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The author focuses on Catalan pro-independence leaders sentenced by Spanish Supreme Court on October 14, 2019 unleashing protests over Catalonia ending riots and clashes with police. Topics discussed include 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, loss of identity of a country due to emigration to other countries and globalization, and feature of the transversal Baltic identity.

This article examines Turkey's wartime diplomacy between the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Hitler's unleashing of Operation Barbarossa. Rather than a survey of Turkish foreign policy as a whole, it takes a critical episode from July 1940 as a case study that – when put in context – reveals how fear of Nazi power and even greater fear of the Soviet Union created in Turkey a complex view of a desired outcome from the Second World War. Juxtaposing archival materials in Turkish, Russian, German, and English, I draw heavily on the hitherto untapped holdings of the Turkish Diplomatic Archives (TDA). Overall, this article demonstrates both the breadth and limits of Nazi Germany's sweeping efforts to orchestrate anti-Soviet propaganda in Turkey; efforts that helped end interwar Soviet-Turkish cooperation. Against previously established notions in historiography that depict Soviet-Turkish relations as naturally hostile and inherently destabilizing, this article documents how the Nazi–Soviet Pact played a key role in their worsening bilateral affairs between 1939 and 1941. The argument, then, is in keeping with newer literature on the Second World War that has begun to compensate for earlier accounts that overlooked neutral powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary French Civilization is the property of Liverpool University Press / Journals and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article informs that on the 80th Anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Non- Aggression Pact, the Russian government opened a display at the Exhibition Hall of the Federal Archives in Moscow on August 20, 2019, to explores effort of European powers to use the Nazi government to destroy the Soviets.

Although Bulgaria was inducted into the Axis, the country managed craftily to avoid sending military contingents against Soviet Russia. Instead, the Bulgarian army sent multiple groups of officers to the German-Soviet front. An instrumental figure was the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Konstantin Lukash, who 'went East' in 1941. The Bulgarian officers were received at a high level in two Army Groups, complimented and treated with respect throughout. Nevertheless, they witnessed the horror of the German occupation of the USSR. After 1945, Lukash's unpublished diary was buried in an archive. This article presents new archival evidence to show that the status of Bulgaria as a complete non-belligerent should be reconsidered to a limited degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of social democracy in the U.S. film industry as part of a New Deal era Hollywood Left. Topics include the January 12, 1938 essay "Hollywood Wakes Up" by Ella Winter in the magazine "The New Republic," the impact of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on the organization Motion Picture Democratic Committee (MPDC), and the work of the organization Hollywood Democratic Committee (HDC) in activism. The relation of politician Henry Wallace to the Hollywood Left is addressed.

The article discusses the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact that featured secret protocol and the Kremlin conceal its existence. It cites on the two totalitarian dictators, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin who have never seen each other but their ideologically charged stunnedpropaganda machines had regularly vilified each other's regime, citing Hitler's rise to power.

Despite a succession of scholarly studies over the years, the relationship between Reza Shah’s Iran and National Socialist Germany has not been fully explored. Rather than focusing on the supposed Aryan ideological sympathies that bound the two countries together, this article argues that the real driver of the German–Iranian relationship in the 1930s was economic and based in the mutual interaction of state economic initiatives. It states that Iran’s place in Nazism’s economic system was the outcome of two factors: the “New Plan” of Reich Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht, and its focus on clearing agreements as a motor for depression-era trade, and the connections of Schacht’s system to Reza Shah’s strategy to modernize Iran. In exploring this issue the article focuses on relations between Germany and Iran during three distinct moments: first, the period from 1918 to 1928 and the working out of a new relationship after the First World War; secondly the period of Schacht’s New Plan in Iran in the mid-1930s; and finally the period from the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939 to the British–Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941. During this last period Iran both belonged to the Nazi–Soviet trade zone created by the Pact and attempted to defend its neutrality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the reaction of the Latvian government and diplomatic circles on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939 as reflected in documents of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The aim of the article is, in the light of Polish documents, to reflect and evaluate Poland's and Latvia’s position concerning a threatening coup in international relations - union of two superpowers. The conclusion is that similarly to the Poles, the Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vilhelms Munters was more afraid of continuation of Moscow talks than of Berlin-Moscow agreement, and moreover, the Latvian government and its Foreign Minister believed until the last moment that it was possible to prevent the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few days after Hitler broke his alliance with Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, Molotov and Stalin used a diplomatic back channel to explore whether Hitler would be prepared to end the war if the Kremlin agreed to hand over a large part of Russian territory to German rule. Lavrentij Pavlovič Berija, on Stalin's order, directed Nkvd officer, Pavel Sudoplatov, to meet with the Bulgarian Minister Plenipotentiary in Moscow, Ivan Stamenov, to explore what it would take for Hitler to halt his invasion of the Soviet Union. Among the concessions that Sudoplatov was authorized to discuss with the Bulgarian diplomat, whom Moscow believed would communicate his conversation to Berlin, there was the handing over to Hitler and his allies of Ukraine, Byelorussia, Baltic Republics, Finnish Karelia and the areas occupied in 1940-41 on the basis of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 25 years since the re-establishment of Baltic independence from the Soviet Union, there has been no conclusive public conversation, or "coming to terms with the past" with respect to crimes against Latvian and other persecuted groups under Communism. This paper examines how national politicians, members of the European Parliament in Brussels, representatives of Latvia's Russian-speaking minority, and the Russian government have engaged in a difficult, long-overdue conversation. Conflicting historical narratives about victimhood are at the heart of these disagreements. Special emphasis is given to Latvia's historical narrative, its development over the past 25 years, and the way it challenges Russia's interpretation of history. I argue that Latvian memory politics at the European level are a continuation of Latvia's quest for acknowledgment of its victimhood, thereby trying to finish the process started in the late 1980s when Balts first demanded acknowledgment of human rights violations they had suffered under the Soviet regime. Latvia's methods of transitional justice are examined, arguing that its memory politics at the European level are an extension of steps taken at the national level to come to terms with the past and to increase its negotiating power against Russia's neo-Soviet historical narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about communist nostalgia in the identity of the left political party of France, the Parti Communiste Français (PCF). Topics discussed include the collapse of the Vichy government in 1944, PCF's passivity on the issue of the signing of the German-Soviet Pact, and the French resistance movement of 1941 after the Nazi invasion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

This article examines the intersection of Big Data and strategic intelligence from a theoretical-conceptual viewpoint. Adopting Popperian refutation as a starting point, it approaches methodological issues surrounding the incorporation of Big Data into the intelligence cycle, and argues that Big Data analytics is best used to discern long-term developments, generate intelligence hypotheses, and adduce refuting facts. The article then briefly examines the use of Big Data via social media, an increasingly fertile platform for intelligence analysis. Finally, the article argues that despite its potential in filling our epistemic gaps, Big Data should continue to complement traditional subject-matter expertise, supported by game theory, as part of a tripartite analytical framework for strategic intelligence consisting of ‘subtext’, ‘context’ and ‘metatext’. In this respect, Big Data may well become the midwife for more open modes of intelligence management and, ultimately, a more open society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In addition to oral tradition, the knowledge and understanding of history is based on written sources. Therefore it is highly significant when research is able to introduce hitherto unknown material that can shed new light on inveterate truths. This was the case with the study "Finland at the Epicentre of the Storm" by Finnish historian Erkki Hautamäki. The study dealt with the diplomatic prelude to World War II, and was based on a secret dossier by Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim. The dossier was transferred to President J. K. Paasikivi after the war, and then disappeared from public eye. Fortunately, its main items were either copied or a synopsis was made on the request of the Marshal by his long-time trustee, Vilho Tahvanaine. On the basis of these copies, Hautamäki was able to propose an entirely new view of the diplomatic manoeuvring which led to the outbreak of WW II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reflection on the life and death of Willi Münzenberg, the very epitome of the Communist internationalist and communicator in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. Münzenberg was a product of State-Communism's early, creative and spendthrift period and also its victim as Soviet Russia became more authoritarian, nationalist and obsessive. And although he must be seen as also a product of national/industrial/imperial capitalism, emancipatory movements of capitalism's global and computerised era still need to be aware of the price to be paid for Münzenberg's crimes and misdemeanours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surviving transcripts of radio broadcasts made by the OUN in 1938 and 1939 defend the Ukrainian right to an independent state and support the formation of Carpatho-Ukraine as the first step towards achieving this goal. At the same time they praise Germany for the new situation created in the wake of the Munich Agreement. The broadcasts were allowed by Germany as part of its strategy to destabilize Czechoslovakia and Poland. The strong anti-Jewish line taken by the OUN in the first months of broadcasting was likely the required payment for being allowed to broadcast. The broadcasts stopped criticizing the Soviet Union when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 1989, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union established the Commission for Historical and Legal Estimation of the Soviet–German Non-aggression Pact of 1939. In the commission, representatives from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania condemned the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, prompting heated arguments regarding the invalidity of the related secret protocol of the pact with other members who continued to hold the traditional Soviet ideological view of the pact as something positive. The debate over the secret protocol had the further potential to extend to disputes over ‘recovery of lost territory’ amongst the Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Russia. This article analyses the arguments used by commission members, considering the interplay of national interests, how they balanced arguments between restoration of ‘state sovereignty’ and maintenance of borders, and how they finally compromised and concluded the commission's report. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Darbai ir Dienos is the property of Vytautas Magnus University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article is a study of the Australian government's exchanges with the Chamberlain government over the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a Grand Alliance between the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union during 1939. Robert Menzies and Stanley Bruce carefully weighed the arguments for and against before deciding to support the proposal for an Alliance. Yet there was considerable ambivalence about their support as evidenced by Bruce's panicky response to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In its own very small and distant way the Menzies government contributed to the inertia that marked the British Empire's failure to secure a Grand Alliance in 1939. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the evacuation of the administrative archives from the National Archival Fonds that had been created in Caliacra and Durostor counties between 1913 and 1940. It mentions the consequences of the cession of Southern Dobrudja towards Bulgaria. It notes the failure of the British-French-Soviet negotiations and the conclusion of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement on August 23, 1939.