History Commons^™

Glasnost, Perestroika And Big Mac's: The Significance Of Mcdonald's In The Changing Face Of The Ussr, Theresa Bartholomew

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Early on the morning of 30 January 1990, George Cohon, president of McDonald'sCanada, left his hotel room and drove to Pushkin Square in Moscow. Nervous about the international press that would be covering the opening of the first McDonald's in this nation and anxious to make the opening perfect, he arrived to see the streets empty in front of the fast-food restaurant except for a lone policeman. Wondering where the anticipated crowds of Muscovites were, Cohon approached the officer, concerned by the apparent lack of interest in the first McDonald's opening in the Soviet Union. After a short conversation with …

The Time Of Troubles Causation, Class Warfare, And Conflicting Interpretations, Jeffrey S. Hardy

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The end of a dynasty in medieval or early modern Europe was often followed by a calamitous period of conspiracy and revolt, intrigue and bloodshed. Such was the case in Russia from 1598 to 1613, the period later called the Time of Troubles. Few epochs still weigh on the collective conscience of the Russian people as does the Time of Troubles. Fears associated with this period remain to this day, as evidenced by the frequent references to it after the fall of the Soviet regime. But the Time of Troubles has not always been well understood. The chroniclers and revisionists …

Early Russian-Chinese Relations, Dean William Bennett

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In February. 1654, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich Romanov dispatched a friendly, if rather pompous, letter on its way across the vast steppes of Siberia and Mongolia to the emperor of China, Shun-chih. In this letter he lamented that the rulers of the two realms had never before established any official contact between themselves, and he expressed a fond hope that the tsar and the emperor might live thenceforth "in friendship, love, and communication." The prospects should have been alluring, promising trade and wealth for both states, and also frequent exchanges of embassies. But less than three years later, the leader of …

Edvard Benes And His Policy To Expel Czechoslovakian Germans, Travis Mueller

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

At the end of World War II, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and the Czechoslovak Republic expelled fifteen million Germans from their homelands in Eastern and Central Europe. During the eviction to the occupied zones of Germany, two million Germans perished.1 Often brutally mistreated, these Germans suffered the wrath of a great European backlash against the Nazis. Nowhere was the expulsion more brutal than in the Czechoslovak Republic. The two nations' shared border and intertwined history made the expulsion of over three million Germans mainly from the Sudetenland-particularly severe.

​​​​From Repression To Appropriation: Soviet Religious Policy And Reform, 1917-1943, Andriy Dyachenko

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyses the dynamics of religious reform in the USSR from 1917 to 1943. It argues that the early Bolshevik policy of persecution was increasingly substituted by state co-optation. This dynamic was shaped primarily by Stalinist concerns with state security and problems of ideology.

Yolkkh: The Story Of My People, Amna Zelimkha Yandarbin

Theses and Dissertations

The name of my project is: Yolkkh, The Story of My People. With this project I present a series of scarves each one bearing an illustrated scene in order to tell a story – my story and the story of the Noxci people. Noxci are the people who are referred to as “Chechens” by Russians and are generally known by that title. As a Muslim, I have witnessed the way Western media tend to dehumanize my community. In order to contrast this dehumanizing process, I thought that telling the story of my family would help reverse Islamophobic tendencies and raise …

Creating An Indigenous Multicultural Faith: The Russian Orthodox Mission In Alaska And The Centrality Of Cosmology, Niklaus Von Houck

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper applies letters, journals, history interviews, government-company contracts, international treaties, theological works, and images to examine the convergence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Alaskan Indigenous shamanism cultures to explicate the harmonizing of an Indigenous multicultural Christian faith in nineteenth-century Russian Alaska. Central to this examination is the evaluation of effects of Orthodox Christian missiology on native Alaskans and the Indigenous religio-cultural response to Russian missionaries. Not merely a historical overview of contact between natives and missionaries in Russian Alaska, this paper harmonizes the commonality of cosmology between native Alaskan shamanism and Orthodox Christianity. It analyzes the impacts of comparatively …

Katja, Ketevahi 'Katje', Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Ketevahi “Katja” is from Georgia. She’s in her late 40’s. She grew up on a farm in the country and became the financial support for her family after her mother died and her father became “emaciated.” When Putin came to power, diplomatic ties deteriorated between Georgia and Russia, which eventually led to war. She fled her country using forged documents and first worked in Turkey but has now lived in Naples for nine years and regularly sends money home to her brother, who cares for their father.

Katja expresses her feelings about war, government, liberty, and what it means to …

The Russian Mission: Seventh-Day Adventism, Bolshevism, And The Imminent Apocalypse, 1881 - 1946, Garett B. Tree

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The first Adventist missionaries made their way into Russia in the late 1880’s, where they experienced imprisonment, exile, and sometimes both. The scope of my thesis concerns the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and how Adventist missionaries and leaders endeavored on the Russian Mission. Using the writings, letters, and correspondence of these missionaries, as well as the myriad Adventist periodicals, I explain and analyze the evolution of the Mission from its inception to the end of the Second World War. In what ways did Adventist missionaries or Adventist media outlets abroad understand, explain, or justify the Russian Mission and its hardships? What …

The Wolf Attacks: A History Of The Russo-Chechen Conflict, Christina E. Baxter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Chechens fought against the Russians for independence. The focus in the literature available has been on the wars and the atrocities caused by the wars. The literature then hypothesizes that the insurgency of today is just a continuation of the past. They do not focus on a major event in Chechen history: the Soviet liquidation of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1944. It is this author’s assertion that the liquidation of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR forever changed the mindset of the people because it fractured a society that was once unified. This …

The Spoils Of War, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

The Light Of The Ancestors (By Idris Bazorkin), Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

"Light of the Ancestors" is excerpted from the Ingush writer Idris Bazorkin's novel, Dark Ages.

Behind The Wall Of The Caucasus, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 42, No. 3, Margaret Clark Reynolds, Mary Lou Robson Fleming, Lee C. Hopple

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Assimilation and Acculturation in a Pennsylvania-German Landscape: The Nisley Family and its Architecture in the Lower Swatara Creek Basin
• Charles-Alexandre Lesueur of Paris, Philadelphia, and New Harmony, Indiana
• Religious-Geographical History of the Hutterian Brethren in Europe and Russia, 1523-1879