Suchergebnisse

This article focuses on book works by Latvian artists during the late-Soviet period, and also offers an initial discussion of the peculiarities of the Soviet publishing environment, as it existed shortly before the USSR's annexation of Latvia at the end of World War II, and the roughly concurrent publication experiences of progressive artists in inter-bellum Latvia, the so-called First Republic. During its heyday in the 1960s and 70s the artist's book was hailed by many practitioners in the West as the superlative democratic art form, due to the hypothetical possibility of the widespread ownership of the art object. An examination of how artist-authored books developed amid Latvian society's repeated, abrupt transitions between democracy and totalitarianism during the past century may further illuminate this concept of a democratic art medium.

What is the role of surveillance in modern states and how does it affect stability and security? Policymakers generally believe that increased security through heightened surveillance will increase stability because the more the state is able to see and know about its citizens and adversaries, the better it will be able to prevent challenges to authority. However, in the case of East Germany, Romania, and the Soviet Union, increased surveillance was seemingly unable to forestall regime collapse. In particular, in the Soviet Union and Romania, the problem of preference falsification led to the citizens hiding their true feelings from the regime and state collapse. In the case of East Germany, the extensive surveillance capabilities of the Stasi gave the regime a false sense of security that led to uprising and failure. Because of these three cases of collapse despite extensive security, two questions are raised: first, did these regimes fall because of dilemma of surveillance or were there other reasons that hastened their demise? And second, does knowing more really increase state stability?