Political History Commons^™

Franco: Ruler Of Spain, Rebecca Davis

A with Honors Projects

This paper examines Francisco Franco's time as ruler of Spain.

The Political Persecution Of A Poet: A Detail Of Dante's Exile, Jason Ader

A with Honors Projects

Durante degli Alighieri, known throughout the world as simply Dante, was a fourteenth century Italian poet, philosopher, literary theorist, and politician. He is best known for his epic Commedia, which was later dubbed The Divine Comedy. Commedia is generally considered the greatest Italian literary work and a masterpiece of world literature. Due to the turbulent political atmosphere of his time and place, Dante spent over a third of his life living in exile. This paper will explore the details of Dante's exile and the influence that it had upon his work.

Smyrna's Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide And The Birth Of The Middle East, Michelle Tusan

History Faculty Research

Today the West tends to understand the Middle East primarily in terms of geopolitics: Islam, oil, and nuclear weapons. But in the nineteenth century it was imagined differently. The interplay of geography and politics found definition in a broader set of concerns that understood the region in terms of the moral, humanitarian, and religious commitments of the British empire. Smyrna’s Ashes reevaluates how this story of the “Eastern Question” shaped the cultural politics of geography, war, and genocide in the mapping of a larger Middle East after World War I.

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 …