Academic literature on the topic 'Soviet Union – Politics and government – 1917-1936'

This article will analyze how Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Americans sought diplomatic recognition of Ukraine by the United States between 1917 and 1941. It will explain why the U.S. government, despite its commitments to the principle of self-determination, did not recognize Ukrainian independence and why it extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union in 1933 despite protests by Ukrainian- Americans about the terrible famine of 1932- 1933. Drawing on new research in the unu- tilized or underutilized papers of leading Ukrainian-Americans, the article will discuss their tactics and examine their impact on both the press and U.S. government officials.

This article offers an in-depth analysis of Soviet policy and diplomacy in the Far East during the tumultuous period spanning from the 1920s to the 1940s. These policies were profoundly shaped by two key factors: firstly, the ideological considerations rooted in the political framework established in the USSR following the 1917 revolution, and secondly, the geopolitical dynamics reflecting the evolving global and regional political landscape in the Far East. The ruling Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government faced formidable challenges as they sought to safeguard the nascent Soviet Republic amid mounting international tensions, both on a global scale and within the Asia-Pacific region.This study aspires to present a comprehensive and integrated examination of Soviet policy and diplomacy during this era. It delineates four distinct chronological segments, each characterized by its unique features, priorities, and challenges. At the same time, these segments are united by the overarching goal of consolidating the Soviet Union's position in the Far Eastern region and the broader Pacific theater. The four discernible stages in Soviet policy and diplomacy in the Far East encompass:1. The period spanning from 1927 to 1932, marked by an initial deterioration in relations between the Soviet government and the Kuomintang administration following the 1927 split between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China (CPC). This phase also witnessed the 1929 conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway and culminated in the reestablishment of Sino-Soviet relations, all set against the backdrop of escalating Japanese aggression in Northeastern China (Manchuria). This phase demanded adroit diplomacy balancing strength and strategic statecraft.2. The 1930s, especially in the aftermath of Japan's aggressive incursions into China, saw limited interaction and collaboration between the USSR and the Republic of China. This period featured cautious Soviet-Japanese relations and included significant events such as armed clashes at Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin-Gol River, as well as the signing of the USSR-Japan Neutrality Pact.3. The era of the Great Patriotic War from 1941 to 1945, during which the Soviet Union's foremost objective was the defeat of the German Nazi aggressor. During this period, Soviet diplomacy was primarily preoccupied with relations with Anglo-American allies, with particular emphasis on the contentious issue of opening a second front. Consequently, Far Eastern and Pacific policy concerns assumed a somewhat marginalized role within the realm of Soviet diplomacy.4. Finally, the period spanning from the winter to the summer of 1945 emerged as a pivotal juncture. During this time, the Soviet Union intensified its political, diplomatic, and military involvement in the Far East, all against the backdrop of preparations for the impending entry into the war against Japan. Diplomatic endeavors reached their zenith during this critical phase.

Interference of esotericism and politics became apparent especially in the 19th century when the early socialists expected the coming of the Age of Spirit, and narratives about secret wisdom being kept in mysterious sacred places became all the more popular. Thus, the idea of the Age of Enlightenment underwent transformation: the world will be saved not by ordinary knowledge but by some special secret wisdom. In this context, Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed the doctrine of Theosophy the ideas of which were overtaken by the next-generation theosophists including also the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) and his spouse Helena Roerich (1879–1955) who developed a new form of Theosophy. The aim of this article is to analyse the interference between Theosophy and politics paying special attention to its historical roots, which, in the context of Roerich groups, are to be sought in the political activities of Nicholas Roerich, the founder of the movement. The following materials have been used in the analysis: first, writings of the founders of Agni Yoga or Teaching of Living Ethics; second, the latest studies in the history of Theosophy made in the available archives after the collapse of the soviet regime; third, materials obtained from the interviews of a field research (2006–2008). The author has made use of an interdisciplinary approach combining anthropological methods with the method of systematic analysis. The historical roots of the political activity of contemporary theosophists stretch into the political aspirations of Nicholas Roerich, the founder of Agni Yoga or Teaching of Living Ethics. Opening of the USSR secret archives and publication of several formerly inaccessible diaries and letters of theosophists offer an opportunity to study the “spiritual geopolitics” of the Roerichs. Setting off to his Central Asian expeditions (1925–1928; 1934–1935), Nicholas Roerich strived to implement the Great Plan, i.e. to found a New State that would stretch from Tibet to South Siberia comprising the territories governed by China, Mongolia, Tibet and the USSR. The new state was conceived as the kingdom of Shambhala on the earth, and in order to form this state, Nicholas Roerich aspired to acquire the support of various political systems. During the Tzarist Empire, the political world outlook of Nicholas Roerich was markedly monarchic. After the Bolshevik coup in Russia, the artist accepted the offer to work under the wing of the new power, but after his emigration to the West Roerich published extremely sharp articles against the Bolsheviks. In 1922, the Roerichs started to support Lenin considering him the messenger of Shambhala. Roerich’s efforts to acquire Bolshevik support culminated in 1926 when the Roerichs arrived in Moscow bringing a message by Mahatmas to the soviet government, a small case with earth for the Lenin Mausoleum from Burhan-Bulat and paintings in which Buddha Maitreya bore strong resemblance to Lenin. The plan of founding the Union of Eastern Republics, with Bolshevik support, failed, since about the year 1930 the soviet authorities changed their position concerning the politics of the Far East. Having ascertained that the Bolsheviks would not provide the anticipated support for the Great Plan, the Roerichs started to seek for contacts in the USA which provided funding for his second expedition (1934–1935). The Roerichs succeeded even in making correspondence (1934–1936) with President Roosevelt who paid much larger attention to Eastern states especially China than other presidents did. Their correspondence ceased when the Security Service of the USA grew suspicious about Roerich’s pro-Japanese disposition. Nicholas Roerich has sought for support to his political ambitions by all political regimes. In 1934, the Russian artist tried to ascertain whether German national socialists would support his efforts in Asia. It may seem that the plans of founding the Union of Oriental Republics have passed away along with Roerich; yet in 1991 his son Svyatoslav Roerich (1904–1993) pointed out once again that the Altai is a very important centre of the great future and Zvenigorod is still a great reality and a magnificent dream. Interference between esotericism and politics is observed also among Latvian theosophists: the soviet regime successfully made use of Roerich’s adherents propagating the communist ideology in the independent Republic of Latvia. In the 1920s and 1930s, the embassy of the USSR in Riga maintained close contacts with Roerich’s adherents in Latvia and made a strong pressure on the Latvian government not to ban the Roerich’s Museum Friend Society who actively propagated the success of soviet culture and economy. On 17 June 1940, the soviet army occupied the Republic of Latvia, and Haralds Lūkins, the son of the founder of the Roerich’s Museum Friend Society, was elected to the first government of the soviet Latvia. Nevertheless, involvement of theosophists in politics was unsuccessful, since after the official annexation of Latvia into the USSR, on 5 August 1940, all societies including the Roerich’s Museum Friend Society were closed. Since the members of the movement continued to meet regularly, in 1949, Haralds Lūkins was arrested as leader of an illegal organization. After the Second World War, theosophists were subjected to political repressions. Arrests of Roerich’s followers (1948–1951) badly impaired the movement. After rehabilitation in 1954, the repressed persons gradually returned from exile and kept on their illegal meetings in small groups. To regain their rights to act openly, Roerich’s followers started to praise Nicholas Roerich as a supporter of the soviet power. With the collapse of the soviet regime, Roerich’s followers in Latvia became legal in 1988 when the Latvian Roerich Society was restored which soon split up according to geopolitical orientation; therefore, presently in Latvia, there are the following organisations: Latvian Roerich Society, Latvian Department of the International Centre of the Roerichs, and Aivars Garda group or the Latvian National Front. A. Garda fused nationalistic ideas with Theosophy offering a special social reorganization – repatriation of the soviet-time immigrants and a social structure of Latvia that would be formed by at least 75% ethnic Latvians. Activity of A. Garda group, which is being criticized by other groups of theosophists, is a continuation of the interference between theosophical and political ideas practised by the Roerichs. Generally it is to be admitted that after the crush of the soviet regime, in theosophist groups, unclear political orientation between the rightists and leftists is observed, characterised by fairly radical ideas.

In the last decade, state building and the problems of establishing state authority in the provinces in 1917 have begun to attract historians’ attention. Several works by Russian authors treat state building under the Provisional Government, with emphasis upon organizational activities “at the center.” Daniel T. Orlovsky and Howard J. White (with greater analytical rigor than their Russian counterparts) have studied the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the provinces. But none of these works has offered a sustained discussion of the revolution in a single city or province. Local studies have concentrated on popular institutions (for example, unions, Red Guards, and the Soviets) and the process of social polarization but have paid litde attention to the state. My aim is to bridge the gap between institutional studies and local studies by looking at local government and the contested nature of state authority in Smolensk from March to June 1917, tracing especially the conflict between class-based politics and state interests.

Dmitry S. Polyansky (1917-2001) is known as one of the CPSU and USSR leaders. He combined his membership in the Politburo of the Communist Party (1960-1976) with the posts of Russian PM, the Deputy and First Deputy Chairman of the all-union Government, the Soviet Minister of Agriculture (1958-1976). Later Polyansky served a SU ambassador in Japan and Norway (1976-1987). As a politic and state activist he was involved to number of odious events: the transfer of the Crimean Oblast (1954), the defeat of the Anti-Party Group (1957), the “Ryazan affair” (1960), the “Novocherkassk massacre” (1962), the Nikita S. Khrushchev’s

AbstractThe Bolsheviks did not alienate citizens from helping find solutions to the problems afflicting children. Many social actions deemed as "useful" by the Soviet authorities were met with support by the regime. These included the "Week of the Homeless Child", school self-taxation, local societies of the "Friend of the Children", and others. Establishing its control over "useful" public ventures, the Government eventually absorbed them. On the surface, the proliferation of public ventures in the area of children's welfare, such as patronage by industrial enterprises, labor unions and other groups and the growth of various advisory boards and children's inspections, appeared to be a result of growing social initiative. In reality the government's support of public work led to de facto state and party control. In order to carry out successful public initiatives, the population had to adapt to the particulars of Bolshevik rule.

AbstractThis article examines the attempts by left-wing Ukrainian nationalists to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable: Ukrainian nationalism and Soviet socialism. It describes how leftist Ukrainian parties active during the Revolution and Civil War in Ukraine 1917–1921 advocated a soviet form of government. Exiled members of the two major Ukrainian parties, the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries, then took this position further, arguing in favor of reconciliation with the Bolsheviks and a return to their homeland. After the Entente recognized Polish sovereignty over Eastern Galicia and Soviet Ukraine introduced a policy of Ukrainization in 1923, many West Ukrainian intellectuals took up this call. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 and the Bolsheviks’ purge of Ukrainian Communists and intellectuals all but ended the position. However, it was more the Soviet rejection of the Sovietophiles that ended Ukrainian Sovietophilism than any rejection of the Soviet Union by leftist Ukrainian nationalists. Thus, an examination of the Ukrainian Sovietophiles calls into question the accounts of the relationship between Ukrainian nationalism and the Soviet Union that have common currency in today’s Ukraine.

After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Iurii Filipchenko (in Petrograd) and Nikolai Koltsov (in Moscow) created centers of genetic research where eugenics prospered as a socially relevant part of the new "experimental" biology. The Russian Eugenics Society, established in 1920, was dominated by research-oriented professionals. However, Bolshevik activists in the movement tried to translate eugenics into social policies (among them, sterilization) and in 1929, Marxist geneticist Alexander Serebrovsky was stimulated by the forthcoming Five-Year Plan to urge a massive eugenic program of human artificial insemination. With the advent of Stalinism, such attempts to "biologize" social phenomena became ideologically untenable and the society was abolished in 1930. Three years later, however, a number of eugenicists reassembled in the world's first institute of medical genetics, created by Bolshevik physician Solomon Levit after his return from a postdoctoral year in Texas with H. J. Muller. Muller himself moved to the Soviet Union in 1933, where he agitated for eugenics and wrote Stalin in 1936 to urge an artificial insemination program. Shortly thereafter, Muller left Russia, several of his colleagues were shot, and the Institute of Medical Genetics was disbanded. During the next three decades, Lysenkoists regularly invoked the Soviet eugenic legacy to claim that genetics itself was fascist.Key words: Russia, eugenics, human genetics, medical genetics, Lysenkoism, history, politics.

On 12 February 1930 a near-insolvent English company began arbitration proceedings against a large and hostile foreign State under an ad hoc arbitration clause contained in a written concession agreement signed by both parties. This concession had been granted by the Soviet Union in 1925 in respect of gold mining and other properties previously operated by the English company's Russian subsidiaries until their dispossession by the Soviet Russian government in 1918, following the October 1917 Revolution. In May 1930, after three months, the Soviet Union abruptly withdrew from the arbitration proceedings, abandoning both its defence and counterclaim and instructing its appointed arbitrator to take no further part in the proceedings. Four months later, on 2 September 1930, the English company obtained a massive monetary award in its favour, signed in London by two arbitrators only. Yet the financial result of Lena Gold-fields Limited v. USSR was to benefit David little and cost Goliath less.

The life path, scientific-pedagogical and public activity of Volodymyr Sokurenko – a prominent Ukrainian jurist, doctor of law, professor, talented teacher of the Lviv Law School of Franko University are analyzed. It is found out that after graduating from a seven-year school in Zaporizhia, V. Sokurenko entered the Zaporizhia Aviation Technical School, where he studied two courses until 1937. 1/10/1937 he was enrolled as a cadet of the 2nd school of aircraft technicians named after All-Union Lenin Komsomol. In 1938, this school was renamed the Volga Military Aviation School, which he graduated on September 4, 1939 with the military rank of military technician of the 2nd category. As a junior aircraft technician, V. Sokurenko was sent to the military unit no. 8690 in Baku, and later to Maradnyany for further military service in the USSR Air Force. From September 4, 1939 to March 16, 1940, he was a junior aircraft technician of the 50th Fighter Regiment, 60th Air Brigade of the ZAK VO in Baku. The certificate issued by the Railway District Commissariat of Lviv on January 4, 1954 no. 3132 states that V. Sokurenko actually served in the staff of the Soviet Army from October 1937 to May 1946. The same certificate states that from 10/12/1941 to 20/09/1942 and from 12/07/1943 to 08/03/1945, he took part in the Soviet-German war, in particular in the second fighter aviation corps of the Reserve of the Supreme Command of the Soviet Army. In 1943 he joined the CPSU. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree and the Order of the Red Star (1943) as well as 9 medals «For Merit in Battle» during the Soviet-German war. With the start of the Soviet-German war, the Sokurenko family, like many other families, was evacuated to the town of Kamensk-Uralsky in the Sverdlovsk region, where their father worked at a metallurgical plant. After the war, the Sokurenko family moved to Lviv. In 1946, V. Sokurenko entered the Faculty of Law of the Ivan Franko Lviv State University, graduating with honors in 1950, and entered the graduate school of the Lviv State University at the Department of Theory and History of State and Law. V. Sokurenko successfully passed the candidate examinations and on December 25, 1953 in Moscow at the Institute of Law of the USSR he defended his thesis on the topic: «Socialist legal consciousness and its relationship with Soviet law». The supervisor of V. Sokurenko's candidate's thesis was N. Karieva. The Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, by its decision of March 31, 1954, awarded V. Sokurenko the degree of Candidate of Law. In addition, it is necessary to explain the place of defense of the candidate's thesis by V. Sokurenko. As it is known, the Institute of State and Law of the USSR has its history since 1925, when, in accordance with the resolution of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of March 25, 1925, the Institute of Soviet Construction was established at the Communist Academy. In 1936, the Institute became part of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1938 it was reorganized into the Institute of Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1941–1943 it was evacuated to Tashkent. In 1960-1991 it was called the Institute of State and Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In Ukraine, there is the Institute of State and Law named after V. Koretsky of the NAS of Ukraine – a leading research institution in Ukraine of legal profile, founded in 1949. It is noted that, as a graduate student, V. Sokurenko read a course on the history of political doctrines, conducted special seminars on the theory of state and law. After graduating from graduate school and defending his thesis, from October 1, 1953 he was enrolled as a senior lecturer and then associate professor at the Department of Theory and History of State and Law at the Faculty of Law of the Lviv State University named after Ivan Franko. By the decision of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR of December 18, 1957, V. Sokurenko was awarded the academic title of associate professor of the «Department of Theory and History of State and Law». V. Sokurenko took an active part in public life. During 1947-1951 he was a member of the party bureau of the party organization of LSU, worked as a chairman of the trade union committee of the university, from 1955 to 1957 he was a secretary of the party committee of the university. He delivered lectures for the population of Lviv region. Particularly, he lectured in Turka, Chervonohrad, and Yavoriv. He made reports to the party leaders, Soviet workers as well as business leaders. He led a philosophical seminar at the Faculty of Law. He was a deputy of the Lviv City Council of People's Deputies in 1955-1957 and 1975-1978. In December 1967, he defended his doctoral thesis on the topic: «Development of progressive political thought in Ukraine (until the early twentieth century)». The defense of the doctoral thesis was approved by the Higher Attestation Commission on June 14, 1968. During 1960-1990 he headed the Department of Theory and History of State and Law; in 1962-68 and 1972-77 he was the dean of the Law Faculty of the Ivan Franko Lviv State University. In connection with the criticism of the published literature, on September 10, 1977, V. Sokurenko wrote a statement requesting his dismissal from the post of Dean of the Faculty of Law due to deteriorating health. During 1955-1965 he was on research trips to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria, and Bulgaria. From August 1966 to March 1967, in particular, he spent seven months in the United States, England and Canada as a UN Fellow in the Department of Human Rights. From April to May 1968, he was a member of the government delegation to the International Conference on Human Rights in Iran for one month. He spoke, in addition to Ukrainian, English, Polish and Russian. V. Sokurenko played an important role in initiating the study of an important discipline at the Faculty of Law of the Lviv University – History of Political and Legal Studies, which has been studying the history of the emergence and development of theoretical knowledge about politics, state, law, ie the process of cognition by people of the phenomena of politics, state and law at different stages of history in different nations, from early statehood and modernity. Professor V. Sokurenko actively researched the problems of the theory of state and law, the history of Ukrainian legal and political thought. He was one of the first legal scholars in the USSR to begin research on the basics of legal deontology. V. Sokurenko conducted extensive research on the development of basic requirements for the professional and legal responsibilities of a lawyer, similar to the requirements for a doctor. In further research, the scholar analyzed the legal responsibilities, prospects for the development of the basics of professional deontology. In addition, he considered medical deontology from the standpoint of a lawyer, law and morality, focusing on internal (spiritual) processes, calling them «the spirit of law.» The main direction of V. Sokurenko's research was the problems of the theory of state and law, the history of legal and political studies. The main scientific works of professor V. Sokurenko include: «The main directions in the development of progressive state and legal thought in Ukraine: 16th – 19th centuries» (1958) (Russian), «Democratic doctrines about the state and law in Ukraine in the second half of the 19th century (M. Drahomanov, S. Podolynskyi, A. Terletskyi)» (1966), «Law. Freedom. Equality» (1981, co-authored) (in Russian), «State and legal views of Ivan Franko» (1966), «Socio-political views of Taras Shevchenko (to the 170th anniversary of his birth)» (1984); «Political and legal views of Ivan Franko (to the 130th anniversary of his birth)» (1986) (in Russian) and others. V. Sokurenko died on November 22, 1994 and was buried in Holoskivskyi Cemetery in Lviv. Volodymyr Sokurenko left a bright memory in the hearts of a wide range of scholars, colleagues and grateful students. The 100th anniversary of the Scholar is a splendid opportunity to once again draw attention to the rich scientific heritage of the lawyer, which is an integral part of the golden fund of Ukrainian legal science and education. It needs to be studied, taken into account and further developed.

This thesis examines the impact of Soviet anti-religious policies on the Muslims of Central Asia from 1917 to 1938. The long struggle of the Bolsheviks to come to the power, their attempts to perpetuate the Russian hegemony in Central Asia, and the reactions of the Central Asian people towards the new regime will all form part of this thesis. Having successfully brought about the revolution, the Bolsheviks faced many challenges. One the famous slogans of the revolution, recognition of each nationality's right of self determination, boomeranged on the Bolsheviks, with the European proletariat deserting from the path of the revolution and proclaiming their own independence. In this situation, the Bolsheviks endeavored to gain the support of the Muslims. The government made many promises to the Muslims but, at the same time, dissolved the Kokand government established by the Muslims, causing Muslium revolts throughout the Central Asian region. The Muslim threat was met with measures of appeasement. The government's promises succeeded in attracting the modernist Muslims to cooperate with the regime. A strategy of "divide and rule" and of indirect attacks on Islam was employed, aiming at the annihilation of Islam. Conservative Muslims continued to vehemently oppose the Soviet regime and its policies. But, given the success of the regime in the civil war, and the lack of unity and the strength among Muslims, the Soviet anti-religious policies in Central Asia succeeded at the institutional level, to do great damage to Islam. However, these policies proved ineffectual in destroying the influence of Islamic teachings on the Muslims of Central Asia.

Das Wort was a literary journal published by German Communist writers and fellow-travelers exiled in Moscow from 1936 to 1939. It was to be a mouthpiece for German literature in exile and to promote the Popular Front policy, which sought to unite disparate elements in non-Fascist Europe in opposition to the Nazis. Das Wort, under the editorship of German Communist writers whose close association with the Soviet Union had been well established in the previous decade, tried to provide a forum for exiled writers of various political persuasions, but was unwavering in its positive portrayal of Stalin's Soviet Union and the policies of that country. As the level of hysteria grew with the successive purges and public show trials in the Soviet Union, the journal adopted an even more eulogistic and militant attitude: any criticism or expression of doubt about Soviet policy was equated with support for Fascism. Thus the ability of the journal to contribute to the formation of a true common front in Europe to oppose Fascism was compromised from the outset by its total support for the Soviet Union. The Popular Front policy foundered on this issue, and that portion of German literature in exile which was to form the first generation of East German literature was inextricably bound to the Soviet Union well before the German Democratic Republic came in to existence.

Soviet Russia and Poland concluded the Peace of Riga in March 1921: Poland recognized Soviet Ukraine, but could keep Eastern Galicia and Western Volhynia. With this, the “Ukrainian revolution” ended, and the Peace of Riga buried Ukrainian aspirations for independence. This meant that the situation developed after the Treaty of Andrusovo in 1667 was repeated, since the Poles and the Russians – ignoring the interests of the Ukrainians – once again divided Ukraine between themselves. Ukrainian “revolutions” and Ukrainian efforts to establish statehood thus ended in failure. Between 1917–1920, the Ukrainians temporarily created sovereign “state initiatives,” but the territory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic was not precisely defined and was decreased gradually due to the constant attacks of the Red Army. It included only a part of Eastern Galicia with its capital, without Lviv (Lemberg). The successive governments were in power only for a short time, so they could not consolidate their government system. The fact that the national identity of the Eastern Ukrainians was weaker made it more difficult to achieve independence, which is why a unified position regarding the nature of the Ukrainian state could not be formed in the individual Ukrainian regions and among political parties. The military superiority of Poland and Soviet Russia, as well as the disinterest of the victorious Allies in the existence of a sovereign Ukraine during the First World War also contributed to all of this. In the end, just like in the 17–18th centuries, the development of the Ukrainian nation from 1921 again took place in the bonds of two states: within the Soviet Union and in the reborn Poland. The civil war finally confirmed the federal character of Ukraine, but in the end, in a “Soviet-style”.

Abstract Obsessed by statistical indicators of economic growth and unabashed in its disregard for the legal protections normally accorded people living in modern society, Stalin’s dictatorship emerged during the period when the United States withheld recognition from the USSR (1917-1933). These were the years of Soviet phantas-magoria. Cruelties inflicted on the peasantry by White and Red armies, policies of terror practiced by both sides in the civil war, levies on food in the years of War Communism, and epidemics of disease and famine in the early 1920s caused millions of fatalities and crippled the economy. To secure the population a respite and to pump up production (which by 1921 was a fraction of its pre-1914 level), Lenin inaugurated the New Economic Policy (NEP). It allowed for a modest system of private enterprise and spearheaded national recovery by 1926.>Communist party control of politics and the destruction to human values and lives caused by Felix Dzerzhinsky’s ubiquitous security police did not diminish, however. In the struggle for succession following Lenin’s death in January 1924, Stalin defeated by turns his rivals on the left (Trotsky), within the “new opposition” (Leo Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev), and on the right (Nicholas Bukharin and Alexis Rykov). Such as it was, the NEP respite was (in effect) repealed by Stalin at the All Union Congress of the Communist party in December 1927. There followed the explosion of the First Five-Year Plan. The rapid industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, and decision to “squeeze” the countryside’s wealth to pay for machinery and foreign technology amounted to an attack by Stalin’s government on the population. This massive but lopsided contest between coercive state power and its subjects resulted in countless more fatalities and led to the incarceration, exile, and forced labor of millions of men and women.

Revolutionary events in Russia in 1917 led to a break in the relations between the Kingdom of Serbia and Russia. The diplomatic initiatives started immediately after the end of the First World War coincided with the aspirations of the Yugoslav kingdom to normalize relations with the largest and most important Slavic country and the eff orts of the revolutionary authorities of Russia to get out of their isolation and fight for their place in the international community. Although both sides shared the belief that there were no real political obstacles, this step was not taken. The reasons for such behaviour of the Yugoslav government and diplomacy were numerous. On the one hand, ideological rivalry and exclusivity, and on the other, observing the other side through the lens of ideological prejudices, led to the distancing of two extremely close political, military and economic areas. The Soviet determination for a world revolution, the demolition of the existing and the construction of a new social order clashed with the Yugoslav persistence in preserving the existing state. Negotiations on mutual recognition and the establishment of diplomatic relations, which were initiated several times, faced insurmountable difficulties, often related to the very set of international circumstances in which the Yugoslav-Soviet rapprochement would certainly threaten the fragile Yugoslav position and disturb its relations with its traditional allies. Although official recognition did not occur, it was carried out in practice through a series of public and secret bilateral contacts and the joint signing of a series of multilateral acts.

This chapter provides an overview of the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, from the time of its creation as a result of the 1917 Russian Revolution, to its dissolution in 1991. The major emphasis is on economic conditions, with political and social conditions as background. The chapter then discusses The Commonwealth of Independent States, the alliance that included most of the 15 former Soviet republics that became independent countries. Developments in Russia, the largest both geographically and demographically, as well as the most powerful of the CIS countries, are the major focus from 1991 to 2017.

This chapter reviews the nature of the Russian polity in the early modern period and the nature and function of political thought within that polity. It looks at interpretations of the early modern period that became the subject of government supervision following the 1917 Revolution, which had the effect of imposing a crude Marxist framework on interpretations of Muscovite history and Muscovite political thought. It also cites texts on political subjects that were seen as products of a class war, chiefly between proponents of the centralizing government and supporters of a conservative boyar opposition. The chapter talks about historians in the West that oppose the formerly dominant image of an all-powerful government commanding a powerless, supine society. It analyses the cultural context for political thinking in Muscovy that was neglected by political necessity in the Soviet Union.

This essay analyses the distinctive effects of Marxist-Leninist ideology and Communist practice on states ruled by Communist parties and states with non-Communist or ‘bourgeois’ regimes. Communist regimes assert that they are historically destined to triumph over ‘capitalist’ and ‘imperialist’ governments. From 1917 to 1944, the Soviet Union was the sole Communist-governed state. Since 1944 there have been multiple Communist-ruled states. Such states generally have formal state-to-state relations in addition to Communist party-to-party relations. Non-Communist-ruled states may have oppositional relations with domestic and foreign Communist parties as well as formal relations with the foreign ministries of Communist-led states. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union has claimed that its decisions bind all Communist parties, but it has also accepted the primacy of a global gathering of Communist parties. Disputes among Communist parties over doctrine and interests that are theoretically congruent raise questions about the coherence of the ideology. Forming a Communist world-state to suppress national rivalries could offer a solution, but at the cost of abandoning national state sovereignties and the autonomy of specific Communist parties.