CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Valahian Journal of Historical Studies
Special Issue
1917. The Beginning of a New Era
Articles on the following topics are encouraged:
• evaluation of Communist experiences in the framework of modernization theories;
• critical studies on totalitarianism and post-totalitarianism;
• changes in the outside world: political and ideological reactions within liberal democracies, the role of the “engaged spectator” in combating political religions, replicas from Liberalism and Christian-Democracy;
• comparative studies in the political culture of Communism, institutional mechanisms of Communist regimes and the role of ideology in international affairs;
• transformations in arts and culture generated both by the utopian allegiance to new ideals and search for new forms of expressions but also by the struggle to maintain freedom of conscience under ideological imperatives;
• the expansion of Communism in East Central Europe but also its role and influence in the Third World, the fluctuating relation between Communism and the anti-imperialist struggle for liberation, similarities of rhetoric and political discourse;
• industrialization under Communist regimes with its economic and social consequences in the framework of developmental studies;
• mass repression under Communist regimes, the role of the political police and the changing dynamics of propaganda campaigns and ideological education;
• social changes under Communism, human costs of rapid industrialization and urbanization, dissolution of patriarchal societies and the everyday rites of the “New Man”.
ISSN: 1584-2525
Editor: Cetatea de Scaun Publishing House
Editorial board
The Valahian Journal of Historical Studies is edited by the Cetatea de Scaun Publishing House with the support of the Grigore Gafencu Center for the History of International Relations of the State University Valahia in Târgovişte (Romania). It is dedicated to a better knowledge of the modern and contemporary history. As the interest for writing and reading in this history study field is obviously increasing, the initiative of this journal is both a response and a stimulant for all historians in search for an additional chance to have their scholarly materials published and acknowledged by the community of fellow historians. The initiative to speak with a distinct voice has originated among our fellow historians in the Department of History of the Faculty of Humanities in our university, but the goal we promise to achieve is broader than a local one. By this journal we encourage a closer and larger dialogue with other Romanian and foreign historians interested in opening up new opportunities Read more
LATEST ISSUE
(No. 23-24/2015)
Language: English
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 5-14
No. of Pages: 10
Keywords: Cold War, conflict, cultural exchanges, superpowers
Summary/Abstract: Research on Cold War has often been considered to a separate research paradigm and has thus been given the same of Cold War Studies. There are journals, research centers and institutions in the western countries many of which were born already during the Cold War. The Cold War was a western paradigm that was partly adopted in the socialist countries during the Cold War, but mainly as a concept outside scholarly research. Cold War studies used to be very political by nature, concentrating on international politics, high-level diplomacy and military affairs. But since the end of the Cold War, drastic changes have taken place in the field. Culture and social approaches that were hardly even in the margins within the Cold War studies have quickly transformed the whole field. One of the important factors for this was the opening of borders and access to primary sources that had remained closed for most researchers throughout the Cold War. This change is well reflected in the articles of this volume.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): Cultural history
Page Range: 15-33
No. of Pages: 19
Keywords: criticism, Cultural Cold War, Russia, visiual art
Summary/Abstract: The cultural Cold War has interested a number of Western and few Russian scholars. At the same time, the problem of representation and reception of American visual art in the USSR during the 1950s to 1980s has not been thoroughly explored. The essay aims to partially fill this research gap. The official Soviet reception of American visual art might be reconstructed based upon articles in periodicals, academic journals and monographs. Numerous publications, issued between 1949 and 1991, have been used as data for this study of the rhetoric in Soviet art history and art criticism. Most of the texts analyzed here contain negative criticism of avant-garde art. However, the essay also includes some precedents of positive criticism of the works of American realist painters. Prior to analyzing the Soviet reception of American visual art, it is necessary to make a few general remarks on the character and peculiarities of Soviet art discourse.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): Cultural history
Page Range: 35-60
No. of Pages: 26
Keywords: Cold War, Columbia Artists Management, David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels, Sol Hurok, Soviet music, Soviet-American cultural relations, Soviet-American music exchange
Summary/Abstract: After Stalin’s death in 1953, the Soviet Union and the United States began to seek alternatives to their military rivalry by using culture as a weapon of “soft-power” in order to accomplish their foreign policy goals using attraction rather than coercion. As the Cold War intensified, a thriving competition developed between the superpowers to determine which of them could send more cultural diplomats to the other side, in the form of soloists and performing groups. This article addresses the undercurrent of socio-economic and political processes involved in organizing violinist David Oistrakh’s first concert tour of the United States in 1955. I’ll discuss how Soviet organizations worked with non-governmental Western partners, such as concert firms and impresarios to bring Soviet performers to the United States. I’ll outline the development of the competition between Frederick C. Schang from Columbia Artists Management, and Sol Hurok from Hurok Artists, Inc. in the organization of Oistrakh’s American outreach from 1955 to 1959. I’ll also discuss how Soviet and American violinists, such as Oistrakh and Yehudi Menuhin, played significant roles in both the organization of tours and the choice of which concert firms would be used in the future. While driven primarily by economic motivations at first, these cultural overtures would have increasingly political and diplomatic implications as they expanded the Soviet Union’s cultural influence to the West. The ripple effect of this “back door diplomacy” very likely affected the outcome of the Cold War itself.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): Economy
Page Range: 61-72
No. of Pages: 12
Keywords: Cold War, Imaginary West, sailors, Soviet Union, youth consumption
Summary/Abstract: Communication with soviet and foreign sailors was one of the most common ways in the USSR to join the western way of life. Structuring this communication was made by official and non-official institutions. Material and non-material exchange constructed special West image which sometimes have little in common with the real West. Distribution of propaganda materials, black-marketing and exchanging of western LPs are analyzing in the article as the main ways of constructing Imaginary West (term proposed by A. Yurchak). I suppose that Imaginary West was built with the help of western goods which “western image” meant more than their utility and anti-Soviet content of propaganda materials. Cultural exchange had not only influenced the individual cognition but also created new social milieus. Rerecording and exchanging of western albums were the example of such milieu creation. Took its birth inside friend circles in 1960–1970s that process had been officially organized as informal associations in 1980s.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 73-87
No. of Pages: 15
Keywords: Cold War, Finnish Slavistics, social science, Sovietology
Summary/Abstract: While historian generally agree that Sovietology was far more than just “knowing your enemy”, a profound understanding of the highly complex nature of the field has been impeded by the lack of a comparative perspective and the absence of what could be called peripheral countries from the grand narrative of Soviet Studies. This essay shifts the emphasis away from American and West German perspectives and turns, instead, to the institutional development of Soviet Studies in Finland. Beginning from the pre-Cold War history of the Finnish Slavistics, the essay provides a lens through which to reflect upon a number of key issues related to the current debate on Cold War social science (in general) and Soviet Studies (in particular).
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 89-107
No. of Pages: 19
Keywords: Catholic press, Lithuania, occupation, The Chronicle of the Catholic Church, The West
Summary/Abstract: World War II was followed by the second occupation of the Baltic States which lasted until the end of the Cold War. The repressive and atheistic policy towards the Catholic Church, priests, and believers pursued by the Soviet authorities during the occupation of Lithuania was especially harsh. Forms and means of its manifestations were close down of Catholic churches, priest seminaries, and monasteries, persecution and penalization of priests for the pastoral care and catechesis of children, restrictions on the admission of students to Kaunas Interdiocesan Priest Seminary, ban on the publication of religious materials and their strict censorship, and discrimination of believers’ rights. This situation motivated Lithuanian citizens to oppose the regime by means of various legal and illegal forms of resistance, among them publication of underground religious press. The article which is based on the method of case study, applied to the analysis of the publication, distribution, and dissemination of an underground Catholic journal The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania in the East and in the West during the Cold War, will help answer three major questions. First, what were the key reasons underlying the birth of the underground religious press including The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania? What internal and external factors were accountable for the formation of strong and well-organized underground Catholic press in Soviet Lithuania? Second, what essential information was covered in the journal? Third, how was the publication and distribution of the said illicit journal organised in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania, the Soviet Union, and the Western countries? Why its dissemination in the West was listed among the key objectives of The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania?
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 109-134
No. of Pages: 26
Keywords: Cold War, Indo-Soviet Tourism
Summary/Abstract: This article draws on archival research in Russia (14 months), India (3 months), and the United States, plus research on material published for Indian and Soviet readers. It explores tourism between India and the USSR, which grew out of the Cold War partnership of the two countries. Jeremiah argues that tourists crossing international boundaries (as in cultural exchange writ large) helped create a forum for Soviet self-presentations which externalized the Bolshevik culture-building project and the principle of “friendship of the peoples.” While he notes that Soviet presentations for Indian visitors were not always well-received, they had further meaning: coaching for Indo-Soviet encounters influenced public rhetoric, and the experiences of Soviet citizens abroad shaped the way they experienced leisure, cultural production, consumption, and ultimately Soviet identity – or the place citizens saw themselves occupying in the world. Jeremiah endeavors to offer something innovative in the way he tells a transnational story of cultural borrowing and foreign policy shaping domestic Soviet experiences.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 135-168
No. of Pages: 34
Keywords: bridge building, Cold War, ECE, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, NATO, OECD, United States
Summary/Abstract: Scholars have usually seen American bridge building policies in a bilateral context applied towards Eastern Europe. Equally, the discussion of modernization theories confines it to the Third World or a non-European context. The author shows that the bridge building policies pursued by the Johnson Administration had a strong multilateral and method driven dimension that led to the establishment of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Rooted in national security calculations, multilateral bridge building was closely connected with the social discourse on modernization and social convergence during the 1960s and 1970s. The negotiation process revealed that the American way of modernization was not endorsed by the Europeans, and thus needed bridge building also in West Europe. By applying Peter Haas’ epistemic community theory framework in the context of Benedict Anderson’s ideas on nations as imagined communities, the author asks if the failures of overcoming the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s can be interpreted as an American overextension of both epistemic and national limits. To grasp the historical background for IIASA the analysis includes other involved multilateral organizations, the OECD, ECE and NATO.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: French
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 169-185
No. of Pages: 17
Keywords: Cold War, cultural diplomacy, education, France, lecturers/lectureships, propaganda, Romania
Summary/Abstract: After a halt determined by the implementation of communism, French-Romanian relations started to regain impetus. Despite being members of two ideologically opposite camps, France and Romania sustain the development of their bilateral exchanges. This is why cultural relations grow and diversify. Language lectureships are created both in France and Romania. Beyond their official purpose, language teaching, lecturers and lectureships play an important role as information relays and even cultural ambassadors. Archival documents from the French and Romanian Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Romanian universities (Iasi and Bucharest) and oral interviews were used for studying lecturers’ actions during the ‘60 and ’70. They allow and ensure contact, better knowledge, and understanding between citizens East and West of the Iron Curtain. French students discover Romania, its language, its culture, its traditions, while Romanians manage to maintain a connection with the French civilizations and, through it, with the western civilization. In this article I argue that despite all the controls carried out by the Romanian authorities, there were exchanges between French and Romanians, proving that the Iron Curtain was permeable. This study also illustrates the complexity of East-West cultural relations during the Cold War.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 187-195
No. of Pages: 9
Keywords: Gianni Rodari, Italian films, Soviet system, Tamara Lisitsian, Western communist parties
Summary/Abstract: The case of Gianni Rodari, an Italian communist children’s writer whose books were received by the Soviet public with exceptional favour, proves how relations with western communist parties happened to be instrumental in opening up the Soviet cultural system to the world. Rodari became, in fact, well-known in the Soviet Union before attaining fame in his homeland; from the Sixties on, however, things became to change, and from this point on, it may be argued, children from different sides of the iron curtain were brought up reading the same books. Rodari’s works were the expression of the point of view of a western communist – in many cases, more western than communist – and they were published in the USSR with very little interventions by the censor (due, probably, to care of the relations with friendly parties), which made them a space were forbidden names and ideas could appear in print. An analogous mediating role was played by Tamara Lisitzian, a Georgian-born film director, who spent several years in Italy as the wife of the son of one of the Communist Party leaders and, after her return, worked as a translator of Italian films and started her own career with films based on Rodari’s works. Although Lisitzian was far from liberal in her views, her children’s films, usually very faithful to the literary models, display rare nonconformist qualities that go even further than Rodari’s books in their irony, sometimes clearly directed at the Soviet system itself.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 197-214
No. of Pages: 18
Keywords: Christian Peace Conference, church under communism, Communist state security, East-West church relations, Ecumenism
Summary/Abstract: The present article analyzes the practical role of the Communist state in the activities of the Christian Peace Conference. The main subject of interest includes the attitude of the different agencies of the Socialist state towards the CPC; the source and form of interest they had in the activities of the organization; the level of control they applied over the participants and their activities; their interplay and possible division of labor. There were two main agencies that were interested in the Hungarian participation in the CPC: the State Office for Church Affairs and the state security. Both instances produced reports, which offer the source base of the article. The paper concludes that there is no doubt that the CPC served to fulfill certain needs of Socialist foreign policy. It seems also apparent that the participating church leaders were strictly instructed by both governmental authorities and Security officers in specific issues. However, in so far as they delivered the tasks they were expected to accomplish, they were able to create international contacts and in questions not related to their tasks even to pursue whatever activities they felt important as churchmen. Additionally, the interest of the different agencies of the state was rather limited. Therefore the CPC was definitely taken advantage of, but nevertheless, it was first and foremost a stage for East-West religious cooperation, and it was at certain moments probably the biggest and most influential of its kind.
Open access on CEEOL: NO
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Language: English
Subject(s): History
Page Range: 215-232
No. of Pages: 18
Keywords: 1980s, Central Europe, Communist regimes, culture, dissidence, peace, Western influences
Summary/Abstract: The debate on the idea of Central Europe that emerged within the dissident intellectual circles from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland has been vastly discussed from a historical, political, sociological, or economical perspective. This paper suggests and analysis on how different themes used by intellectuals from the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria have penetrated the Central European dissident ideas and have contributed to the appearance of a specific manner of thought. We argue here that the ideas of Central Europe emerging from West-Germany and Austria have been extremely influential on the dissident intellectuals from the Communist states and have given them an efficient tool to challenge the official political system. We will focus our study on specific themes that derive from literary, biographic, or essayistic works that are relevant to our discussion, as well as secondary literature on this subject.
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ISSUE NO. 22/2014
ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING
MOST CITED
“When in Rome do as the Romans”. Immigration in Scandinavian Right-wing Populist Programs
KARI ALENIUS
Issue No. 15
CALL FOR PAPERS
Cetatea de Scaun Publishing House & „Grigore Gafencu” Research Center for the History of International Relations and Cultural Studies invite professors and researchers to send their papers or collaborations to VALAHIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL STUDIES, which is a fully refereed biannual publication that aims to contribute to a better knowledge of the modern and contemporary history, especially of East-Central European history, integrated in the CEEOL, Ebsco, IndexCopernicus and SCIPIO databases.
We encourage a closer and larger dialogue with other Romanian and foreign historians interested in opening up new opportunities to disclosure new sources launching new viewpoints and ideas concerning the modern and contemporary historical developments. We are eager and honoured to open our pages to all both senior and young historians engaged in studies on the history of international relations as well as on the political, economic, social, intellectual developments in the field along with any reviews in other published books and articles calling attention. Read more
PUBLICATION NORMS
• The paper must be unpublished work;
• The paper must contain the author or authors’ full names, Institution they belong to and their e-mails;
• The paper must be submitted in the official languages of the publication: English, French, German and Italian; they must contain a title, a short abstract written in English, five to ten key words as well as a ten row bio note about the author(s);
• The maximum length for the articles is 20 pages, with a single space interlining;
• The contributions must be sent in word format;
• The documents must be sent in Garamond Font size 11;
• Footnotes must be put automatically in Garamond Font size 9;
• Images illustrating the text must be sent as .jpg or .tiff files; the author assumes responsibility for the right to publish the images;
• The journal’s editorial board reserves the right that upon the review by the referents to publish or reject any of the received papers Read more