Amateur history for (a) future historian(s)
When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, a large number of Jews fled east. When the Red Army invaded Poland from the east sixteen days later, these Jewish refugees found themselves under Soviet rule. By the time the border was formalized between the Soviet and German zones of occupation, thousands of Jewish refugees …
Continue reading “Jewish Refugees in the Kresy: Soviet Loyalty Testing”
5.1 Is the collapse of the USSR more attributable to personality, institutional or structural features?I think the collapse of the USSR was attributable to all three of the features: personality, institutional, and structural. Presuming that Mikhail Gorbachev is the person referred to in the first regard, I think it’s fair to say that his personality …
4.2.3. Is there such a thing as Brezhnevism? What, if anything, characterises the ideological politics of Brezhnev’s long term in office? There is such a thing has Brezhnevism, but I don’t think Brezhnevism is the right word to use for it. On the one hand, there certainly was a series of policies and actions undertaken …
4.1.3. It is sometimes suggested that historians ought to swap the term “De-Stalinisation” for Khrushchevism. What do you think? Is there such a thing as ‘Khrushchevism’? Can more insight into the transition from Stalinism be gained by focusing on what was distinctive about the ideological politics of the Khrushchev era? While I am unsure whether …
Continue reading “Was Khrushchevism a Period of De-Stalinization?”
What are the (relative) advantages of the revisionist interpretations of Stalinism? I think one of the most important advantages of the a revisionist interpretation of Stalinism is that it becomes easier through one to understand how and why Stalin undertook the mass repressions that he did. For instance, although the “traditional” historians and revisionists both …
3.1. Stalin’s regime is an archetype (or model) of totalitarianism. Do you agree? I don’t think it’s much of a question of whether Stalin’s regime was totalitarian. Rather, I think the dispute that has arisen is not over whether it was totalitarian but rather over how well and accurately the term had been defined before …
While the Cold War has been largely understood as a non-shooting war between the United States and the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1991, the effects on the nations of Europe and the developing world cannot be overestimated. In both Europe and the developing world, sides were created by the U.S. and USSR and proxy …
Continue reading “The Cold War in Europe and the Developing World”
The ability of extremist political movements of the interwar period might have maintained their power on the basis of coercion, but there was nevertheless a core group of people at the center of these movements — not to mention a not insignificant number of the rank and file — that supported them. In Germany, National …
On the surface, the ideologies of the Soviet and Nazi regimes were diametrically opposed. On the one hand, the Soviets were on the far left and sought (at least in theory) to create a society in which everyone was equal; on the other hand, the Nazis were on the far right and sought to impose …
Continue reading “Source Analysis: Women in Interwar Radical Politics”
In my opinion, Mikhail Gorbachev deserves enormous credit for both the peaceful ending of the dictatorship and cold war and the decline and collapse of the Soviet state because I cannot imagine one happening without the other. Moreover, the see the decline and collapse of the USSR as having been an overwhelmingly positive thing, even …
Inevitable Historicity