Search

Non-food consumer goods have always been, are and will remain important attributes of a person’s life. In addition to purely physiological, non-food goods satisfy a number of other needs that shape people as thinking creatures and distinguish them from animals. The article examines the problem of consumption of non-food consumer goods by collective farmers in one of the regions of the Urals, i.e. the former Molotov Region (presently, the Perm Region) during the first years after the Great Patriotic War (1946–1950). The topic of this article is relevant, since the problem of scientifically grounded and balanced consumption of non-food consumer goods by the population remains unresolved. The author turned to materials kept in two archives: Russian State Archives of Economics and State Archives of the Sverdlovsk Region. Some of these documents have never been published, including household budget surveys, which have a long history in Russia. Attention is focused on the fact that the determining factor in the material living conditions of collective farmers during the first post-war years was the permanent shortage of almost all consumer goods. The author demonstrates that in the period under study the consumption level of non-food consumer goods by collective farmers was unsatisfactory. It should be noted that such a low level of consumption by Molotov Region peasants in the first post-war years was no exception. It is concluded that there were no grounds for a rapid growth in the consumption of non-food consumer goods by this “secondary” category of the population (which collective farmers were at the time) during the period under study.

A quantitative and qualitative analysis of food consumption in the families of collective farmers in the Molotov and Sverdlovsk regions is provided in the article. The author used materials from the funds of two archives: the Russian State Archive of Economics (RSAE) and the State Archives of the Sverdlovsk Region (SASR), some of which have never been published. The source base for writing this article was the materials of budget surveys of the population, which have a long history in our country. It is argued that the need for high-quality and properly structured nutrition is one of the basic needs of human existence. It is stated that the level of consumption of food products by the population of the Soviet Union in 1946—1950 was determined by the harsh post-war conditions. Attention is focused on the fact that a powerful decrease in the livestock component of the collective farm backyard, combined with a decrease in income from work on the collective farm, could not but affect the level of income and consumption of collective farm families, including nutrition. It is proved that in the studied period — the first post-war five years — the level of nutrition of collective farm families should be assessed as unsatisfactory.

This article examines how the ideological cliches and propagandistic campaigns in Soviet newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s are reflected in the literature of the same period. Without ending the Great Purge, the Communist Party, hypocritically, called for its repressions to be stopped and innocent people to be rehabilitated. This campaign was described in the story ‘The Rehabilitation’ by the avant-garde writer Daniil Kharms. The article also deals with the propaganda campaign that began in the Soviet periodical press in August-September 1940. This was triggered by V. Molotov’s report in which, envisaging the development of the Second World War, he summoned Soviet citizens to “readiness for mobilization”. In literature, it stipulated the government’s order to depict virtuous and heroic characters. The “readiness for mobilization” idea explains the criticism of A. Avdeenko for his partiality to negative characters and of A. Akhmatova for her lyric poems.

This article highlights the issue of increasing labour intensity among collective farmers during the Great Patriotic War. The dynamic of labour costs of the rural population was analysed using the case of the Molotov (Perm) Region, a typical rear territory of the time. The source base of the research is constituted by archival materials, including recently declassified statistical reports, protocols of district executive committees, and administrative documentation of district and regional levels. The author considers the wartime situation using the modernisation approach, seeing it as a crisis associated with the breaking, reorganisation, and complication of agricultural production activities. The materials are analysed using the comparative historical method. Documentary sources confirm the thesis of high labour intensity in agricultural production during the wartime period. In the year 1944, collective farmers in Molotov (Perm) Region had, on average, 335 labour (working) days, which was 20 % higher than the country average at the time. Following the increase in labour intensity caused by the war, the traditional rhythm of agricultural work in the region was largely transformed so that the workload of farmers became high throughout the year. The combination of tough labour conditions and ingrained intrinsic motivation contributed to the reorganisation and greater efficiency of agricultural activities. However, heavy physical exertion, low levels of mechanisation of work, and the lack of proper recuperation resulted in mass psychological burnouts among collective farmers by the end of the war. In fact, already in 1945, a decline in the level of labour productivity was recorded among the collective farms of Molotov (Perm) Region.

What effects do violent protests have on social movement mobilizations? In recent decades, the field of nonviolence studies has popularized a strategic nonviolence framework to understand activist tactics. This framework is problematic in two ways. First, dominant theories argue that violent protest actions demobilize nonviolent protest. However, there is less empirical support for this claim than often assumed. Current quantitative findings on the demobilizing effects of violent protest rely on a false dichotomy between violence and nonviolence that obscures the effects of low-level violent actions. Through statistical analysis of protest trends in the US over 72 years, I show that riots have an overall mobilizing impact on nonviolent protests. Second, the strategic nonviolence framing encourages an instrumental view of tactics that is prone to miss the symbolic and emotional aspects of different types of actions. Through qualitative interviews with participants in the black bloc tactic, I explore the experiential effects of the riot, and find that rioting can have deeply empowering emotional impacts on participants, with lasting effects that sustain activists’ political engagement. In combination, these results demonstrate that low-level violent actions interact with movements in more dynamic ways than dominant theories have understood. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2021 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]

This study aims to characterize and model the thermal protective fabrics usually used in workwear under Molotov cocktail exposure. Physical properties of the fabrics were measured; and, thermal protective performances of the fabrics were evaluated under a fire exposure generated from the laboratory-simulated Molotov cocktail. The performance was calculated in terms of the amount of thermal energy transmitted through the fabrics; additionally, the time required to generate a second-degree burn on wearers’ bodies was predicted from the calculated transmitted thermal energy. For the characterization, the parameters that affected the protective performance were identified and discussed with regards to the theory of heat and mass transfer. The relationships between the properties of the fabric systems and the protective performances were statistically analyzed. The significant fabric properties affecting the performance were further employed in the empirical modeling techniques − Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for predicting the protective performance. The Coefficient of Determination (R2) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the developed MLR and ANN models were also compared to identify the best-fit model for predicting the protective performance. This study found that thermal resistance and evaporative resistance are two significant properties (P-Values 2 and RMSE values of ANN model were much higher (R2 = 0.94) and lower (RMSE = 37.42), respectively, than MLR model (R2 = 0.73; RMSE = 191.38); therefore, ANN is the best-fit model to predict the protective performance. In summary, this study could build an in-depth understanding of the parameters that can affect the protective performance of fabrics used in the workwear of high-risk sectors employees and would provide them better occupational health and safety.

The Great Patriotic war had a disastrous impact on country’s demography. Much available research focuses on the study of human losses in Russia and individual regions, while widely using demographic statistics of state bodies, mainly regional, republican statistical offices and the CSO of the USSR. Their representativeness has been proven, and negative characterizations of registry office statistics (registration of births, deaths, marriages, and divorces) found in modern historical literature has no basis, except in cases where it was not possible to collect complete information. In this study, this corpus of documents is used to analyze reproduction processes in the Molotov region and their impact on demographic structures. Identified new sources (data on birth order, and data on maternal age, which appeared in the concluding period of the war) resulted in methods of demographic analysis (calculation of general, special, and private fertility rates) to obtain new data on the demographic situation in the region and the depth of the demographic catastrophe in which the country found itself in the war, the consequences of which are felt up until today. World War II plunged the country’s population, including territories deep in the rear, into a demographic crisis that resulted in changes in demographic structures, deformation of reproduction, disproportion in the ratio between fertility and mortality, and damage to the regeneration of generations, especially among males.

(To the results of the Plenum of the Central Presidium of Varnitso on May 4-5, 1930).,. P.K.Brodovsky. Questions about the choice of the path to socialism or to the camp of its conscious and irresponsible enemies are now being raised before various strata of the intelligentsia with unprecedented sharpness and persistence. V. Molotov. All attempts not to take one or the other side end in failure and scandals. V. Lenin. The starting point for discussing the tasks of our era is the understanding of this era as a historically inevitable period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, moreover, the task of the proletarian dictatorship is to build socialism a comprehensive restructuring of the life of human society based on a new economy and technology. If we pose the question of how the intelligentsia relates and what part does the intelligentsia take in solving these problems of the epoch, then it will become clear to anyone who is even slightly familiar with the history of our revolution that it is impossible to give a general, sweeping answer to this question.

The issues related to the financial income and expenses of the families of collective farmers in the Molotov region are considered. The relevance of the study is due to the public interest shown in the study of various aspects of the material living conditions of the population. The scientific novelty of the work is seen in the fact that previously unpublished archival materials stored in the Russian State Archive of Economics (RSAE) are introduced into circulation. The results of a comparative analysis of the average per capita financial income of collective farmers in the Molotov region and other territories of the Ural region are presented. Particular attention is paid to the consideration of the tables presented by the author containing numerical data on the topic of the article. It is stated that the progressive improvement of the quality of the material living conditions of citizens today is one of the priority goals of the policy of any state that positions itself as social. Attention is focused on the fact that in the first post-war five years, the income of collective farmers was influenced by two main factors: the consequences of the Second World War and the attitude of the authorities to the collective farm peasantry. It is proved that the incomes of collective farmers in the Molotov region were lower than those of collective farmers in the economically more developed Sverdlovsk region, but were quite comparable with the incomes of collective farmers in other regions of the Urals.

The article discusses the methods of scientific and artistic propaganda (Museum and local history tour, lesson at the exhibition, lecture, conversation with slides). Museum employees at places of temporary storage of monuments carried out educational work among the population. Working with the audience in the Museum serves as a support for the positive state of mind of people in the conditions of intense wartime. Meeting with evacuees collections of art monuments allowed residents of Perm, Gorky, Solikamsk and other regional centers in 1941–1945 to expand their horizons, aesthetically evaluate the famous masterpieces of Russian art, which had a beneficial effect on the entire cultural climate of the provincial society. During the great Patriotic war, the main part of the art collections of the State Russian Museum was evacuated to Molotov (Perm). Paintings, sculptures, works of iconography are placed in the Perm Museum of local lore, in the Trinity Cathedral of Solikamsk. Conducting excursions and consultations at temporary exhibitions, conversations with slides are methods of scientific and educational work. This work was important and necessary for the residents of Perm. The meeting with art organized for visitors of the Museum in Perm by the staff of the Russian Museum provided great spiritual support during the great Patriotic war, which can be regarded as an unprecedented case of aesthetic education of the younger generation and spiritual support of the residents of Perm in wartime conditions. The relevance of the material presented in the article is undeniable. In the last years of the twenty-fi rst century, there have been increasing calls for a review of the role of the Soviet Army in the great Patriotic war (1941–1945). It is necessary to take responsibility for historical truth. The importance of the Victory, which brought liberation from Hitlerism not only to our Homeland, but also to the Western world, is great, and the merits are invaluable. It is necessary to preserve the truth for future generations of residents of the former Soviet space, as well as citizens of other countries. Special importance in the preservation of memory belongs to documentary sources, which include archive materials. Along with them, works of art created during the war or in the first post-war years play an invaluable role in restoring the truth.

The history of the Department of Pathological Anatomy of Molotov Medical Institute during the Great Patriotic War of 19411945 is presented. The working conditions of the department, the formation of pathological anatomy service in Perm and region, the active work of the department in training personnel for pathology departments, the creation of the society of pathologists, the scientific work of the department are shown.

This article analyzes the work of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (NKID) of the USSR in the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara), where it was evacuated in 1941- 1943 together with other central government agencies and the diplomatic corps accredited in the USSR. Although this period was quite short, and though key decisions were, of course, made in Moscow, intense rough work was being carried out in the “reserve capital”, which ensured the solution of the tasks set by the country's leadership to the NKID apparatus.The aggression of Nazi Germany found the Soviet Union poorly prepared not only militarily, but also diplomatically. Due to the opposition of the Western powers, domestic diplomacy failed to create a collective security system to prevent the aggression of Germany, Italy and Japan. Negotiations with representatives of Great Britain and France, which were conducted in 1939, were interrupted and relations with these countries were virtually frozen.Some important strategic tasks were set before Soviet diplomacy. First of all, it was about the concentration of diplomatic activity in specific areas that could provide real assistance to the Red Army in obtaining the necessary weapons and strategic raw materials. Among other tasks were the search for allies, establishing effective military, economic and political cooperation with them, counteracting the expansion of the Nazi coalition at the expense of Sweden and Turkey, and conducting an extremely balanced policy in the Far East in order to avoid a military clash with Japan.Due to the deterioration of the military situation on the Western Front and the imminence of the capture of Moscow, on October 16, 1941, the main staff of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, headed by its Deputy Chairman A. Vyshinsky, as well as members of the diplomatic corps were evacuated to Kuibyshev (now Samara). V. Molotov and a small group of assistants remained in Moscow.The relations between the NKID and the embassies evacuated to Kuibyshev evolved differently. The level and the intensity of contacts with them largely depended on bilateral relations with the respective nations. Contacts with the embassies of Great Britain and the USA were naturally at the top of the agenda. By way of ambassadors of these countries the key tasks of forming the anti-Hitler coalition were being solved, and the dates of summit meetings were agreed upon.The crowding of the central office staff and foreign diplomats in a small regional city certainly introduced difficulties into the practical implementation of many tasks. Nevertheless, the striving for a common victory and the awareness of responsibility to their own country, united this motley crew of diplomats, and facilitated the search for compromise solutions. The return to Moscow of the employees of the People’s Commissariat and the diplomatic corps took place after the victory in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. Only at the end of 1943 Kuibyshev did finally cede its status of the capital of the USSR to Moscow.

Evacuation of plants and population to the territory of Molotov region during the Great Patriotic War is one of the well-researched episodes. Removing from the frontline people, especially children, as well as the equipment of factories which played an important role in the USSR defense industry was the primary task for the authorities. The evacuation of cultural values from the country's leading museums also played an important role. At the same time, in 1941-1942 Molotov also became one of the centers receiving the document from different archives. Based on the analysis of the archival materials it is revealed some aspects of the war period archivist’s activity connected with the preservation of evacuated documents of the Central Archive of October Revolution and some archives of Leningrad region. The evacuated materials began to arrive in Molotov in August 1941, and already in 1942 this fact negatively influenced the work of the Molotov Region State archive. The archivists of Molotov could provide the best conditions of the evacuated materials storage only to the detriment of the local materials conservation and their own work. For the long period the archive was practically forced to stop the reference and scientific work, as well as the systematization of the archival funds. But the core targets of the archive at that period were not reduced by the authority, which led to archivists’ overstrain and discontent of management. At the same time, the key mission – safekeeping of the evacuated documents – was accomplished by the archivists. Re-evacuation of the materials of the Central Archive of October Revolution made in March 1944 allowed Molotov archivists to return to the pre-war working conditions.

The system of state and military control under the influence of crisis phenomena of any type, war or pandemic, undergoes profound transformations and requires the mobilization of all resources including efforts aimed at training the necessary military personnel. Our country has gained considerable experience in training military pilots, including naval aviation, both in peacetime and in wartime. Without a doubt, the experience of the Great Patriotic War is one of the most important in the history of aviation and the system of military educational institutions of the Navy. Just the war, which required maximum effort, demanded quick, non-trivial, but extremely productive decisions in the training of aviation personnel with limited human, material and time resources. The article explores the training and combat activities of the Second School of the pilot training of the Navy, as a part of the pilot training system during the Great Patriotic War. The author relies on the chronological sequence and analysis of archival and personal documents some of which are being used in the scientific field, reveals issues related to the development of management and organization of training of pilots of the Navy in the conditions of termination of such activities of OSOAVIAHIM. The interaction of the military command and Soviet local authorities on the organization of educational process, as well as the main steps for reforming and transforming all studies have been anlyzed. From the point of view of objectivity the author reveals both positive and negative aspects of these processes; indicates that the difficulties of the initial period of the school’s formation affected the number and quality of school graduates. All this makes it possible to assess the degree of effectiveness of such a system of training aviation personnel both in individual educational institutions and in the country's navy as a whole during the war years.

A significant phenomenon in the years of the Great Patriotic War was the evacuation of population, enterprises and institutions to the Eastern regions of the country which changed to a great extent the appearance and gave a new impetus to the economic and socio-cultural development of the rear regions. Molotov region was one of these territories. The Executive Committee of the Molotovsky regional Council of Workers ' Deputies (regional Executive Committee) was responsible for organizing the reception of evacuees, and the city and district Executive committees, village councils, and collective farms were directly responsible for housing the evacuated population. Analysis of the records of local authorities provides an opportunity to study the policy implemented on the ground in relation to the evacuated population. The sources of the study were the documents of local authorities deposited in the funds of the regional Executive Committee, city and district Executive committees of Molotov region, but the funds are presented unevenly. The author comes to the conclusion that in practice of city and district authorities the work with certain categories of the evacuated population occured due to the administrative documents of the Molotov regional Executive Committee, operational tasks for supplying the evacuated population and their employment. It should be noted that the evacuated population as an integral group appeared mainly in summer and autumn 1941, when the main task facing the authorities was the rapid deployment of citizens. A significant ranking during this period was provided by the type of evacuation – organized arrived evacuated population (with enterprises and institutions) and unorganized arrived population (single). Further, in the recordkeeping documentation the ranking of the evacuation population according to definite categories was provided primarily when solving the problems of social supply of citizens and at their statistical accounting. According to the documents a number of groups being under special attention of the local authorities were identified among the evacuated population: children, engineering and technical workers of enterprises arriving for evacuation, evacuated families of red army soldiers, front – line soldiers, families of the red Army command staff, families of responsible party workers. Significant specifics in the mechanisms of work with evac population in certain districts of Molotov region have not been identified.

The paper is aimed at examining criminal prosecution of the collaborationists, which is one of the most important activities of the post-war Soviet state security bodies. The research is based on the files of state security bodies in the Molotov region. In historiography, the issue is in general explored. Particularly, some papers describe well the evolution of legislative environment for criminal justice and penal sanctions for collaborationism. However, scholars, as a rule, do not verify information that can be found in official documents. Therefore, the author focuses mainly on the opportunities of using the investigations’ files as sources for the assessment of validity of imputations of collaborationism. The source analysis shows that, in general, a style of the significant part of accused persons’ evidences which can be found in the records of interrogations, bills of indictment, and other materials of the studied trials, shows an adequate representation of the most part of events. The author demonstrates that the state security bodies of Molotov region did an important work for the state and society, disclosing collaborationists and initiating criminal prosecution against them. They did a large-scale and intensive work to identify the criminals and prove their guilt. The analysis of declassified documents of investigation bodies and tribunals lets the author to conclude that a large part of those evidences are persuasive. However, the ability to extend the research results to the activity of the state security service as a whole depends on whether historians would have the opportunity for studying all the doc- Уголовное преследование … 117 uments of the Soviet state security service of the war and post-war period dealing with the trials against collaborationists

The article examines a number of key aspects in the political history of Tuvan People’s Republic shortly before it became part of the USSR. The entries in the diary of the charge d’affaires of the USSR in the Tuvan People’s Republic, M.G. Sushchevsky (1942-1943) help us focus, in particular, on the early preparatory stage of this process and pinpoint the date when the Soviet leaders started to consider the issue quite seriously – March 18, 1943. Attention is also paid to other developments in the social and political life of the People’s Republic of Tuva which had some bearing in the process of taking the decision to join the USSR. Among them are the government institutions and their work (e.g. the Little Khural) and the political purges which continued into the 1940s.Some light is shed on the emigration of Tuvan arats to Mongolia and the forced resettlement of ethnic Tuvans from Mongolia to Tuva in the 1930s and 1940s. Special treatment is given to the issue of the border which since the early 1930s had become dominant in the Tuvan-Mongolian relations and remained so until the accession of Tuva into the USSR in October 1944.For its sources, the study, inter alia, relies in the unpublished “Diaries of the charge d’affaires of the USSR in the Tuvan People’s Republic c[omrades] Sushchevsky and Budarin”, preserved at the Archives of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (f. 06 “V.M . Molotov’s Secretariat”).

This article examines the fate of the well-known chess players of the middle of the 20th century - the “expatriate defector” Alexander Alekhine and the Soviet champion Mikhail Botvinnik - as one of the little-known stories related to the history of the contacts between the representatives of the Russian diaspora and the Soviet state of the Stalin era. The author examines the history of the failed match between these two outstanding chess masters in 1939-1940 and shows why the Alekhine-Botvinnik match, which had been initially approved at the highest party and state level, was not held, and find out what role the Soviet administrative apparatus played in this. The author comes to conclusion that under the conditions of strict authoritarian leadership, with the directives of V.M. Molotov, N.A. Bulganin and A.Ya. Vyshinsky, and possibly Joseph Stalin, the managers had a sufficient set of bureaucratic methods that allowed delaying the process of preparing the match up to a favourable occasion which led to the final breakdown in the negotiations. Such methods include precaution, prolonging pauses in interdepartmental communication, requesting for “instructions”, recalculating estimates, using rumours as arguments, using erroneous addresses and redirecting correspondence. The reason for the officials’ inactivity was the fear of personal responsibility for the defeat of the Soviet champion by the “expatriate defector”, especially in the situation when some leaders of the USSR chess movement were repressed. The author’s analysis provides insight into the problems of the functioning of the executive power in the conditions of the political regime established in the USSR by the beginning of the Second World War.

Este artículo analiza el modelo organizativo y de negocio de El Salto, un medio alternativo surgido de la refundación de Diagonal como proyecto colaborativo y descentralizado territorialmente. A partir de una revisión documental y de entrevistas en profundidad con miembros del proyecto, abordamos su experiencia con el fin de presentar sus potencialidades, límites, contradicciones y retos en el actual contexto de hibridismo mediático. Nos encontramos ante un medio que ha estado vinculado a los movimientos sociales desde finales del siglo XX –primero como Molotov (1986-2003), después como Diagonal (2005-2016) y actualmente como El Salto. En estos años ha pasado de ser un medio antagonista y contra-informativo a convertirse en un medio alternativo –en lo discursivo y en lo organizativo– con vocación transversal. En las conclusiones debatimos sobre el futuro de un modelo periodístico colaborativo basado en los principios del cuarto poder en red. This paper analyzes the organizational and business model of El Salto, an alternative media which arises from the refoundation of Diagonal as a collaborative and territorially decentralized project. We conduct a documentary revision and deep interviews with some members of the project in order to expose the potentialities, limits, contradictions and challenges of alternative media in the current hybrid media systems. We are dealing with a media linked to social movements since the late twentieth century –first as Molotov (1986-2003), later as Diagonal (2005-2016) and now as El Salto. In their path it has been transformed from an antagonistic and counter-informative media to an alternative media –both, discursive and organizational– with a transversal perspective. In the conclusions, we discuss the future of a collaborative journalistic model based on the principles networked Fourth Estate.

The educational practice of Ural schools during the Great Patriotic war is examined. Based on documents from archives and museums of the Perm region school history in the period of 1941-1945 is reconstructed. The materials on the organizational and pedagogical problems and their solutions are presented. The implementation of the compulsory education, introduction of basic military training, forms of training and education in their relation to the realities of a military childhood are examined. Information about students’ participation in the assistance front is provided. The author argues that in the second half of the 1930-ies - early 1940-ies a system of education and social teaching, having a rigid social order, developed. Solutions of actual problems of patriotic and military physical education are shown. The elements of best teaching experience and teachers’ mastery as a phenomenon that expresses the essence of the processes in a specific period and timeless in its significance are described. Significant line of the historic genesis of childhood related to the role of the child as a subject of history is actualised. The publication is a part of research work on the military childhood and is limited by the historical-pedagogical analysis of the pedagogical practice, embodied in schools of Molotov oblast during the war.

Leonid Mendeleevich Demner was born in August 3, 1923. In February 1944, he was drafted into the Red Army on the Leningrad front and served as a troop of 286th infantry division separate ski battalion, later - as a military translator of the 286th Infantry Division 996th Infantry regiment and in division headquarters of the same division in the 1st Ukrainian Front. He w as awarded with the Order of «Red Star», «World War II degree», the medal «For courage», «For Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War» and other awards. Discharged in May 1946, he worked as a dental technician trainee, dental technician and caster prosthodontist in denture clinic of Chernivtsi, and as a dentist, prosthetist in aviation hospital in Lviv. Since 1951 to 1956 he was a student of Molotov’s State Medical University. In 1956-1959 he worked in Izhevsk as the children’s department head and an orthodontist. In 1959-1962 he was a postgraduate student at the Department of Prosthetic Dentistry of Kazan Medical Institute. In 1963 he presented his PhD thesis, and in 1972 - doctoral dissertation. In 1969-1990 he worked as the head of the Prosthetic Dentistry Department of Kazan Medical Institute. Gabdulkhak Gil’mullovich Nasibullin was born in November 30, 1923. In 1937 he entered the Kazan midwifery school. In May 1942 he was drafted into the Soviet Army and sent as a battalion physician assistant to the 383rd Infantry Regiment. He served as a combat medic of the 7th Guards Army 167th separate tank battalion, medical platoon commander of the 81st Guards Division 233rd Infantry Regiment Battalion at the Steppe Front and 2nd Ukrainian Front. He was awarded with the Order of «Red Star» and «World War II degree», 12 medals. In 1950 he graduated from Kazan Dental Institute. Later, he worked as a dentist in the Perm region. In 1953-1956 he was trained as a clinical resident at the Department of Prosthetic Dentistry of Perm Medical Institute. In 1956-1976, he worked at the Department of Prosthetic Dentistry of Kazan Medical Institute. In 1964 he presented his PhD thesis, and in 1975 - his doctoral dissertation. In 1976-1982, he headed the department of orthopedic surgery and dentistry of the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education named after V.I. Lenin in Kazan. In 1982-1993, he headed the Department of Prosthetic Dentistry at the Kazan State Medical Academy.

Being the basis of the "Stalinist" economic policy, both due to the peculiarities of ideology and in the perspective of solving geopolitical problems, the struggle for the country's economic independence formed the post-war trajectory of the USSR. The purpose of the paper was to identify the influence of this factor on decisions taken by the Soviet leadership, both in domestic and in foreign policy. Archival materials that have become available to researchers make it possible to clarify the "Stalinist" strategy for solving the task of restoring the national economy and keeping countries of "people's democracy" in the zone of influence in the conditions of the formation of a bipolar world with an acute shortage of resources. The authors of the paper rely on a source database stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), in the funds of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in the funds of V.M. Molotov and of A.I. Mikoyan. Continued work with documents in this area promises to open the curtain on the “white spots” of late Stalinism, which remain the subject of heated discussions in historiography. Moreover, it is the post-war period that allows analyzing the "Stalinist" managerial model in its most complete form. Thus, it is also important to investigate its mechanisms from the point of view of solving the problem of the effectiveness / non-effectiveness of the Soviet system.

The objective is to examine how Meier brought together conditions for the development of punk in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1980s. The central argument points that, in a context of redefining the suburb of Rio as a space for creative reinterpretations of national and foreign artistic genres and for the redefinition of locals with Brazilian redemocratization, Meier was a neighborhood easily accessible by young people who lived in the suburbs and had a specific closed location that allowed these young people to socialize with others who had the same musical interests and the same criticisms of the political-economic system and sociocultural, seen by them as oppressive. Appropriating rebellious aesthetics and behavior but not violence and adapting them in the process of reinventing national and Rio punk, the performance of punk bands in Meier - in particular the Molotov Cocktail - served as a stimulus for the creation of other bands that identified with the musical genre and attracted young people who adopted not only the challenge in the ways of dressing and acting, but in the manifestation of their criticism of the material precarious situation in which they lived in the Meier and other neighborhoods of the city and the state of Rio of January.

‘How far is Russia going to go?’ asked Walter Bedell, the new American ambassador while presenting his credentials to Molotov on 4 April 1946. At that time, the westward expansion of the USSR’s territory was considerable. During the post-war conferences, in Tehran and Potsdam for instance, and later in the peace treaties with former satellites of Hitler‘s Germany, the Allies – who had little scope for choice – endorsed the new border delinea-tions. Years before, these had been planned ahead by the Soviets, who were eager to obtain the recognition of the territories they had annexed in 1939 and 1940 (i.e. Eastern Poland, the Baltic States, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina). By 1941, Stalin had already raised the issue before Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary. At the end of the war, these territorial demands were reasserted once again. Moreover, the Soviets acquired new territories at the expense of the vanquished, particularly Petsamo, a port on the Arctic Ocean, together with the surrounding area taken over from Finland, and Konigsberg and its region on the Baltic Sea won from Germany (Eastern Prussia). Stalin also negotiated, with Benes, the last western Soviet annexation after the war: Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Stalin, Molotov and the Soviet diplomats did their best to improve and redraw the borders of their countries while expanding the Soviet Empire. In spring 1948, a range of agreements, mutual assistance treaties and internal reforms paved the way for the exportation of the Soviet system to Eastern European countries. Rumours spread in East and West predicting a new enlargement of the USSR. Which country would become the next Soviet republic? Romania? Czechoslovakia or Poland? (First paragraph)

The author studies the participation of the non-proletarian urban population in elections during the New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia. The analysis of the urban population’s participation in election campaigns is made referring to a wide range of sources, materials of official statistics, Soviet press, unpublished archival documents kept in Russia’s central and regional archives. An analysis of typical documents of the highest and central Soviet and party bodies (order documents, protocols and resolutions, reports, statements and informational documents) retrieved from the funds of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Central Committee of the Soviet Party as well as sources of personal character (voters’ complaints about election irregularities) enables the author to reconstruct models of electoral behaviour of non-proletarian strata of the population, and the peculiarities of their relations with the authorities during the 1920s. The article introduces previously unstudied materials of the boards of the Politburo and Orgburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks presided by V. M. Molotov (March – July, 1926) which help substantiate the process of political decision-making by the highest party organs as to the non-proletarian strata of the Soviet society in the election process. Additionally, referring to the critical analysis of official statistical data of the first half of the 1920s, the author concludes about the low reliability of data on the number and structure of the urban electorate, which considerably impedes the study of unorganized voters in elections and calls for additional research of the issue. The non-proletarian strata of the population were a numerous and diverse group in the urban electorate of the 1920s, outnumbering the other groups in provincial towns. Aiming for loyal City Soviets (City Councils), they used a number of approaches, e. g. excluded non-proletarian groups from the electorate, increased the number of lishentsy (persons stripped of the right of voting), and introduced differentiated representation norms in favour of workers and Red Army men. Reactions of the non-proletarian public to the political changes varied depending on their background from absenteeism to protesting. The most common forms of protest were refusal to vote for the candidates approved by the authorities, claims of various kinds, and nomination of their own deputies for the Soviets. Though not infrequent per se, such forms of protests were considerably overestimated by the local Soviet and Party representatives, who opposed the expansion of the New Economic Policy and exaggerated the threat coming from the socially alien groups of the Soviet public and their potential seizure of power in the Soviets. Part of the representatives of the non-proletarian population were dissatisfied with the authorities, and the electoral system, but this, however, did not reach the scale of oppositional parties or movements. Open protests were uncommon, with modestly-sized groups of entrepreneurs and craftsmen being relatively united but aiming for integration rather than confrontation with the Soviet political system. The lack of loyalty in city-dwellers during elections was used by the Bolshevik authorities as an important leverage in their fight for the toughening of the political course and the cessation of the New Economic Policy., Предметом исследования автора является участие непролетарских городских слоев на выборах в Советской России в годы нэпа. Особенности участия горожан в избирательных кампаниях изучаются на основе широкого круга источников: законодательных актов, материалов официальной статистики, советской печати, неопубликованных архивных документов, находящихся на хранении в центральных и региональных российских архивах. Анализ традиционных для делопроизводства высших и центральных советских и партийных органов видов документов (распорядительных, протокольно-резолютивных, отчетных, докладных, информационных) из фондов Наркомата внутренних дел, Всероссийского центрального исполнительного комитета, Центрального комитета партии, а также источников личного происхождения (жалоб избирателей на нарушения, допущенные в ходе выборов) позволяет реконструировать модели электорального поведения непролетарских слоев населения, особенности взаимоотношений с властью на протяжении 1920-х гг. Впервые вводимые в научный оборот материалы комиссий Политбюро и Оргбюро ЦК ВКП(б) по подведению итогов выборов под председательством В. М. Молотова (март-июль 1926 г.) конкретизируют процесс выработки политических решений высшими партийными органами в отношении непролетарских слоев советского общества в электоральном процессе. Наряду с этим на основе критического анализа официальных статистических сведений первой половины 1920-х гг. автор делает вывод о невысокой степени достоверности данных о численности и структуре городского электорального корпуса, серьезно осложняющих изучение «неорганизованных» избирателей в выборах, и актуализирует проведение дополнительных исследований в этом направлении. Непролетарские слои населения составляли многочисленный и разрозненный контингент в электоральном корпусе городов 1920-х гг., численно преобладая в небольших провинциальных городах. Большевики, желая обеспечить лояльный состав городских советов, использовали различные административные подходы: исключали непролетарские слои из электорального корпуса, расширяли круг «лишенцев», устанавливали дифференцированные нормы представительства в пользу рабочих и красноармейцев. Реакция непролетарских городских слоев на политические изменения обусловливалась разнородностью их состава и варьировалась от абсентеизма до протестного поведения. Наиболее распространенными формами протеста являлись отказ голосовать за утвержденных властью кандидатов, выдвижение требований и собственных депутатов в советы. Протестные формы, хотя и не являлись редкими, но масштабы такого протеста существенно преувеличивались местными советскими и партийными работниками, которые, будучи недовольны расширением нэпа, нагнетали угрозу захвата советов «социально чуждыми» слоями советского общества. У части непролетарских слоев населения существовало недовольство властью, избирательной системой, однако протестные настроения не достигали уровня организации оппозиционных партий или движений. Открытые формы протеста являлись редкостью, относительную сплоченность демонстрировали немногочисленные группы предпринимателей и кустарей, но они стремились к интеграции в советскую политическую систему, а не к конфронтации с ней. Нелояльное поведение горожан на выборах использовалось в качестве значимого аргумента во внутрипартийной борьбе большевистского руководства в пользу ужесточения политического курса и сворачивания нэпа.

This article examines the relations between Jewish and Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel since the events of October 2000, when massive Arab protests and riots took place and thirteen Arab demonstrators were killed. In the decade since then Arab-Jewish relations have been characterized by growing mutual mistrust, fear, and hostility. Together with these negative attitudes, political polarization between the two communities has also increased. This poses a serious threat to Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel and to Israeli democracy itself. In the first ten days of October 2000, as the so-called "al-Aqsa Intifada" got underway in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, massive demonstrations were held in Arab-populated areas throughout Israel. In the course of these demonstrations, Arab protesters blocked roads (including major highways and junctions), burned tires, and set fire to buildings such as post offices, banks, and gas stations. Some Arab youth threw stones (and in a few cases, firebombs) at cars, police vehicles, and policemen as well as at some Jewish civilians (one Jewish passerby was even killed). In trying to quell the demonstrations, police officers (including police snipers) fired tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and live ammunition. Thirteen Arab protesters (including a Palestinian from Gaza) were shot and killed by the police, and many more were injured. This was the single bloodiest event for Palestinian citizens of Israel since the Kfar Qassem massacre in 1956. The violence of October 2000 was not restricted to clashes between the police and Arab demonstrators. In reaction to Arab rioting, in some "mixed" cities (i.e., cities with a large population of both Jews and Arabs) Jewish mobs attacked Arabs and Arab property, and violent clashes occurred between Jewish and Arab rioters. The worst instance of Arab-Jewish violence took place in the town of Upper Nazareth. Jewish mobs responded to Arab rioting in the adjacent Arab town of Nazareth by throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Arab neighborhoods and damaging Arab-owned property in (predominantly) Jewish Upper Nazareth; and on October 8, 2000, hundreds of Jewish rioters faced off against about a hundred Arabs on two sides of the road separating Nazareth from Upper Nazareth. The mobs exchanged insults and threw stones at each other. In the melee, two Arabs were killed and many injured. Never before in Israel's history had there been inter-communal violence on such a scale.1 Now over a decade later, the "events of October 2000," as they became known, remain an unhealed wound. They are also a watershed, marking the beginning of a new period of escalating tension and hostility between Jewish and Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel.2 This article examines Jewish-Palestinian relations in Israel since the events of October 2000. In it, I argue that the October 2000 events represent a turning point in Jewish-Palestinian relations in Israel. While these relations have always been fragile and uneasy, in the decade since October 2000 they have seriously deteriorated and the ever-present rift between the Jewish and Palestinian communities in Israel has widened even further.3 Attitudes on both sides have hardened, mutual distrust has intensified, fear has increased, and political opinion has become more militant and uncompromising. 4 In the words of a report by the International Crisis Group: "The sense of alienation among Palestinian citizens of Israel is mirrored on the Jewish side by the feeling that Arab Israelis are increasingly disloyal."5 The Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority in Israel have been caught up in a negative spiral in which the suspicion, fear, and animosity of one intensifies the suspicion, fear, and animosity of the other. While the outcome of this negative spiral cannot be predicted, it clearly does not bode well for the future of Jewish-Palestinian coexistence in Israel. The Palestinian Minority since Octo ber 2000 To this day, the events of October 2000 stand out as the most visible and violent manifestation of the alienation, frustration, and discontent felt by many Palestinian citizens of Israel. …

Gob Squad—love children of the contemporary European performance scene—have “occupied” the Berlin Volksbühne for their newest action: Revolution Now! So let the Molotov cocktails fly: “this revolution will be broadcast live!”

Extraordinary circumstances led me to become an epidemiologist.1,2 I was a 21-year-old medical student in Warsaw in September 1939 when my father urged me and the rest of our family to ‘go east’ to escape the Nazi occupation of Poland. My mother objected, convinced that the British and French would come to our rescue. Although my father could not dissuade her, and was not prepared to leave her, he insisted that one of us ‘had to survive’, so ordered me to leave for the Soviet Union. My parents and my brother remained in Poland until they were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they perished in 1942. The medical school in Warsaw had been closed by the Nazis, and I was working in a home for Jewish children with severe learning disabilities, mainly Down's syndrome. The director of the home was a communist, and he came up with a plan. The mother of one of the children came from the area of Poland which had been occupied by the Soviet Union. She obtained a permit for herself, her own child and three other children to return there. The director of the home suggested that I should travel with them to help her look after four mentally disabled children during the journey. After tutoring by my mother in how to recite for the German authorities the words written on the Russian travel document, but fictitiously adding my name, the six of us were authorized to leave German-occupied Poland and to remove our ‘Star of David’ armbands. A train conveyed us as far as the railhead at Malkinia. From there we had to walk for a few kilometres through a forest, crossing no man's land into Soviet territory at Zaremby Kościelne. It was a Friday evening, and when we spotted candles alight within a house, we asked the Jewish family there for something to drink; but we were refused. We moved on, and eventually arranged for each of the children to be returned to their parents, leaving me free to search for a medical school where I could complete my undergraduate medical training. The medical school at Lvov was already full, partly because of the influx of Polish students who had also fled from the Nazis. However, some friends of mine in that part of Soviet-occupied Poland had highly-placed contacts in Minsk, capital of Soviet Byelorussia. They arranged for me to be admitted to the medical school there, and I qualified in June 1941. It was a special committee of the Ministry of Health which then decided that I was to become an epidemiologist. I had never considered this option (I had wanted to study internal medicine), partly because Jews were ineligible for government jobs in pre-war Poland. On the day the Germans launched their offensive against the USSR on the 22 June 1941, I volunteered for the Red Army and was made a captain in the Medical Corps. After being wounded in my right leg on the Byelorussian front, I was sent to Molotov – now renamed Perm – in the Urals, where I was appointed head of an anti-epidemic unit. The unit consisted of physicians, paramedics (feldschers), nurses and disinfection personnel, and we had a small mobile laboratory for serological tests.

Standard accounts on Turkey's foreign policy identify Molotov's communication of 1945 (better known as “Stalin's demands”) as the catalyst behind Turkey's post-WWII decision to strain its relations with the USSR and turn to the United States (US) for defense support. The aim here is to complement these accounts which have stressed the military and ideological threat posed by the USSR as the catalyst behind Turkey's foreign policy change, by offering an analysis that explores the conditions of possibility for such change. The aim here is not to question the seriousness of the risks involved in failing to stand firm against the USSR in the immediate post-WWII period. Nor is it to dispute the appropriateness of Turkey's search for “Western” allies at a time when its economic, political and military vulnerabilities were acknowledged by friend and foe alike. The following mediates through accounts that stress the military threat and those that emphasize the ideological threat and presents an analysis that looks into the production of representations of the USSR as a “threat” to Turkey and the context which allowed for the production of such representations of the USSR.

In this work, the use of a portable Raman spectrometer is evaluated for the non-invasive analysis of two types of pre-ignited improvised incendiary devices (IIDs), the classic Molotov cocktails and the chemical ignition Molotov cocktails (CIMCs). The most common ignitable liquids (ILs) used to make classic Molotov cocktails (gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene and ethanol) were measured in seven different clear and colored glass bottles to evaluate if the container features could hamper the Raman measurements. The results showed that the portable Raman spectrometer can be employed to detect ILs in glass bottles without disturbances. Chemical changes on the ILs are produced when they are mixed with acid; therefore, to evaluate the use of the portable Raman spectrometer for the analysis of CIMCs required an investigation of how time and movement influence the measurements. Thus, two different IL&-sulfuric acid mixtures commonly used to make CIMCs (gasoline&-sulfuric acid and diesel fuel&-sulfuric acid) were measured over time under static and motion conditions. In spite of the intense fluorescence encountered in both CIMCs, it was possible to identify the acid and the gasoline for the first hours of the reaction both in the static and motion experiments. Concerning the diesel fuel present in the CIMC, it underwent instantaneous chemical changes under both measurement conditions, showing high fluorescence that impeded its identification. In view of the results achieved, the portable Raman spectrometer can be a useful instrument for the rapid, non-invasive and safe analysis of pre-ignited IIDs.

▪ Abstract The fall of Soviet Communism led to the release of top secret documents vital to our understanding of the Cold War. This material is, however, available to research only to a limited extent. The best access is to be obtained in the archives of the Warsaw Pact countries, including those in Berlin. In Moscow itself, secrecy still forestalls access to the most important documents, above all those relating to the origins of the Cold War under Stalin. It is therefore not surprising that the debate about Cold War origins is still with us, and without any notable improvement in the quality of evidence adduced in the debate. It is by no means clear, as historians such as Gaddis have asserted, that the origins can be laid merely at the door of one unreasonable and unreasoning man: Stalin. It is, however, equally unconvincing to hear from Trachtenberg that Stalin was merely doing what all statesmen do and did so entirely rationally. The complementary argument from Leffler that, given the rational nature of Russian decisions, the answer lies more with U.S. than with Russian policy makers begs as many questions as it seeks to answer. The wary reader is well advised that the jury is still out until both the prosecution and the defense actually have adequate access to the evidence.

On 4 June 1935 Aleksandr Iakovlevich Arosev sat on the platform in the Negoreloe train station, looking west at the Soviet-Polish border. As an official immersed in Soviet international cultural propaganda and diplomacy, the head of the All-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad (VOKS) from 1934 to 1937, Arosev traveled frequently to Europe during the years of the Popular Front. But this time he was only escorting his wife, a Czechoslovak ballerina of Jewish background he had married while a Soviet diplomat in Prague, as far as the border station. He then recorded the following words in his secret diary: "For a long time I walked in the direction in which the train disappeared. Like a Scythian or a Mongol, I harbor inside me a great longing [toska] for the west and nothing acts on me like the evening sky or the setting sun. I adore the west and would like to follow the sun." Neither this maudlin profession of love for the west, nor the ironic yet cutting self-depiction as an Asian savage reflect sentiments many scholars might expect from a 1930s cultural apparatchik or a Stalinist with close personal ties to Viacheslav Molotov. As we shall see, the diary entry is but one key piece in the much larger puzzle of Arosev's strikingly variegated depictions of Europe. It is a truism to say that in the two centuries after Peter the Great, Russia's tangled relationship with the "west" lay at the heart of Russian political evolution, culture, and identity, but it is far from common to explore a similar proposition for the Soviet period. Recent landmark studies on the prerevolutionary period have shown how Russian articulations of proximity and distance from Europe were central to the self-presentations of rulers, on the one hand, and to the dissemination of norms of civilization for elite society and the rest of the people in need of "enlightenment," on the other.2 What took place in the wake of westernization holds true, mutatis mutandis, for the decades after the Bolshevik revolution, although the field of Soviet history has with few exceptions narrated Soviet

Having invaded the Northern bank of the Black Sea, the Tsarist Russia wanted to occupy the Turkish Straits on both sides in order to guarantee her access to the warm waters as an alternative for the iced northern ports in winter. Tsar’s desire in question could not be realized both because of the conflict among big powers over this region and the Bolshevik Revolution period after the WWI. After the Revolution, Soviets, the successor state of Tsarist Russia, had good relations with Turkey, the Ottoman’s successors, during the two civil wars. But at the beginning of WWII, the Soviets’ policy changed. Like the Tsarist Russia, the Soviet leader Stalin together with Molotov started to ask sovereignty over Turkish Straits. Hence, in Yalta and Posdtam Conferences during the last year of the war, they put their demand for land from Turkey on the table. The United Kingdom and the Unites States of America, however, did not accept their demands. Thus, power politics was exercised to solve the problem

David Phillips was a post-doctoral fellow on a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Texas, Austin, where he acted as host and chauffeur to one of the IUPAC representatives, the Soviet delegate, Professor Nikolai N. Kondratiev, then Deputy Director of the Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow. During the course of ferrying him around, Nikolai asked David about his plans after his two-year stay in Texas, David replied that he had intended to return to Europe, but was looking for one more year as a post-doctoral fellow before seeking an academic position probably back in the UK. Nikolai invited him to spend time in his Institute, and eventually, through the Royal Society/Academy of Sciences Exchange programme, this came to pass. Professor Phillips now describes his experiences, both cultural and scientific, in Russia during 1966-67 where he learned much about the Russian people, and also about himself. He returned with a taste for good music, Russian literature and language, and travel generally, and for taking chances in life. Keywords: David Phillips, Nikolai N. Kondratiev, Victor Yakovlevich Shliapintokh, Royal Society/ Academy of Sciences Exchange programme, chemiluminescence, fluorescence and oxidation in synthetic polymers 1. Introduction To be a visitor to the then USSR, at the age of 26, for a period of a year was a very unusual adventure, and memories of this have stayed with me for the rest of my life. My visit was brought about by a chance meeting in the University of Texas at Austin, where I was a post-doctoral fellow on a Fulbright Scholarship with the grand old man of photochemistry, W. Albert Noyes Jr. Noyes had been President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, IUPAC, and was still on the Executive Committee, which held a meeting in Texas in early 1966. Each of Noyes students and post-doctorals was assigned to act as host and chauffeur to one of the IUPAC representatives, and by chance, I was assigned to the Soviet delegate, Professor Nikolai N. Kondratiev, then Deputy Director of the Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow. During the course of ferrying him around, he asked what I was going to do after my two-year stay in Texas, and I said I had intended to return to Europe, but was looking for one more year as a post-doctoral fellow before seeking an academic position probably back in the UK. He promptly asked me if I would like to spend time in his Institute, and eventually, through the Royal Society/Academy of Sciences Exchange programme, this came to pass. 2. Russian colleagues So it was that in September 1966 after a pleasant five day journey by ship [the MV Baltika, formerly MV Molotov] stopping at Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki, I and other Royal Society and British Council visitors to the USSR docked in Leningrad. I confess to a rising sense of unease as we approached Leningrad, a fear of the unknown perhaps, but principally a concern that I did not speak Russian, and what would my hosts think of that. The other emotion as we approached Leningrad was the knowledge that the impression my Russian colleagues would have of the west, and of western people, would be highly coloured by their experience of working with me, since they did not have easy access to contemporary western press, literature, broadcast media. This is not a conceited view; I had been told firmly at the Royal Society to behave in a considerate and professional manner; by the time I left Moscow after almost a year in the USSR, people, including the security services, would know everything about me. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] [FIGURE 3 OMITTED] [FIGURE 4 OMITTED] So what are the abiding memories I have retained? The most important is the warmth and generosity of the Russians with whom I worked, and with whom I still have connections. The most important of these was Victor Yakovlevich Shliapintokh, my research director at the Institute, a man of immense patience and good humour, who sadly died in 2011. …

article i nfo In this work, mixtures of gasoline with sulphuric acid and diesel fuel with sulphuric acid were analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results showed considerable qualitative and semi- quantitative modifications in the chromatographic profiles of the ignitable liquids (ILs). In the case of acidified gasoline, the alteration of the abundances of aromatic compounds and the hydrolysis of an oxygenated com- pound such as methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), in addition to the immediate and unexpected appearance of tert-butylated compounds were observed. In the case of acidified diesel fuel, the alteration of aromatic com- pounds occurred. These sequential changes were then studied in detail in order to explain the chemical modifi- cations taking place. These extensive chemical modifications may be considered as a new chromatographic profile distortion effect, the acidification of ILs. As such modifications are not generally taken into account in the criteria followed to assess the classification of an IL, we propose some recommendations helping to the iden- tification of acidified ILs. This information can be especially useful to detect and identify non-burned ILs from seized or failed improvised incendiary devices made with mixtures of sulphuric acid-IL, or ILs altered intention- ally with the aim to modify their composition.

Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov's entry into the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1915 was the act of an insecure teenager at war with the world. After the death of his father, a government school inspector, in 1909, the tsarist authorities had provided for Andrei's mother and her four children, and had paid for his secondary schooling in Tver. Even though he was thus one of the select beneficiaries of the tsarist "social-support system," Zhdanov chose to join the Marxists who called for the Old Regime's abolition. Zhdanov's political convictions may have continued to waver for some time after 1915, contrary to the subsequent official Soviet version of his "conversion." In 1916, he completed training as an army ensign without demur. He was awaiting dispatch to the front when the tsar abdicated. Then, presented with an opportunity, Andrei Zhdanov decided definitively to throw in his lot with Lenin's followers, the self-assured Bolsheviks. Once the Revolution unfolded, Zhdanov clearly could thank his lucky stars. Within the year, the determined RSDLP faction he supported gained power in Russia. He probably did not always identify himself as a Bolshevik Social-Democrat in March 1917, but he undoubtedly considered himself to be one by early 1918. Leading a small "Bolshevik" group, he introduced "Soviet power" to a little town just east of the Ural mountains in January 1918, three months after Lenin and Trotsky had organized the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd.1 In June of the same year, under threat of the approach of anti-Bolshevik forces, Zhdanov revamped to Ekaterinburg. The Civil War would force him to leave the Urals, and in the spring of 1919 he arrived in his old stamping ground of Tver'. From there would commence in earnest his rise to the highest echelons of power in the USSR. From 1919 to 1922, he was one of the up-and-coming leaders of Tver' province. A dozen years in Nizhnii Novgorod (Gor'kii) followed, ten years of which he served as provincial first secretary of the Communist Party.2 In 1934 he became a junior secretary of the Party's Central Committee, a position that he would combine for ten years with that of head of the Leningrad city and province Party organizations (as S.M. Kirov's successor). From 1944 until his death in 1948, Zhdanov joined Stalin and Molotov as one of the three most visible Soviet leaders, pronouncing publicly on foreign affairs and culture. His prominence inspired speculations that he was to be Stalin's successor.3 Although Zhdanov was a pivotal figure in Soviet history, instrumental in constructing the Stalinist edifice during the 1930s and 1940s, neither in Russian nor in Western languages has his life been the subject of systematic study.4 His youth and first steps as a (minor) Bolshevik leader present us with some key insights into his later behaviour as a Soviet leader. He would be Stalin's deputy in the 1940s despite his brief stint as an officer in the tsarist army or his rearing in a "bourgeois" milieu, according to Marxist criteria. These non-proletarian antecedents helped to make Andrei Zhdanov an exceedingly cautious Bolshevik, even though, ironically, his middle-class, intelligentnyi, background recommended him to Stalin in the 1930s, for Zhdanov seemed well-equipped to deal with matters of science, philosophy, and culture. Attentive parents and rigorous schooling helped to develop in the young man an indefatigable attitude toward work, another quality that Stalin would come to appreciate. As a teenager, Zhdanov joined a social-democratic network of young acquaintances who would rise with him through the Communist Party's ranks to reach the highest bodies of Party and state in the 1920s and 1930s. The devastating blow of his father's death when Zhdanov was thirteen contributed to the boy's sense of social and psychological insecurity, and induced resentment toward those more affluent whom he suspected to be looking down on him. One could suggest that the uncertainty that resulted from the disappearance of the adored authority figure of his father drew Zhdanov to the monistic Marxist workers' party in 1915 and then to the Bolsheviks with their peculiar leadership cult in 1917. …

THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE NEGOTIATIONS with Britain and France provided Molotov's formal introduction to the diplomatic world. They established his negotiating style, based less on the civilities of diplomacy than on his experience as chairman of Sovnarkom, as a member of the Politburo and other top party institutions, where he was prepared to hand out rude and rough treatment to others. The negotiations created a reputation for him in the international arena that was to remain, and perhaps dog him, for the rest of his political career. Much has been written about these talks from the Western point of view, less from the Soviet, and very little regarding Molotov's role. This article seeks to redress the balance and is the first attempt to review these negotiations using unpublished documents in the archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry formerly unavailable, although these mainly confirm the conclusions drawn from published Soviet documents and Western materials.1. From the beginning, the two sides approached the negotiations differently. The Western powers believed that war could still be avoided and, if it came, the USSR, much weakened by the purges, could only function as a supply base in a long war of attrition, not as a main military participant. The USSR, which approached the negotiations with caution because of the traditional hostility of the Western powers and its fear of 'capitalist encirclement', had little faith either that war could be avoided or in the Polish army. It wanted a guaranteed commitment of military support in a war in which the USSR would play an aggressive role in a two-pronged attack on Germany: from France and the USSR.2 These contrasting attitudes partly explain why the USSR has often been charged with playing a double game in 1939: carrying on open negotiations for a pact of mutual assistance with Britain and France whilst secretly engaging in parallel discussions with Germany for an agreement aimed against the Western democracies. Molotov has been accused both of artificially dragging out the talks with Britain and France by seizing on various inessential details to secure a successful outcome or better deal with Germany, and also of summarily breaking them off and concluding an alliance with Germany when on the verge of success with Britain and France. But the delays which Molotov caused were usually on issues essential to Soviet interests, and there appeared to be an impossible obstacle to the vital military convention with France and Britain when the agreement with Germany was signed. In contrast, the Western states, even taking into account that

recurred throughout the Cold War. In Trust and Mistrust in International Relations, which builds on earlier contributions to the theory of strategic cooperation by Robert Jervis (1978), Robert Axelrod (1984), and Robert Keohane (1984), Andrew Kydd has formulated the most sophisticated and realistic game theoretic interpretation of trust and mistrust available today. He has also crafted a rationalistic explanation of the origins and decline of the Cold War. Kydd defines "trust" as the belief that the other side prefers mutual cooperation to exploiting one's own cooperation. By contrast, "mistrust" is a belief that the other side prefers exploiting one's cooperation to returning it (p. 7). Most research in economics, sociology, and political science has used repeated Prisoner's Dilemma games to model trust. In these games, the beliefs and preferences of players are common knowledge, which raises the issue of why trust is needed. Kydd's model of the security dilemma game incorporates uncertainty about the other's preferences and relative power, the advantages of defecting first, the potential losses from being betrayed, and the prospective benefits from conflict (pp. 30-34). Whereas previous models of trust centered on the other party's incentives to cheat, in Kydd's model, actors that place a high value on gaining at the other's expense are not only less trustworthy but also more suspicious of others (p. 39). In a related game theoretic interpretation of the spiral model, states are uncertain about the other's preferences and beliefs about their own trustworthiness. Inability to determine whether the other is defecting out of greed or out of fear can drive arms competition between states that would otherwise prefer the status quo. Kydd then applies his models to indepth historical narratives of the origins of the Cold War and the end of the US-Soviet rivalry. To provide evidence concerning beliefs and goals, he uses the most recent secondary sources, recorded conversations with former Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and published documents. In addition, he deduces from the spiral model how the United States and Soviet Union would have behaved if they had had particular preferences and beliefs about the other (pp. 76-77). Kydd's case study of the origins of the Cold War supports the standard US interpretation in which US plans for postwar collaboration were frustrated by Soviet ambitions. Mistrust of the Soviet Union was therefore justified. The United States was initially made uneasy by the Soviet violation of the Yalta agreements on Eastern Europe. The Truman Administration adopted a policy of political

There are few unresolved questions concerning the origins of the Second World War that have provoked as much disputation as the issue of Soviet policy toward Nazi Germany. In the absence of a complete opening of the Politburo papers on foreign affairs and the personal and state papers of Stalin and Molotov, no one has yet been in a position to say the final word on the subject. Yet almost all scholars writing in this field do their best to make it appear that a definitive answer has now been given. In Stalin’s Drive to the West, 1938–1945: The Origins of the Cold War, R. C. Raack tells us that “Stalin, quite as much as Hitler and Mussolini and the Japanese, wanted the war,” whereas Geoffrey Roberts in The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War takes the view that the Russians consistently pursued a line designed to deter war in Europe and argues that there were no substantial differences on policy in Moscow. Indeed, Roberts, with no access to Stalin’s papers and without having consulted any Soviet foreign commissariat documents other than those published, goes so far as to deny that the Russians initiated any advances toward Berlin, even in 1939. “From Moscow’s point of view the story of Soviet-German relations between May and August 1939 is one of persistent wooing by Berlin. Not until the end of July 1939 did the Soviets even begin to respond to these German overtures. Until then Moscow remained both skeptical and impassive in the face of numerous attempts by the Germans to initiate discussions about improving political relations between the two countries—and thereby drive a wedge between the USSR and the Western powers, who they knew were engaged in negotiations about an anti-Hitler coalition.” This is a bold claim, no less ambitious than that made by Raack. The fact that two historians can present two such divergent interpretations after so much