History Commons^™

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 Nixon Administration And American Foreign Relations, Luke A. Nichter

Presidential Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Assessments of President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy continue to evolve as scholars tap new possibilities for research. Due to the long wait before national security records are declassified by the National Archives and made available to researchers and the public, only in recent decades has the excavation of the Nixon administration’s engagement with the world started to become well documented. As more records are released by the National Archives (including potentially 700 hours of Nixon’s secret White House tapes that remain closed), scholarly understanding of the Nixon presidency is likely to continue changing. Thus far, historians have pointed to four …

Kim Was Korea And Korea Was Kim: The Formation Of Juche Ideology And Personality Cult In North Korea, Bianca Trifoi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Juche ideology, created by founder Kim Il-Sung, governs all aspects of North Korean society. This thesis attempts to answer the questions of why and how Juche ideology and the cult of personality surrounding Kim Il-Sung were successfully implemented in North Korea. It is a historical analysis of the formation of the North Korean state that considers developments from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, with particular attention paid to the 1950s-1970s and to Kim’s own writings and speeches. The thesis argues that Juche was successfully implemented and institutionalized in North Korea due to several factors, including the …

The Great Terror: Violence, Ideology, And The Building Of Stalin's Soviet Empire, Michael David Polano

Wayne State University Theses

“The Great Terror: Violence, Ideology, and the Building of Stalin’s Soviet Empire” is a study of the confluence of terror and ideology in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. I argue that an intersection of Soviet ideology and geopolitical circumstances caused the Great Terror. The Stalinist variant of Soviet ideology evolved from Leninism and Marxism. It consisted of both a vision of an ideal socialist society and explicit practices and policies designed to realize the vision. It was the geopolitical circumstances, both foreign and domestic, that activated this ideology, compelling Stalin and his inner circle to initiate and employ practices …

Peasants And The Great Leap Forward, Marissa Warren

Undergraduate Research Journal

Countries following Marxist ideology have typically showed a disinterest of the peasantry and sometimes even outright hostility. When it came to revolutions within these Marxist countries, the peasantry was typically forced following their government’s demands. These countries used their peasantry, always on the government’s own terms. That is, they never asked the peasantry what could be done for them, but rather simply demanded the peasantry follow them. China, prior to the “Great Leap Forward,” suffered through a civil war, putting a new Party in charge of the government. This government chose to include peasants in their revolution and promised them …

Gender And The Emergence Of The Soviet 'Citizen-Consumer' In Comparative Perspective, Amy E. Randall

History

In the 1930s, the Stalinist regime promoted a campaign to establish “Soviet trade,” a non-capitalist system of “socialist” retailing. Policymakers also legitimized ordinary people’s desires for greater material comfort and increased consumption, and encouraged them to act as new Soviet consumers by engaging in new consumer behavior and official efforts to improve retail trade. This essay examines how the government’s mobilization of consumers helped to produce a new identity, the Soviet “citizen-consumer,” whose consumer practices facilitated the integration of consumers into the Soviet polity and the building of socialism. It also considers how this mobilization of Soviet consumers was similar …