War II to the present. I take into account both the macro structure and broader context—that is, the general discourse on Katyn—as well as a number of sublevels (namely, stratifications and specific discourses through which the issue has been articulated in the course of the years).

The Transition from Totalitarianism to Authoritarianism in Russia

Author(s): Lev Gudkov / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

It is an acknowledged fact that most research on totalitarian systems focuses on the period between the 1930s and the 1960s. During this time, “typical” totalitarian systems—which may be described in an entirely satisfactory way with the “totalitarian syndrome” theoretical framework put forward by Friedrich and Brzezinski in the mid-1950s—hit their stride.1 Authors usually deal with the formation and with the institutional features of the fascist state in Italy, of Nazism in Germany, and of the Soviet system in the USSR. For the most part, such research is conducted by historians, who insert ready-made structures and concepts from political and sociological studies into their system, in order to combine or systematize the vast empirical material at their disposal.

Totalitarianism, Nationalism, and Challenges for Democratic Transition

Author(s): Gail Warshofsky Lapidus / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

From the very origins of the Soviet state, its successive leaders have faced the challenge of dealing with both the legacy of empire and the multi-ethnicity of its populations. It was Lenin who put in place the initial ideological concepts and institutional features of Soviet nationality policy, including recognition/support for national rights and cultural pluralism and the ethno-federal structure of the USSR, and Stalin who built on these foundations but developed them in new directions. In the period following Stalin’s death, his successors wrestled with the problem of balancing the inherent contradictions of his legacy. But Gorbachev unintentionally brought these tensions to the forefront when his efforts at liberalization and democratization of the Soviet system unleashed a series of challenges to both the ideological and institutional foundations of the system, which culminated in the dissolution of USSR. Nor did the challenge of reconciling nationalism and democratization end with the disappearance of the USSR. While many of the post-Soviet states could view the end of the Soviet system as a liberation, and an opportunity to construct a new and democratic future, for the Russian Federation the experience was traumatic. It involved the loss of substantial territories and populations, the loss of superpower status, and the loss of a legitimating ideology. As Vladimir Putin would later lament, it was “the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the twentieth century.” The sudden and unexpected collapse—and the widely voiced suspicion that it was the result of a nefarious plot by foreign enemies—created difficult and continuing problems in defining and legitimating a new and nonimperial Russian identity. Indeed, the pervasive fear that the Russian Federation could itself disintegrate along ethno-national lines was an important contributing factor in the movement away from the promise of a democratic post-Soviet Russia to the increasingly authoritarian and conservative regime that has emerged in the 2000s.

Public Memory and the Difficulty of Overcoming the Communist Legacy

Author(s): Mark Kramer / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In a televised ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow on November 2, 2007, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that he had awarded a posthumous Hero of Russia plaque and Gold Star medal to George Koval, an American technician who had been assigned by the U.S. Army during World War II to the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government’s top-secret program to build a nuclear bomb. Koval, it turned out, was also working at the time as a spy for the Soviet military intelligence service, operating under the codename “Delmar.” He smuggled highly sensitive information about nuclear weapons technology to the Stalinist regime in Moscow. At the Kremlin ceremony honoring Koval, Putin warmly described him as “our comrade” and extolled him for his “immense contribution to the strengthening of our country’s defense capacity.”