Stalin's Great Terror and the Asian Nexus

Stalin's Great Terror of 1937–1938 did not stop at the Soviet borders: under Moscow's explicit instructions, it extended to Asia, particularly to the People's Republic of Mongolia and to Xinjiang or Chinese Turkestan. More people proportionately suffered from the Terror in Mongolia than in the Soviet Union. Stalin's terror operations in the Asiatic lands were implicitly directed against Japan, the main competitor for influence in the region.     

A Soviet West: nationhood,regionalism, and empire in the annexed western borderlands

This article considers the role the Soviet Union's western borderlands annexed during World War II played in the evolution of Soviet politics of empire. Using the Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine as case studies, it argues that Sovietization had a profound impact on these borderlands, integrating them into a larger Soviet polity. However, guerrilla warfare and Soviet policy-making indirectly led to these regions becoming perceived as more Western and nationalist than other parts of the Soviet Union. The Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine differed in their engagement with the Western capitalist world. Different experiences of World War II and late Stalinism and contacts with the West ultimately led to this region becoming Soviet, yet different from the rest of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet West was far from uniform, perceived differences between it and the rest of the Soviet Union justified claims at the end of the 1980s that the Soviet Union was an empire rather than a family of nations.     

Post-Cold War Vietnam: stay low,learn, adapt and try to have fun – but what about the party?†

The paper compares political ideas and acts in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev and in Communist Vietnam. It argues that the Gorbachev group, committed to progressive change, concluded that power granted to them by their position in the Soviet system needed to be eliminated, creating a ‘boot strap’ problem. To secure progressive change they had first to destroy their own power base. By contrast, the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) attempted, in the two decades after the emergence of a market economy in 1989–1991, to rule an increasingly open society through Soviet political institutions. By the late ‘noughties’ Vietnam faced a crisis of domestic sovereignty, with politics largely a matter of spoils, with policy largely irrelevant and unimplementable, and usually blocked by powerful interests. The paper argues that Hinsley's notion of the sovereignty issue makes this situation far easier to analyse. It argues that the Gorbachev group's analysis would have led to them predicting that the VCP's attempt to use Soviet institutions to rule over a globalising and increasingly open society with a market economy would lead to a crisis of political authority, and that they would have been correct. This leads to the counter-intuitive position that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was a success ? in that it managed to solve a serious political problem, i.e. how to create the preconditions for a political system suited to a market economy in a relatively open society – and the VCP a failure.     

An Alternative Internationalism: The Main Lines and Legacies of Polish Sovietology,Promethean Orientalism and the Soviet ‘Southern Borderlands’, 1926–1939

Abstract

‘Prometheism’ was an interwar movement of borderland nationalists from the former Russian Empire who envisioned the division of the Soviet Union into independent nation-states. This article argues that ideological affinities and diasporic connections made the Promethean cause an attractive ‘alternative internationalism’ to the Soviet system for exiled thinkers hailing from the so-called ‘southern borderlands’ of Crimea, the Caucasus, the Volga region and Central Asia. In the 1930s, Prometheism drew intellectuals from these regions to Poland, where the movement’s thinkers formulated ambitious visions of Eurasian liberation from Soviet power.     

核武器与冷战时期美国对苏联的政策

冷战时期,作为维护国家安全的重要工具,核武器在美国对苏联的政策中发挥了重要作用。美国政府不仅在战后初期坚持核保密政策,而且还多次利用核武器对苏联施加压力,以迫使其在政治上和外交上做出让步,并制定了一系列针对苏联的核作战计划。与此同时,为了保持对苏联的核优势地位,对苏联构成有效的威慑,美国政府不断加强核力量的建设,使得美苏之间的核军备竞赛愈演愈烈,并使双方走到了核战争的边缘,从而使得美苏决策者都认识到,限制核军备竞赛对双方至关重要,美苏关系也由此进入了相对缓和的时期。及至20世纪70年代,限制战略武器谈判成为美国对苏政策的重要内容。     

THE SPATIAL LEGACY OF INFORMAL EMPIRE: OIL,THE SOVIET UNION,AND THE CONTOURS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA'S FAR WEST

Abstract

Beginning in the 1930s, Soviet geologists, engineers, and economic planners began laying the infrastructure of informal empire in China's westernmost province of Xinjiang. Seeking to gain access to its rich petroleum wealth in particular, these Soviet state agents helped create a blueprint for state investment and development in Xinjiang that continues to resonate today. Confronting the substantial Soviet investment in the province and driven by a border policy intent on minimizing capital expenditures for distant peripheries, economic planners in the Republic of China and the People's Republic alike relied heavily on Soviet reports, technology, and infrastructure in their own economic development plans. In the end, the efforts of Chinese and Soviet planners, often working in collaboration, helped create an enduring pattern of state investment in Xinjiang. Focusing on oil extraction, processing, and transport operations in Xinjiang, this work reveals the long-term resonances of informal empire in Chinese border regions.     

'The red template': Us policy in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan

'The red template' examines the policies of the United States in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the context of the Cold War. The available documentation tends to support the thesis of this paper: that US policy in Afghanistan, consistent with US policy elsewhere both during and after the Cold War, is geared to protect US private power and thus US access to oil. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on 25 December 1979, the belief among US foreign policy-makers that the Soviet Union was finally embarking on their longtime mission of advancing upon the oil of the Persian Gulf and the warm water ports of the Arabian Sea was finally supported--a propaganda defeat for the Soviet Union. America's response--to finance and arm the most fundamental and dangerous Muslims that could be rounded up--is a decision that continues to shake the world. The possibilities of the resulting 'blowback'--in the form of well-documented terror and the not so well-known heroin trade--were ignored in the drive to support those who would struggle against Soviet-dominated communism. This paper details the cold calculus of US decision-makers and the negative effects on the people of Afghanistan and beyond. The rise of the Taliban can be directly attributed to this process and America's so-called 'War on Terrorism' is yet another harsh penalty the people of this war-ravaged country must accept at the hands of the world's sole remaining superpower.     

Anti-Russian and Anti-Soviet Subversion: The Caucasian–Japanese Nexus, 1904–1945

This article examines the little known history of political collaboration between Caucasian national groups and Japan directed against the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The collaboration, begun at the time of the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, resumed in the 1920s and continued through World War II. The Caucasian groups (Haidar Bammat's ‘Caucasus Group’ in particular) and Japan worked together to pursue their common goal of dismembering the Soviet Union. Their anti-Soviet subversion was real yet achieved few results in the face of extraordinary Soviet security. Nevertheless, Stalin took no chances and terrorised anyone suspected of any possible link to the subversive activity.     

Learning from your comrade’s mistakes: the impact of the Soviet past on China’s future

While the Soviet Union imploded in the midst of its attempt to reform itself, more than a decade later China stands as a testament to the resilience of Communist rule. I suggest that one reason China has been able to stave off a regime collapse is that Chinese leaders have sought to learn from the collapse of the Soviet Union and are seeking to adjust their policies to buttress their political power. I present evidence in support of this position including statements of political leaders and party insiders, internal government documents, and Chinese scholarship on the Soviet collapse.     

The Rise and Fall of Ethnoterritorial Federalism: A Comparison of the Soviet Union (Russia), China,and India

The early Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and independent India inherited vast territories and multi-ethnic populations from the preceding empires. Their maintenance was a political and administrative challenge. The Soviet Union devised an archetype of ethnoterritorial federalism, in which nationality groups were granted their own administrative territories and subnational governments. The PRC and India imitated this system selectively, aware of its dangerous centrifugal tendency. The collapse of the Soviet Union discredited ethnoterritorial federalism, but none of the three countries has since devised a new system of multinational integration to replace it.     

Oleg Tsarev's Synthetic KGB Gems

The Crown Jewels, published in Great Britain in 1998 and the United States in 1999, is Oleg Tsarev's second book drawn from KGB archives and written in cooperation with a Western author in this case, Nigel West.1 This important, complex book has much to offer historians, especially those inclined toward archeology, for Tsarev has skillfully choreographed his version of history to dance around the facts of some very well known intelligence and espionage cases. Consequently, he deposits another dense layer of evidence to sift, sort, and evaluate. But an assessment of Tsarev's volume also leads to three major points. Admittedly, two are glimpses of the blindingly obvious,'' restated here because these fundamentals become buried under media hype. First, that new historical evidence requires careful interpretation. Second, the secrets spies gather should be evaluated within the context of national and institutional policy formulation and implementation. Third, the notion of damage'' from Soviet espionage, has been exaggerated and misunderstood, and it is now time to investigate the impact of Soviet espionage upon national and international politics. And, most relevantly, Tsarev, a former lieutenant colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, also serves as a consultant to the Service's press department.     

Why did CPSU reform fail? The 28th Party Congress Reconsidered

This article considers the reasons for the failure to reform the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which was central to the Soviet collapse. Using a wide range of party and other archives, it challenges the conventional view that power was concentrated in the hands of a very conservative party apparat that was able to frustrate any attempt at reform. Focusing on the issue of party renewal at the 28th Party Congress of 1990, it argues that party reformers, including many party secretaries, made serious efforts to change a hierarchically organised vanguard party into a social democratic one at about this time. Their eventual failure was due more than anything else to the reformers' lack of an organised movement and Gorbachev's indecisiveness.     

Historical aspirations and the domestic politics of Russia's pursuit of international status

What determined Russia's national interests and grand strategy in the first decade after the Cold War? This article uses aspirational constructivism, which combines social psychology with constructivism, to answer this question. Central to aspirational constructivism are the roles that the past self and in-groups, and their perceived effectiveness play in the selection of a national identity and the definition of national interests. This article explains why Russian political elites settled on a statist national identity that focused on retaining Russia's historical status as a Western great power and hegemon in the former Soviet Union and in engaging the country in bounded status competition with the United States.     

Keeping Central Asia stable

Contrary to optimistic assessments on the stabilising impact of the US troop deployment in Central Asia, the long‐term prospects for regional stability are far from certain. The American entry into Central Asia has complicated the geostrategic dynamics of the region and engaged the three great powers and regional players in intense rivalry for influence and leverage. If there was ever a ‘Great Game’ at play in the post‐Soviet era, it is now. The convergence of the great powers on Central Asia was justified in terms of anti‐terrorism. The toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan may have secured its northern neighbours from an imminent threat, but the direct involvement of US forces in Central Asia is not likely to contribute to regional stability in the long run.     

Taiwan and the Soviet Union during the Cold War

Taking into account recently published evidence on Taiwan's relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, this article examines the official and secret contacts between Moscow and Taipei from 1949 to 1988. It argues that despite some consideration given to a possible cooperation, Cold War hostility suited Taiwan and the Soviet Union more than collaboration. Taipei resorted to the ‘Soviet card’ in the 1970s to hinder Sino–American rapprochement, but never abandoned anti-Sovietism as the foundation of its diplomacy. The Soviet Union, for its part, prioritized normalization of relations with China and avoided rapprochement with the ROC, which could have only further strained ties with the PRC and accelerated the formation of the Sino–US united front against Moscow.     

Poland's conception of European security and Russia

This article examines the problem of contemporary bilateral relations between Poland and Russia. Its thesis largely attributes the rivalry of these two states in Eastern Europe to conceptions relating to the balancing and bandwagoning of power. This rivalry can be put down to the fact that Polish-Russian relations are being developed within broader global processes such as Russia's relations with NATO, the USA and European Union. The greatest obstacle to the maintenance of mutually beneficial relations is the sensitive issue of security. In recent years Poland has consistently underlined its willingness to reinforce NATO's mutual defense mechanisms by supporting the organization's continued presence in Central-Eastern Europe. This issue has been compounded by Poland's striving to bring the countries of Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine) into closer affiliation with Western institutions favoring European integration, which is evidently perceived as interference in what is regarded by Moscow to be a sphere of Russian influence. This has provoked a number of serious crises in bilateral relations between Poland and Russia since the Euro-Maidan Revolution in Ukraine. Russian plans to install new (Iskander) missile systems close to the Polish border and Poland's effective attempts post-2014 to extend NATO presence within its own country testify to the scale of conflicts of interest between the two states and the lack of trust afforded by both sides. The issues highlighted in this paper are of great importance, since they not only enable the complexity of Central European issues to be more fully comprehended but also help to elucidate other global actors' conceptions relating to cooperation with Europe.     

Enforcing Stalinist Discipline in the Early Years of Post-war Reconstruction in the USSR, 1945–1948

A distinctive approach to disciplining the Soviet population emerged following the Terror of 1937–1938, and as a consequence of World War II, around the notion of socio-political and socio-economic ‘organisation’. The early post-war years as a consequence saw the introduction of innovative means of social disciplining in all areas of Soviet society. The infamous attack on the post-war intelligentsia, in particular, resulted from Stalin’s belief that only through the intelligentsia’s correct ‘leadership’ of this socio-economic ‘organisation’ would the Soviet Union be able to meet its challenges of reconstruction and superpower consolidation. This post-Terror and post-war phase in Stalinism marked a lasting turn, which consolidated the authoritarian socio-political dynamics evident in the later post-Stalin Soviet system.     

“Why not love our language and our culture?” National rights and citizenship in Khrushchev's Soviet Union

This paper highlights campaigns for national rights among two non-titular communities in the Soviet Union and places them in local historical contexts. Drawing on archival sources and oral history interviews, the author not only delves into the campaigns themselves, but also explores broader debates about the nature of Khrushchev's Thaw and Soviet citizenship, which was far from an empty concept in the Khrushchev era. Petitioners invoked discourses that indicate both an awareness of national rights and an expectation of the state's obligation to protect them. Oral history interviews with surviving petitioners and community members support the notion that petition language can serve as a reflection of how petitioners viewed their place in Soviet society and interpreted the Soviet citizen contract.     

Informal Institutions in Azerbaijan: Exploring the Intricacies of Tapsh

Research on informal aspects of the post-communist economy and political institutions has developed rapidly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While there is no lack in research on informal practices in Russia and other Eastern European countries, comprehensive empirical investigations of informality in peripheral regions of the former Soviet Union—such as the Caucasus and Central Asia—are still rare. This article aims to fill this gap by providing an evidence-based empirical account of informal practices in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Drawing its empirical data from a two-decade-long ethnographic participant observation carried out in various locales of Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, this study offers nuanced insights into the hitherto unexplored informal practice of tapsh.     

State and local finance in a command economy: the case of the soviet union

Two aspects of Western public finance, the economic theory of federalism and public choice theory, have insights that, if adopted in the Soviet Union, could help improve its resource allocation to permit economic growth, mitigate the problems it has with its minorities, and aid the transition away from a centralized, Communist-Party-dominated State and society. The economic reforms proposed by Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev are briefly summarized and criticized in the context of a summary discussion of governmental decisionmaking in the Soviet Union. Lessons are identified from the U.S. historical experience that suggest certain steps to improve local government as necessary preconditions for improving Soviet economic efficiency. These are free local elections, a free local press, an independent judiciary with real authority to protect the integrity of the press and local elections, real decentralization of political power to the regions, steps toward equalization of fiscal capacity among the regions, increased citizen mobility, and adoption of actions to provide incentives for Western investment in local government capital formation. This last precondition requires a convertible currency. (To achieve a convertable currency may require other economic and political changes that are beyond the scope of this paper.) Aspects of the paper rely on information publically available through mid-1989.