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This article analyses Spanish-Soviet relationships from 1977, when Spain’s diplomatic relations with the USSR resumed, until the end of the Cold War. On the one hand, the reestablishment of diplomatic relations expanded the framework of bilateral agreements signed in different areas by both countries. On the other hand, Spain’s joining NATO for good a few years later had a negative impact in the Soviet Union. The Soviet propaganda duly echoed this from a political perspective. Gorbachev’s undertaking the General Secretariat of the CPSU in 1985, brought about important changes in the USSR with the implementation of Perestroika and a new foreign policy, novoe myslenie. The latter became the protagonist in Spain of the propaganda displayed by Spanish-Soviet friendship associations existing since 1979. These is due to the fact that they served as a showcase for the Soviet vision of international politics. They also displayed propaganda in line with social movements opposing Spain’s permanence in NATO and, finally, gained international support for the process of changes taking place in the final stages of the cold war.

The article is devoted to the history of the anti-alcohol campaign in the Gorky region in 1985–1988. The main directions of activity of authorities within the campaign are revealed. The positive sides in the activities of the party and Soviet bodies of the Gorky region in the anti-alcohol campaign are indicated. The achievements and failures in the implementation of these activities in the region are identified. The conclusion is made about the possibility of a successful fight against alcoholism in the USSR during a long and systematic campaign

This study aims to illustrate how the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) approached the immediate Post-Cold War scenario. For this purpose, it analyses the attitudes adopted by the Spanish communists, not only towards Perestroika and the crisis of the Soviet system, but also towards key international events such as the German Unification process, the Gulf crisis and the birth of the European Union. The work underlines how, under Anguita’s leadership, the PCE underwent a left-wise turn leading Anguita to establish his policy on a logic of strong opposition to the new world order characterized by American hegemony and the expansion of the neoliberal model.

The article describes the events, which took place in the USSR in its last years. It discovers the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States. It explains why the CIS did not grow in a new Union state and did become nothing more than a mechanism for a “civilized divorce” of the former Soviet republics.

The text briefly analyses the main currents of interpretation ascribed to the economic and political reforms in Hungary by official Polish media in the 1980s. Various perspectives are combined, but the official discourse of state-controlled press is predominant. The language, the arguments used, as well as the main actors speaking, are shown against the background of the changing situation in both countries and in the communist bloc as a whole. The tradition of the reform of the system is presented as an important point of reference, and the entire official discourse of the 1980s in Poland is presented as the starting point for a new era, inaugurated in 1989 with the fall of communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of History / Habaršy Tarihi Seriâsy is the property of Al-Farabi Kazakh National 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.)

Copyright of Studia Paedagogica is the property of Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts 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 term "economic self-management" (in Estonian, isemajandamine) stood at the center of economic and political debates in Soviet Estonia in 1987–1988. This article traces its transformation from an economic term to a political concept, reconstructing the intellectual resources that the reformers were drawing on in this process. Navigating the constraints of Soviet discourse, reform-minded academics in Soviet Estonia radically expanded the original meaning of isemajandamine, which ultimately provided an argumentative platform for declaring the republic's "sovereignty" within the Soviet Union. The article brings out the linguistic, political, and transnational dimensions of this conceptual innovation, which started in 1987 and was completed when the law on the "economic independence" of the Baltic republics was adopted by the Soviet Union in 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article covers the last anti-alcohol campaign in the history of the Soviet Union during the Perestroika period. The aim of the work is to consider the creation and activities of voluntary societies fighting for sobriety on the example of the Smolensk region. The authors conclude that during the anti-alcohol campaign, there were created prerequisites for further increasing efforts to combat drunkenness and alcoholism and to establish a sober lifestyle. However, the restrictions imposed only led to queues in stores, absenteeism and an increase in moonshine brewing.

This article examines letters on glasnost sent to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in 1987 and compiled by the Central Committee's Letter Department in a booklet for the Politburo in 1988. Contextualized by other sources from the archive of this Letter Department and others, these sources begin to illuminate how the Central Committee's Letter Department functioned and how it evolved during Perestroika. These letters also allow us to begin to incorporate more ordinary citizens' conceptions of glasnost into the history of this concept. These sources show at least four definitions of glasnost that circulated in the first years of reform. None of these definitions coincided with the liberal concept of "freedom of speech". The conversation about glasnost in these letters challenges the common liberal teleology of studies of Perestroika, highlighting the distinctly Soviet nature of those who wrote letters and the concepts they wrote about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Literature / Literatura is the property of Vilnius 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 research goal - taking into account the relevance and insufficient study of this topic, the set a goal was to find out the position of scientific and educational intelligentsia in the period of Perestroika on the basis of archival sources and press then, to reveal its role and place in the processes of ideological, ideological transformations in the state. The research methodology. It is based on the principles of historicism, scientificism, comprehensiveness, consistency and objectivity. Historical-situational and logical-analytical methods have been used to cover the problem. Thus, research is based on methods that avoid prejudice and one-sidedness. Scientific novelty. On the basis of unpublished documents and journals the ambiguous position of the scientific and educational intelligentsia in the era of socio-political transformations of 1985-1991 was analyzed. Scientific novelty is determined by the fact that it is one of the first attempts to comprehensively analyze the scientific and educational representatives as ideologists and crystallizers of the social consciousness and world outlook of the citizens of the specified period. Emphasis is placed on highlighting a number of problems educational an related issues Perestroika and Glasnost. Conclusions. The Soviet system considered and used the scientific and educational intelligentsia as moderators of public opinion, undeniable authority. This, in particular, is evidenced by the educational institution Knowledge Society, which was engaged in the dissemination of political and scientific knowledge in UkrSSR, was a means of comment and propaganda, an inculcation of communist ideology. This society included the best representatives from the scientific and educational environment. The course of Perestroika, Glasnost, democratization contributed to the coverage of a number of problems both in the sociopolitical, socio-economic, and in the historical and cultural life. And the scientific and educational intelligentsia, as the most progressive layer of society, was at the epicenter of events and, on the one hand, had to carry progress, a new world view, and on the other, not to deviate from communist dogmas, ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about the Estonian transition from the era of perestroika to the 1990s. It suggests that the Estonian national movement considered the existence of the nation to be threatened. Therefore, it used the window of opportunity presented by perestroika to take control of time and break free of the empire. This essay has the following theoretical premises. First, Estonia was not engaged in “normal politics” but in something that I will conceptualise, following the Copenhagen School, as “existential politics.” Second, the key feature of existential politics is time. I will draw on the distinction, made in the ancient Greek thought, between the gods Chronos and Kairos. By applying these concepts to Estonia, I suggest Kairos presented the opportunity to break the normal flow of time and the decay of Socialism (Chronos) in order to fight for the survival of the Estonian nation. The third starting point is Max Weber’s historical sociology, particularly his notion of “charisma,” developed in Stephen Hanson’s interpretation of the notions of time in Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. Based on this, I will argue that Estonian elites thought they were living in extraordinary times that required the breaking of the normal flow of time, which was thought to be corroding the basis of the nation’s existence.

Ukrainian feminisms, and East European feminisms more generally, have often been evaluated in relation to those of the so-called West, wherein Western feminisms are (often implicitly) viewed as progressive, and those of Eastern Europe are seen as underdeveloped and/or emerging only after independence. This article resists such neocolonial framings by arguing that the poetic contributions of Ukrainian women writers in the period of perestroika (1985-1991) holds significance for understanding a longer Ukrainian feminist genealogy. As the 1980s brought forth new political and ecological realities, especially the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) explosion in 1986, the stakes of this shifting articulation of nationhood became especially high for women, as the concerns were tied directly to women’s sexual and reproductive bodies and futures. To that end, this article positions the work of Iryna Zhylenko (1941-2013), Natalka Bilotserkivets (1954-) and Oksana Zabuzhko (1960-) during perestroika as integral to the emergence of a more visibly subversive feminist rhetoric in Ukraine. While not always ‘feminist’ in name, women’s perestroika poetics, specifically through their representations of embodiment, yielded sharper and more vulnerable articulations of their gendered subjectivities, including the performances of sexual, maternal, and national identities.

Based on the analysis of the content of films released during Perestroika and in postSoviet Russia, the article describes the main technologies for transforming the historical memory of the Great Patriotic war. It is based on the classification of techniques and methods that are used for falsification of history. The author notes that unlike falsifiers of history, who operate with historical facts and their interpretations, the policy of historical memory operates with myths, symbols, cliches and ideologems. In contrast to the existing research, which focuses primarily on the methods of falsification of historical events, or on the content of the policy of historical memory, the author of this article shows how various technological methods of transforming the historical memory are used on the example of the Great Patriotic war. The following technologies of transforming the historical memory are distinguished: the destruction of historical memory, rewriting the meaning, depriving historical events of real content, debunking and discrediting heroes, "black" myth, generating "phobias" in relation to events of the past, and breaking a single historical space. The author concludes that the main myth that underlies the transformation of the historical memory of the Great Patriotic war in the years of Perestroika and in post-Soviet Russia was the myth of the "suffering Soviet people", which replaced the Soviet myth of the "prosperous Soviet people".

The article discusses the cultural revolution that took place in Sverdlovsk during the years of Perestroika and transformed rock-music, visual art, theatre, cinema, and literature. Hypothetically, these tendencies embodied not attempts to establish regional cultural identity but, on the contrary, artists’ striving to liberate themselves from regional and, more broadly, Soviet cultural models and invent new cultural languages of national and frequently global scope. The article interprets these transformations of culture as an idiosyncratic form of postcolonial development derivative of Russian internal colonization (Alexander Etkind). Resulting hybrid models were based on the conflation of the local and global, or rather representation of the local as the global. Such scenario of „entering the global culture“ turned out to be typical for post-Soviet culture in general, which explains wide popularity of the Sverdlovsk-born phenomena across Russia throughout the 1990s and 2000s. .

The article is devoted to the problems associated with the increase of difficulties in Soviet trade in the Gorky region at the beginning of perestroika. A number of settlements of the region where there are big difficulties with trade and consumer services of the population are revealed. An attempt is made to refute the widespread provisions on the key role of the Soviet leadership of the perestroika era in creating a crisis situation in the USSR in the second half of the 1980s

Un étranger ne pouvait louer un appartement chez un particulier à Moscou ou dans les autres villes du pays jusqu’au milieu des années 1980. C’est devenu possible lorsque la libéralisation économique amorcée par les réformes de Mikhaïl Gorbatchev, plus connues sous le nom de perestroïka (1986-1991), a permis de développer ce type de pratique. Logeant chez l’habitant, j’ai pu comprendre les mutations du quotidien des Moscovites dans la période de bouleversement politique et économique qui a suivi.

The article deals with the actual problems connected with process of multiparty system development in Mongolia in the end of XX century, victory of democratic revolution in spring of 1990 and adoption of Mongolian Constitution of the 1992 having considerable importance in the democratization of modern Mongolian society.

The article is devoted to the history of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics in the period of perestroika and his transformation from the Moscow Institute of National Economy to the Russian Economic Academy. On the basis of archival materials, the author made an attempt to understand what trends formed the basis for the transformations made in the late 1980s and early 1990s, what goals and objectives the university leadership set for itself, what price and what was achieved despite all Shocks and transformations, through which the Russian state and society had to pass. The article presents an analysis of the tasks set by the leadership of the Moscow institute of national economy in the Comprehensive Program of Social and Economic Development of the Institute for the period up to 2010, adopted in 1987. Despite the fact that its implementation was corrected by historical processes, much of what was planned at the first stage was implemented and formed the basis for the modernization of the university that began then. The scientific value of the article lies in the fact that it is written with the use of previously unexplored archival materials that allow a better understanding of the processes and problems associated with the transition of the university to a self-supporting system and the introduction of profiling. In addition, the article presents the dynamics of the volume of scientific research and its funding in the university in 1987–1991.

The article deals extensively replicated images of major structural reforms in the history of Russia (The government reforms of Peter I, the Great Reforms of Alexander II, the October Revolution, industrialization, Perestroika and market reforms of the 1990s), their contemporary respondents’ assessments and position in the overall structure of the collective memory of Russians. The results of historical and sociological analysis through the methodological tradition of «memory studies» showed that the current structure of the collective memory has a significant ideological opposition to the structuring reforms, legitimizing resource development model.

In modern Russia, there is a clear discrepancy between the official policy of historical memory and the mass historical consciousness. In the politics of official memory, Joseph Stalin is a tyrant, a dictator who killed millions of people. In the mass historical consciousness, he is a fighter against corruption and privileges, a caring owner of a huge country. While the mass historical consciousness considers the Victory in the Great Patriotic War as a significant event of the twentieth century, the policy of historical memory turns to the tragic sides of this war. Other examples can be given. At the divergence of the official policy of historical memory and mass historical consciousness, there are "wars of monuments" and "wars of memory", as well as various manipulative strategies on the part of the authorities. So far, the official policy of historical memory fluctuates between these two formulas. The main reason for the discrepancy between the official policy of historical memory and the mass historical consciousness in modern Russia is that in Russian society, due to economic and political problems, nostalgia for the Soviet past, deemed a time of stability and certainty is growing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the main directions and forms of external open communications of the Soviet secret services at the second stage of their reorganization in the Gorbachev Era. It shows the general tendencies of the state security bodies' implementation of the principle of openness. It highlights the peculiarities of "publicity and democratization" expansion in the operational and service activities of the USSR KGB in the Perestroika period. It is substantiated that in the second half of the 1980s in the USSR there was a transformation of the "repressive-communicative" system with a gradual transition from monologic communication to dialogic communication. At the same time, it is shown that the publicity of the Soviet secret services in this transitional period was influenced by both the specifics of their work and the prevailing propaganda model of communication in the USSR. It is emphasized that at that time the public contacts of the state security bodies with the population had a pronounced propaganda character. It is proven that the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR considered open communications as an important tool for influencing and manipulating public opinion. At the same time, they were provided through public (work with the media, creative unions, public organizations, meetings with employees of enterprises, institutions, organizations, etc.) and personal channels (consideration of applications and reception of citizens). Among the main areas of the communicative interaction of the Soviet secret services in Ukraine, the article deals with the following: public discrediting of national liberation movement members; popularization of state security bodies through mass media and creative unions, in particular the role of press groups in information and propaganda support of state security bodies; participation in rehabilitation processes; work with citizens' appeals. The leading forms of such activities were as follow: meetings with labor collectives, roundtable discussions, thematic evenings, public meetings, organization of excursions to departmental rooms-museums; participation of representatives of state security bodies in public events; publications in the press, release of TV and radio programs, feature and documentary films dedicated to the Soviet secret services, organization of press conferences; conducting a personal reception of citizens, and correspondence based on the results of consideration of appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Postscriptum Polonistyczne is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego 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 article focuses on the turning point in the deconstruction of the Soviet paradigm in Latvian historiography at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s and draws attention to and analyses the relevant aspects of this process. It aims to explain the form in which deconstruction took place, which topics became key in the discussion, whether the old ones remained and were reinterpreted or new issues arose. Last, but not least, the question of transformation raises the question of continuity and discontinuity between interwar Latvia, Soviet Latvia, and re-established Latvia at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, in terms of topics, personnel and structure. The paper will analyze how, in reaction to the crisis of Soviet historiography, Latvian historians were gradually opening discussions regarding various previously taboo historical topics and how they moved on from the critique of Stalinism and Neo-Stalinism within Gorbachev’s perestroika to the concept of national history in the European context and to the rejection of Soviet annexation of Latvia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the material studied, the media educational practice products analysis (monographs, curriculum documents, periodicals and conferences of different levels articles, thesises and others) we reconstructed the generalized theoretical model of the period of “perestroika” (1984−1991) media education, embodied in educational institutions. Methodological basis of the media educational models was grounded on ideological, aesthetic, practical theories, the theory of critical thinking development. The aim of the reconstructed generalized theoretical media education model is thoroughly developed personality formation with the help of mass-media (cinema, television, press, radio, photography). But taking into account communistic ideology in the USSR, we should elaborate that a thoroughly developed personality supposed reliance on such components as: ideological content and political prowess; a person-collectivist; a person with high moral principles, aesthetic ideals, established in the Soviet society. Media competence in the generalized theoretical media educational model evaluation criteria: the level of cinematograph theory and history knowledge, its specific means of expression; understanding of cinema poetics in the context of the other arts and means of mass communication; the ability to navigate in the current movie schedule; the motives and demands while choosing the films for scholars’ and students’ viewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text is, above all, a grateful testament to a local saint's continued liveliness. It is a new hagiography, a story of a woman who gave away everything—her house, her money, her possessions, and even her name—who wandered homeless, and who has helped people resolve desperate situations ever since. Retelling the fragmented stories of how people asked for her intervention, and of how, through their actions, new mycelia of power grew on the ruins of the Soviet socialist state, I hope that this essay helps opens a loophole: a space between naïve faith and sociological faithlessness in which we might understand today's miracles without crushing them by the secular objectivist gaze. Looking through this loophole, this essay retells some of stories I heard about the Soviet collapse and about how people survived it: about gleaning the planned economy's rubble, chance connections, personal ties, Divine Providence, fast fortunes, and the enclosure of fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of History Studies (13094688) is the property of History Studies 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 is about a cultural-philosophical movement called Russian cosmism (Russky kosmizm) and its current status in the Republic of Kalmykia, southwest Russia, home to Buddhist Kalmyks, a people of Oirat-Mongol origin. Emerging in Russia in the early twentieth century and suppressed during the Soviet period, this movement proliferated openly across Russia with the beginning of perestroika. Promulgated as an original product of the Russian mind, cosmism positions itself as a 'science of the truth and soul searching' and purports to address various issues, including—but not limited to—the spiritual, psychic, and paranormal anxieties that are on the rise in Russia. Although Russian cosmism is an all-encompassing movement combining various elements of theosophy, philosophy, poetry, theories of evolution and energy, astrology, cosmology, ecology, and even science fiction, this article focuses upon its more cosmic topics—that is, those that are related to outer space, cosmic energies, and alien visitations, as well as responses to these ideas in Kalmykia. The story of Russian cosmism is not just a story of this particular movement, but also that of science in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the perestroika gave rise to a new legal thinking that helped spark a broader transformation of international law and governance. Building on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the article analyzes the emergence and short-lived influence of the professionals behind the new legal thinking of the perestroika. This elite operated at the crossroads between international and domestic law and politics. At this juncture, and in an attempt to safeguard and solidify their own position, they promoted the primacy of international law over politics by calling for, among other things, the establishment of an international criminal court. Building on the thinking of this elite that coexisted with concurrent streams of investments into international law from both East and West, a geopolitical window for new criminal law initiatives beyond the state wasopened.Itwasinthisbriefwindowofopportunitythatthefieldof international criminal justice was developed as a reflection of a wider universalist promise of establishing legal primacy in international governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with Tony Kushner’s plays Perestroika and Slavs!, which consider the questions of Russian history. Perestroika is Part II of Kushner’s Angels in America, and the play is not actually devoted to the ‘Russian theme’, but forms parallels between ‘national themes’ in the USA of 1980–1990s and Russian Perestroika of the same period. Slavs! is a play about the 1980–1990s as well, but it is often called “a chronicle of a Russian Revolution” (J. Fisher). T. Kusher is interested in Revolution as a longstanding problem. The playwright investigates the impact of several ideological systems on the history of Russia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the crisis of Soviet system, and the strategies developed by Gorbachev government to redirect Soviet economy and policy in order to solve the main problems that affected the USSR during the 1980s. In addition, it will be scrutinized the obstacles found by Gorbachev to promote the restructurings that Soviet Union required, and the expansion of the crisis that culminated in the dissolution of the USSR.

In modern history, when reality is subject to rapid and radical change, the role of personality – whether a statesman or a politician – can be very significant in the process of making such changes and in achieving specific results. This is true of the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who in 1989-90, as described in this article, by his actions and policies led the Germans to unity after forty years of Germany’s split.

Cinematography of perestroika (and the early post-Soviet period) entails mixed terrain, often described as a socially-critical “black wave” – chernukha; the period saw an unprecedented number of works by female directors, which remain to be addressed by film scholarship. This article examines the cinematic opus of Olga Zhukova (1954-) who produced five feature films in the period 1990–1994. This article discusses her films, which were not well received by critics and accused of being pretentious and artificial, alongside another Soviet director, Iskra Babich (1938–2001). I re-examine the formation of Zhukova’s cinematic speech, focusing on the interplay of the audio-visual and corporeal, to argue that her works create specific timespaces which defy the immediate socio-political references provided by the seemingly formative linear narratives, and bypass the patriarchal dichotomies underpinning the latter.

En el transcurso de las últimas dos décadas del siglo XX la Unión Soviética pasó por grandes cambios en su estructura política, pero, sobre todo, económica. El conjunto de reformas económicas que comenzaron a implementarse en 1985 alteraron por completo el pensamiento de los rusos y, además, tuvo un gran impacto en la manera en la que se enseñaba la economía en las universidades de esta nación. Con este trabajo de investigación se tiene como objetivo mostrar los cambios en el pensamiento acerca de la profesión del economista en la Unión Soviética y cuáles fueron concretamente a la Perestroika y a la fractura de la Unión. Además se pretende mostrar el impacto de los dos procesos mencionados anteriormente en la historia de facultad de economía en Moscow State University, la más influyente de Rusia.