Determinants of Happiness in Japan and the Netherlands: Macro and Micro Analysis and Comparison

It is often said that the Japanese happiness is lower than that of Europeans. However, sufficient discussion has yet to take place with consideration of differences in social forms as a background factor. In this study, therefore, by leveraging comparative international surveys, we empirically study and compare the factors that affect happiness in Japan and in the Netherlands, a country which has a higher happiness level than other European countries, from both macro (country level) and micro (individual level) perspectives.

This paper focuses on life evaluation as happiness. It was confirmed through the results of our macro analysis that social support (i.e., having relatives or friends you can count on to help you when you are in trouble) is the factor that significantly improves the level of life evaluation both in Japan and the Netherlands compared to other countries. In addition, change of the logarithmic value of GDP per capita in Japan is negative and statistically significant, which coincides with the Easterlin Paradox claim that more income does not bring greater happiness. On the other hand, we were unable to confirm the Easterlin Paradox in the Netherlands, in which change of the logarithmic value of GDP per capita is positive, though not statistically significant. Furthermore, our longitudinal data analysis in this paper also revealed that healthy life expectancy and generosity are insignificant, although their significance has been claimed in earlier studies (e.g. Helliwell et al, 2017).

Although our macro analysis found social support is important both for Japanese and Dutch happiness on average, the results of our micro analysis have revealed different views and structure of society; the Netherlands is a welfare society in which the public sector and the citizens support each other, and Japan is a welfare society which is based on support provided by community including families and the local area. In other words, the Netherlands showed greater trust on others in general (general trust) than Japan, and Japan showed greater trust on families (family trust) than the Netherlands, a factor that had an influence on happiness levels of individuals in the respective countries. That is, while the Netherlands’ vision of a welfare society is based on “individuals and the public,” under which the independent citizens take the initiative in supporting each other, Japan’s vision of welfare society is based on “community,” under which families have a duty to support each other. In Japan, where freedom of choice is more limited than in the Netherlands, people who have more freedom of choice were found to be happier.

In order to improve happiness in both countries, we need to strengthen social support based on their respectively unique visions of welfare society rather than resorting to income-boosting economic policies. In doing so, the key for Japan would be whether or not the system can be reformed in such a way as to allow freedom of choice to individuals.     

Shifts in religiosity in the face of Soviet type urbanization: the case of Lithuania

This article focuses on shifts in religious life triggered by the processes of Soviet urbanization in Lithuania, a country with a strong agricultural character. Based on an analysis of diverse sources, it explores the turning point of contemporary religious history in Lithuania during the1960s, which was connected primarily with the massive displacement of people meant to transform the traditional way of life in the Lithuanian countryside. The article argues that the main result of this displacement was not so much the collapse of religious life, as was intended by the Soviet authorities, but rather the dislocation of its center from the countryside to the cities.     

Endurance of the Soviet imperial tongue: the Russian language in contemporary Georgia

This article will examine the role of the Russian language on the periphery of the post-Soviet space by using multiple sources of data, including original matched-guise experiments, to examine the language situation in contemporary Georgia. This is one of the former Soviet republics in which the use of the titular language was most intensively institutionalized and that most ardently resisted Russification, and one that today for various reasons is most eager to escape the legacy of its Soviet past and to embed itself in the global community. In Georgia the cultural and political influence of the former imperial centre has been greatly reduced, and Russian has been challenged in functional roles by the new international lingua franca of English. The direction that the Russian language takes in a place like Georgia may be a useful bellwether for such transformations elsewhere in the post-Soviet periphery.     

Gorbachev at Two Years: Perspectives on Economic Reforms

This article examines how the Putin leadership, inspired by the example of Yuriy Andropov, has carried out a comprehensive "sovietization" of the Russian political system by systematically eliminating all alternative sources of power (governors, competitive elections, the media, and private business). Drawing on legislation, the press, and data about the backgrounds and career paths of the post-Soviet elite, the central institutions are compared with their Soviet predecessors and the implementation of this strategy is examined. The roles of military, security and other backgrounds are analyzed. The degree of influence likely to be wielded by the siloviki is also considered.     

帝国研究视角下的苏联解体研究

苏联的建立与演进,似乎都与"帝国"有复杂的关联性。其前身——俄罗斯帝国是典型的陆上帝国。苏联成立后坚持反帝立场,但之后逐渐演变成为一个"社会帝国主义"国家。其标志就是形成了核心—边缘的帝国结构体系,以苏联统治中枢莫斯科及俄罗斯为核心,向外形成了三层边缘地带,其中第一层是苏联的加盟共和国,第二层是中东欧华约成员国,第三层是在亚洲和美洲的经互会成员国。苏联解体实际上是"帝国终结"历史的一个组成部分,是一次迟来的非殖民化,也是人类历史发展的自然进程。这方面的具体原因至少有以下三个:其一,苏联领导人对当时局势的认识及判断和采取的对策及政策;其二,边缘地区民族主义产生了重要的动员和发动作用;最后,"帝国的负担"成为难以承受的现实负担。     

The Politics of Citizenship Policy in Post-Soviet Russia

Russian citizenship policy has evolved in puzzling ways from the 1990s, when all former Soviet citizens were entitled to simplified access to Russian citizenship, to the 2002 citizenship law, which put an abrupt end to this policy, giving few but those born on the territory of Russia the right to citizenship. Since 2002, the right to Russian citizenship has been extended to some additional categories of former Soviet citizens, but without a return to the expansive policy of the 1990s. Drawing on legal and governmental sources and the scholarly literature, this article looks at elite debates over citizenship rules to analyze Russian citizenship politics and policies, focusing on citizenship rules affecting former Soviet citizens. These are examined to uncover the causes of legislative zigzags and ascertain the applicability of existing citizenship theories to Russian realities.     

Religious change in Estonia and the Baltic states during the Soviet period in comparative perspective

Abstract

The article presents a comparative-historical treatment of the change in the religious life of Estonia from 1940 to 1991, when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union. The article is based largely on documents of the archive of the Estonian commissioner of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults of the Soviet Union, documents which were not available to researchers before the collapse of the USSR. Religious change in Estonia has been compared to what happened in the neighbouring Baltic countries. The archival data shows an extraordinary decline of institutionalised religion in Estonia during the Soviet period (especially in the Lutheran and Orthodox Churches). Compared to the other republics of the Soviet Union (especially Catholic Lithuania), this fall was particularly drastic in “Lutheran” Estonia and Latvia. Also, some comparisons are made between Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the rest of Europe, in order to test the author's hypothesis that by the end of the Soviet occupation, Estonian society was among the most highly secularised ones in Europe (or possibly the most secularised).     

The Most Recent Input-Output Table: A Milestone in Soviet Statistics

The paper reproduces the 18 × 18 sector Soviet input-output table for 1988 which became available in the West in April 1990, but has not been published in the USSR. The layout (quadrants) and selected elements of the table are described and briefly analyzed. Because the hitherto unavailable statistics facilitate the analysts of a variety of critical issues such as the price reform, defense expenditures, and private incomes and taxation, the input-output table is regarded as an important contribution as well as a milestone in the gradual process of releasing economic data in accordance with the policies of glasnost'. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 027, 052, 222.     

Soviet policy toward the two Koreas, 1985–1991: The new political thinking and power

This research explores the evolution of the Soviet Union’s Korea policy between 1985 and 1991, focusing on the correlation between Gorbachev’s shifting power position within the Soviet leadership and the development of the Soviet Union’s new policy toward the two Koreas. Soviet leaders utilized policy issues (foreign and domestic) to mobilize support in their internal power struggle. Conversely, they needed to establish a firm power base before launching new policies. Thus, power and policy in the Soviet political system often enjoyed a mutually reinforcing relationship, and foreign policy issues became entangled in the domestic political process. As Gorbachev’s power position improved and his reform policy (new political thinking) was refined, Soviet policy toward the two Koreas correspondingly evolved in three phases: (1) Gorbachev rising: the formulation of the new political thinking (March 1985–summer 1988); (2) Gorbachev ascendant: the implementation of new political thinking (fall 1988–summer 1990); and (3) Gorbachev in decline: the continuing momentum of the new policy (fall 1990–December 1991). In late 1990–1991, Soviet Korea policy was characterized by an undisguised tilt toward Seoul. Nevertheless, the Soviets did not consider Soviet relations with the two Koreas to be a zero-sum game. Moscow sought to establish a balanced relationship with both Pyongyang and Seoul, and hoped to play an active role in peace and security on the Korean peninsula.     

Endorsing Annexation? The Whitlam Government's De Jure Recognition of the Soviet Baltic States

In August 1974, the Australian Labor Party Government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam announced it had recognised the incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union de jure. Historical writing around this diplomatic recognition is scarce and sheds little light on why the policy was enacted. Using previously unavailable archival evidence, as well as other sources including testimony from Government and public service workers, this article demonstrates that the recognition was induced primarily by Whitlam, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and Sir James Plimsoll, Australia's ambassador to the Soviet Union. These actors were motivated by varying considerations. These included an adherence to realist foreign policy principles, concerns regarding Australian–Soviet bi-lateral relations, convictions around the legitimacy of Baltic self-determination, and ethnic prejudice against Australians of Baltic descent.     

Russian Archival Sources for the Study of the Iranian Communist Party: The Pre-Tudeh Years, 1917-1942

In recent decades, the field of history of Communism in Iran has been enriched by a number of studies that deal with different aspects of the subject. Still some core aspects, such as the role of the Comintern in the Iranian Communist movement, remain largely understudied. This could be partly explained by the inaccessibility of archival documents during the Soviet era. Yet, despite the opening of many former Soviet archives after 1991, access to certain archives still presents great difficulties. In the framework of a research conducted in Russian archives, an inventory has been located in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial'no-Politicheskoi Istorii / RGASPI) in Moscow. The inventory originates from the Comintern’s archive and consists of a large number of files and documents in various languages (primarily Russian, but also Persian and Azerbaijani) relevant to Communist activities in Iran. Given the importance of this inventory to the study of Communism in Iran, Iran-USSR relations and the extent of Soviet involvement in Iran in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods, we decided to translate and annotate it and to provide an introductory discussion of the highlights of Communist activity in Iran between the years 1917 and 1942.     

Emptying lakes,filling up seas: hydroelectric dams and the ambivalences of development in late Soviet Central Asia

ABSTRACT

In the late Soviet Union, large-scale projects such as the Toktogul Dam in the Kyrgyz Soviet Republic were promoted as emblems of the Soviet model of development in Asia. While Central Asian politicians and intellectuals usually tuned in to the enthusiasm, the construction also revealed different opinions about the precise direction and goals of Soviet development. Large-scale investments became focal points of political and intellectual debates; they not only helped bind the periphery closer to the Soviet centre, but also revealed the different economic, political and cultural priorities of the regional, republican and union-wide actors. The construction of dams and reservoirs eventually triggered conflicts between the republics and laid the foundation for an anti-colonial critique of the late Soviet state.     

Population Politics in Vilnius 1944-1947: A Case Study of Socialist-Sponsored Ethnic Cleansing

A historian examines a specific case of ethnic cleansing in the immediate aftermath of World War II: the "repatriation" of Poles from the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic between 1944 and 1947. Questions of how "repatriation" was carried out, the motivation on the Polish and Soviet sides, the differences in outcome of this policy in Vilnius and the countryside, and why "repatriation" presents a case of ethnic cleansing are considered on the basis on archival material as well as newspapers, memoirs, and historians' accounts of this case and in the context of the literature on genocide and ethnic cleansing.     

Red army swords and free market ploughshares

This article reviews the record of military reform, demobilization, and conversion in the Chinese and Soviet militaries. As the Chinese experience has been relatively successful and the two states have similar military systems, lessons are drawn from the Chinese experience and applied to the current debate on the progress of military reform in the Soviet Union. The Chinese military reform model is offered as an alternative that could satisfy the demands of Soviet liberals, predisposed to an American model, as well as Soviet centralists, predisposed to a praetorian model.     

The Estonian Economy Under Soviet Rule: A Historiographic Overview

In order to evaluate our current knowledge of some aspects of the Estonian economy under Soviet rule, this historiographic article reviews a number of available treatments, divided into three subgroups (works by authors in Soviet Estonia, publications by Estonians in exile and recent studies). The article demonstrates that different and contradictory interpretations of the economic development of the ESSR can be found. The author concludes that more detailed estimates of the living standard and economic growth during the Soviet years, which would be the basis of economic history writing, have yet to be established.     

Why did We Get the End of the Cold War Wrong?

In many important ways the history of modern international relations (IR) begins at the point when the international order collapses in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Indeed, the withering of communism in Central and Eastern Europe followed by the break–up of the USSR two years later, posed what many in the field saw then (and continue to regard now) as a series of problems to which the hitherto dominant paradigm in IR—realism—had no ready or easy answers. This article neither seeks to defend nor criticize realism. Rather it shifts the debate about the end of the cold war—and why most experts failed to anticipate it—away from the field of IR to the more specific study undertaken in the West of the Soviet system. It goes on to argue that the source of so much academic embarrassment may be better explained not through a rehearsal of realism's supposed flaws as an international theory, but rather through a detailed examination of the different ways that different writers understood, or more precisely failed to understand, the operation of the Soviet system itself. The conclusion reached is that few analysts could have predicted what happened between 1989 and 1991. In fact, as the article seeks to show, their often complicated and diverse theories about the USSR as the living alternative to market capitalism led most of them (with one or two notable exceptions) to the conclusion that whatever problems faced the Soviet Union as a power in the 1980s, the system as such was likely to endure.     

Poland and Hungary, 1956: A Comparative Essay Based on New Archival Findings

Why did the Soviet Union intervene in Hungary in 1956 but not in Poland? This article reviews the “historical thesis”, “personality thesis”, and “neutrality thesis”. It concludes that, while the new archival sources do not radically alter these three older theses, they do yield some insights. Wladyslaw Gomulka was perhaps less successful in deterring the Soviet leaders during the latter’s 19 October visit to Poland and less secure politically in his own country than originally thought. In addition, Imre Nagy may not have been as progressive, given his initial opposition to the very decisions for which he has gone down in history as having made.     

Soviet Repatriation Efforts among “Displaced Persons” Resettled in Australia, 1950–53

In the early 1950s, the Soviet Union made great efforts to persuade its former citizens among the “displaced persons” (DPs) resettled in Australia after the war to repatriate. They sent two undercover military intelligence men to Canberra to identify DPs who might be interested in returning, offer them free passages, and organize the repatriation. The result was a paltry dozen repatriations, out of the estimated 50,000 eligible DPs resettled in Australia. This strange story — hitherto completely unknown and reconstructed on the basis of recently opened Soviet classified material in the State Archive of the Russian Federation and ASIO files in the National Archives of Australia — adds a new angle to our understanding of Soviet‐Australian (and, in general, Soviet‐Western) relations at the height of the Cold War.     

Winning Friends,Influencing People: Soviet Cultural Diplomacy in Australia, 1928–1968

This article draws on largely unpublished archive materials to examine the strategies employed by the USSR to manage its cultural relations with Australia as a means of extending its influence beyond its traditional supporters in trade union and socialist movements. The activities of key players like the All‐Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies (SSOD) and the International Commission of the Union of Soviet Writers and their interaction with Australian organizations and individuals identified and cultivated as contacts of influence are reviewed in the context of the changing international situation and an often problematic bilateral political relationship.     

The Problem of Soviet Colonialism in the Baltics

This essay works through some of the necessary preliminary questions in thinking about Soviet colonialism in the Baltics. It opens by tracing the prehistory of critical thinking about Soviet colonialism in the 1960s and considers why the topic of Soviet colonialism has not (or not yet) become a dominant way to understand Soviet history. The central question posed by the article is whether one can speak about the Soviet invasions of the Baltic States as ‘colonization’. It proposes that, initially, communist Russia did not in fact seek to colonize the Baltic States and instead ‘occupied’ them; however, this initial period of occupation later developed into a period of a colonial rule.