Search results
When Khrushchev was ousted in October 1964, Israel wondered how Soviet policies would change. Regarding the Jews, there were no changes. Ivan Dedioulia, first secretary of the Soviet embassy in Israel, claimed there was no anti-Jewish discrimination in the Soviet Union. Nasser’s threats, he stated, were ‘idle.’ The Alexandria summit proved that confrontation with Israel
Mutual attraction between the Soviet Union and Afro-America became apparent soon after the 1917 October revolution. For the African-American left, Soviet Russia seemed to be a ‘promised land’ for national and ethnic minorities and a complete contrast to the United States with its system of segregation and discrimination. 1 As Claude McKay put it, ‘the Russian workers, who have won through the ordeal of persecution and revolution, extend the hand of international brotherhood to all the suppressed
During World War II, the Yishuv leadership and the American Zionist leadership made a great effort to convince the Soviet Union to be more open to Zionism, regarding the effort as a long-term investment. The investment paid off when the Soviet ambassador to London announced in 1943 that his country would support Zionism. 1 Thereafter, the Soviet Union took an increasing
The archives of the Soviet Union’s two decision-making bodies, the Communist Party Central Committee and the Politburo, cannot be accessed, so a reliable account cannot be given of Soviet Union’s role in the crisis. However, selected documents have been published and the issue can be discussed, at least, on the diplomatic level. 1 The Kremlin’s view was that since early
At the time of Stalin’s death, Israel and the Soviet Union were poles apart. For Ben-Gurion, Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union and orientation toward the West were conditions for Israel’s survival, while for Stalin’s heirs it was ideologically imperative to deny the existence of a Jewish issue in the Soviet Union and to demand Israel’s neutrality. 1 In April 1953
Four questions stand before the historian of the cold war and the Arab-Israeli conflict: 1) Did Israel and the US have a 'special relationship'? 2) Were Soviet-Israeli relations destined for failure from 1948? 3) Was the Arab-Israeli conflict insoluble because of the cold war or in spite of it? 4)Was detente between the superpowers the key to solving the Arab-Israeli conflict? Israel failed to get a security guarantee from the US because if it were granted ally status the Arab states would turn to the Soviets. Instead of a security guarantee Kennedy used the nebulous term 'special relationship', which did not bind America politically or militarily. Relations with the USSR looked promising at first, but the Zionist ideology of the Jewish state made it inevitable that relations with would worsen , since the Kremlin rejected the notion that Soviet Jews were by definition part of the Jewish nation, and therefore candidates for emigration to Israel. As for the Arabs, they were adamant that the Palestinian refugees return en mass, which meant the destruction of of Israel. No compromise suggested by the US was acceptable to to the Arabs , who were always supported by the USSR.The Soviets demanded detente cover not only the Arab states and Israel, but Turkey and Iran as well. Consequently the Middle East remained a no-man's-land between the superpowers' spheres of influence, inexorably paving the way for the wars in 1956 and 1967.
Watching the red dawn charts the responses of the American avant-garde to the cultural works of its Soviet counterpart in period from the formation of the USSR in 1922 to recognition of this new communist nation by USA in 1933. In this period American artists, writers, and designers looked at the emerging Soviet Union with fascination, as they observed this epochal experiment in communism develop out of the chaos of the Russian Revolution and Civil War. They organised exhibitions of Soviet art and culture, reported on visits to Russia in books and articles, and produced works that were inspired by post-revolutionary culture. One of the most important innovations of Soviet culture was to collapse boundaries between disciplines, as part of a general aim to bring art into everyday life. Correspondingly, this book takes an interdisciplinary approach by looking at American avant-garde responses to Soviet culture across several media, including architecture, theatre, film, photography, and literature. As such, Watching the red dawn considers the putative area of ‘American Constructivism’ by examining the interconnected ways in which Constructivist works were influential upon American practices.
Written in French exile, the following text by Siegfried Kracauer from December 1936 outlines a research project that the German-Jewish intellectual undertook with funding from the Institute for Social Research. The work outlined here would be a study of totalitarian propaganda in Germany and Italy through sustained comparison with communist and democratic countries, especially the Soviet Union and the United States. Appearing in English translation for the first time, this document from Kracauer‘s estate is crucial for a full understanding of his career as a sociologist, cultural critic, film theorist and philosopher, demonstrating the global scope of his engagement with cinema, mass culture and modernity.
Freedoms, set out in 1941, provided particularly American inspiration for the post-war development of liberal global governance. 1 But the principles of great-power trusteeship and balancing, reflected in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals in 1944, were decisive in the creation of the United Nations. 2 Despite the early proliferation of liberal institutions under the aegis of the UN, Cold War prerogatives undermined cosmopolitan aspirations for world government. Cancelling each other out in the Security Council, the US and the Soviet Union
obligation to provide humanitarian assistance wherever it is needed’ ( International Committee of the Red Cross, 1994 : 1). Humanitarian Situation in the DPRK The DPRK made its first large-scale appeal for international humanitarian aid in 1995. Prior to this, the country was a habitual recipient of fraternal aid from the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe. North Korean founder Kim Il Sung’s economy needed aid at first to rebuild after the Korean War, and then to sustain itself. While Kim Il Sung’s son and successor Kim Jong Il, and grandson and current