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Following the entry of the USSR into the Second World War in June 1941, images of Soviet women proliferated in Britain. Official propaganda, parliamentary debate, and popular culture positioned self-sacrificing Soviet woman as models for British women’s behaviour in wartime: their wartime citizenship. The example of the Soviet woman also offered an opportunity for British to claim the full range rights of rights and responsibilities of citizenship. These ranged from arguments for better provision of childcare to, most controversially, the right to bear arms in the event of German invasion. These public protests came to nothing. Under pressure from the post-war repudiation of the gains women made during the war, the viability of pro-Soviet rhetoric was then fatally undermined by the advent of the Cold War. Nonetheless, women’s public and private admiration for their Soviet contemporaries aided the project of refashioning citizenship’s boundaries across the public and private spheres. Evidence from these contests also points to new ways of approaching questions about British political culture from the 1930s through to the post-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Influenced by developments in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the British Communist Party (CP) began to treat its rivals on the far left, principally the Trotskyists, as class rather than political enemies. Surveillance, including the maintenance of dossiers, began in 1932, but was greatly heightened in the late 1930s, as international tensions, notably the Nazi threat to the Soviet Union, increased. Less attention was paid to the Trotskyists in the later years of the Second World War and in the immediate post-war period, but was intensified during the Party crisis which followed the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Party. Later, the CP was faced with additional rivals, the Maoists, to monitor. Surveillance came to an end in the 1970s as sectarian attitudes abated and the CP entered its terminal decline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article traces the development of the British press narrative from the launching of Sputnik in October 1957 to the Soviets' second satellite, containing a dog, in early November. It argues that there was an initial outpouring of surprise, combined with celebration of humankind's achievement. There was also a sense of loss of national prestige, due to Britain's lack of an equivalent space programme and the decline of her empire. The launch of the dog prompted widespread condemnation, mixed with frivolous popular coverage. The article provides an insight into how this moment impacted on British society and understanding of national identity in the 1950s with imperial superiority, religion and perceived decline being recurring themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the debate precipitated by the Thatcher government's (unsuccessful) attempt to secure a British boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Aware that it faced a struggle to win over the autonomous British Olympic Association, but with Thatcher in particular keen to support the United States, the government's case that the invasion required a specific response in the form of a boycott was steadily overshadowed as the public debate increasingly focused on arguments over human rights and détente and the use of state power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Second World War Anglo–American alliance was less cohesive on the political side than the military. There were widening divergences between Britain and the United States with regard to the best way to handle co-operation with the Soviet Union during 1944. Some shared assumptions about the motivations of Soviet policy existed, but British and American policy-makers not only formulated different approaches, they consistently viewed their own to be more successful than those of their ally. There was an opportunity to co-ordinate polices during American Under-Secretary of State Edward Stettinius's mission to London in April 1944 but the fact that the issue was barely discussed is symptomatic of the situation. The British Foreign Office gained the backing of Winston Churchill in an attempt to forge ahead with pragmatic arrangements with the Russians. A satisfaction with their own efforts on both sides meant that the British and American bureaucracies made no serious and sustained attempt to co-ordinate their policies towards the Soviet Union through 1944, in contrast to the closeness of co-operation in other areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The British Government never recognized the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States in June 1940, but almost did so early in 1942 and was ready to do so again in 1944, when it took at face value Stalin's revision of the Soviet constitution. The result was ‘trouble’ from the Baltic ambassadors in London, particularly the Latvian ambassador. The British Government changed its stance in autumn 1945 when the revisions to the Soviet constitution proved to be sham. Thereafter British policy amounted to procrastination, as the developing Cold War prevented a final post-war settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The publication of a documentary collection on British policy towards the Nordic countries from 1944 to 1951 is a good occasion to ponder how and to what extent history is, or can be, rewritten on the basis of new documentary evidence, and in what directions the historiography of the early Cold War seems to be heading at present. To illustrate these issues, some key aspects of British policy towards Finland are addressed, in particular those connected with the distinct change of attitude from 1944, when Finland was self-evidently left in the Soviet sphere of influence, to the late 1940s, when the British gradually saw the chance and the utility of countering Soviet efforts in Finland. Repetition of every familiar issue along the well-trodden path of scholarship on the late 1940s is not deemed necessary here. Particular attention is paid to the need for multi-archival research. The necessity and the utility of well-informed multi-archival commentary on even the best single-archive documentary examination is demonstrated, and the consequences for future research discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documents published in the latest volume of the series Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO) reveal interesting shifts in British views on Finland's odds of survival in the changing post-war geopolitical situation. In 1944–1945, the British government put the maintenance of the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union first and identified its interests in Finland, considered to lie in the Soviet security sphere, very narrowly. However, after this initial period of marked pessimism over Finland's fate, the Foreign Office identified factors and trends which indicated that the Finns could carve a distinct position for themselves in the no-man's land between the emerging Cold War blocs. By 1948, careful, yet guarded, optimism of Finland as a Nordic country capable of retaining its sovereignty and Western connections superseded an earlier view of Finland as an East European country, bound to fall under complete Soviet domination sooner or later. As Finland's position improved, so Britain's interests gradually widened. Were Finland now to fall under Soviet domination, the United Kingdom and the West had more to lose. In the absence of means to match Soviet influence in Finnish foreign policy and domestic affairs, British policy was defined in terms of applying ‘soft power’ to preserve Western interests: cultural and economic relations, propaganda and information campaigns, and the cultivation of personal contacts with leading Finns. Subsequently, pessimism and optimism oscillated in British analyses of the situation in Finland and assessments of how well this soft power worked, or what means of influence were available. At the same time, a determined effort was made to contain the expansion of Soviet influence in Northern Europe to Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article begins with an outline of how the Norwegian government in exile perceived its position towards its great power allies in the final year of the war: a feeling of uncertainty if not outright abandonment, as Britain and the United States failed to understand or share Norwegian concerns at being left alone to face a possible Soviet ‘liberation’ of northern Norway. After the end of the war Norway's interim solution to its security dilemma was to put its trust in the United Nations while seeking to develop practical military cooperation with the United Kingdom. Seeking to avoid provoking the Soviet Union, Norway tried to stall Molotov's claims for shared sovereignty over Svalbard before finally rejecting the proposals in February 1947. That combination of formal non-alignment and informal ties with the United Kingdom broke down under the pressure of events beginning with the coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948. Initial moves to seek reassurance of Western support, in parallel with ultimately unsuccessful attempts to construct a Swedish-inspired Nordic defence alliance, ended with Norway joining the Atlantic Pact in April 1949. The documentary evidence now at hand, in the volume just published, suggests that it took quite some time before the British government came to understand and share Norway's concerns. Initially swayed by the self-fulfilling prophecy of a Norwegian return to isolationism and pacifism, a realization of Norway's determination to stand and be counted against the Soviet challenge only gradually began to emerge through 1947. Yet Britain's own inability to offer substantial security assistance to the Scandinavian region meant that any reassurance of Western support had to await a political commitment from the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses joint British and Russian operations in Iran during World War II. It examines Iran's 1939 declaration of neutrality and explores competition for influence in Iran between Germany, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. The author offers thoughts on the reasons behind Iran's lack of a successful resistance to the Soviet-British operations. The actions of British leader Winston Churchill, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and Iranian leader Mohammad Reza Pahlavi are also considered.

Between 1974 and 1979 the British Labour Government, led first by Harold Wilson and then by James Callaghan, developed a programme of improvements to the British Polaris Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) system initiated during Wilson's first government between 1964 and 1970. This Polaris improvement programme was known from 1974 onwards as Chevaline. Chevaline offered Britain an indigenous solution to meet the 'Moscow Criterion' - the requirement that British strategic missiles had to be capable of penetrating Moscow's 'Galosh' Anti-Ballistic missile defence system (ABM) even in the absence of US support. This came during a time of economic austerity in a changing strategic environment which led Labour to explore nuclear cooperation with the French. It also led to calls from within the party to renounce nuclear weapons through unilateral disarmament. This article will shed fresh light on the bitter internal debates that ensued and how a select band of senior ministers responded to this dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the attitude of the Chiefs of Staff committee towards the Russo-Finnish war of November 1939 to March 1940, and the effect that their attitude had on British strategy towards Scandinavia and the USSR during the early months of the Second World War. It argues that the Chiefs and the War Cabinet were in agreement until December 1939, after which their opinions diverged and the Chief's advice to the government became more erratic and reckless. It concludes that the Chiefs failed in their primary duty to provide clear advice to the War Cabinet and that British policy in Scandinavia could have led to disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about the Soviet Union and Great Britain's policy towards the Kurds during the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran. According to the article, the British and the Soviet forces needs to deal with several key factors in Iranian politics during their occupation and the Kurds in Iran were a powerful factor not to ignore with. When Germany became a threat to the British in the Persian gulf, the British upheld their relations with the Kurdish tribes but were cautious from making direct support to the Kurds as such act might be taken by the Kurds in Turkey as a sign of encouragement.