Concentrating on the formative years of the Cold War from 1943 to 1957, Patryk Babiracki reveals little-known Soviet efforts to build a postwar East European empire through culture. Babiracki argues ...that the Soviets involved in foreign cultural outreach tried to use "soft power" in order to galvanize broad support for the postwar order in the emerging Soviet bloc. Populated with compelling characters ranging from artists, writers, journalists, and scientists to party and government functionaries, this work illuminates the behind-the-scenes schemes of the Stalinist international propaganda machine. Based on exhaustive research in Russian and Polish archives, Babiracki's study is the first in any language to examine the two-way interactions between Soviet and Polish propagandists and to evaluate their attempts at cultural cooperation. Babiracki shows that the Stalinist system ultimately undermined Soviet efforts to secure popular legitimacy abroad through persuasive propaganda. He also highlights the limitations and contradictions of Soviet international cultural outreach, which help explain why the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe crumbled so easily after less than a half-century of existence.
Other Bandungs LEWIS, SU LIN; STOLTE, CAROLIEN
Journal of world history,
06/2019, Letnik:
30, Številka:
1/2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This essay introduces a special issue focused on “Other Bandungs,” which moves away from the focus on the high diplomacy of the 1955 Bandung conference to examine other conferences and gatherings ...across the Afro-Asian world. These gatherings speak to a broader participation of activists, intellectuals, cultural figures, and political leaders in the Afro-Asian moment. This collection thus disrupts hard divisions between state and non-state and warring Cold War blocs, while pointing to the changing social dynamics of internationalism in the Afro-Asian world. This essay points to the material dimensions enhancing and undermining transnational activity, from air travel and passport restrictions to the political economy of conference financing and Cold War patronage. Taken together, this essay frames these articles as an interconnected story of the multiple pulls of cultural and intellectual traffic in the post-colonial era.
Money did not become obsolete under Communism. The ruble remained a key feature of Soviet life. After World War II, money became an essential tool of the Soviet government. A strong ruble represented ...the nation's promise of future prosperity, but its failure to deliver improved purchasing power undermined popular confidence in Communism.
An essential exploration of how authoritarian regimes
operate at the local level How do local leaders govern in
a large dictatorship? What resources do they draw on? Yoram
Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk ...examine these questions by looking at
one of the most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth
century. Starting in the early years after the Second World War and
taking the story through to the 1970s, they chart the strategies of
Soviet regional leaders, paying particular attention to the forging
and evolution of local trust networks.
Between Stalin's death in 1953 and 1960, the government of the Soviet Union released hundreds of thousands of prisoners from the Gulag as part of a wide-ranging effort to reverse the worst excesses ...and abuses of the previous two decades and revive the spirit of the revolution. This exodus included not only victims of past purges but also those sentenced for criminal offenses.
InKhrushchev's Cold Summer, Miriam Dobson explores the impact of these returnees on communities and, more broadly, Soviet attempts to come to terms with the traumatic legacies of Stalin's terror. Confusion and disorientation undermined the regime's efforts at recovery. In the wake of Stalin's death, ordinary citizens and political leaders alike struggled to make sense of the country's recent bloody past and to cope with the complex social dynamics caused by attempts to reintegrate the large influx of returning prisoners, a number of whom were hardened criminals alienated and embittered by their experiences within the brutal camp system.
Drawing on private letters as well as official reports on the party and popular mood, Dobson probes social attitudes toward the changes occurring in the first post-Stalin decade. Throughout, she features personal stories as articulated in the words of ordinary citizens, prisoners, and former prisoners. At the same time, she explores Soviet society's contradictory responses to the returnees and shows that for many the immediate post-Stalin years were anything but a breath of spring air after the long Stalinist winter.
Cuba Was Different explores Cuban Communist Party (PCC) views following the collapse of Eastern European and Soviet socialism through the lens of the official daily newspaper Granma (1989-1992) and ...interviews conducted later with Cuban PCC members who reflected back on that momentous period.
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