We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Међународна конференција „East-Central Europe in the Cold War,1945–1989“, Варшава, 16–18. октобар 2008 / International Conference „East-Central Europe in the Cold War, 1945–1989“, Warsaw, October 16–18 2008
More...
Међународни научни скуп „Балкан и проблеми међународних односа за време Другог светског рата и на почетку хладног рата: пројекти стварања федерација, информбиро, совјетско-југословенски сукоб“, Београд, 23–24. октобар 2009. годинe / International Conference “The Balkans and Problems of International Relations During the WWII and at the Beggining of the Cold War: Projects of Federations, Cominform and Soviet – Yugoslav Split”, Belgrade, 23–24 October 2009
More...
The article attempts to define the role of Plovdiv International Fair in the foreign trade relations of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia – countries belonging to the same economic and political world in the inter-bloc confrontation during the Cold War. The period from the mid-1940s and the 1950s was chosen, because then Czechoslovakia was the second most important trade socialist partner of Bulgaria, which provided machinery, equipment and complete sites for Bulgarian industrialization. The study traces the gradual weakening of the importance of the fair for their trade relations with the increase of integration processes in the COMECON since 1956, when the international socialist division of labour was created and the processes of coordinating business plans were centralized. The analysis is based on archival material not yet in scientific circulation, stored in the State Archives of Plovdiv, and on studies examining the Bulgarian-Czechoslovak economic relations for the period.
More...
The article attempts to show the tasks placed at the International Exhibition in Plovdiv in the context of the so called people’s democracy in Bulgaria in 1944–1948. They are most clearly seen in the Statute of Procedure of the Fair, which regulates its governance structure and its role in the economic sphere in the country. That is why the article discusses the amendments to the normative document adopted in the 1930s after the establishment of the new power in Bulgaria from September 1944 until the elaboration of a new Statute in 1948. The aim is to find out whether the development of the fair was in view of the internal logic of expansion of such institutions or depended on the changes in the foreign policy, foreign economic and domestic conditions in Bulgaria during the establishment of the Stalinist model of socialism during one of the most sharp phases of the Cold War. The article was based on archive material from the State Archives in Plovdiv related to the Plovdiv International Fair which has not been analyzed so far and on scientific studies revealing the main problems in the political, economic and commercial spheres in the country during the period considered.
More...
Конфликт между СССР и Югославией 1948 г. обозначил очень важный момент в создании советского блока - одну из интегрируемых в него стран не удалось заставить отказаться, несмотря на мощное давление из Кремля, от части своих на ционально-государственных интересов ради общих интересов, возглавляемой Москвой коммунистической коалиции. Так возникла первая трещина в основании, строящейся на песке сталинской империи. Нормализация советско-югославских отношений стала естественным процессом между двумя странами, избравшими, так называемый, „социалистический путь развития”. В то же время, идущая из Москвы, и лично от Н. Хрущева инициатива вновь содержала прежние установки: Югославия должна вернуться в лоно „социалистического лагеря”, с его жесткой, централизованной дисциплиной и беспрекословным подчинением СССР и его гло- бальным целям. Первые оценки и анализ внутренней и внешней политики Юго- славии, сделанные в советском внешнеполитическом ведомстве в течение 1953- первой половине 1954 гг. практически не отличались от тех, которые были сделаны еще в 1948–1949 гг., в период начала конфликта. Это было особенностью работы дипломатического и партийного аппарата тех лет. Чиновники и функционеры го- товили материал, исходя из предположения, что его будут читать в основном теже лица (МИД в тот период возглавлял В. Молотов – А. А.), которые в свое время подписывали различные резолюции против югославской компартии. Этим же людям предстояло принимать и новые решения. Как мы видели, большую работу по информированию московских „товарищей” о своей позиции провела в эти годы югославская сторона. Белград дал недвусмысленно понять Москве, которая была серьезно обеспокоена постепенной интеграцией Югославии в политические и вое нные структуры Запада через Балканский пакт, что это всего лишь временная так тика, целью которой является решение проблемы Триеста. Перспектива восста- но вления экономического обмена между двумя странами, включавшая и поставки военной техники, отображалась в югославском сценарии нормализации, посыла емом Москве, как один из факторов, который будет способствовать прекращению военно-политического сотрудничества с Западом. С другой стороны, начальный этап нормализации дал дополнительный импульс к постепенной кристаллизации югославской политики неприсоединения. Югославии, выстраивая новые отноше- ния с Москвой, приходилось структурировать сложившиеся ранее связи с Западом, сохраняя все нужное и отсекая избыточное, привязывавшее ее к западным блокам. Белград стремился остаться на периферии двух сфер влияния и, лавируя между ними, каждый раз использовать свою позицию в собственных интересах, как по литических, так и экономических. Любопытно, что югославские дипломаты от кры то, и несколько наивно, говорили Москве о всех преимуществах такой вне- шне по литической линии. Первый период нормализации проходил на фоне скрытой борьбы внутри Кремля между защитниками прежней сталинской поли тики и сторонниками её частичного реформирования. Все это не могло не отразиться и на темпах восстановительного процесса и на его содержании. Итогом стала Белградская декларация 1955 года, которую можно рассматривать и как несомненный реванш Тито в его долгом противостоянии с Москвой, и как, с другой стороны, победу Хрущева над своими противниками. Не случайно Хрущев прислал Тито стенограммы заседаний июльского, 1955 года, пленума ЦК КПСС, на котором были осуждены позиции В. Молотова, Л. Кагановича и Г. Маленкова в отношении его «югославской» политики. Получается, что Тито в чем–то смог помочь Хрущеву. Вообще причины, по которым Югославия и Тито вызывали у Хрущева в те годы приступы „неконтролируемого” энтузиазма, еще предстоит исследовать. Можно только предположить, что в сознании Хрущева происходило формирование некой идеи, сутью которой могло быть следующее. СССР постепенно преодолевает международную изоляцию, устанавливает более-менее добрые отношения с США и Западом в целом, начинает с их помощью модернизацию своей экономики. Пример отношений Югославии с западными странами в этом случае мог казаться временами советскому лидеру идеальным. Поездка Хрущева и Булганина в Индию и Бирму в эти годы, почти параллельно визитам Тито, также ложится в данную гипотезу. Но идеализм Хрущева имел свои границы. Он не мог отрешиться от своих марксистских представлений, а также действовать вне жесткого контроля ЦК и сохранявшего свои позиции ортодоксального окружения. Ухудшение отношений с Югославией осенью 1956 года, в связи с венгерскими событиями, а затем весной 1958 года, убедительно это подтвердили.
More...
Научни скуп „Хладни рат – прошлост, садашњост, будућност“, Сарајево, Коњиц, Мостар 2–5. децембар 2010. године, / Conference “The Cold War – past, present, future”, Sarajevo, Konjic, Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), 2nd to 5th of December 2010
More...
Любомир Огнянов (съставител). Политическа история на съвременна България. Сборник документи. Т. II (1948–1953). София, Държавна агенция „Архиви“. 2018.
Book Review
More...
The author investigates the selection and the training of foreign students from Czechoslovakia in the period 1953–1959, and also their realization in shipping and at shipbuilding enterprises after their graduation. The most important factors for success are the good selection and high-level of adaptation of students as well as special preparation and pedagogical skill of the lecturers of Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy.
More...
On the basis of unpublished sources from the archives of the communist parties of Yugoslavia and Italy (Arhiv Jugoslavije, Belgrade; Archivio del Partito comunista italiano, Rome), this article analyzes the relations between these two parties during the early sixties. In a few very significant and crucial years for their interparty relations, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) and the Italian Communist Party (PCI)managed to reestablish their relations, and to elevate them to a level of a strategic alliance. The aim of this article is to analyze that process, which was the foundation of a closer friendship and alliance of the LCY and PCI in the following decades.
More...
The study presents the strategies of France and Italy to intensify trade with China in the years after Mao Zedong as a starting point for the development of their cultural influence and vice versa; of Great Britain – to increase humanitarian contacts as a prerequisite for its larger trade supplies. As the topic is very broad, the examples that illustrate the described processes are mainly in the field of music and cinema. More attention is paid to China’s acceptance of Western European initiatives. The text traces and analyzes the development of China’s official positions regarding the foreign cultural presence in the country, and could serve as a guide for developing a successful diplomatic practice.
More...
България през втората половина на 40-те години на ХХ век
The second half of the 1940s is a crucial transition period in establishing totalitarian control of society. The decor of pluralism and parliamentarism brought specific color in the life of Bulgarians in the first years after September 9, 1944. The Communist Party in Bulgaria,aided by the entry of the Red Army in Bulgaria and the arrangements between the members of the anti-Hitler coalition, actually became ruling political force, but did not immediately establish a dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of Soviet rule. The destruction of the old authority structures was followed by a period of existence of a parallel unregulated power at all levels. The orchestrated political pluralism did not provide for any serious political role for the coalition partners of BRP (k), whose political platforms detached from the historical context, were quite harmless. A side effect in the movement towards a totalitarian society was the emergence of opposition, which briefly stirred Bulgarian political space and created the illusion of political pluralism in the country. The regime defined itself as a “people’s democracy”, but behind the propaganda thesis about the authority practice shows violation of pluralism, constant interference in the internal life of the other parties, strict regulation of all components of public and political life, criminalization of dissent, including the whole society into state organizations working under the ideological and political leadership of the Communist Party. The affirmation of the communist regime was accompanied by the formation of party-bureaucratic class which acquired the status, powers and privileges, access to which remained limited for members of other parties. Corrupting party cadres, sensitive to domestic benefits, began in the first months after September 9 and gradually became a dominant practice that turned into hallmark of the regime and existed until the end of the 1980s.
More...
Thе article is an overview of the development of relations between Turkey and all six Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE). The first rapprochement between these states is motivated by Turkey`s seeking for support from the Muslim and Arab countries after the Cyprus crisis and oil shock in 1973. The author argues that contacts have deepened during the Turgut Özal`s-era in Turkey, but they reached their peak during the rule of Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish). In that time bilateral political, trade, commercial, military and cultural contacts have flourished, in addition to multilateral platforms were both all Gulf countries and Turkey have been present.
More...
The article looks through the changes in the memory of the Second World War as part of the transformations in the ideas that were established after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Marxist-Leninist ideology dominance in the East European countries. The author offers her version of the transformations in the memory of the Second World War, while analyzing the process of the Holocaust ideas’ establishment and the need for condemnation of all totalitarian regimes. According to her, two parallel processes take place in Europe after 1989 – the establishment of the Holocaust as a main event during the whole world war, going from West to East, and the enforcement of the view for similarity between the two totalitarian regimes – the National-Socialist and the Bolshevik, going in the opposite direction. The second process of European revisionism requires not only condemnation of the Communist crimes against humanity in a way similar to the condemnation of the Nazi crimes through the Nurnberg tribunal, but also a full revision of the views on the reasons, the driving forces and the results of the Second World War. In such way, the confrontations between Russia and the West nowadays, related mostly to the accession of Crimea and the war activities in Ukraine, also have their impact on the past: 70 years after its end, the war is starting to look more and more not like a collision between the anti-Hitler coalition and the Axis powers, but like a fight between two totalitarian regimes, in which, for one reason or another, most of the then existing countries were included.
More...
During the Cold War, the superpowers used their ideologies as symbolic capital in the struggle for new spheres of influence. The United States emphasized slogans of freedom and democratic values, and the USSR propagated ideas of socialism. One of the key “messages” exploited by Soviet cultural diplomacy in the post-war world was the image of the October Revolution as a benchmark for the struggle for a just socialist system. The ideas of Great October were most intensively vocalized and reinterpreted during round-number anniversaries. In 1947, officially celebrated for the first time not only in the Soviet Union, the thirtieth anniversary of the October Revolution had witnessed the initial efforts of the USSR to sovietize Central and Eastern European countries’ cultures and ideologies. By exploring this case, the article surveys the mechanisms and ways the Soviet festive activities and rituals were implanted and adjusted to foreign surroundings. Jubilee celebrations are taken here as part of commemorative practices aimed at developing a “socialist” identity in Central and Eastern Europe and their further integration into the Soviet cultural and political space of influence. Reconstructing the general mode of the holiday and the specifics of its functioning in different countries, the article concludes that, in many respects, the first “common” commemoration of the October Revolution abroad represented a “transitional” stage where Soviet ideological messages were relatively fuzzy and imposed rituals had to be variably adjusted to Eastern European social environments.
More...
The Soviet Union’s October 1957 launching of Sputnik was of domestic political importance to the US. It led to a review of the US education system, which resulted in the adoption of the National Defense Education Act by the US Congress in 1958. Its purpose was to strengthen the national defense by appropriating federal financial support to increase the number of educational programs responding to critical national needs. Discussion of Sputnik’s influence on the reform of American education has continued for 60 years. In the scientific and journalistic literature various arguments have been advanced for and against satellite’s influence, which are discussed in this article. It attempts to show the satellite’s impact on accelerating negotiations for exchange agreements between the USSR and the USA in the fields of culture, technology and education, and ultimately creating a new branch of American historical scholarship — Russian Studies. Particular attention is paid to the content of Section VI of the NDEA. It provided financial support to higher education institutions that established or already had in place modern foreign languages centers. The results of the implementation of this paragraph were evident in the same year, as universities in different states began establishing Russian and East European Studies Centers. It became the starting point for a new stage in the development of Soviet-American relations in the field of science and education.Keywords: Soviet Sputnik, National Defense Education Act, USA, USSR, academic exchange, American edu- cation, Russian and East European studies.
More...
Defending its economic interests, the USA evolved a strategy with a long-term and manysided effect on the economic and socio-political development of the Continent of Europe. The Marshall Plan gave the initial impetus to the integration processes in Europe and contributed not only to the recovery but also to the reconstruction and modernization of the European economy, and to the introduction of a regulated social market economy. The active role of the Great Britain and France in elaborating the recovery programme proved that they were zealous partisans of the idea of a united European economy. In this sense they were sincere in their intentions to draw to the plan the East European states and the USSR. In uniting the European interests they saw a sure guarantee for the preservation of their economic superiority and for counteracting the hegemony of the USA in Europe. The American aid proposal, and later also the projects prepared by Great Britain and France, were unacceptable to the USSR which wanted at any price to preserve its status of a great power. The two specific trends in Europe’s post-war development, namely towards the opening of the national economies and the formation of international economic institutions, made the Soviet government still more cautious with respect to the Western initiatives. The Soviet Union could not be an equal partner of the developed states. What was still worse in this case was that it subordinated also the interests of the other East European states to its hegemonic strivings. Bulgaria was invited by Great Britain and France to take part in the European economic recovery programme. On the suggestion of the Soviet government, she gave a negative reply to the British-French note. As a result of her refusal to participate in the Marshall Plan Bulgaria lost the West European markets for one of her basic export goods – tobacco. More disastrous for the country was the fact that she become part of an isolated community in which the dominating power possessed a considerably more limited economic potential. The division of Europe made possible also the more unimpeded introduction of the Soviet socio-economic model which destroyed the traditional structures of the Bulgarian economy.
More...
The purpose of the present article is to trace the history and to show the activities performedby the gypsies/Romani organizations in Shumen, Bulgaria during the period between 1944 and 1990. The history of these organizations is going through several periods which match the political periods regarding the gypsy population in Bulgaria.It was founded in 1946, when Bulgaria was leading a policy of ethnical recognition of the gypsies and a wide consideration of their cultural and historical identity. Inthe beginning of the 1950s, due to the fear of the so-called “turcheene” (i.e. public demonstration of the Turkish ethnic identity) among a large part of the gypsies, there was a turning-point in the public policy – the Cultural and Educational organization of the gypsies was forbidden and they got into the hands of the “Fatherland Front” (“Otechestven front”). In spite of the restrictions and interdictions, in 1967 the leaders of the Gypsy movement in Shumen restored their organization by the name of “Roma”, but they didn’t get the recognition and validation from the government. In spite of this, they continued to work for the protection of the Gypsy community in Shumen and in all of their activities in several basic directions (socioeconomic, political, educational and cultural) were performed by the organization’s name. This continued until the beginning of the 1990s, when the organization was recovered, andalong side this a number of new organizations arose.
More...