Political History Commons^™

Historical Culture: Russia In Search Of Itself, Boris Paramonov

Russian Culture

Russia's 75 year-long experiment with communism is over, but the question persists as to whether the Soviet regime was a historical aberration or an expression of the country's destiny. This question is as old as the Bolshevik revolution. It has produced a voluminous literature and will no doubt continue to attract attention in the near future. Alas, it can not be answered conclusively, for it is grounded in the questioner's ideological a priori and tells us more about the historian's biases than about Russian history.

Moral Culture: Public Morality And Private Responsibility, Igor Kon

Russian Culture

When Mikhail Gorbachev unfurled his reform banners in the late 1980's, many observers inside and outside Russia hailed perestroika as a moral renaissance. The Soviet Union was indeed a spiritually bankrupt society at the time, its citizens demanding a clean break with the past and yearning for a better future. Despite the new openness or glasnost, the changes have been slow in coming and often very controversial. A public opinion survey conducted in February 1991 showed the country morally adrift and deeply divided about the course of reforms.

Psychological Culture: Ambivalence And Resistance To Social Change, Alexander Etkind

Russian Culture

"National character," "modal personality," "collective unconscious," "ethnic mentality," "cultural identity" -- these and similar notions are designed to capture psychological traits that distinguish one social group from another. Attempts to isolate such hypothetical qualities are not different in principle from efforts to describe religious, legal, or other social patterns found among people who have lived together for a length of time, except that psychological constructs tend to focus on subjective characteristics and are somewhat harder to identify. For the first time, the link between culture and psychology came under close scrutiny in the nineteen century. German linguists Steinthal and Lazarus …

Intellectual Culture: The End Of Russian Intelligentsia, Dmitri N. Shalin

Russian Culture

No group cheered louder for Soviet reform, had a bigger stake in perestroika, and suffered more in its aftermath than did the Russian intelligentsia. Today, nearly a decade after Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled his plan to reform Soviet society, the mood among Russian intellectuals is decidedly gloomy. "The intelligentsia has carried perestroika on its shoulders," laments Ury Shchekochikhin, "so why does it feel so forlorn, superfluous, forgotten"? G. Ivanitsky warns that the intellectual strata "has become so thin that in three or four years the current genocide against the intelligentsia would surely wipe it out." Andrey Bitov, one of the country's …

Religious Culture: Faith In Soviet And Post-Soviet Russia, Jerry Pankhurst

Russian Culture

The former Soviet Union is undergoing a religious revival. People inside and outside the Russian Orthodox church are reexamining its ancient ways, rediscovering its long-forgotten saints, searching its institutional memory for answers to urgent questions facing the nation. The Western reaction to this remarkable resurgence of religion in Russia has been mixed. All observers welcome the fact that free inquiry about religion and free religious worship have been restored in the Russian Federation. At the same time, many are concerned about the xenophobic tendencies that have accompanied the religious revival in Russia and that became especially evident after the liberal …

Labor Culture: Labor Morality Under Socialism, Vladimir Magun

Russian Culture

Soviet leaders had always taken a keen interest in workers' behavior and labor motives and sought to keep labor morality under strict state control. A complex network of values and regulations was developed for this purpose after the October Revolution of 1917. They were best articulated in the "political economy of socialism" which purported to present a scientific picture of the country's economic life. Textbooks on socialist economy were widely circulated in the Soviet Union and appropriate courses included into a core curriculum for all higher education institutions in the country. Basic tenets of socialist political economy were taught in …

The Intelligentsia Without Revolution: The Culture Of The Silver Age, Andrei Ariev

Russian Culture

The most effective definition of "the intelligentsia" might read: “Russian intellectuals who are generally opposed to the government.” But even Russia’s traditionally powerful government has collapsed at times, leaving a vacuum of authority. This was precisely the historical situation at the beginning of the twentieth century. It made an indelible impression both upon thinkers, such as Rozanov, and on politicians, such as Lenin.

0794: The Bon Ton Bullets In The Service, 1943-1945, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection consists copies of nineteen editions of a Huntington, West Virginia area newsletter titled, “The Bon Ton Bullets in the Service” published between 1943 and 1945. The newsletter describes activities of area service members during World War II, and published excerpts from letters sent from servicemen, news from home, addresses, and miscellanea. Also included is an index of individuals mentioned in many of the newsletters.

Joyce Apsel On The Oxford Handbook Of Genocide Studies. Edited By Donald Bloxham & A. Dirk Moses. New York, Ny: Oxford University Press, 2010. 675pp., Joyce Apsel

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. Edited by Donald Bloxham & A. Dirk Moses. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. 675pp.

Confronting “Indivisibility” In The History Of Economic And Social Rights: From Parity To Priority And Back Again, Roland Burke

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Indivisible Human Rights. By Daniel Whelan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2010. 269pp.

Essex Under Cromwell: Security And Local Governance In The Interregnum, James Robert Mcconnell

Dissertations and Theses

In 1655, Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell's Council of State commissioned a group of army officers for the purpose of "securing the peace of the commonwealth." Under the authority of the Instrument of Government, a written constitution not sanctioned by Parliament, the Council sent army major-generals into the counties to raise new horse militias and to support them financially with a tax on Royalists which the army officers would also collect. In counties such as Essex--the focus of this study--the major-generals were assisted in their work by small groups of commissioners, mostly local men "well-affected" to the Interregnum government. In addition …

Neither A Borrower Nor A Lender Be: America Attempts To Collect Its War Debts 1922-1934., James Chambers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During and immediately after World War I the United States lent over $10 billion to various countries to sustain their war efforts and to provide post-war relief. The United States's insistence that these loans be repaid led to sharp disagreements with its erstwhile allies as to the nature of these loans and whether they should actually be repaid.

This thesis examines the processes, and the policies upon which those processes were based, by which the United States attempted to compel the debtor nations to begin repaying their loans.

The central theme of the thesis was developed largely from primary sources, …

Oscar James Dunn: A Case Study In Race & Politics In Reconstruction Louisiana, Brian Mitchell

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The study of African American Reconstruction leadership has presented a variety of unique challenges for modern historians who struggle to piece together the lives of men, who prior to the Civil War, had little political identity. The scant amounts of primary source data in regard to these leaders’ lives before the war, the destruction of many documents in regard to their leadership following the Reconstruction Era, and the treatment of these figures by historians prior to the Revisionist movement have left this body of extremely important political figures largely unexplored. This dissertation will examine the life of one of Louisiana’s …

Black Policemen In Jim Crow New Orleans, Vanessa Flores-Robert

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Although historians have done in-­‐depth researched on Black police in the South, before the Civil War and during Reconstruction, they seldom assess black policemen’s role in New Orleans between the Battle of Liberty Place and 1913. The men discussed here argue that despite the hardening racial attitudes in Post-­‐ Reconstruction South, in New Orleans opportunity still existed for Blacks to serve in positions of authority, perhaps a heritage of the city’s earlier tri-­‐partite racial order. The information obtained from primary sources such as police manuals, beat books, and newspapers, counters the widely held belief that African American presence in the …

The Romani Place In Kosovar Space: Nationalism And Kosovo’S Roma, Melissa Hughes

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

On February 17, 2008,Kosovo declared its independence. The path to independence and the claim to Kosovo was a long process that developed in three primary phases: A) the fostering of territorial solidarity under direct rule and an emphasis on historical ties to the territory; B) the foundation of the national idea within the realms of proto-nationalism; and C) the emergence of peripheral and mass nationalism. This research seeks to define the development of nationalist ideologies in Kosovo and to explore where Roma fit within those ideologies. An historical and sociological approach to nationalism in Kosovo is critical in understanding the …

Promoting Unity Through Propaganda: How The British Government Utilized Posters During The Second World War, Elizabeth Tate Goins

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Comprised of four separate countries, the United Kingdom is a state unlike any other. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have distinct identities, which has been a cause for discord throughout British history. However, during the Second World War the Ministry of Information, under the guidance of the Conservative government and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, launched a poster-based propaganda campaign aimed towards unifying the UK under a common national self-identity. By emphasizing shared qualities such as resilience, pragmatism, humor, patriotism and even the concept of unity itself, the Ministry of Information fostered a sense of national self-identity with the …

Challenging Notions Of U.S. Citizenship: The Contributions Of Mexican Americans, Tracy E. Kirby

Master's Theses

The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, in which the idea of “citizenship” has had very strong intrinsic values, and has divided those who “have it” from those who “don’t,” since the first legal construction of such categories in 1790. Longstanding contradictions, characterized by ceremonies awarding citizenship to some and laws of exclusion, deportation, and forced removal for others, have embodied U.S. approaches to citizenship, and created a dichotomy between “citizen” and “alien.” This Master's Thesis will initiate a discussion and reformulation of what it means to be a citizen in the United States, and more importantly …

The Path To Peace: Conflict Theory And Northern Ireland’S Troubles (1968-1998), Ruairi Wiepking

Master's Theses

This paper is a qualitative historical analysis of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Over a period of approximately thirty years, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland dominated the headlines of newspapers in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Despite this violent history, Northern Ireland has enjoyed relative peace and stability since the passage of the Belfast Agreement in 1998. This paper aims to better understand why and how Northern Ireland endured a generation of brutal sectarian violence and emerged into a new era of peace and mutual understanding. In doing so, this paper incorporates theories from peace and conflict studies …

Violence Against Women In Pakistan, Amina Bath

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Tunnel Vision: “Invisible” Highways And Boston’S “Big Dig” In The Age Of Privatization, Michael R. Fein

Humanities Department Faculty Publications & Research

While most analyses of late-twentieth-century highway policy suggest a shift toward open system design, bottom-up federalism, and the devolution of transportation governance, the history of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel project, informally known as the “Big Dig,” runs counter to this trend. Though the project emerged in the 1970s during a time of unprecedented citizen activism in transportation planning, ultimately the privatization of political power proved to be the Big Dig’s most important legacy for twenty-first-century urban highway projects.