The Incredible Story of the Book “The Country of White Lilies” of Grigoriy Petrov

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-243
Author(s):  
Zeynep Zafer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Exile Literature ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Soviet Union

Many works about Russian exile literature written abroad were unpublished for years during the Soviet Union period. Some of these works, which lost their originals in Russian language, met with the Russian readers in the 1990s after being translated from the Western languages in Russian. The Russian writer Grigory Spriridovich Petrov’s book The Country of White Lilies due to the intense interest of the Turkish readers was preserved in the approximately 60 years period of prohibition. The book and his author, whose name was forgotten in the Soviet Union, continued to be published in the Balkans and Asia and only 81 years later was published in Russian language. The original was first translated in Turkish and from the Turkish translation the book was translated in Arabic and Finnish. The Country of White Lilies has more than eighty publications and up to ten different translations from Bulgarian and Russian editions in Turkey.

scholarly journals Russia’s Foreign Policy Evolution in the New Balkan Landscape

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 179-199
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Entina ◽  
Alexander Pivovarenko
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Difference

The article reflects on the issue of the foreign policy strategy of modern Russia in the Balkans region. One of the most significant aspects of this problem is the difference in views between Russia and the West. Authors show how different interpretations of the events in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s predetermined the sense of mutual suspicion and mistrust which spread to other regions such as the post-Soviet space. Exploring differences between the Russian and the Western (Euro-Atlantic) views on the current matters, authors draw attention to fundamental differences in terminology: while the Western narrative promotes more narrow geographical and political definitions (such as the Western Balkan Six), traditional Russian experts are more inclined to wider or integral definitions such as “the Balkans” and “Central and Southeast Europe”. Meanwhile none of these terms are applicable for analysis of the current trends such as the growing transit role of the Balkans region and its embedding in the European regional security architecture. Therefore, a new definition is needed to overcome the differences in vision and better understand significant recent developments in the region. Conceptualizing major foreign policy events in Central and Southeast Europe during the last three decades (the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s), authors demonstrate the significance of differences in tools and methods between the Soviet Union and the modern Russia. Permanent need for adaptation to changing political and security context led to inconsistence in Russian Balkan policy in the 1990s. Nevertheless, Russia was able to preserve an integral vision of the region and even to elaborate new transregional constructive projects, which in right political circumstances may promote stability and become beneficial for both Russia and the Euro-Atlantic community.

scholarly journals Do History Lessons Ever Pay off? A Diplomat’s Memoir

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodric Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Russian Language ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Moscow River

Sir Rodric Braithwaite was educated at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, from where he went to serve in HM Diplomatic Service, having worked in Jakarta, Moscow, Washington, Warsaw, Rome, and Brussels, where he was a member of the British delegation to the European Community. From 1988 to 1992, Sir Rodric served as HM Ambassador in the Soviet Union during the decisive years of the Perestroika and the first British ambassador in Russia. Subsequently, he was appointed foreign policy adviser to the Prime Minister in the second John Major ministry and chaired the UK Joint Intelligence Committee between 1992 and 1993. He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in 1994. As a career diplomat, Sir Rodric gained decades of insight into the troubled relations between Russia and West, having taken part in numerous negotiations on arms control. His affinity with the decision-making circles in both Russia and Britain alongside with the mastery of the Russian language allow him to skillfully dissect the underlying causes of ups-and-downs in Moscow’s relationship with the West, employing the works of both English- and Russian-speaking analysts. Among his recent books are Across the Moscow River (2002), Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War (2006), Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979–1989 (2012), Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation (2017). In this essay, Sir Rodric reminisces of the years spent as a diplomat and provides his view on the usefulness and applicability of historical lessons while devising a foreign policy course.

Tajikistan

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-69
Author(s):  
Barakatullo Ashurov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
State Control ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Missionary Movement

Christianity in modern Tajikistan is closely connected to the missionary movement of the Church of the East in the Central Asian landmass. The historical patterns of the ROC aimed to cover only European and Russian nationals with Russian language only. This has led to Christianity being dubbed a ‘Russian religion’. The Roman Catholic Church was in Central Asia since the thirteenth century. The first wave of Protestants came through the Mennonites (Brethren), along with Evangelicals and Baptists (who both eventually merged in 1941 into the Evangelical Baptists), and the second wave came through various Protestant mission organizations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Protestant churches in the country comprise both local converts from Islam and those of Russian Orthodox background. Although non-Tajik Christians are culturally acceptable, local converts are regarded as traitors. Many such restrictions apply equally to all religions. State restraint toward religious minorities are due to inherited Soviet tradition and fear of the extremist ideology that was a cause of the recent civil war. Current persecution in the country is largely a matter of social discrimination rather than state control. Nonetheless, the existing communities, particularly those with valid registrations, are thriving, albeit on a small scale.

Laying Blame for Flight and Fight: Sino-Soviet Relations and the “Yi–Ta” Incident in Xinjiang, 1962

2019 ◽  
Vol 238 ◽  
pp. 504-523
Author(s):  
Charles Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Northern Xinjiang ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Major Flare ◽  
Party State

AbstractIn spring 1962, 60,000 individuals fled from northern Xinjiang into the Soviet Union. Known as the “Yi–Ta” incident, the mass exodus sparked a major flare up in Sino-Soviet relations. This article draws on declassified Chinese and Russian-language archival sources and provides one of the first in-depth interpretations of the event and its aftermath. It argues that although the Chinese government blamed the Soviet Union for the Yi-Ta incident, leaders in Beijing and Xinjiang also recognized the domestic roots of the disturbance, such as serious material deficits in northern Xinjiang and tensions between minority peoples and the party-state. The Chinese government's diplomatic sparring with Moscow over the mass exodus reflected Mao Zedong's continued influence on Chinese foreign policy, despite claims by scholars that Mao had retreated from policymaking during this period.

Invasion and Occupation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Prusin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Military Power ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Economic Space ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Chain Of Command ◽  
Political Economic

Examines German rule imposed on Serbia after the collapse in Yugoslavia in April 1941. Obsessed with the preparation for the war against the Soviet Union, Hitler relegated Serbia to a source-depot of food supplies and raw materials within the Third Reich’s political-economic space. As a hinterland for the German forces in the Balkans, Serbia became a “state of emergency,” whereby the system of governing was simplified to the direct chain of command from top to bottom for the purpose of fulfilling specific tasks. Initially, the April catastrophe facilitated the image of Germany as an invincible military power and seemingly extinguished popular will to resistance.

The Voices of Keti Chukhrov: Radical Poetics after the Soviet Union

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-478
Author(s):  
Marijeta Bozovic
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Future Challenge ◽  
Institutional Critique ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Many ◽  
State Socialist

Abstract The newest Russian poetic avant-garde wields highly aware appropriations and remediations in stark opposition to mainstream cultural phenomena, including nostalgia for the imperial and militant aestheticized politics of the Soviet Union. Efforts to think leftward beyond the state socialist past to a global egalitarian future challenge both Russian and “Western” narratives in our increasingly interconnected world. The Georgian-born Russian-language poet Keti Chukhrov, in particular, theorizes powerlessness in deeply local yet globally familiar ways. Despite the many voices rumbling through her work, Chukhrov’s theses are consistent: art must be communist; all desire, even faked, is political eros; and the post-Soviet subject is not even dead. Chukhrov embeds her politics in institutional critique, lends her labor to collectives and collaborations, and refracts her poetic voice into multitudes.

A Utopian Vision? A Modest Proposal to Prevent Nations from Causing Future Wars

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-549
Author(s):  
Nicolae Harsanyi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sweet Taste ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Modest Proposal ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Cold War

I certainly find the present times most engaging: I have had the chance to live through events that will not be neglected by historians—the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the subsequent end of the Cold War, the failed Moscow coup and the breathtaking aftermath of undoing “mankind's golden dream” in its very cradle, the Soviet Union. There is so much hope in the air for East Europeans to return to development which was thwarted by decades of imposed socialist dictatorship. The sweet taste of freedom and self-assertion helps people to overcome the economic hardships ravaging the area. From the Baltic to the Balkans, from the Tatra to the Caucasus and beyond, nations, nationalities, and minorities show signs of vitality and righteous affirmation of their own complex existence on territories fragmented by conventional boundaries established with or without their own consent or approval.

Denuclearization on NATO's Southern Front: Allied Reactions to Soviet Proposals, 1957–1963

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 197-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lykourgos Kourkouvelas
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
East European ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Missiles

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union and its East European allies sought to prevent the installation of U.S. nuclear missiles in Western Europe by embarking on a diplomatic “peace offensive” that included proposals for the creation of denuclearized zones in various geographical areas of Europe. This article considers how the NATO countries responded to these proposals. In the end, the Western allies rejected proposals for the denuclearization of the Balkans and other areas in Europe, but discussions within NATO's councils often proved complicated, especially regarding southern Europe. In the case of the 1957 Stoica proposal for the denuclearization of the Balkans, the leading NATO countries stepped back and let Turkey and Greece reject the proposal, but by 1963, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States and other key allied countries as well as the NATO bureaucracy assumed a more active role in evaluating and ultimately rejecting the notion of denuclearization in the Mediterranean.

scholarly journals EU Enlargement to the Balkans: Membership Perspective to the Balkan Countries

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Rıdvan Karluk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Balkan States ◽  
The Eu

After the dispersion of the Soviet Union, the European Union embarked upon an intense relationship with the Central and Eastern European Countries. The transition into capital market and democratization of these countries had been supported by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs at the beginning of 1989 before the collapse of the Soviet Union System. The European Agreements were signed between the EU and Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia on December 16th, 1991. 10 Central and Eastern Europe Countries became the members of the EU on May 1st, 2004. With the accession of Bulgaria and Romania into the EU on January 1st, 2007, the number of the EU member countries reached up to 27, and finally extending to 28 with the membership of Croatia to the EU on July 1st, 2013. Removing the Western Balkan States, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina from the scope of external relations, the EU included these countries in the enlargement process in 2005.The European Commission has determined 2014 enlargement policy priorities as dealing with the fundamentals on preferential basis. In this context, the developments in the Balkans will be closely monitored within the scope of a new approach giving priority to the superiority of law. The enlargement process of the EU towards the Balkans and whether or not the Western Balkan States will join the Union will be analyzed.

scholarly journals “Russian” and “Soviet” Plot in the Literary Works of Yoko Tavada

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 364-382
Author(s):  
T. S. Simyan
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Heroine's Journey ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
Japanese Writer ◽  
The Given ◽  
Jimi Hendrix

In the article the concepts-signified as “Russian” and “Soviet” expressed in the works of the German-Japanese writer Yoko Tavada (born 1960) are touched upon. The concepts signified as “Soviet” and “Russian” do encompass everything that is connected with Russian culture, literature and the Soviet Union. The empirical material for the given depiction were the essay and novel by Tavada “Suspicious passengers of your night trains” (2002, 2009). Based on the example of this novel the attitude of the younger generation of the socialist countries of late 1980s to the Russian language is revealed. The transition of the socialist bloc (Yugoslavia) is described on the example of clothes (jeans, aluminum fork, and pizza), the younger generation (good manners vs. bad manners), and language skills (English vs. Russian). The heroine’s journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway (Moscow – Irkutsk – Khabarovsk) enabled the author to reveal the micro-historical realities of the last decade of the Soviet era. The plot of the novel showed that in the last decades of the Soviet era there was already a “nostalgia” for household goods, the style of clothing and music, and Western pop culture (Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley). During the contact with the main character, the Russian soul (benevolence, openness, hospitality) and low standards of eco-awareness and disrespect for non-smokers in public transport (train) are revealed. The Soviet era is also confessed at the level of smell and food (garlic, cheap cigarettes, onions, black bread, porridge, soup butter drips, vodka, etc.). In the course of the narrative and communication with the surrounding people the Siberian “real” world is indicated, i.e. the poverty of the interior of the Siberian villages of the Soviet era. In the course of describing the Siberian expanse its natural and climatic constants such as cold, snow, bathhouse and birch, the latter as a symbol of all of Russia with its mythological stratum, were presented. The attributive cycle of the Siberian natural-climatic and “material” world is completed by the theme of androgyny opened up in the Siberian bathhouse, which is a space for identifying all types of physical things, that is, of female and male in woman and man.

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