From a Bolshevik to a British Subject: The Early Years of Maksim M. Litvinov

Slavic Review ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Definitive Answer ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Violent Men ◽  
The Government ◽  
Considerable Period ◽  
Striking Contrast ◽  
The Revolution

Maksim M. Litvinov was the most colorful and controversial of the major European diplomats in the 1930s. As Henry Roberts has observed, Litvinov's “chubby and unproletarian figure radiated an aura of robust and businesslike common sense that was in striking contrast to the enigmatic brutality of the Politburo.” But this cultured and reflective man served that Politburo for the better part of his life, and he did so until his disillusionment overwhelmed him, and he made a complete break with the policies of the Soviet leadership. The obvious question is why Litvinov continued this bizarre relationship so long—one between the cosmopolitan “citizen of Geneva” and the reclusive and often violent men in the Kremlin. A definitive answer is, of course, impossible given the sources, but a clue can be found in an examination of Litvinov before the Bolshevik Revolution, a topic that has received virtually no attention from western scholars. As will be shown, the rotund and cooly analytical diplomat was for a considerable period of time a man wholly dedicated to violent revolution—and not just in the abstract. Litvinov was one of the apparatchiki of the movement who was not afraid to get his hands dirty in the sometimes messy business of fomenting revolution. Litvinov changed greatly over the course of his life, but it seems clear that for a few decades he was never fully able to repudiate these early years. Therefore he remained at his post, continuing to serve the government that sprang from the revolution, even as his own disillusionment grew.

Development and destruction of the liberal prison system in Spain: a general framework for studying the topic

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. 424
Author(s):  
Luis Gargallo Vaamonde
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Prison System ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual

During the Restoration and the Second Republic, up until the outbreak of the Civil War, the prison system that was developed in Spain had a markedly liberal character. This system had begun to acquire robustness and institutional credibility from the first dec- ade of the 20th Century onwards, reaching a peak in the early years of the government of the Second Republic. This process resulted in the establishment of a penitentiary sys- tem based on the widespread and predominant values of liberalism. That liberal belief system espoused the defence of social harmony, property and the individual, and penal practices were constructed on the basis of those principles. Subsequently, the Civil War and the accompanying militarist culture altered the prison system, transforming it into an instrument at the service of the conflict, thereby wiping out the liberal agenda that had been nurtured since the mid-19th Century.

1660–1688

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Harris
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
The Revolution

The first chapter traces the friendship of Godolphin and Marlborough from their early years at the Restoration court, through the Exclusion crisis until the Revolution of 1688. Both marry for love at a time when many men with no inherited fortune regard wives and families as encumbrances they cannot afford, but Margaret Godolphin dies early in childbirth. They share a diplomatic mission to William of Orange in 1678, and afterwards their friendship enables them to work in different ways towards his intervention to defeat the Catholicizing policies of James II, so that England can participate in a European alliance against the expansionism of Louis XIV. When James flees to France in 1688 both Churchill and Godolphin accept William and Mary as de facto monarchs, though their strongest loyalties are to Mary’s sister Anne, with whom Sarah Churchill has become a favourite.

The Unexpected Revolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. D. Clark
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Rights Theories ◽  
New View ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter 4 offers a new view of the American Revolution in terms more of negations than of affirmations: not the instantiation of modernizing natural rights theories or republicanism, but the result of older and passionate negations on both sides of the Atlantic, often religious. It reinterprets Paine’s Common Sense against the older contexts proposed in this book, and argues that the pamphlet, although important, was not transformative and ubiquitous. It traces Paine’s subsequent writings while in America, responding to and interpreting the course of the Revolution, and concludes that Paine’s understanding of that important episode was less than has been thought; rather, he largely remained within an English frame of reference, as did, indeed, most American colonists. He understood the American Revolution, then, in English terms.

Soviet Specialist Baiting: The Case of N. A. Dobrosmyslov

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Professional Competence ◽  
The State ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
High Salary ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Government ◽  
Continued Employment ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractFor many communists working in the Soviet state apparatus during the 1920s, the state's continued employment of so-called “bourgeois specialists” (spetsy) was an ideological affront and an obstacle to proletarian advancement. In their eyes, until the spetsy were removed and workers staffed the institutions of the state, the revolution would be neither secure nor its promises fulfilled. Based on archival research, this article traces rank-and-file communists' attempts to remove one such specialist, N. A. Dobrosmyslov, from his position in the Tax Department (Gosnalog) of the People's Commissariat of Finances (Narkomfin). Dobrosmyslov had been a long-time official in the tsarist tax bureaucracy and had also worked for the Provisional Government in 1917. Communist opposition to him took the form of a denunciation campaign that focused on his alleged anti-Sovietism, his professional competence, his arrogant manner, his high salary, and his attempt to obtain a large pension from the government. The documents related to the case reveal the atmosphere of suspicion and often open hostility that surrounded the spetsy. They provide evidence of the contrasting evaluations of the spetsy made by leading communist administrators and by the lower-level communists who worked closely with them. They also show how important the issue of material compensation was for this latter group. Finally, the case provides an example of how biography could be interpreted and manipulated to serve particular ends, especially in the context of political and personal denunciation.

Testing times

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
Sue Cowley
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Home Testing ◽  
The Government

Early years sector organisations have campaigned hard for providers to have access to Covid home testing to give them parity with maintained settings. While the Government has now promised to deliver this by 22 March – the next battle is to ensure that childminders are included in the frame.

Building better people: policy aspirations and family life

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Brid Featherstone ◽  
Anna Gupta ◽  
Kate Morris ◽  
Sue White
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Family Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Developmental Potential ◽  
Small Children

This chapter discusses the residual, but strongly legitimised, role for the state in preventing damage to children, which carries high levels of criticism for those parents seen as failing to optimise their child's developmental potential. The idea that childhood experiences are important and can be formative clearly has a common-sense truth to it and obviously, traumatic experiences in childhood will have lasting impacts. However, a vocabulary has emerged in which notions of toxic parenting and the quest for optimum developmental flourishing create new mandates for the state to act. The chapter then argues that these are necessary to explain the sharp rises in national rates of child removal, particularly the permanent removal of very small children, documented over the last decade. They also contribute to service fragmentation by privileging intervention in the early years in the form of ‘evidence-based’ parenting programmes.

Some Actuarial Aspects of Unemployment Insurance

1929 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-160
Author(s):  
J. G. Kyd ◽  
G. H. Maddex
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Poor ◽  
National Insurance ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government

Judged by the amount of space devoted to the subject in the Journal of the Institute, Unemployment Insurance has received but little attention from actuaries in the past Public interest in the problem of relieving distress due to unemployment became pronounced in the early years of the present century and led to the appointment in 1904 of a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and, eventually, to the passing in 1911 of the first Unemployment Insurance Act. These important events found a somewhat pallid reflection in our proceedings in the form of reprints of extracts from Sir H. Llewellyn Smith's address on Insurance against Unemployment to the British Association in 1910 (J.I.A., vol. xliv, p. 511) and of Mr. Ackland's report on Part II of the National Insurance Bill (J.I.A., vol. xlv, p. 456). At a later date, when the scope of the national scheme was very greatly widened, the Government Actuary's report on the relevant measure—the Unemployment Insurance Bill 1919—was reprinted in the Journal (J.I.A., vol. lii, page 72).

scholarly journals Utopiens grænser i Den amerikanske revolution

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (64) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Birk Jespersen
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Farmer ◽  
Political Logic ◽  
The Revolution

Mikkel Birk Jespersen: "Utopiens grænser i Den amerikanske revolution - Om utopiske tekststrategier i Common Sense og Letters from an American Farmer"AbstractMikkel Birk Jespersen: “Boundaries of Utopia in the American Revolution: On Utopian Text Strategies in Common Sense and Letters from an American Farmer”The article discusses the relations between utopia, literature and revolution in the American Revolution through an analysis of Tom Paine’s Common Sense (1776) and J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1782). It is arguedthat utopia constitutes a textual function whose ‘non-place’ or ‘point zero’ is not reducible to a political logic, but rather presents a challenge to it. In the revolution, however, the different logics of utopia and of the political can be said to confront each other, hereby illuminating the contradictions of both. The constellation of the two texts brings out the contradictory nature of utopia, as the texts have opposed approaches to the revolution and are characterised by two different utopian logics.

scholarly journals Humanitarian Assistance of Italy to Ukraine in 2014-2018 рр.

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-124
Author(s):  
Olga Sukhobokova
Keyword(s):  
Public Information ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Strong Ties ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
Italian Government ◽  
The Government

The article deals with the provision of humanitarian aid to Ukraine by the government and society (citizens) of Italy during the period of Russian armed aggression against Ukraine (2014-2018). Among them are the efforts of the large Ukrainian community in Italy (according to official figures in Italy, there are more than 230 thousand Ukrainians registered). The directions, volumes and methods of relief assistance for Ukrainian military and population in war-affected areas in eastern Ukraine and settlers were analyzed. It was determined that government financial assistance (over 3 million euros was allocated for 2014-2018) during this period came through international humanitarian organizations, which deal with the civilian people affected by the armed conflict and the program of demining of ukrainian territories. The Ukrainian community in Italy provides individual assistance (from individuals) and from organizations (for example, the Congress of Ukrainians in Italy, “EuroMaydan-Rome” and others). Ukrainian communities of entire cities and regions may be involved in collecting a large sum (the most active are Ukrainians in Rome, Brescia, Milan, Naples).Mostly Ukrainians provided cars for units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and volunteer groups in the area of fighting, equipment, clothes and funds for the needs of Ukrainian defenders, as well as food and gifts for them to holidays, organized humanitarian cargoes for the victims of the war of the population. At the same time, the Ukrainian community in Italy tried to hold public information events in support of Ukraine in the early years of the Russian-Ukrainian War and inform the Italian society and authorities about the events in it.The third source of humanitarian aid for Ukraine in Italy is Italian voluntary associations such as “Italy-Ukraine-Maidan”, which independently delivers the largest humanitarian cargo to the east of Ukraine. Italy’s assistance to Ukraine is considered in the context of the socio-political processes and the foreign policy line of the Italian government. It is determined how the traditional strong ties between Italy and Russia affect for the attitude and assistance to Ukraine.

scholarly journals Savings and investment equality does not prevail according to Keynesian definitions

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. 97-105
Author(s):  
Tamás Bánfi
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Monetary Authority ◽  
Market Mechanisms ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Investments ◽  
General Government ◽  
Government Deficit ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Government

Aside from the general government and the non-resident sector, textbooks on macroeconomics uniformly define the following correlation under the terms investment and saving: I = S. The I = S equality is naturally and legitimately interpreted by macroeconomic textbooks almost without exception as the equality between intended investments and intended savings, because the equality ‒ if we accept it ‒ is not only a definitive identity, but generally the outcome of market mechanisms that take time. Keynes’s first critic was Robertson who claimed that “his analysis corresponded to what common-sense proclaims (even to the simple-minded) to be the essence of the matter; namely, the power possessed by the public and by the monetary authority to alter the rates of income flow – the former by putting money into and out of store, the latter by putting it into and out of existence. Thus, in his definition, I = S + (A + B), in which A is new money and B is reactivated idle balances. ” Robertson's comment could have been addressed with a simple correction, and the tool used for funding the expansion of state (public) investments, i.e. the government deficit financed by the creation of new money, is a consistent element of the theoretical framework.

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