A Decade of Sino-Russian Diplomacy

1928 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Malbone W. Graham

The diplomatic relations between China and Russia in the past decade present a tangle of converging factors among which the Chinese revolution, the World War, and the Russian revolution play a great part. They are, however, only a phase in the larger process of imperial dissolution and national revival which has encompassed both the Russian and Chinese states and remarkably transformed them within the space of a generation. It is in relation to the forces unleashed by the disintegration of the Romanov and Manchu empires that the decade's changes in diplomatic policy must be viewed.The most significant factor underlying the reorientation of Russian and Chinese foreign policy was the abolition of the monarchy in each country; for, with the fall of the imperial houses, came the beginnings of political and administrative disintegration, the resurgence of local nationalism, and the loosing of the centrifugal forces which the defunct dynasties had held in check. It is not our problem here to trace the constitutional consequences of such a vacancy of power in either domain, but to note the salient fact that it was a difficult, if not impossible, task immediately to create an efficient substitute authority for the dead and departed emperors, and that, in view of that difficulty, provincial separatism was for a time allowed to gain such headway as to constitute a serious menace to the national integrity of both the dissolving empires.

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 716-736
Author(s):  
James Brown Scott

The scientific organizations which flourished before the World War have had great difficulty in continuing their labors after its termination. The Institute of International Law has been no exception. It was to have met in Munich in September, 1914, and its program had been completely arranged; but the war which started in August, 1914, necessarily put an end to all arrangements for the session. A resort to arms inevitably brings with it a desire for its avoidance; and the greater the war, the greater the desire. A decade, a generation struggles in the mists and shadows, seeking to extricate itself from the post-war spirit, condemning the past somewhat indiscriminately and advocating innovations which, new in expression, are nevertheless the aspirations of those who, in all time, crushed and bruised by force, seek to replace it by justice.


2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. CHRISTOPHER JESPERSEN

The frequent use of the Vietnam analogy to describe the situation in Iraq underscores the continuing relevance of Vietnam for American history. At the same time, the Vietnam analogy reinforces the tendency to see current events within the context of the past. Politicians and pundits latch onto analogies as handles for understanding the present, but in so doing, they obscure more complicated situations. The con�ict in Iraq is not Vietnam, Korea, or World War II, but this article considers all three in an effort to see how the past has shaped, and continues to affect, the world the United States now faces.


1960 ◽  
Vol 64 (590) ◽  
pp. 87-92
Author(s):  
A. H. Wheeler

The first International Agricultural Aviation Conference, held at the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield between the 15th and 18th of September 1959, was well timed to mark one stage in the development of the art of airborne farming—it was the stage when the art ceased to be mainly experimental and became essentially a commercial business.Intermittently for the past thirty years, in various parts of the world, attempts have been made with varying degrees of economic and practical success to do certain operations connected with farming, forestry or other allied activities. Two main factors within the past decade have served to intensify the interest and activity in the art. One important factor is the general improvement in aircraft, including helicopters, coupled with the very large number of relatively suitable ones which became redundant (and therefore cheap) at the end of the Second World War. The other factor, equal in importance, concerns the development of the science of agricultural chemistry which has given the farmer a new and wide range of fertilisers, selective weed killers and other chemical forms of pest control which are effective in reasonably small bulk.


2019 ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Victor Grossman

Germany is commonly perceived as a strong, dependable island amid a sea of gyrating European uncertainties, a down-to-earth, dependable ally in attempts by the better U.S. presidents to move the world forward as steadily as possible. For the past thirteen years, this view has been personified in the clear, undramatic words and deeds of Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany since 2005. Considerable doubts in this appraisal, with evidence that Germany, like every other country, has never been a monolith free of class conflict and other contradictions, are addressed in Oliver Nachtwey's Germany's Hidden Crisis: Social Decline in the Heart of Europe, out now from Verso Books. In describing West German, then all-German, developments from the end of the Second World War until the present, Nachtwey analyzes from the left, unafraid to utilize the ideas of Karl Marx as well as a host of more recent analysts of many shades.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
Viktor Yu. MELNIKOV ◽  
Yuri A. KOLESNIKOV ◽  
Alla V. KISELEVA ◽  
Bika B. DZHAMALOVA ◽  
Aleksandra I. NOVITSKAYA

Without understanding the past can be neither a viable present and no decent future. The appeal of the nation to its history – this is not an attempt to escape from the present and uncertainty about the future. This understanding of who we are, where we came from. Based on our experience, we can confidently move forward. Not happen in the Russian revolution, which way went the history of the world? Can we learn from the past to prevent another disaster? The lessons of history are there – they just need to be able to retrieve. The main lesson we can learn from what happened in 1917 – the need to value human life. Russia of the late XIX – early XX century was an incredible human potential.


2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 145-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine S. Chan

In the 1980s, as the end of the millennium approached, the production of nostalgia exploded all around the world. For Hong Kong, nostalgia became a reminder of the golden age that had transformed the city into one of the “Four Asian Tigers” in the decades following the end of the Second World War. While yearning for the better days of the past, Hong Kong coincidentally experienced destabilisation. As the rest of the world, especially the “baby boomers,” mourned the end of a productive era, Hong Kong locals were disturbed by the affirmation of the handover to China in 1997. In the context of these events, a creative rush to nostalgia in cultural manufacturing swept across the city. In the hope of highlighting the uniqueness of nostalgic production in Hong Kong, this study analyses two sets of TV commercials produced by local beverage company Vitasoy. Through the deconstruction of selected historical events, Vitasoy successfully reinvented its brand and, in contrast to general criticism of the concept, generated a positive connotation for nostalgia on the path towards Hong Kong's search for an identity.


Author(s):  
Dana Greene

This chapter details the life and career of Denise Levertov from 1972 to 1975. This period was marked by critical endings for Levertov, an extraordinary time of emotional turmoil and confusion. Three centrifugal forces—the end of the Vietnam War, her break with mentor Robert Duncan, and her divorce from Mitch—could have overwhelmed her. In the end they did not. She survived, and haltingly searched for a new life. Two books of poetry appeared. Footprints (1972) and The Freeing of the Dust (1975) both attested to her longing for freedom and desire to leave the past behind, and a collection of essays, The Poet in the World (1973), established her preeminence in poetics. As she groped toward the future, Levertov carried a talisman with her, a new understanding of her name Denise. Previously she assumed Denise derived from the Greek “Dionysus.” Now to her delight she discovered that in Hebrew its origin was in “Daleth,” meaning “door,” “entrance, exit/way through of/giving and receiving.” Obliquely she began to live into this new self-understanding.


Inner Asia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Elza-Bair Guchinova

Abstract This article examines how historical representation of the deportation of Kalmyks to Siberia has changed in compliance with the politics of history in Russia. It traces the shift from silence on this topic under communism to the dramatisation of it in the 1990s when the communists lost their power, and finally to the softening of this event in the last decades when state ideology under Putin’s administration is striving to unite the peoples of Russia around the victory in the World War II, leaving the history of the ‘purged peoples’ on the sidelines of this triumph. This evolution from a tragic to a more positive narrative is reflected in the messages of public spectacles about the deportation. The softened approach to this traumatic event was also linked to generational change: its eldest witnesses today are the people who were born between 1943 and 1956 and who were too young to remember its hardships. The author analyses classic theatre performances (‘Arash’, 1995, and ‘Kalmychka’, 2018) and mass agitational campaigns, such as the Trains of Remembrance which took present-day Kalmyks to Siberia to express gratitude symbolically to Siberians who helped them in the difficult period. These spectacles are not mere historical illustrations of the past, but new revisions of it.


1963 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. O'Farrell

The Bolsheviks saw their revolution, not as merely Russian, but as the opening act in a great drama of international socialist revolution. This vision, dazzling in itself, mingled with Russian reality, evoked responses in the Australian and New Zealand labour movements. To these countries, the Russian revolution came as part accomplished fact, part world myth, an astonishing sublimation of the enforced and sordid internationalism of suffering on the battlefields of the world war. As such, it was peculiarly disturbing to labour movements which had been, in the main, traditionally cautious and self-sufficient, resistant to both dreams and doctrines. But even Australian and New Zealand labour could not live by bread alone. Was the Russian revolution relevant? This was the basic question, and, at first, it went to the core of local conflicts and indecisions. At first, this question seemed to mean – were revolutionary concepts relevant to Australian and New Zealand conditions, in a situation of imminent world revolution. Was labour to pursue doctrinaire, militant and revolutionary socialism, or welfare-state reformism? This fundamental alternative was, of course, not absent before the Russian revolution, but that revolution posed it with a realism, bluntness and urgency never experienced before. Yet hardly had Australian and New Zealand labour confronted with this imperative, when its terms began to change as circumstances narrowed the challenge represented by Russia. Was the Russian revolution relevant? By 1920 this question had come to mean – would Australian and New Zealand labour accept Russian methods, theories and direction?


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