Sovietization

Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Shver, the well-known Vyborg architect who played a key part in restoring Alvar Aalto’s library following the war, died on February 9th, 2015. Shver came to Vyborg in 1957 and was for a long time head of the Vyborg branch of Lengrazhdanproekt, the Leningrad Civil Construction Institute. He loved Vyborg and was one of its most respected residents. They say that it is not place which embellishes man, but
man which embellishes place. As an architect and citizen, Aleksandr Shver did everything he could to ensure that his ‘place’ preserved its unique beauty. Here Project Baltia publishes part of a conversation with the architect from November of 2014.

In 1963, after studying at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad, Dmitry Fridlyand arrived in Vyborg to take up a job assigned him by the state [as was the practice at the time]. He stayed there for many years [instead of the usual three], becoming the head of the 2nd workshop at the Vyborg branch of Lengrazhdanproekt. Below, Project Baltia talks to Fridlyand, who now lives in Israel, about what it was like to be a practising architect in the old
and new parts of the city in Soviet times.

The article explores the Soviet Information Bureau's manipulation of the Polish press from 1945 to 1953, the interaction of Soviet and Polish officials and the meagre results achieved by these efforts. The article illuminates the operation of the Soviet foreign propaganda unit and the problematic character of the project to mould Polish opinion of the USSR. It also reveals the inherent early weaknesses of the Soviet East European Empire more generally.

JUDr. Gustáv Husák, CSc. (1913 –1991) was involved in the Czech-Slovak public space for sixty years with a significant footprint even today. The book discusses his public activities, thoughts and political life. It’s based on a thorough research and is chronologically structured, intertwined with thematic areas, however an analytical approach prevails.
The first chapter focuses on Husák’s youth, the factors that led him to the communist movement, and his early activism. This is followed by a portrayal of the Husák’s activities during the Second World War, his role in the resistance, participation in a propaganda trip to the Nazi conquered Ukraine, and his vision of Slovakia as a republic of the Soviet Union. His later involvement in the Slovak National Uprising provided the legitimacy of his later political career in the postwar era, when he successfully led the struggle for the communist monopoly of political power in Czechoslovakia and attempts to present the Communist Party
of Slovakia as a national party. Next two chapters show the origins of Slovak bourgeois nationalism and the way Husák was incorporated with in, criminalized and eventually absolved. Further, the difficulties with Husák’s return to politics are highlighted, which brought him for the time being to the field of historical science and opposition activities. The public support and activism during the Prague Spring helped Husák to become a vice-chairman of the Czechoslovak government and a leading position in the formation of federalization of Czechoslovakia. Although the image of Husák as a reformer was so strengthened, he remained convinced of the necessity of a communist power monopoly and
a strong alliance with the Soviet Union as the guarantor of national independence and post-war socialism. After the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia, this with his agility sufficiently convinced Moscow and cemented his position as the leader of the Communist Party for the next two decades. The final chapters present Husák as a skilled tactician and political practitioner who, after tragic death of his second wife, suffered from apathy that accompanied his gradual departure from public life. The final part of the book focuses on historical sources and historiography. Referencing specific examples it portrays in detail relations between historians and Gustáv Husák and, moreover, it presents a typology of possible historical narratives about him.
The text consistently stresses the fundamental interdependence of domestic events and international factors, whilst shedding light on personal relationships between Husák and other major figures. A thematic analysis is framed to a greater extent in connection with the Czech-Slovak relations, in which Husák played a significant role. His background in Slovak nationalism, and identity of a nationally oriented Slovak Communist, punitively criminalised him and still yet earned a large recognition of the Slovak public, who rightly assumed him as
the father of the Czecho-Slovak federation whose foundation he actually built. However, he always prioritised party discipline over national interest. In this context, we can perceive Gustáv Husák paradoxically both as a destructor and an architect of Slovak statehood upon which the foundation of today’s Slovakia is built. In this respect, the intention of the text purposefully transcends the biographical motif.

This article presents an analysis of Czechoslovak political history of the first half of the 1970s and the question of who would succeed General Ludvík Svoboda (1895–1979) as Czechoslovak President. The emphasis is on the role of Gustáv Husák (1913–1991), who emerged from the political crisis of 1968–69 as the most powerful actor, and was, at the 14th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, confi rmed as General Secretary of the Party. Using Soviet archives, the author points to differences between the individual members of the Party leadership, and particularly to the lack of unity amongst the so-called ‘healthy forces’. According to him, it is fair to talk about the disintegration of this bloc, which had been formed during the Prague Spring, into several smaller groups. The secretary of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Vasil Biľak (1917–2014), was, in consequence of this and Soviet pressure, forced to abandon any ambitions to stand at the head of the Party, and had to be satisfi ed, instead, with the position of Number Two in the Party. The Soviet leadership derived social stability in Czechoslovakia from the fi rmness of the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership, and in particular counted on the collaboration of Husák and Biľak, and it made this clear to both men. Svoboda’s failing health prevented him from properly discharging his duties as President of Czechoslovakia, but he did not even try to hold on to the presidency, even though, in the interest of political stability, he was confi rmed in offi ce in March 1973, and remained something of a temporary solution. The article does not seek to challenge or confi rm the hypothesis that he was forced to step down in May 1975; although, in any event, Svoboda was in no condition to have taken this step himself. Husák’s efforts to become President kept running up against the question of the accumulation of offi ces and also the Czech-Slovak national factor, even though, thanks to centrist Czechoslovak policy and support from Moscow, he succeeded in achieving a ‘peculiar unity’ over this question in the CPCz leadership, so that on 29 May 1975 he became the fi rst, and also the last, Czechoslovak President who was a Slovak. In Czech eyes, however, he remained a Slovak who had, after August 1968, considerably participated in the unfortunate re-imposition of hard-line Communism known as ‘normalization’, whereas for the Slovak nation he increasingly became a turncoat, a ‘Prague Slovak’.

Summary

The book deals with Soviet mass terror campaigns in the territories of the present day Republic of Moldova. As the breakaway separatist region of Transnistria of today was a part of Ukraine and Soviet Russia-Soviet Union since 1917, the story begins right after the October Revolution. Among the topics included are: Red Terror in Transnistria, latter on territories in which in 1924 was created the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic; the famine of 1921-1922; 1924-1926 (local one) and 1932-33, various aspects, including details about the privileges of nomenklatura; collectivization campaign on 1929-1933 and mass deportations as well other political repressions; resistance of the local populations, scale and forms of manifestations, including the bab'i bunty; Great terror in Moldavian ASSR, 1937-1938; extension of Communist Terror in Bessarabia, 1940-1941, following the application of secret protocol of Soviet Nazi Pact of August 23 1939, including a paragraph on the execution of 136 persons in the first year of Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, their ethnic and social background; postwar famine of 1946-1947, raising questions like: was it organized or determined by natural conditions as the Soviet historiography pretended, how various agenda of different Soviet institutions worsened the situation of the local population and made the death toll (4,5 % out of the total population) the highest in comparison with Ukraine (0,6 %) and Russia (1%) according to Michael Ellman (Cambridge Journal of Economics, September 2000, vol. 24, p. 613); other topics include mass deportations from the late Stalinism, 1949 and 1951, conflicts between MGB and MVD during the mass operations, the reaction of the population, the conditions of life in Siberia etc; and the impact of 20th Congress of CPSU and Hungarian Revolution on public opinion in the Moldavian SSR during February-December 1956 and the contestations of the monopoly of Communist Party in society and the resurgence of apocalyptic rumors and expectations, as well as the end of the myth ‘Americans are coming to liberate us’. The book alternates the general analysis of the phenomena of repressions, violence and resistance with personal stories based on KGB files and testimonies of the victims or their relatives when available. Among the general questions posed in the book is the one related to the nature of repressions and violence in the Soviet Union in its formative years (Lenin and Stalin): were the repressions and mass violence a direct consequence of the application of ideology or a result of certain context?
The book used largely Russian and Ukrainian collections of documents and literature published in the last 20 years as well as reference authors from the West (among others Lynne Viola, David Shearer, Peter Solomon, Nicolas Werth etc). About half of the information is from the archival sources previously inaccessible from the former KGB in Chisinau, MVD of Moldavian SSR and Sovmin of MSSR. 
The book has been published in Romanian and has 396 pages, including conclusions, selective bibliography, Index and 7 pages of pictures with victims and perpetrators. The Russian version is in work now and will be published most probably already in the fall 2014.


The book could be ordered online at: www.bestseller.md, www.elefant.ro, www.kubon-sagner.de or www.amazon.com

The book focuses on the main instruments used by the Soviet regime in order inculcating a new ethnic identity in the former Romanian territory of Bessarabia. It is based on the  main contributions on the topic published till late 1990s, Western authors included, as well as new archival data.

"This volume of documents focuses on three central topics. The first concerns the identification of the “class enemy” by the Soviet authorities in the first year of Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, 1940-1941; the second – on the confiscation of property; and the third – on labor mobilization. In other words, it is about the three subjects that preceded the actual political repression (identifying the so-called class enemy), represented one of the forms of repression or foreshadowed the punishment against the “class-alien elements” (confiscation of property); and also acted as a
kind of mass deportations, although it doesn’t look like at the first glance (labor mobilization). As a whole thus, the three main thematic domains sheds new light on what is already known about the political repression, and at the same time make it possible to extend the concept of “political repression” under Communism, in this case under the regime that existed in Bessarabia in the first year of Soviet occupation. All the documents, except one, are published for the first time and were selected from four former Soviet archival depositories located in Chișinău: former Central Committee of Communist Party of Moldavia’s archive; former State Archive of the Moldavian SSR (local government’s files); former KGB of Moldavian SSR’s depository; and former Ministry of Interior of Moldavian SSR’s depository."

The year of publication is 2014. In this pre-print version, it is indicated wrongly that it is 2013.

Could be ordered in paperback online at: www.bestseller.md or www.cartier.md

Both before and after the Second World War, Grodno functioned as a constantly changing spatial and symbolic reference system. This study describes the ways in which the various historical and cultural references have been read and rewritten like a palimpsest. Old marks were partially erased to add a new texture. However, it is primarily by making the older layers visible and reading them, that legitimate new interpretations can be reached. To reveal the complexity of this system of signs, the author examines the various national and Soviet historiographies, bringing together previously separate narratives.
This account of the history of Grodno from 1919 to 1939 offers an example of the destruction and reconstruction of a central European town. The specific importance of this town, with 50,000 inhabitants in 1939, was its position in the historical transit region between Lithuanian, Polish and Belarusian settlement areas with a large urban Jewish population counting for over 50% of the town's overall population. The focus of this study on the cultural appropriation of the town’s physical spaces allows the interaction and overlayering of various ethnic, religious and linguistic groups to be investigated at a meso-level. It demonstrates how Polish, Jewish, Russian and Belarusian groups manifested themselves politically and culturally after the First World War and reveals how, in 1939, the town space had not yet been entirely divided along national lines.
During the second half of the 1930s, attempts were made to harness the growing unrest associated with ethnic and national conflicts. The state policy of nationalization, which was stepped up after the death of Józef Piłsudski, provoked attacks by right-wing nationalist parties and, in Grodno, it had an economic impact on the Jewish traders and craftsmen. The prohibition against almost all manifestations of Belarusian identity which was implemented in the late 1920s, led to its disappearance from the town’s public spaces and indirectly to a strengthening of the Communist underground.
The Second World War and the succession of Soviet and German occupying regimes exacerbated the categorization of groups by ethnicity and nationality. The stereotype of the żydokomuna that arose in the inter-war period contributed to this, as to many Poles it seemed to be confirmed by the communist franctireur conflicts in early September 1939 and by the jubilant reception of the Soviet troops by the majority of Grodno's Jews. The relationship was reversed when, in June 1941, other sections of the Polish population welcomed the occupying German troops and, at least in the beginning, worked closely with them. The resulting dynamic shifts in attribution at times of threat explain why accounts written during the war depict two opposing, hateful national groups.
Despite the violence fomented along social, ethnic and racist lines by the German and Soviet occupying forces, in Grodno, unlike other parts of the eastern Polish Republic, violent conflict did not break out between the various groups. This is testified to by the close ties that existed between Jews and Christian even during the time of the Grodno ghettos, as well as by the largely unsuccessful attempts to incite a Polish-Belarusian conflict.


The Second World War almost entirely destroyed the network of relationships between the town's former inhabitants. With the murder of Grodno's Jews and the displacement of large sections of the remaining Polish population, the town lost almost two thirds of its inhabitants. This leveling, combined with the retention of some of the structures, created the foundations for the rapid Sovietization of Grodno after 1944.
The most important conditions for the rapid Sovietization were the quick settling of cadres from within the Soviet Union and the late forced industrialization of the region in the second half of the 1950s, which resulted in the mass migration of peasants into the town. This sequence of events created a situation in which Belarusian peasants arrived in Grodno at a time when Russian was already the lingua franca and Soviet cultural patterns had largely been established.
The strong semiotic association between Belarusian ethnicity and rural culture, which predated the Second World War, was further strengthened by the Soviet staging of a Belarusian titular nation in folkloric forms. Since the majority of migrants from the surrounding villages wanted to be part of the urban society, this form of official representation of Belarusian ethnicity fuelled the desire to exclude ethnic markers such as the vernacular from everyday life. The permanent acculturation of the new inhabitants to the Russophone, Soviet culture of the town was not only the result of coercion, as exemplified by the collectivization of the countryside or the official language policy. It also reflected the concerted efforts of the migrants to distance themselves from their rural descent. The result was that the town's communication spaces were almost entirely Russified.
Finally, this study reveals how historians, preservationists, archaeologists, social activists, museologists, writers, teachers, politicians and other involved parties both locally and in the Soviet Union are constantly generating new readings of the palimpsest of Grodno. Through the analysis of the reconstruction of a Soviet-Belarusian town after its destruction in the Second World War, the author himself becomes a participating observer in the negotiation of local interpretations of history. This study contributes therefore to scholarship on the relationship between ethnically defined systems of reference and communication, remembrance cultures in central European towns, as well as to the ongoing formation of a multi-layered Belarusian town.

Introduction The era of Sadriddin 'Aini can be characterized as an era of reforms. During that era, the populations of the Middle East and Central Asia endeavored to push aside the agents of illiteracy and ignorance (i.e., agents that over centuries had created stagnant societies). Instead, through introducing progressive modes of individual and societal interactions, they ushered in a new way of life. Their desired, new and progressive societies, those populations thought, could be realized only if their people were able to write constitutions of their own, and if they had a fair chance to establish parliaments in which to legislate progressive laws. The awakening to this reality happened gradually and the efforts to realize it moved in an easterly direction from Europe. An account of the life and works of Sadriddin 'Aini is followed by a discussion of the modernizing, westernizing, and Sovietizing changes implemented in the Central Asian and Middle Eastern societies of the era. Those changes were expected to raise the socio-political and cultural values of these countries so that, at the end of the process, they would be on a par with European values of the time. In this section, in order to produce a meaningful context for presenting the thought and activities of Sadriddin 'Aini, more emphasis is placed on the developments in Central Asia. The discussion of the changes in the area is followed by an account of the dynamics of the Emirate of Bukhara at the turn of the twentieth century through the eyes and reportage of Sadriddin 'Aini. Bukhara is used as an example, indeed as a last bastion of pure, traditional ways confronting a brave new world. A glance at the reaction of the Muslims of Central Asia and the Middle East to the modernizing, westernizing, and Sovietizing trends that had been brought to them ends the study. Additionally, two sections: a chronology of the life of 'Aini, and a section called " 'Aini's People " are appended. The former supplements the narrative about 'Aini's life and provides depth. The latter provides information about individuals in 'Aini's life who shared his concerns regarding Bukhara. They are some of the Bukharan intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century who, by introducing new-method schools, tried to retain the traditional values of the old kingdom while implementing necessary changes to modernize. All these together, it is hoped, will bring 'Aini's life and works, but more importantly 'Aini's Bukhara, during a turbulent time in its history, into perspective.

For all its strategic importance, the South Caucasus remains relatively unknown in the 'Western' scholarship. By reconsidering the historical role of the first democratic republics of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan in 1918-1921, this project seeks to integrate the region into the mainstream of modern European history and identifies primary material contained in the most complete studies of the first independence era in Transcaucasia.

Historiography During the Soviet Nation and State Building Process
The concepts of nation and state embody in themselves both normality and artificiality. It is firmly established by historical experience that the human, as the subject of the former as well as the object of the latter, frequently interferes with the content of these concepts. If this intervention stems from ideological reasons, the implication is that the mechanism for providing legitimacy is involved with its focus on historiography. At this stage, the engine of historiography becomes an office for the approval of political power.
Within that context, the fictionalization of history transforms the knowledge of the past to a reproducible product. This understanding means a neglect of the motive to attain the reality of the past; instead, the aim is to become the social engineering required for the continuity of the ideology. In this concise text, alongside the ongoing philosophical debates as to what history is and how it should be laid out, the instrumentality of history in practical terms will be examined with a special focus on the Soviet Union paradigm.
Keywords: Soviet historiography, Soviet nation-state, Territorial historiography, Soviet nationalism.

This article explores the Sovietization of Finnish Karelia, i.e. Ladoga Karelia and the Karelian Isthmus ceded by Finland to the USSR in 1940 and 1944, as a multifaceted and contradictory process that produced feelings of national loss and erasure which Finnish visitors experience when they travel to the region today. Ironically, the Sovietization process in this region also had the seemingly opposite effect of creating and preserving a general impression of Karelia as a foreign territory in the minds of the Soviet citizens who moved there and whose descendants still inhabit the region. These seemingly contradictory outcomes of the Sovietization of Karelia can be traced to the political climate of the post-war era in the region, when nationalization discourse to some extend promoted a union between Karelians and Finns. The ceded area around the Ladoga Lake became a part of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic and maintained its Finnish place names despite the fact that the migrants who resettled the Ladoga Lake region after the war spoke neither Finnish nor Karelian and knew nothing about the territory’s history. Ladoga Karelia preserved what appeared to be an exotic character to its new residents from throughout the USSR. Relying on the published and archival materials from the 1940s and 1950s, the author focuses on the production of a new socio-territorial identity of this space and addresses the historical legacy of the region, its appropriation in the official Soviet narrative, and aspects of Soviet migration there. By analyzing the oral histories of the local inhabitants, the keystones of local memory in the region are discerned.

В статье на основании анализа учетно-партийных документов 25 коммунистов, вступивших в партию в Золочевском районе Львовской области в 1939—1941 гг., анализируется социальный состав коммунистов. Делаются выводы о национальном и социальном составе, социальном происхождении и образовательном уровне коммунистов, работавших в Золочевском районе в рассматриваемый период. Автор рассматривает особенности учетно-партийных документов как исторического источника и делает выводы об их значении как источника по социальной истории.

Статтю присвячено концептуалізації, класифікації та порівняльному зіставленню понять «радянізація», «русифікація» та «дерадянізація» як методологічних категорій, які можуть бути використані для постколоніальних досліджень політичної історії країн Центрально-Східної Європи.

Ethnic conflicts have increased in number since the end of the cold war. In the case of Moldova the ethnic conflict resulted in the formation of the secessionist political community of Transnistria. This dissertation attempts to assess the influence of heritage and language policies on the formation of new identities and ethnic mobilisation through an in-depth analysis of the case study of Transnistria. It argues that language and heritage affect ethnic classifications and can be the driving factors for the establishment and retainment of independent ethnic identities. The dissertation furthermore argues that those intrinsic variables can lead to inter-group rivalry and ethnic conflict, especially following de-nationalisation and language policies that threat en ethnic groups social identity and self-concept. Based on the results of the analysis, the study presents explanations of the influence of the historical formation of Moldova and de-nationalisation policies on the causation of the identity struggle that occurred after the adoption of the 1989 language laws and led to ethnic conflict in 1992. The results show that the conflict is caused by three major factors: threats to nationalist, linguistic and ethnic identity, nationalist sentiments, and the fear of pan-romanisation. It appears that the reshaping of borders and subsequent mass movements and de-nationalisation attempts had a tremendous influence on the perception of group belonging and Moldovan self-concept as they threatened Moldovan linguistic and national identity. The dissertation will conclude, with the evidence provided, that in the case of Moldova, heritage and de-nationalisation policies have created an environment of inter-group rivalry, that exacerbated with the adoption of the 1989 language laws.

20. yüzyılın başlarında ulusçu düşüncenin eyleme dönüşmesiyle yeni bir dünya düzeni kurulmuştur. Bu yeni düzende, tarihe şekil veren büyük imparatorluklar yerlerini kendi içlerinden çıkan ulus-devletlere bırakmak zorunda kalmıştır. Yüzyıl başındaki bu değişim Rusya halkları için sadece yönetim biçimiyle sınırlı kalan bir başkalaşımdan ibaret olmuştur. Nitekim imparatorluk ortadan kaldırılmış, fakat beklenen ulus-devletler ortaya çıkmamış, daha doğrusu Bolşevikler böyle bir duruma müsaade etmemiştir. Bu halklar ancak yüzyılın sonunda Sovyetler Birliği'nin dağılmasıyla bağımsızlıklarını elde edebilmişlerdir. Sovyet halkları arasında yer alan Türkdilli halklar geç elde ettikleri bu bağımsızlıklarının meşruiyetini pekiştirmek amacıyla ulusun ve devletin biricikliğine atıfta bulunan toprak, bayrak, dil, tarih ve benzeri objeleri ulusçuluk temelinde yeniden dizayn etmişlerdir. Bu çerçevede siyasal tercihini ulus-devlet anlayışından yana yapan Azerbaycan, ulusçu bir anlayışla tarihine ve kimliğine yeni bir şekil vermeye başlamıştır. Fakat bu süreç bağımsızlık sonrasının siyasi çalkantılarına paralel olarak geliştiğinden Azerbaycan ulusal tarih yazımı kalıcı bir biçim alamamıştır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Azerbaycan, ulus-devlet, tarih yazımı, ulusal tarih, ulusal kimlik.

At the beginning of the 20 th century, as the nationalist thinking turned into action a new world order emerged. In this new world order, great empires had to leave their autonomy to the nation-states, which arose within those empires. This conversion taking place at the beginning of the century was only a rebellion for Russian nations, which is limited to a change of regime. As a matter of fact the empires were destroyed, but the expected nation states did not emerge, or more precisely the Bolsheviks did not allow them to do so. These nations could only gain their independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the century. In order to consolidate the legitimacy of their delayed independence, the Turkish speaking nations among the Soviet communities redesigned the concepts of land, flag, language, history and similar elements that refer to the uniqueness of the nation and the state, on the basis of nationalism. In this respect, Azerbaijan, which made its political choice in favor of being a nation-state, started to redesign its history and identity with a national perspective. However, since this process developed in line with political upheaval, the national historiography of Azerbaijan could not adopt a permanent shape.

Tematyka związana z PPR, jej struktura, ludzie i działalność polityczna jest dokładnie poznana, w odniesieniu do centralnych struktur partii, a w niektórych przypadkach również do struktur regionalnych. Jak dotąd jednak nie ma żadnych opublikowanych studiów nad PPR w powiecie chojnickim w latach 1945-1948. Stąd autor zdecydował się wypełnić tę lukę poznawczą poprzez studia nad materiałami źródłowymi. W stadium tym przyjęto dwie hipotezy. Pierwszą, stanowiącą przypuszczenie, że elity PPR w Chojnicach były elementem „narzuconej władzy” w procesie sowietyzacji Polski. Druga hipoteza, pomocnicza, stanowi przypuszczenie, że zjawiska polityczne, wynikające z działalności politycznej PPR na ziemi chojnickiej, były analogiczne do zjawisk zachodzących w całej Polsce, na szczeblu lokalnym, w wyniku budowania struktur i utożsamiania władzy państwowej z PPR zgodnie z ideologią marksizmu-leninizmu.

2009 means a double anniversary in Hungarian–Japanese Diplomatic Relations: 140 years has passed since 1869 when diplomatic relations has been established between the Monarchy of Austria–Hungary and the Japanese Empire, and it was also half a century ago that the People’s Republic of Hungary has renewed its diplomatic relations with Japan in 1959. This latter agreement has been reached after brief negotiations held in Prague, and was followed by the reopening of the diplomatic legations in Budapest and Tokyo in 1960, that were later upgraded to the rank of Embassies in 1964. By first hand analyses of the related Foreign Ministry materials and Party documents already available in Hungarian archives this paper provides unique details about the various elements within the process of normalization between Hungary and Japan and shows how this bilateral diplomatic move was related to the global Cold War diplomacy manoeuvres. For Budapest and Tokyo the key element behind strengthening the relations was above all foreign trade, with a special emphasis on triangle businesses that helped both countries to evade trade embargo regulations of COCOM-CHINCOM. From Moscow’s point of view this rapprochement supported the ongoing Soviet–Japanese normalization talks but also demonstrated the new doctrine of “active foreign policy” the Soviet Union was expecting from its East-European allies. While for the American side Hungarian–Japanese trade relations fitted perfectly into the US endeavours of facilitating foreign trade as a means of lessening the dominated nations’ dependence on the Soviet Union.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical genealogy and main uses of heritage in actually existing communist countries. This is performed by carrying out a critical review of Èleazar Aleksandrovič Baller’s Communism and Cultural Heritage, (1984, Progress, Moscow). The analysis of Baller’s work reveals that the logics of heritage in communist countries differed in various ways from capitalist countries, mainly because of the almost total state control over the heritage apparatus and the subordination of heritage policies to Marxist–Leninist ideology. Heritage was fundamental in dealing with the problem of change and continuity with the traditions, narratives and identities of previous society, and in the process of transforming citizens into ‘new men’ through the cultural revolution and the inculcation of ideology through museums and monuments.

В статье анализируется историческая и идейно-политическая коллизия, возникшая по итогам закрытого заседания ХХ съезда КПСС, когда стратегия управления общественным мнением в процессе десталинизации в СССР и странах социалистического лагеря столкнулась с непредсказуемыми последствиями «утечек информации» о содержании секретного доклада Н. С. Хрущева, инициированных информированными о нем видными деятелями международного коммунистического движения. В итоге риторика десталинизации перешагнула дискурсивные границы партийного руководства СССР, дав старт публичным дискуссиям об И. В. Сталине и сталинизме на Западе. Внимание автора концентрируется на первоначальных (непосредственно в 1956 г.) последствиях развенчания культа Сталина в ГДР. Реакцией на это членов СЕПГ и общества в целом стали, с одной стороны, попытки любой ценой «поддержать имидж» прежнего вождя, а с другой эскалация иконоборческих практик, наиболее ярко обнажившая кризис репрезентаций тоталитарной власти. Конец этим «либеральным тенденциям» положило Венгерское восстание осенью 1956 г., побудившее режим СЕПГ перейти к более жесткому контролю над публичным дискурсом и вновь приступить к репрессивной политике подавления инакомыслящих. Тем не менее десталинизация 1956 г. имела важный терапевтический эффект для послевоенного немецкого общества, позволила населению впервые нарушить предписанное государством молчание и открыто заговорить о наболевших проблемах. Официальная ревизия имиджа Сталина сделала возможным начало коллективной эмоциональной работы немцев с травматическим опытом депортаций, насилия и территориальных потерь.

«Сталин — лучший друг немецкого народа!» Как ни парадоксально звучал данный восточногерманский лозунг пропаганды для современников после 1945 г., он отражал исторические реалии складывания нового политического порядка в послевоенной Европе и являлся результатом процесса советизации территории бывшего врага. После победы Советского Союза во Второй мировой войне экспорт культа Сталина в страны социалистического блока превратился в эффективный инструмент идеологической экспансии Центра (Москвы) на Периферию (Восточную Германию), обучая население говорить, действовать и чувствовать по-советски. Настоящая книга рассказывает читателю о процессе становления, расцвета и забвения культа Сталина в Восточной Германии в период с 1945 по 1961 г. О том, как происходил идеологический трансфер из СССР в советскую оккупационную зону и как онемечивались советские репрезентации власти в чужом политическом пространстве, какую роль сыграл культ Сталина в мобилизации населения и утверждении диктатуры СЕПГ, как рядовые немцы реагировали на предложение нового «фюрера» в лице советского лидера и переделывали себя из «врагов» в «друзей» Сталина речь идет в этой книге.

Книга предназначена для специалистов-историков и для широкого круга читателей, интересующихся историей России и СССР, историей Восточной Германии (ГДР) и других обществ советского типа в Восточной Европе после 1945 г.

"Abstract: The paper analyses the potential of a theoretical comparison between communism and colonialism, focusing on the cultural dimension of the Stalinization process in Eastern Europe. The paper applies this theoretical perspective to late 1940searly 1950s Romanian culture in relation with the appropriation of culture by the communist regime within the late 1940s political and ideological shift in Eastern Europe. The approach uses as a background for its argumentation a theoretical debate which started
2001 and has continued until today (Moore 2001, Kovačević 2008), also reinterpreting on a series of theories developed during as well as at the end of the Cold War (Kulski 1959, Kolarz 1964, Horvath 1972, Katsenelinboigen 1990). The paper uses a series of conceptual tools such cultural transfer, cultural dependences, cultural identity, cultural export, which are applied for the first time to the Romanian culture.

Keywords: colonialism, imperialism, cultural colonialism, sovietising, cultural transfer, cultural dependences, cultural identity, cultural export"

This article examines the cultural Sovietization of the southern part of Sakhalin following Moscow’s invasion in the Soviet Japanese War of 1945. Cultural Sovietization is understood as a process affecting three interrelated levels: (1) After the legal, political and administrative integration of the territory the society of southern Sakhalin was actively shaped by an almost complete exchange of population. (2) Through the construction of a narrative of Sovietization, Sakhalin’s history is retold to this new population as the history of a Russian and Soviet island. (3) By the Sovietization of symbols and the reshaping of visual and linguistic landscapes on Sakhalin, this Sovietization narrative is represented and emphasised in the collective perceptions of the new Sakhalineans. In contrast to other territories taken over by the Soviet Union in 1944 and 1945, the role of war was less important during the integration of this formerly Japanese territory in the postwar period. While the Soviet conquest of Königsberg and the reoccupation of once Soviet and Russian territories were highly significant victories that were accompanied by vast destruction and campaigns of revenge killing and displacing thousands, the Japanese colony of Karafuto was spared such a disastrous defeat. The new Soviet settlers found infrastructure, housing and industries largely intact when they arrived in the southern part of the Pacific island. For an interim period of about three years they lived and worked cheek by jowl with the Japanese residents interfering with a construction of what Sakhalin was supposed to become. The tension between the theory of a Soviet identity and the practice of cohabitation shaped the decades following the return of the southern part of Sakhalin as well as the Kurile islands.

Abstract: The paper analyses the potential of a theoretical comparison between communism and colonialism, focusing on the cultural dimension of the Stalinization process in Eastern Europe. The paper applies this theoretical perspective to late 1940searly 1950s Romanian culture in relation with the appropriation of culture by the communist regime within the late 1940s political and ideological shift in Eastern Europe. The approach uses as a background for its argumentation a theoretical debate which started
2001 and has continued until today (Moore 2001, Kovačević 2008), also reinterpreting on a series of theories developed during as well as at the end of the Cold War (Kulski 1959, Kolarz 1964, Horvath 1972, Katsenelinboigen 1990). The paper uses a series of conceptual tools such cultural transfer, cultural dependences, cultural identity, cultural export, which are applied for the first time to the Romanian culture.

Keywords: colonialism, imperialism, cultural colonialism, sovietising, cultural transfer, cultural dependences, cultural identity, cultural export

This paper highlights a somewhat neglected aspect of Sovietization in Eastern Europe: a quest of a smaller nation aspiring for regional cultural dominance. Taking a close look at post-1945 Hungarian discourses on Budapest and its literature, it claims that the (partly failed) refashioning of the city into a Soviet-type metropolis was entangled with the revision of the literary canon, and both processes were framed by an effort to secure Hungarian cultural supremacy in the post-Habsburg realms. An inverse project of the struggle for ‘Westernization’ or ‘Europeanization’, accelerated Sovietization as an act of self-colonization served, paradoxically, to re-establish an imaginary Hungarian empire.

The Marxist discontinuity in geographical thought, which we pointed out in our previous work (Matlovič, Matlovičová 2020), is a specific case. It was caused by geopolitical changes after World War II, when Czechoslovakia came under the influence of the Soviet Union. This led to the onset of the communist regime in 1948 and the subsequent fundamental transformation of the political establishment, the economic system and socio-cultural life, which did not bypass the field of education and science. It was mainly the ideological indoctrination of science and higher education by dialectical and historical materialism of the Soviet type (Marxism-Leninism) and the subordination of education and research to the power interests of the Communist Party. We consider this paper only as an introduction to the study of this issue. Its aim is to identify the initial manifestations of the onset of Marxist discontinuity in Czechoslovak geography, to point out its main actors and at the same time to identify possible convergent and divergent features of this onset in Czech and Slovak geography. As a theoretical and methodological framework for our research, we have decided to base our paper on the Latour-Barnes model of changing scientific discipline.

By tracing the developments that led to a historical debate in 1950, this article questions some assumptions concerning the Stalinization of Hungarian history writing, in particular the notion of a predetermined continuity between the national-communist line followed by Hungarian communists before and after 1949. Contrary to the understanding of the Sovietization of historiography in Hungary as a straightforward process, guided by a firmly-established ideological line, this article shows that the period between early 1949 and 1950 was characterized by a certain level of uncertainty, caused, on the one hand, by the ideological and institutional changes brought about by Sovietization, and, on the other, by a temporary lack of firm interpretative guidance from the Party leadership. A closer look into the efforts to elaborate a new periodization of Hungarian history reveals not only the existence of competing Marxist interpretations (a “national” state-oriented and an “internationalist”...

Towards the 1960s Soviet authorities began to realize the threat posed by foreign radio broadcasters in the Soviet Union in general. It appeared that not only were there dozens of foreign broadcasters broadcasting with languages spoken within the Soviet Union, but also that there was a sizable audience tuning in to these broadcasts constantly. From the point of view of people in the Soviet Union, Baltic Republics were a special case. While foreign broadcasting was a relatively a new phenomena, Baltic Republics were used to tuning in to foreign broadcasts already in the late 1930s and during the war. Furthermore, especially Estonia has an important source of foreign broadcasts in Finnish language broadcasts. This became especially important when KGB started to alter its policies concerning jamming foreign broadcasts and excluded Finnish language broadcasts from its list of hostile broadcasts. Furthermore, television broadcasts from Finland could be picked up in northern coast of Estonia from the late 1950s onwards and more extensively from the late 1960s. Although Finnish media was generally far from hostile to the Soviet Union, it nevertheless gave live coverage to events like the Prague Spring of 1968.
In the Baltic Republics, Soviet authorities were losing their media monopoly much earlier than has been anticipated so far. Prevention of free flow of communication was among the foundation pillars of the Soviet system and therefore authorities out forth a row of measures for preventing its subjects from listening to foreign broadcasts. These measures, however, mostly failed and were in contradiction with other Soviet measures that aimed at expanding the audibility of Soviet radio and amount of high-quality radio receivers in general. Therefore, authorities also tried to improve Soviet radio programming in order to compete with foreign broadcasts along the 1960s. This policy lead to changes and improvements in the Soviet radio, but failed to bring a big difference, especially in the Baltic Republics, where local radios were not allowed enough moving space.
The Soviet media policy in the Baltic Republics in the 1950s and 1960s was forced to adapt to the situation because of foreign broadcasts and in many regards was on the defensive. Baltic Republics, especially Estonia were in an exceptional situation when compared to any other Soviet area as regards to possibilities of following foreign media already from the late 1950s onwards.

The work aims to study the formation of a system of ideological influence on the Izmail region’s population in 1944–1945. Based on archival sources and materials of the regional press, the tasks of agitation and propaganda activities, the general forms and methods used by the Communist Party to spread ideology among the population of the annexed region were revealed. The author paid particular attention to determining the role of the regional party leadership in managing and conducting agitation and propaganda. The methodology. The study is based on the principles of historicism, scientificity, objectivity, systematics, specificity, and reliance on historical sources. With the aid of the historical-typological method, it was possible to determine the main tasks, forms, and methods of agitation and propaganda. The historical-comparative method opens the way to reveal the peculiarities of ideological work with various categories of the citizens and to determine the specific features o...