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Copyright of Anuario Español de Derecho Internacional is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, S.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Investigaciones Historicas is the property of Universidad de Valladolid, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Second World War, the bloodiest war to have occurred in the history of mankind had an impact on the society of both the allies and the axis powers. Soviet Union was a major participant in the Second World War. The Soviet Union is said to have been the most affected losing an estimated 26 million citizens and an estimated 11 million soldiers during the war. The contribution of women in the Second World War cannot be forgotten, the war could be considered a watershed in terms of women's involvement in military and intelligence. Soviet Union had the largest involvement of women in the war. This paper would be an attempt to show that the Second World War was not a space reserved only for the men, there was a strong female presence in the war and the important role of these women played helped break the barrier of patriarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ruta Sakowska spent her entire professional career at the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny; ŻIH) in Warsaw, and her scholarly legacy is inextricably linked to Oyneg Shabes, the clandestine documentation project organized by Emanuel Ringelblum in the Warsaw Ghetto that became the focus of her work. Sakowska belonged to a generation of Jewish youth that came of age as second-class citizens in a newly independent Poland; most of her cohort was murdered during the Holocaust. Although she survived the war in the Soviet Union, she lost many years performing relatively menial jobs and did not receive her doctorate in history until she was in her fifties. Her fraught relationships with her colleagues at ŻIH were another significant obstacle to her professional advancement. Notwithstanding, she made several major scholarly contributions, both in her analysis of the Ringelblum Archive and in her preparations for its publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article focuses on the role of Russian journalists and their reporting during World War II. We argue that, generally, the historical trajectory of journalism and the press in Russia significantly diverges from the often-cited 'norm' of the West. We look at the press in the Great Patriotic War but recognize that it cannot be judged based on Western-centric institutional culture. We conclude that professionalism in Soviet eyes meant something significantly different from its equivalent in Western journalism, and this divide was even more pronounced during World War II. Nevertheless, the Soviet press became a powerful tool on the road to victory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article gives a brief overview of the historiography of post-war justice in Lithuania. It begins with an introduction to post-Holocaust justice, outlining the functioning of the post-war war crimes trials in Soviet Lithuania, including the institutional framework, the retribution law, the nature of legal proceedings, and the procedural changes that took place over time. The article then presents the historiographical approaches historians have used to investigate these trials and depicts the current developments in this field of study. It shows that following the fall of the Soviet Union, the first works on post-war justice lacked an in-depth analysis and instead concentrated on how the Soviet regime had utilized these legal proceedings for political purposes. The article presents not only the micro-historical studies that historians have conducted on selected court cases in recent years, but also explores the ways in which the relationship between the Holocaust and the Soviet war crimes trials, as well as the visual representation and mediation of these trials, have been investigated. It then briefly discusses the missing categories of analysis that need to be integrated into the study of post-war justice in the case of Lithuania. The article finishes by presenting the debates and controversies surrounding this historical topic. It shows that the Soviet campaign of post-war retribution is embedded in the "narratives of doubt." The credibility and reliability of the legal records compiled by KGB officials are constantly questioned not only by the legal and political authorities, but also by historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belarus is the only post-Soviet state to have fully adopted the interpretation of both the former Soviet authorities and today's Belarusian political regime on the fundamental role played by the Second World War in the construction of the country's historical narrative and national identity. This memory serves to sacralise Soviet legacy and to legitimise the present political system, which is anchored in this legacy. Modern Belarusian historiography can be divided into two major schools: Soviet and nationalist. Currently, the Soviet view of history dominates with the support of the political authorities. The education system aims to transmit the official Soviet interpretation of a sacred role played by the Second World War in the history of Belarus. This paper investigates discourse on the Second World War in Belarusian society and in school history textbooks, focusing on the following key themes: the Nazi occupation, the Holocaust, the collaboration, the partisans’ movement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research examined the effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war on identity changes among educated Ukraine-born women who have lived their adult lives in Israel. The data, collected in July 2022, were determined to be representative of educated women aged 25–60 who emigrated from Ukraine during 1988–2018. Findings revealed a strengthened Ukrainian identity in over half of the respondents. The Ukrainian-born Israelis, who held a hybrid Russian-Israeli identity, strengthened their Ukrainian identity. However, this strengthening was not uniform. It was associated with (a) frequency of exposure to Ukrainian news and social media that support the Ukrainian government; (b) attitudes toward the Russian-Ukrainian war; (c) the presence of the war in daily life; and (d) the geo-political place of origin in Ukraine. The study underscores the importance of researching identity shifts in people indirectly affected by crises in today's information-rich age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose of the Study: This paper examines generativity, social suffering, and culture change in a sample of 16 women aged 65 years or older who emigrated from the former Soviet Union. Key concerns with generativity are identity, which can be strongly rooted in one's original cultural formation, and a stable life course, which is what ideally enables generative impulses to be cultivated in later life. Design and Methods: To better understand how early social suffering may affect later life generativity, we conducted two 90-min interviews with each of our participants on their past experiences and current views of generativity. Results: The trauma of World War II, poor quality of life in the Soviet Union, scarcity of shelter and supplies, and fear of arrest emerged as common components in social suffering, which affected their identity. Implications: Overall, the theme of broken links to the future--the sense that their current lives were irrelevant to future generations--was strong among informants in their interviews, pointing to the importance of life course stability in relation to certain forms of generativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 came as a surprise not only for the politicians of the era, but for scholars of international relations as well. Since then, the reasons for this sudden and unanticipated breakup have been discussed at length and numerous studies have been introduced that aimed at explaining the causes that led to the collapse of the Soviet system. Some of these studies considered the reformist leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev as the major cause for the collapse, whereas others tried to explain the dissolution of the Soviet Union mainly with economic and social factors. This study focuses on the Afghanistan war as the key factor that started the chain of events that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The paper argues that the war in Afghanistan, albeit not being the sole reason of the collapse, accelerated the process of the dissolution of the Soviet Union through the political, economic, military, and social consequences that it created. The war had a deep impact on Soviet politics in many ways. First, by demonstrating the weaknesses of the Red Army, it helped the new Soviet leadership to understand the reality that military methods for solving internal or international problems were no longer sustainable. Second, the war demonstrated that the Red Army was not unbeatable, which increased the appetite for independence on the part of the non-Russian republics. Third, the perception that non-Russians were forced to fight against Afghans in a "Russian war" raised suspicions about the "legitimacy" of the war, which created fragmentations in the multi-ethnic Red Army. Finally, the Afghanistan war created a mass of war veterans (Afgantsy) that unified under newly emerged non-party organizations. The increasing criticisms of these groups started to be seen in Soviet politics at an ever-growing pace, which weakened the political hegemony of the Communist Party and provided the first spark for glasnost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The culture and mentality of a nation is formed in a process of interaction between individual and environment, and, consequently, its behaviour can be influenced by the changes of the social and physical environment. Politics is one factor in this process, as it uses power to control people's thinking and behaviour through various instruments and techniques, and in this way, it can be regarded as a governmental extension on human actions. Using an imagological approach, the article's purpose is to highlight that oppression, along with political discourse, shaped the mindset of the Soviet people. Also, the regime attempted to shape Soviet society in order to achieve the image desired. The Soviet political apparatus was based on oppression, the technique of repetition, and the role models highlighted by the regime. All the measures taken influenced the mentality of the Soviet people and, implicitly, led it to a transformation and, later, an adaptation because people had to comply with all the rules, laws, and measures taken by the Communist Party. This will be analysed in the first book published in Romania by Vasile Ernu, Născut în URSS [Born in the USSR], and in two works by Svetlana Alexievich, namely The Unwomanly Face of War and Chernobyl Prayer. By analysing these works, the reader learns how a society, its culture and mentality can be influenced by the social and physical environment. The three works present the transition from fiction to the non-fiction category, portraying authentic experiences and depicting the tangible impacts on people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuclear weapons have not been used since their first deployment in 1945. If the use of these weapons as a punitive tool is highly improbable, can a nuclear deterrent threat ever be credible? What strategies would nuclear powers be inclined to adopt to bolster the credibility of nuclear punishment if deterrence fails? While Nuclear Pessimists argue that there is no way to solve the inherent incredibility problem of nuclear punishment, the Nuclear Revolutionists and Rational Punishment approach suggest avenues of incurring "autonomous risk" and employing "limited retaliation" to address the issue. This article, however, argues that it is essential to secure the feasibility of punishment to make a deterrent threat credible. The credibility of nuclear deterrence can be restored when the defender makes continuous efforts to turn these weapons into a militarily and politically feasible tool of punishment. It traces and compares Moscow, Tel Aviv, and London's policy choices after their direct deterrence failures in 1969, 1973, and 1982. The article finds that the most efficient way to de-escalate a crisis is to address the feasibility problem. While all three countries succeeded in inducing their adversaries to abandon attempts at altering the status quo, Israel and the UK had to engage in costly wars as they excluded the nuclear option. In contrast, the Soviet Union accomplished the goal by combining measures to enhance the feasibility of nuclear punishment and deploying controlled retaliation tactics below the threshold of full-scale war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soviet wartime propaganda and contemporary Russian work on the activities of the Orthodox Church during the war promote the Church's claim that it was motivated by patriotism, a point it used to claim legitimacy in the USSR and now in contemporary Russia. In contrast, this paper argues that the hierarchs and laity of the Patriarchal Church were not essentially motivated by patriotism or the desire to show loyalty to the Soviet regime in 1941, but instead acted to use the war to achieve three goals: first and most important, to become relevant in the everyday life of the Soviet people by promoting Christian beliefs and values; second, to earn legitimacy in the eyes of anti-clerics and non-believers by lending moral and practical support to the war effort; and finally, to obtain legal standing by showing its trustworthiness and loyalty through displays of Russian (not Soviet) patriotism consonant with its historic role, all the while without endorsing communist ideology. The hierarchs orchestrated a campaign from the top down throughout the clerical hierarchy, to achieve the aforementioned goals whilst from below the faithful, independently of the hierarchs, used their local displays of patriotism as leverage to reopen local churches and to force the regime to respect their right to worship. The grassroots response by believers and parish clerics in support of the Church and its wartime activities represents primarily an endorsement of the Church, Christianity, Russian patriotism, and only secondarily, if at all, loyalty to the Stalinist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on new sources freshly made available by the Holy See, the study aims to reassess the history of - supposed or real - efforts at rapprochement between the Holy See and the Soviet Union, initiated between 1942 and 1946, with the ultimate goal of identifying the considerations that shaped the eastern politics of the Holy See at the end of World War II. After a thorough investigation of the Orlemanski Action in Spring 1944, of the Flynn Mission in March 1945, and of the negotiations that were opened in ig46 via some Hungarian Jesuits, the author argues that, while at the end of the war there was indeed a moment when Moscow appeared open to cooperation, those efforts at rapprochement that in fact took place generally broke down because of the Kremlin's basic indifference, while the Holy See remained throughout ready for communications as long as the necessary conditions were fulfilled. As a result, the eastern politics of Pius XII should be interpreted in terms of the paradigm of the Holy See's traditional eastern politics of concordats rather than in that of intransigence. Yet the technical term of Ostpolitik cannot be applied to the eastern politics of Pius XII without further qualifications, for, while it does show connections with the Ostpolitik of the Holy See in the 1960s, several major differences can be identified between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how Finnish Jews defined their position during the Second World War when Finland fought against the Soviet Union as a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany. After the Moscow Armistice in September 1944, the Jewish community's leadership created an official narrative that transformed the community's travails into a positive experience. They wanted to signal to the Allied forces and Jewish communities worldwide that their rights had not been violated during the war, even though Finland had been de facto allied with Nazi Germany. By doing so, they suppressed knowledge of the treatment of Jewish refugees and their deportations, as well as of their own volatile positions during the war. By inviting Marshal Mannerheim to the Helsinki synagogue in December 1944, the community helped forge Mannerheim into a national hero by honoring him for saving the Finnish Jewish community from the Holocaust. In addition, this article examines how Finnish Jews commemorated Holocaust victims vis-à-vis the commemoration of fallen Jewish soldiers in the transnational Jewish (survivor) community in the immediate postwar years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On November 7, 1942, the Soviet Union celebrated the first quarter of a century of its existence. In its present gigantic struggle for its own preservation and for the maintenance of freedom and decency in the world, the Soviet Government depends greatly on its present generation, those born or grown up since 1917. The Soviet Government is now thus reaping the harvest of its investment in the care, training, and general bringing up of the generation in the years gone by. The purpose of this paper is to review briefly the highlights in the Soviet child-care program in the last twenty-five years. Such a review, of necessity sketchy and general, is hereby presented not only by way of a better understanding of the Russian ally, but also to throw some light on the problem of child care in these crucial times. In 1914 in the whole vast Russian Empire, with a population of about 170 million, there were altogether 7,000 maternity beds available to the public. Total accommodations for nursery children was 500. At the outbreak of World War I, there were less than 8 million children attending the primary and secondary schools in that country. During the same period the attendance at the higher educational institutions was slightly over a hundred thousand.

This artistic research focuses on vegetal histories from and about Donbas, Ukraine, a land which once was an exemplary mining region of the Soviet Union and where in 2014 the ongoing war broke out. In order to re-examine dominant representations of the region through the frames of industrialisation and war, the study engages with scholarship in paleobotany and explores the vegetal past of coal, the fossil at the heart of Donbas' history. Through drawing and writing this research brings together plant fossils, recent interviews with internally displaced persons and critique of colonial depictions of the steppe as an empty space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) has been one of the most controversial figures in Modern China since the early-1940s. One of the key issues in the controversy is whether Chiang paid more attention to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) than to the Japanese during China's war of resistance. This article attempts to answer this question through statistical analyzes of Chiang's wartime diaries. Together with the question are Chiang's considerations behind his critical decisions that would finally collapse the Republican China in 1949. The article demonstrates that the CCP received far less attention from Chiang than the issue of finance, let alone other issues. The times that the CCP received Chiang's extraordinary attention was when it was conducting provoking operations against the Nationalist government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of communal violence against Jews catalysed by the German invasion of the USSR was long neglected by scholarship due to biases against eyewitness testimony and the opacity of local events to outside observers. A growing number of studies on the topic have recently emerged, drawing from the eyewitness testimonies of Jewish survivors and previously inaccessible Soviet archives. This article analyses the lesser-known audio-visual recordings of interviews with non-Jewish witnesses to communal violence in provincial towns and villages of Lithuania. Collected decades after the events, they relate the same cruelty and destruction as recalled by Jewish survivors. As insider accounts from the local, non-Jewish community, they disclose manifold and divergent subject positions in the face of extreme violence. Marked by a forensic mode of discourse that accentuates individual agency and responsibility, they diverge from the prevailing apologetics of national narratives of the period. Instead, they reflect an immediacy of apprehension rooted in the intimate topographical setting of rural Lithuania under German occupation, a local memory not yet assimilated to national narratives of heroism and suffering. Finally, they express the memory of mutual surveillance, intimidation, and coercion that would endure for decades after the end of the war in these locales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is Part II of a survey of Russia's position as one of the great powers and how it has evolved from 1815 to the present day. Part 1 ended on the eve of the Great Patriotic War (1941‒1945), and Part II begins where Part 1 left off, with some data on the Great Patriotic War and its influence on the USSR's position as a great power. It deals with post-war reconstruction and then considers the Cold War and post-Soviet Russia (1992‒2022). Attention is paid to Soviet economic policies, the reasons for the long-run decline in Soviet economic growth, and the state collapse of 1991. Explanatory theories used include List's economic recommendations for medium-developed countries, Wintrobe's political economy of dictatorship, and Tilly's analysis of the war–state relationship. It is concluded that a relatively poor country can become a great power and maintain that position for long periods if it has institutions that enable it to squeeze its population for military purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The split between the Soviet Union and China had a great impact on other Communist countries, including the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, or North Vietnam), under the leadership of the Vietnamese Workers' Party (VWP). As the rift between the PRC and the Soviet Union intensified, the VWP tried hard to balance between the two Communist powers so that it could focus on the war against the United States and the conquest of the South. Interactions between the DRV, China, and the Soviet Union highlighted the frequently complex nature of relations within the Communist world during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upper Karabakh region has become a permanent point of conflict between the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia with the weakening and collapse of the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century and the formation of new borders, especially during the Soviet era. With the appearance of signs of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the Armenians of Upper Karabakh expressed their desire to join Armenia and renounce the citizenship of the independent Republic of Azerbaijan. This conflict resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union has led to two periods of war between the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia. In these wars, parts of the mountainous lands of Karabakh, which are the source of parts of the waters of Upper Karabakh, the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia, have also been handed over. Karabakh's water resources have always been emphasized by officials on both sides, and this shows the hydropolitical importance of Upper Karabakh and its surrounding districts. In this article in a descriptive-analytical way, by studying the situation of water resources and structures in the region, the hydropolitics of Upper Karabakh is studied with emphasis on the results of the mentioned conflicts and wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is Part 1 of a survey of Russia's position as one of the great powers and how it has evolved from 1815 to the present day. It begins with the situation in 1815 and the path to it, and devotes attention to important Russian institutions then, soldiers' cooperatives, autocracy and serfdom. The subsequent wars and their consequences are discussed. The end of the Empire, the creation of the USSR and Soviet institutions are considered. Consideration is also given to the relative economic position of Russia/USSR and its changes over time. Attention is paid to the economic policies of Witte and Stalin. Explanatory theories used include List's economic recommendations for medium-developed countries, the institutional theories of Acemoglu, North and others, Modelski's evolutionary analysis of global politics and Tilly's analysis of the war–state relationship. Part 1 ends on the eve of the Great Patriotic War (1941). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combat operations of 1945 in the Ostrava region ranked among the largest and most important military encounters of World War II in the Czech Lands. Immediately aft er the war, the fi rst sites of memory appeared spontaneously. During the 1950s and 1960s, ‘institutionalisation of memory’ can be witnessed, based on the narrative of ‘liberation’ and ‘Slavic brotherhood’ of the Czech and Soviet population. Th e discussion of historians and writers about wartime controversies, which started in the era of ‘destalinisation’, had no important impact on the commemorative practise. Aft er the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in 1968, authorities attempted to use the narrative of ‘liberation’ t the o improve the public opinion of the Soviet Union. Museums were expected to play a leading role in this process. Aft er the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, attempts to reconsider the narrative of ‘liberation’ appeared. A strong counter-narrative developed amongst the population of the Hlučín region, whose ancestors served in German armed forces. Nevertheless, the traditional post-communist narrative of ‘liberation’ remains quite strong in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Plural: History, Culture, Society is the property of Faculty of History & Geography, 'Ion Creanga' State Pedagogical University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and ten-year war that followed were the result of long, historical interest in the country by Russia that dates back to the 19th century combined with the Soviet Union's desire to protect and promote friendly communist regimes. The war failed to achieve the Soviet Union's goals, and even contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even today the Russian Federation maintains an active interest in Afghanistan for many of the same reasons that its predecessor did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has recently acquired several collections of material related to Russian and Soviet relations with Japan in the first half of the twentieth century with an emphasis on the Russo-Japanese War period. The original artifacts are held in our Special Collections and are viewable in person upon request. Selected materials have been digitized by our Digital Collections Center and the digital surrogates are available online. This collection continues to actively grow as bibliographers and special collections staff acquire new and relevant materials from a variety of sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Babylon Center for Humanities Studies is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this readable and at times dramatic study, Craig Daigle offers a complex perspective on the nuclear superpower era of détente, discussing both the U.S.-Soviet rivalry and the Arab-Israeli conflict during a four-year time span that witnessed two Middle Eastern wars. According to Daigle, at this point, "Nixon and Kissinger viewed the Syrian invasion as a "Soviet-inspired insurrection" that had to be met with force." Daigle hints that Nixon and Kissinger, playing linkage politics, may have responded to these bold Soviet moves in mid-April 1970 by sending U.S. forces into Cambodia in an expansion of the Vietnam War. [Extracted from the article]

After Japan surrendered in 1945, more than 6 million Japanese were stranded in various parts of what had been the imperial domain. From 1945 to 1956, thousands of Japanese found themselves in the USSR and mainland China, unable or unwilling to return. Drawing on Soviet, Chinese, Japanese, and Western archives, this article compares Soviet and Communist Chinese policies toward the stranded Japanese. The distinct pathways adopted by the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties during the Chinese Civil War led to significant differences in their approaches to the day-to-day lives of the Japanese, the methods and messages of propaganda they adopted, and their means of handling the repatriation issue. Soviet and Chinese policies toward the Japanese during this uncertain and unsettled decade were shaped less by Cold War ideological and geopolitical alignments than by the legacies of East Asia's recent wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today the problem of partial occupation of the territory of Ukraine is acute regardless of the time of the First or Second World Wars, and given the current Russian-Ukrainian war. The annexation of Crimea, the occupation of certain areas of the Ukrainian Donbass with the proclamation of fake "LPR-DPR", an attempt to declare the same "state fakes" in southern Ukraine during the full-scale Russian war against our state in February 2022 encourage reflexive analogies primarily with statehood in Ukraine. Consequently, a new problem in Ukrainian scientific thought regarding the nature of Soviet statehood in Ukraine as an occupation is relevant. The purpose of the article, which does not claim to be empirical or factual, is to investigate the political and legal nature of Soviet statehood in Ukraine as an occupation in accordance with the criteria developed in science to assess the nature of the occupying power. According to the author, the most obvious aspects of the analysis of the problem mentioned in the title are the spread of Soviet statehood in Ukraine and, in particular, laying the foundations of the Soviet political and legal systems and the national composition of Soviet authorities in the USSR. And the chronological periods of the actual formation in Ukraine of Soviet statehood (1917-1921) and its spread to Western lands (1939-1940 and 1945). The thesis is proposed that the Soviet statehood in Ukraine was not "local" ethnocultural, that is, one that was organically formed in the middle of Ukrainian society, hence - was not specifically Ukrainian national. Instead, it was introduced and implanted from outside as a cover for aggression against the Ukrainian People's Republic, and more broadly as an implementation of the centuries-old Russian imperial doctrine of Ukraine's political takeover. It is proved that from the very beginning of the uprising in Ukraine, Soviet statehood developed within the framework of "another" Soviet Russian totalitarian state and the legal system. The mechanisms of the introduction of Soviet statehood in the Ukrainian lands after the collapse of the Romanov empire are considered. It was established that they had signs of Russian occupation with armed interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. It is substantiated that, in essence, the form of Soviet occupation of Western Ukrainian lands was their Sovietization of a complex of socio-economic, political, national-cultural and repressive-punitive measures aimed at the absorption of the annexed territories. As a result, it is thought that it would be wrong to neglect the formal state status of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic - a direct consequence of its occupation. At that time, Ukraine had clear but formal signs of statehood: its own territory, state symbols, parliament, government, and even membership in the United Nations and its subsidiaries. It is believed that even such a lame state status of the USSR potentially provided Ukraine with a path to independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Letonica is the property of University of Latvia, Institute of Literature, Folklore & Art and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this article is to compare the policies of the British and Soviet governments regarding the participation of women in paramilitary organizations of the interwar period. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism and consistency. Both general scientific (analysis and synthesis, abstraction, system analysis, generalization) and special-historical (critical analysis of sources, retrospective, historical-comparative) methods, as well as the gender approach were used. The scientific novelty. The article compares for the first time the peculiarities of the participation of Soviet and British women in paramilitary organizations of the interwar period in the context of state policy in this area. Conclusions. The author concludes that the approaches of the authorities to the involvement of British and Soviet women in paramilitary organizations differed significantly and directly depended on the foreign policies of these countries. In the USSR, which despite its pacifist statements during the interwar period gradually prepared for war, its government in the 1920s began to take specific steps for organization of military training of its population without any distinction based on sex. In Great Britain, against the background of economic crisis and peculiarities of foreign policy, women have long been out of such training. In addition, both countries significantly differed in the patterns of behaviour of women imposed by their governments and societies. In particular, in the British public discourse, women were represented as a noncombat, auxiliary force during the future war, the femininity of members of women's paramilitary organizations was emphasized. Instead, the imposed pattern of women's behaviour in the Soviet Union was the opposite. They were strongly encouraged to follow the male example; the possibility of their participation in the war as soldiers was often emphasized. At the same time, they shared common arguments in campaigning for women to join paramilitary organizations and held public events to promote such organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]