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Based on the fact that the EU-part of the Eastern Bloc has not fared well in transitioning to renewable energy in the last decade compared to other regions of the bloc, this study investigated the impacts of coal consumption, socioeconomic factors and bureaucracy on the environment and the moderating effect of socioeconomic factors and bureaucracy on the coal consumption–environment relationship in the selected bloc. The study used the AMG, FMOLS and DOLS modelling framework and a panel of six countries in the selected bloc from 1990 to 2018. The study established that coal consumption has a significant dampening effect on CO2 emissions in the EU-part of the Eastern Bloc and that bureaucracy in the region amplifies this effect instead of mitigating it. In another corridor, we found that in the midst of the coal–environmental nexus, socioeconomic factors offer a mitigating path towards emission reduction in the region. Policy recommendations directed at addressing bureaucratic hitches associated with the transition to renewable energy in Eastern Europe. The authors propose the inauguration of hybrid courts (specialised) to settle disputes that may arise from indigenes and standing technical committees to increase bureaucratic expertise, which would reduce the permit acquisition period required for wind, hydropower, and solar installation farms and other technicalities associated with the EU funding for the Eastern Bloc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the policies of Socialist Poland towards the non-aligned Pan-African state of Mali during the Presidency of Modibo Keita (1960-1968). Mali was one of three 'radical' West African states in which the Eastern bloc and the People's Republic of China made inroads in the first post-colonial decade. Poland, like other Eastern bloc countries, placed great emphasis in its public diplomacy on support of 'Third World' countries as they freed themselves from colonialism. The article shows that, in the case of Mali, these publicly stated aims sharply contrasted with socialist Poland's policies on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zoos represent a social construct, whose form is influenced by societal development. During the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century, they have been transformed from assembled collections to internationally managed insurance (ex situ) populations, and these transformations required some changes in taxa numbers and composition. Previous studies have already identified the trend of reducing the number of taxa kept in zoos worldwide. The aim of the present study is to verify this trend in Europe in more detail and therefore to identify the changes in taxa richness and mammalian taxa richness from 1959 to 2016 in the same set of 67 European zoos while considering their opening period (before 1900 and 1900–1960) and location with respect to the former Iron Curtain (Eastern vs. Western Bloc). There was no significant decrease in taxa richness; on the contrary, there was a significant increase in taxa richness for the former Eastern Bloc zoos. There was a significant decrease in mammalian taxa richness for zoos opened before 1900 and those of the former Western Bloc. These results demonstrate that mammalian taxa have declined in numbers to some extent and that the decline mostly concerns older zoos and those that have historically reached a different stage of development. This suggests that European zoos have not been subject to trends uniformly and should apply different and appropriate strategies when facing future (not only conservation) challenges.

The purpose of this article is to present the operational capabilities of the OSCE in regulating armed conflicts and their application in the former Eastern bloc countries. In order to show the role of the OSCE in the regulation of armed conflicts, OSCE operational capabilities have been structured in a conceptual grid including: OSCE regulatory tools – in the form of missions, field offices and field coordinators; regulatory mechanisms and emergency mechanisms applied in the light of the peaceful pathways of OSCE involvement in the regulatory process. The common feature of operation at each phase is the broadly understood maintenance of stability or achieving stability. There are armed conflicts against which the OSCE has selectively used regulatory activity, omitting certain phases of the conflict, and those against which the application of regulatory tools has not led to lasting stabilisation. The results presented in the paper confirm the correctness of considering the above theories against the background of the conflict cycle concept. Institutional and legal analysis and comparative analysis were used in this paper.

This text examines U. S. foreign policy toward the Eastern Bloc during Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s presidency. Specifically, the text focuses on the „revolutionary“ events unfolding in Poland and then Hungary during 1956 and the U. S. government‘s discussions of possible responses to these events, which included discussions of possible retaliatory measures, particularly of an economic nature, and efforts to achieve global diplomatic condemnation of the violent intervention of the Polish and Soviet armies. The text also compares U. S. policy toward the two countries and attempts to place this response in the broader context of U. S. foreign policy strategy at the time, which was influenced by both the strategy of containment and Dulles‘s proclamation of the „liberation of captive nations“. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of TESAM Academy Journal is the property of Tesam Academy 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.)

Zoos represent a social construct, whose form is influenced by societal development. During the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century, they have been transformed from assembled collections to internationally managed insurance (ex situ) populations, and these transformations required some changes in taxa numbers and composition. Previous studies have already identified the trend of reducing the number of taxa kept in zoos worldwide. The aim of the present study is to verify this trend in Europe in more detail and therefore to identify the changes in taxa richness and mammalian taxa richness from 1959 to 2016 in the same set of 67 European zoos while considering their opening period (before 1900 and 1900–1960) and location with respect to the former Iron Curtain (Eastern vs. Western Bloc). There was no significant decrease in taxa richness; on the contrary, there was a significant increase in taxa richness for the former Eastern Bloc zoos. There was a significant decrease in mammalian taxa richness for zoos opened before 1900 and those of the former Western Bloc. These results demonstrate that mammalian taxa have declined in numbers to some extent and that the decline mostly concerns older zoos and those that have historically reached a different stage of development. This suggests that European zoos have not been subject to trends uniformly and should apply different and appropriate strategies when facing future (not only conservation) challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the cultural Cold War in Latin America has experienced a growing interest from disciplinary fields such as cultural history or literary studies. In this line of work, and with the aim of contributing to a transatlantic approach to the problem, the special issue "Cultural ties of socialist and transatlantic friendship: Latin American writers and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War" emphasizes the study of the interrelationships between Latin American literature and various European socialist countries. For this, it attends to a corpus of a plural nature: from fictional texts or analysis of periodicals to, above all, non-fiction texts that authors of diverse origins (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Cuba or Mexico) produced after passing through nations located beyond the Iron Curtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cold War motivated the international cultural field to replicate the geopolitical tensions and affinities that gripped the world. The positive side of this process contributed to the expansion of national literatures in environments where traditionally they had not found great resonance. However, the perverse effects were translated into various exclusions and dogmatic impositions that undermined the autonomy of writers. Latin American literature experienced, in this context, a process of globalization. The aim of this text is to testify to the complexities inherent to the reception of this literature in socialist Romania, for which a remarkable set of periodicals is analyzed, especially from 1964 to 1971. The translation, edition and physical reception of the Latin American authors themselves it was produced according to changing structural determinations, which show the evolution of the Romanian political-cultural field itself, but also thanks to individual gatekeepers who brought Latin American literature closer to the Romanian public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the diplomatic relations between Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union during the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, with a primary focus on the case of Imre Nagy’s capture. The crisis that arose during Nagy’s hiding in the Yugoslav embassy reveals the background of these countries’ relations, in which Yugoslavs showed ambiguousness to maintain the achieved status of a free socialist country on the one hand, and on the other, to keep good relations with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the author attempts to provide answers on Yugoslav role in Nagy’s arrest after he left his hideout within the Yugoslav embassy. The author argues that Yugoslavs were not aware of any Soviet plans to capture Nagy after he left the embassy, even though there are other claims present in this paper that suggests the opposite.

The article will focus on the state of the source base for the Union of Czechoslovak Composers, specifically the archival groups at the National Archives and the National Museum - Czech Museum of Music, which were examined as part of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic's project no. 21-19041S - Composers' Unions and Cultural Policy in Socialist Countries in the 1950s and 1960s. On this occasion, a catalogue of the local archival group Sp 7/2008 was also created for the NM - CMH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Baltico-Slavica is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavic 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.)

The Cold War relationship between British Guiana's People's Progressive Party (PPP) and Czechoslovakia is a case study of how decolonising Third World national liberation movements tried to break free from the Western orbit with the help of the Eastern Bloc. PPP co-founder Cheddi Jagan was the unique elected anti-colonial nationalist leader who secretly worked to assist and join the Eastern Bloc. This article highlights cooperation between British Guiana's leaders and Czechoslovakia aimed at achieving liberation, industrialisation, and scientific socialism. It also demonstrates Czechoslovak and Soviet plans to use British Guiana as a base for South American intelligence operations and to begin bringing postcolonial Guyana into the Eastern Bloc's orbit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article concerns the subject of mass Ukrainian-Polish contacts in the last decade of the USSR. Documents produced by the Polish consular services and the political police allow for the study of Poles’ travel across the eastern border. They were visiting Ukraine e.g. as employees of cultural and commercial institutions, construction companies, participants of official delegations, students of Soviet universities, trainees, participants of trips and — the most frequent — individual tourists. The most important were informal contacts, almost all visitors tried to trade illegally. The intensification of these trips (in 1988 Ukraine was visited by 700,000 Poles), their circumstances and character were the effect of the progressive disintegration of the communist system, which had been taking place in Poland since 1980 and in Ukraine since 1985. The deepening economic crisis increased interest in the transportation of goods across the border and their illegal sale as a source of household supplies or income. Weakening state structures were unable, or unwilling, to effectively counteract this practice. The progressive liberalization of travel regulations increased the number of visitors, who were interested not only in business but also in Ukraine’s past and culture, especially in monuments of Lviv. Poles sometimes demonstrated their critical attitude to the Communist regime, manifested freedom or religious attitudes and often broke harsh Soviet rules. The militia and secret service found them to be troublesome guests. However, non-political people-to-people contacts, virtually nonexistent after WWII, were established and renewed then. These relations developed into close neighborly cooperation after the fall of the USSR.

This article begins with an analysis of the years of cultural activism of the Mexican writer Efraín Huerta at the beginning of the Cold War to approach the study of the book of poems published in 1956 entitled Los poemas de viaje (1949-1953). The study traces the Mexican writer's travels through the Eastern Bloc countries and analyses the writing of the main poems in the collection, guided by the poetics of geography, in order to study the fictionalization of urban space in the poems about Prague, Moscow, and Budapest and how it influences the poet's ideological stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a whole corpus of crime fiction from European socialist countries that was published in Cuba during the 1970s and 1980s. This article analyses, on the one hand, the circulation networks of these literary texts and the communication networks maintained by the writers who were simultaneously developing socialist crime fiction. On the other hand, it points out the possibility of elaborating a comparative poetics of this literary genre. As a first approach in this sense, this article compares elements of the Cuban novel La justicia por su mano (1973) by José Lamadrid Vega, and Rita Villar Figueredo's 1977 Spanish translation of Julian Semionov's Soviet novel Petrovka, 38 (1964). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue "F(r)icciones culturales entre Amírica Latina y el Bloque del Este/Balcanes durante la Guerra Fría" summarizes, first, the disciplinary and epistemological parameters in which it is located and with which it is in dialogue. The shift from the new historiographical approaches of the Cold War is briefly pointed out, highlighting those that have dealt with its incidence in Latin America. Likewise, it mentions contributions from literary studies, especially those linked to the concept of World Literature. Second, three axes are indicated in order to delve into the study of the cultural relations of Latin American literature with European socialist countries--reception, the problem of intellectual networks and comparative poetics--and their link with the texts in the special issue is specified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the character and specific forms of the Czechoslovak-Yugoslav relations after 1974, when the two leftwing authoritarian regimes settled their dispute, which sprang up after the crushing of the Prague Spring. In addition to interstate and intergovernmental relations, another aspect that was examined is their economic cooperation. The paper is based on as yet unexplored archival sources.

This paper explores the foreign policy of US President George H. W. Bush and his administration towards the Soviet Union and the other countries of the Warsaw Pact. The article also focuses on two historically significant American foreign policy strategies that were implemented during the earlier years of the Cold War: containment and détente. The rapidly changing international environment and Bush’s Beyond Containment policy which, aimed to respond to these changes, became the basis for the following research questions: 1) How did American conception of foreign policy approach to Eastern Bloc countries such as Hungary or Poland change under the Bush administration in 1989 in comparison to the period of implementation of the containment or détente? 2) How did the American perception of the retreating Soviet power within the bipolar international structure affect American diplomatic relations with the Eastern European governments? The aim of the paper is to put Bush’s foreign policy in his first year in office in the American ‘Cold War’ foreign policy context and to compare the classical American political strategies with Bush’s foreign policy in 1989.

The topic of Czechoslovak scientific c-technical cooperation with the Western Bloc has recently enjoyed a revival of interest, which can be illustrated by the works of Doubravka Olšáková, Valentina Fava, or Emilie Těšínská. Nevertheless, there is still a range of specific aspects that have been omitted from the consideration of contemporary studies, the analysis of which seems to be a prerequisite for a comprehensive depiction of the history of the cross-Curtain flows of know-how, experts and capital. In this respect, it is appropriate to revisit some of the works of more technically oriented authors of the communist and early post-communist era (Miloslav Ernst, Jaroslav Nykryn, Karel Kaplan) and to objectivize their often ideologized conclusions with new findings from primary sources. To this end, both the fonds of industrial ministries in the Czech National Archives, as well as records of international organizations (UN, GATT, UNESCO) located in Geneva were consulted. As these newly accessible archival materials reveal, compared to the Gottwald era (1948--1953), the subsequent period of Antonín Novotný (1953--1968) saw a dynamic development of the forms and content of inter-bloc cooperation, which allowed for the exchange of competitive scientific-technical know-how and modern technologies that proved to have a significant positive impact on the further development of the Czechoslovak economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Art Studies Quarterly / Problemi Na Izkustvoto is the property of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Art 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.)

Based on Spanish, German, Polish and Romanian archives, this article explores some aspects of the Cold War that have hardly been studied until now: the activities of the Eastern Bloc secret services in Spain; the surveillance of Spanish diplomats; and Eastern European spies in Spain. The article examines the history of East-West relationships but adds the perspective of everyday life, using oral history and the records of the security police. The focus is on the importance of the surveillance of Spain as a Cold War country, which has almost never been researched in its connection to the Eastern Bloc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Allied victory in World War II, Europe was divided into two spheres of influence, according to geographical criteria. The Eastern Bloc, the area of influence of the Soviet Union, adopted the communist regime, promoted by Moscow. The communist regime has been replaced in all Eastern Bloc countries since 1989. Fourteen of these countries, no longer under Moscow's influence, have joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1999, the world's strongest military organization. These fourteen states represent three former members of the USSR, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, four former members of Yugoslavia, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Northern Macedonia, and seven other states, namely Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. How has the allocation of defence resources in the fourteen NATO countries evolved since the fall of communism and the exit from Moscow's influence? We try to answer this question by studying the literature in the field of research and by processing the information provided by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. This study aims to analyse at the level of each country the differences in approach to defence spending from the adoption of the capitalist system, until obtaining the status of NATO member country. Also, this study analyses the evolution of defence spending after joining NATO, to see how the defence budget has been influenced by NATO membership. Special attention will be paid to Romania, the second among the fourteen countries in terms of army size and defence allocations, a country in which the anti-communist revolution has been more violent than in other states. Romania's accession to NATO in 2004 was one of the most important moments of the post-communist era, of equal strategic importance with the accession to the European Union. The Romanian military is respected within the Alliance due to its professionalism and dedication to the values promoted by NATO, currently participating in international missions in theatres of operations.

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s nearly one thousand Nigerians attended universities and professional-technical schools in the Soviet Union. This article examines the recruitment, training and political activity of these students focusing on the years of the Nigerian Civil War. At the beginning, most students were recruited through pro-Soviet organizations and came from the Eastern Region. Initially united within a radical student union, over time Nigerian students were divided along ethnic lines. The article sheds light on the evolution of student politics, the mobilization of Biafrans in support of the secessionist cause, and their conflict with the rest of the students. In light of this conflict, the Soviet authorities acceded to the request of the Nigerian government to impose its strict control over the recruitment and political activity of students. The partnership between Lagos and Moscow provoked the disillusionment of the supporters of Biafra and had a great impact on student politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins with an analysis of the years of cultural activism of the Mexican writer Efrain Huerta at the beginning of the Cold War to approach the study of the book of poems published in 1956 entitled Los poemas de viaje (1949-1953). The study traces the Mexican writer's travels through the Eastern Bloc countries and analyses the writing of the main poems in the collection, guided by the poetics of geography, in order to study the fictionalization of urban space in the poems about Prague, Moscow, and Budapest and how it influences the poet's ideological stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a whole corpus of crime fiction from European socialist countries that was published in Cuba during the 1970s and 1980s. This article analyses, on the one hand, the circulation networks of these literary texts and the communication networks maintained by the writers who were simultaneously developing socialist crime fiction. On the other hand, it points out the possibility of elaborating a comparative poetics of this literary genre. As a first approach in this sense, this article compares elements of the Cuban novel La justicia por su mano (1973) by José Lamadrid Vega, and Rita Villar Figueredo's 1977 Spanish translation of Julian Semionov's Soviet novel Petrovka, 38 (1964). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue "F(r)icciones culturales entre Amírica Latina y el Bloque del Este/Balcanes durante la Guerra Fría" summarizes, first, the disciplinary and epistemological parameters in which it is located and with which it is in dialogue. The shift from the new historiographical approaches of the Cold War is briefly pointed out, highlighting those that have dealt with its incidence in Latin America. Likewise, it mentions contributions from literary studies, especially those linked to the concept of World Literature. Second, three axes are indicated in order to delve into the study of the cultural relations of Latin American literature with European socialist countries--reception, the problem of intellectual networks and comparative poetics--and their link with the texts in the special issue is specified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War, Austria was a country of first asylum for people attempting to flee the so-called "Eastern Bloc." Although the Austrian government used its help for these refugees as part of its foreign policy agenda to increase international prestige, politicians and public perceived Austria first and foremost as a transit country. One of the main strategies employed by the government to solve "refugee crises" was to call for international support and for the admission of refugees to other countries. This article highlights the work of international organizations on behalf of refugees in Austria, focusing particularly on the work of the UNHCR in five major refugee movements to Austria: Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Poland 1981, GDR 1989, and Romania 1989/90. In doing so, it connects support for refugees to the political and economic frameworks of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Athenaeum: Polskie Studia Politologiczne is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Security Studies Nicolaus Copernicus 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 authors examine the impact of the development of image-based remote sensing systems on the activities of state administrations in the cartographic production and making of geographical information publicly available in the Eastern Bloc countries. A convergence of cartography, secrecy, and power occurred during the Cold War. Through investigation of facts relevant to the acquisition image data of the Earth surface performed by the USA and the USSR, it aims to examine the key questions of why the logic behind the development of cartography in the Eastern Bloc countries after World War II was distorted. The lack of logic was reflected in the fact that the amount of information actually presented on maps decreased with an increase in the information about the surface of the Earth acquired by the means of remote sensing systems.

In the years since the end of the Cold War, the role and place of US intelligence community in shaping governmental decision-making process on the USSR and Communist Bloc affairs during the Cold War period have come into the centre of special historiographical trend in both the USA and Europe. Based on the CIA documents recently available to researchers, the article examines the analysis and forecast on the economic and foreign trade policy of the USSR in the COMECON, produced by the American intelligence since the early 1950s until the mid-60s. The author traces the evolution of the US economic intelligence, engaged in researches and submitting reports on the topic, and the views of CIA analysts on the nature, forms and methods of the USSR to maintain relations with her Eastern European allies within the COMECON. The paper defines several stages in the institutional and cognitive development of US economic intelligence on «intra-bloc» developments and the USSR - Eastern Bloc affairs.

Copyright of Kırıkkale University Journal of Social Sciences is the property of Kirikkale University Journal of Social Science (KUJSS) 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 author explores newly revealed declassified analytical and political materials of NATO's and the EC structures that dealt with economic issued. The documents of these two organizations indicate that neither NATO nor the EU during 1957-1962 period had no assumptions about the specific behavior of Romania as a future "troublemaker" in the Eastern Bloc, although some traces of it have not been left unnoticed. At the same time, at the analytical level and on the basis of individual data, experts made assumptions about the growth of contradictions both in the Eastern Bloc as a whole, and, in particular, its economic arm - COMECON. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis that broke out in the Eastern Bloc in the second half of the 1980s, the foreign- and internaleconomic problems of Bulgaria and Romania, the exhaustion of the mechanisms for their practical solution, the formalization of personal contacts between Todor Zhivkov and Nicolae Ceausescu, influenced the Bulgarian and Romanian diplomacy, which prove incapable of solving the escalating environmental problem of gassing the city of Rousse. For the sake of the socialist solidarity of member-states the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the use of Todor Zhivkov as a "a link" between the USSR and Romania, the problem of the environmental pollution of Rousse by the chemical plant "Verahim" in Giurgiu has been silenced for a whole decade (1981-1991), despite the indisputably proven presence of unacceptable concentrations of chlorine ion, which is harmful to the health and life of the citizens of Rousse. The positive consequence of the bilateral political and diplomatic stalemate, in which the Bulgaria and Romania fall is the emergence of the first public protests, the announcement of the environmental problem in Rousse by the media, and the emergence of the first dissident organization in Sofi a - Public Committee for Environmental Protection of the City Rousse (8 March 1988). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The side effects of the Global South's 1980s debt crisis on the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) member countries have received scant scholarly attention, even though the members were important trading partners for many developing countries. This paper focuses on the reaction of the East by looking at internal documents from CMEA meetings. It is argued that the crisis of the South aggravated the already pending crisis of the Eastern economies. The CMEA countries reacted by taking on more risks in doing business with the South and trying to secure the debt repayments by adopting Western financial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]