Stalin’s Constitution

Stalin’s Constitution PDF Author: Samantha Lomb
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351759833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Upon its adoption in December 1936, Soviet leaders hailed the new so-called Stalin Constitution as the most democratic in the world. Scholars have long scoffed at this claim, noting that the mass repression of 1937–1938 that followed rendered it a hollow document. This study does not address these competing claims, but rather focuses on the six-month long popular discussion of the draft Constitution, which preceded its formal adoption in December 1936. Drawing on rich archival sources, this book uses the discussion of the draft 1936 Constitution to examine discourse between the central state leadership and citizens about the new Soviet social contract, which delineated the roles the state and citizens should play in developing socialism. For the central leadership, mobilizing its citizenry in a variety of state building campaigns was the main goal of the discussion of the draft Constitution. However, the goals of the central leadership at times stood in stark contrast with the people’s expressed interpretation of that social contract. Citizens of the USSR focused on securing rights and privileges, often related to improving their daily lives, from the central government. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315194004, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Stalin’s Constitution

Stalin’s Constitution PDF Author: Samantha Lomb
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351759833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
Upon its adoption in December 1936, Soviet leaders hailed the new so-called Stalin Constitution as the most democratic in the world. Scholars have long scoffed at this claim, noting that the mass repression of 1937–1938 that followed rendered it a hollow document. This study does not address these competing claims, but rather focuses on the six-month long popular discussion of the draft Constitution, which preceded its formal adoption in December 1936. Drawing on rich archival sources, this book uses the discussion of the draft 1936 Constitution to examine discourse between the central state leadership and citizens about the new Soviet social contract, which delineated the roles the state and citizens should play in developing socialism. For the central leadership, mobilizing its citizenry in a variety of state building campaigns was the main goal of the discussion of the draft Constitution. However, the goals of the central leadership at times stood in stark contrast with the people’s expressed interpretation of that social contract. Citizens of the USSR focused on securing rights and privileges, often related to improving their daily lives, from the central government. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315194004, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Stalin's Genocides

Stalin's Genocides PDF Author: Norman M. Naimark
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400836069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
The chilling story of Stalin’s crimes against humanity Between the early 1930s and his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin had more than a million of his own citizens executed. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, bloody massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin's henchmen. Stalin's Genocides is the chilling story of these crimes. The book puts forward the important argument that brutal mass killings under Stalin in the 1930s were indeed acts of genocide and that the Soviet dictator himself was behind them. Norman Naimark, one of our most respected authorities on the Soviet era, challenges the widely held notion that Stalin's crimes do not constitute genocide, which the United Nations defines as the premeditated killing of a group of people because of their race, religion, or inherent national qualities. In this gripping book, Naimark explains how Stalin became a pitiless mass killer. He looks at the most consequential and harrowing episodes of Stalin's systematic destruction of his own populace—the liquidation and repression of the so-called kulaks, the Ukrainian famine, the purge of nationalities, and the Great Terror—and examines them in light of other genocides in history. In addition, Naimark compares Stalin's crimes with those of the most notorious genocidal killer of them all, Adolf Hitler.

Stalin's Outcasts

Stalin's Outcasts PDF Author: Golfo Alexopoulos
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501720503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
"I served not in defense of the bourgeois order, but only for a crumb of bread since I was burdened with five small children.""From 1923 to 1925 I worked as a musician but later my earnings weren't steady and I quickly stopped. Without an income to live on, I was drawn to the nonlaboring path.""As a man almost completely illiterate and therefore not prepared for any kind of work, I was forced to return to my craft as a barber.""I am as ignorant as a pipe."Golfo Alexopoulos focuses on the lishentsy ("outcasts") of the interwar USSR to reveal the defining features of alien and citizen identities under Stalin's rule. Although portrayed as "bourgeois elements," lishentsy actually included a wide variety of people, including prostitutes, gamblers, tax evaders, embezzlers, and ethnic minorities, in particular, Jews. The poor, the weak, and the elderly were frequent targets of disenfranchisement, singled out by officials looking to conserve scarce resources or satisfy their superiors with long lists of discovered enemies.Alexopoulos draws heavily on an untapped resource: an archive in western Siberia that contains over 100,000 individual petitions for reinstatement. Her analysis of these and many other documents concerning "class aliens" shows how Bolshevik leaders defined the body politic and how individuals experienced the Soviet state. Personal narratives with which individuals successfully appealed to officials for reinstatement allow an unusual view into the lives of "outcasts." From Kremlin leaders to marked aliens, many participated in identifying insiders and outsiders and challenging the terms of membership in Stalin's new society.

The Last Days of Stalin

The Last Days of Stalin PDF Author: Joshua Rubenstein
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300192223
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Monografie over de laatste maanden in het leven van Stalin en de periode daarna.

Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes

Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes PDF Author: Tom Ginsburg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107047668
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This volume explores the form and function of constitutions in countries without the fully articulated institutions of limited government.

Constitutional Foundings in Northeast Asia

Constitutional Foundings in Northeast Asia PDF Author: Kevin YL Tan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509940200
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This new book in the Constitutionalism in Asia series considers the idea of origins, and of change and continuity in terms of 'constitution-making', which is an on-going process in the Northeast Asian states. The book examines the drafting, nature, core values, and roles of the first modern constitutions during the founding of the 8 modern states/territories in Northeast Asia: China (1949), Taiwan (1947), Hong Kong SAR (1997), Macau SAR (1999), Japan (1889), North Korea (1948 and 1972), South Korea (1948), and Mongolia (1924). The collection provides: - an exploratory description of the process and substantive inputs in the making of the first constitutions of these nations/territories; - analysis of the internal and external (including intra-regional) forces surrounding the making of these constitutions; and - theoretical construction of models to conceptualise the nature and role of the first constitutions (including constituent documents) in the founding of the modern nation-states/territories and their subsequent impact on state-building in the region.

Soviet Constitutional Crisis

Soviet Constitutional Crisis PDF Author: Robert Sharlet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315486482
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Moving from the adoption of the "post-Stalin" Constitution of 1977 through its subsequent implementation under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko to the radical legal "restructuring" of the Gorbachev years, Robert Sharlet traces the gradual evolution of a nascent constitutionalism in the erstwhile USSR. Sharlet, a noted authority on Soviet law and constitutional development, demonstrates the gradual transformation of law from an instrument of Communist Party rule into the new "rules of the game" for nonauthoritarian political development. In effect, he argues, one of Gorbachev's most durable achievements may be his redefinition of Soviet politics into a legal idiom along with his relocation of policymaking from behind the closed doors of Party conclaves into the more open, emergent arena of constitutional government. In analyzing the politics of law from the Brezhnev era to the rise of Yeltsin, the author takes account of the "war of laws", the symbolic uses of the Soviet constitution, and even the fact that the leaders of the failed coup attempted to justify their seizure of power on constitutional grounds. Constitutionalism has sufficiently suffused Soviet public life, the book concludes, that most of the sovereign republics as successors to the former USSR, have begun designing their futures - to varying degrees - in constitutional forms.

Perestroika Era Politics: The New Soviet Legislature and Gorbachev's Political Reforms

Perestroika Era Politics: The New Soviet Legislature and Gorbachev's Political Reforms PDF Author: Robert T. Huber
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315488477
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This book is an evaluation of the new legislative politics in the Soviet Union. The contributors examine the uneven progress of electoral and constitutional reform, the composition, organisation, staffing and procedures of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, the development of factions, movements and parties on the left, on the right, and of the nationalist bent, the path of executive-legislative relations and case studies of the role of the legislature on domestic and foreign policy realms. This book should prove of interest to students of Soviet politics, political parties, and legislative politics, as well as for anyone interested in the struggle of political ideas, forces, and institutions in the USSR today.

Stalin's Citizens

Stalin's Citizens PDF Author: Serhy Yekelchyk
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019939041X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Being a good citizen under Stalin meant taking an active part in political rituals, such as elections, parades, festive meetings, political information sessions, and subscriptions to state bonds. In Stalin's Citizens, Serhy Yekelchyk examines how ordinary citizens came to embrace some parts of this everyday Stalinist politics and resist others. The first study of the everyday political life under Stalin, this book examines citizenship through common practices of expressing Soviet identity in the public space. The Stalinist state understood citizenship as practice, with participation in a set of political rituals and public display of certain "civic emotions" serving as the marker of a person's inclusion in the political world. The state's relations with its citizens were structured by rituals of celebration, thanking, and hatred-rites that required both political awareness and a demonstrable emotional response. Soviet functionaries transmitted this obligation to ordinary citizens through the mechanisms of communal authority, including workplace committees, volunteer agitators, and other forms of peer pressure, as much as through brutal state coercion. Yet, the populace also often imbued these ceremonies with different meanings: as a popular fête, an occasion to get together after work, a chance to purchase goods not available on other days, and an opportunity to indulge in some drinking. The people also understood these political rituals as moments of negotiation whereby they would fulfill their "patriotic duty" but expected the state to reciprocate by providing essential services and basic social welfare. Nearly-universal passive resistance to required attendance challenges theories about the mass internalization of communist ideology. Focusing on the last years of World War II and immediate postwar years, Yekelchyk shows how formulaic rituals under Stalin could create space for the people to express their concerns, fears, and prejudices, as well as their eagerness to be viewed as citizens in good standing.

Access to History: Stalin's Russia 1924-53 4th Edition

Access to History: Stalin's Russia 1924-53 4th Edition PDF Author: Michael Lynch
Publisher: Hodder Education
ISBN: 1444150774
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
The Access to History series is the most popular and trusted series for AS and A level history students. The new editions combine all the strengths of this well-loved series with a new design and features that allow all students access to the content and study skills needed to achieve exam success. This is a new edition of the bestselling title 'Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia 1918-56' which now focuses on the period from 1924-53. It has been revised and fully updated for the 2008 AS specifications for Edexcel and AQA, providing both a narrative and an analysis of the impact of Stalin's leadership on the USSR. It examines Stalin's rise to power following Lenin's death in 1924, the nature of his rule, the economic changes he brought about and his foreign policies. Finally, a concluding chapter focuses on what life was like in Stalinist Russia. Throughout the book, key dates, terms and issues are highlighted, and historical interpretations of key debates are outlined. Summary diagrams are included to consolidate knowledge and understanding of the period, and exam-style questions and tips written by examiners for each specification provide the opportunity to develop exam skills.