The Russian Revolution at 100: the Soviet experience in the mirror of permanent counterrevolution

Abstract

The Russian Revolution is analysed in this paper in the context of a conjuncture dominated by counterrevolution. Beginning with the repression of the 1850s, a process of permanent counterrevolution has become the over-determining trend of social-political history. The Russian Revolution was subject to several distinct aspects of this process. First was external counterrevolution, the attack on it from the outside. Whilst Anglo-America was the main bulwark organising it, the Nazi/fascist counterrevolution and invasion of the USSR was an example of counterrevolution that ran out of control and ended in a defeat in Europe that was only overcome through a long and risky Cold War. Internal counterrevolution affected the Russian Revolution as part of a longer process of adjusting socialist theory to successive defeats. In the Soviet case, Socialism in One Country was the decisive mutation in this respect and must be viewed as the decisive component of the triumph of counterrevolution. After the war, Anglo-America adjusted the counterrevolutionary strategy to surgical excisions of socialist tendencies until the USSR, isolated and ideologically exhausted, collapsed. Even so, several of its legacies continue to be relevant, notably the nationality policy and internationalism. Also, today’s information revolution casts a new light on the Soviet planning experience that must be studied now that capitalism is slipping into a systemic crisis.     

The More the Merrier? Hungarian and Romany Minorities in Slovakia

This article discusses some important aspects of thetreatment of minorities in the Republic of Slovakia.It discusses the 1992 Constitution and subsequentdevelopments such as the State language law 1995, therestriction of political rights of Hungarians,educational policies, the setback of EU entry talks,the September 1998 general elections, the Dzurindagovernment's ``De-Meciarization', the 1999 MinorityLanguage Law, and recent electoral legislation. Thespecial condition of the Romany is considered. Theeffectiveness of international mechanisms for theprotection of minority rights (the Organisation forSecurity and Cooperation in Europe, the InternationalCovenant for Civil and Political Rights, the EuropeanConvention of Human Rights, the Framework Conventionfor the Protection of National Minorities) isassessed, as is the involvement of the EU. Finally,the role of the judiciary is reflected upon.     

乡村社会研究的难题与话语群的观察对策

话语群理论是在传统的乡村研究理论遇到一系列难题之后应运而生的,是对我国乡村研究中的长期模式,即关于乡村社会"传统—现代"的二元分割结构认知模式的突破,也是基于西方语言学方法遇到自身困惑,即语境建构出现泛滥趋势的基础之上提出来的。     

列宁帝国主义思想及国外学术界最新发展

列宁帝国主义思想是马克思学者关于资本主义研究的重要成果,具有开创性意义。随着资本主义经济社会发展变化,国外学者对列宁帝国主义思想作了补充性研究。列宁帝国主义思想诞生虽已经有近百年历史,但仍然具有较强的现实意义。帝国主义的本质特征和基本矛盾并没有发生改变,但社会主义取代资本主义采取的方式可能会出现多样化,并不仅限于暴力革命。     

语言权利产生的背景及其法定化

语言具有原生的多样性和平等性,其维系着公共生活的有序运作,同时又对于个体具有身份构建和文化认同的意义。近代以来,政治权力介入语言领域,语言权利是民族国家共同语的政治构建与反构建过程的副产品。国家对官方语言的选择和对少数民族语言地位的安排是语言权利研究的重点。由此,在不同的时期也引发了关于个体语言权利与集体语言权利、自由主义与认同政治、语言公正与语言生态等相关问题的讨论和争议。     

African Union and Intra-State Conflict Resolution: A Return to the Libyan Crisis (2011)

This paper looked at the performance of the African Union (AU), in the resolution of intrastate conflicts in Africa. The study necessitated a revisit to the Libyan crisis. It is acknowledged in the study that conflicts pervade human relations. In the case of Africa, the study further shows that Africa has never experienced a lasting peace. The theoretical framework of games theory has been adopted in the study, to describe the character of African conflicts and to proffer solutions for the minimization of the level and number of such intrastate conflicts. The Libyan conflict typified the character of intrastate conflicts in Africa and was used for illustration in the study. The study concluded that the AU has made significant contributions toward the resolution of intrastate conflicts in Africa but there are still shortcomings of the AU and impediments to the efforts of the African Union, toward the resolution of such crises.     

When Art and Commerce Collide: Colorization and the Moral Right

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the dominant framework that drives US public diplomacy initiatives and insists that, short of major structural changes, US public diplomacy lacks ethical legitimacy. Based on a review of past US public diplomacy practices, the article finds that these efforts were mainly characterized by a one-way flow of information and an emphasis on image management. Using the theories of hegemony, American exceptionalism, Orientalism, and cultural imperialism, the author lays a theoretical framework for analyzing public diplomacy. The author suggests that, for public diplomacy to move beyond propaganda, it needs to incorporate two-way communication and symmetry.     

Marie Corelli's British new woman: A threat to empire?

At the height of the British Empire, England was in the midst of major social, economic and moral upheaval. The roles and status of middle-class women were particularly affected by many of these changes. In turn, as the gap between idealism and ‘reality’ grew, the validity or usefulness of Victorian notions or ideals of womanhood increasingly came under attack. Arising from this commotion was the figure of the late Victorian and Edwardian ‘New Woman.’ Her appearance provoked further confusion and ambiguity about gender that had repercussions for empire. This paper addresses the way in which the role of English women in sustaining the British Empire intensified the social pressures on them in the metropole. It examines the threat to nation and empire represented by the New Woman by looking at how she was presented to the rapidly growing general reading public at the end of the nineteenth- and beginning of the twentieth century. This is achieved by looking at the bestselling novels of Marie Corelli, a phenomenally popular turn-of-the-century author. Corelli's novels repeatedly affirm that the New Woman represented the threat of ‘modernity,’ that she was a danger to ‘civilisation’ and therefore to British imperialism.     

性别·叙事性·语言学视角:露斯·佩奇的女性主义叙事理论评析

20世纪90年代以降,以北美为主导的女性主义叙事学得到了长足的发展,无论是在叙事理论建构还是在叙事批评实践上均取得了引人瞩目的成果.本文主要从性别、叙事性、研究方法以及研究课题等层面出发,评析英国学者露斯·佩奇的女性主义叙事理论.文章指出,一方面,佩奇采用文学与语言学的双重视角,对女性主义叙事学的发展做出了重要贡献;但另一方面,佩奇关于叙事形式可以脱离性别的论点又偏离了女性主义叙事学研究的主流.     

Nyerere's Road to Socialism

The privatisation of Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC) was an important part of Ghana’s neo-liberal reforms. Privatisation is explicitly intended to alter the balance of power between the public and private sector, and the process revealed much about the relationship between the state and the country’s business community. A close examination of the process confirms widely-held perceptions of the Rawlings government and its reform process as highly state-driven and subject to the personal idiosyncrasies of the country’s president. By contrast, Kufuor’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) demonstrated a less equivocal commitment to boosting the role of the private sector in the economy and employed a more routinely institutionalised set of interactions. While the outcome of these processes was sometimes counterintuitive, overall the privatization of AGC is likely to have shifted power out of the hands of the state and into the hands of an international set of shareholders.