Suchergebnisse

Summary

NEXT TO THE PARTY ELITE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY, THERE ARE SEVERAL POLICY ELITES IN THE USSR. THEY CONSIST OF OFFICIALS IN EVERY FIELD OF POLICY & HAVE THEIR BASIS OF POWER IN THE RESOURCES THAT ARE ALLOCATED IN THE GOVERNMENT BUDGET. MOST RESOURCES FLOW TO THE ECONOMY, THE SCIENTIFIC & CULTURAL SECTOR, THE MILITARY, & THE ADMINISTRATIVE APPARATUS. ELITES IN THESE SECTORS CAN BE MOST INFLUENTIAL IN THE POLICY-MAKING PROCESS. THE PARTY ELITE MAKES ALL LONG-TERM POLICY DECISIONS, IT CAN REGULATE THE RECRUITMENT OF NEW MEMBERS INTO THESE POLICY ELITES & IT CAN CALL THE ELITES TO ACCOUNT BY PERMITTING PUBLIC DISCUSSION OF POLICY DECISIONS. POLICY ELITES HAVE MORE INFLUENCE IN POLICY-MAKING WHEN THEY HAVE MORE REPRESENTATIVES IN THE POLITBURO & THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. THEIR REPRESENTATION HAS GROWN SINCE 1953--IRREGULARLY--BUT THE PARTY ELITE STILL HAS THE MAJORITY IN THESE PARTY ORGANS. POLICY ELITES HAVE INFLUENCE AS THERE IS A CONSTANT FLOW OF THEIR MEMBERS INTO THE PARTY ELITE. THIS MAKES THE PARTY ELITE LESS COHERENT & CAUSES MORE INTERNAL DISPUTES. YET THE POLICY ELITES ARE NOT CONTENT WITH POSSIBILITIES TO INFLUENCE POLICY MAKING; THEY ARE IN OPPOSITION TO THE PARTY ELITE THAT DOES NOT WANT TO GIVE THEM MORE INFLUENCE, ESPECIALLY IN LONG-TERM POLICY DECISIONS. HA.

Typical of current work in contemporary Soviet political theory is the work of V. N. Danilenko, a specialist in French political theory which appeared in Sovjetskoje Gosoedarstvo i Pravo (1976, Apr). Danilenko analyzes some French political theorists. The needs of ideological struggle require attention to new development in bourgeois ideology. The crisis of world capitalism as well as the emergence of formerly colonial nations has created a need for a renovation of political theories. Today's interest in the typology of political systems is typical of that renovation effort. The French theorists are criticized for assuming the independence of the political & economic structures & for not recognizing the role of ideologies as well as of social & geographic factors. They absolutize political systems & study them abstractly. By contrast, Marxist-Leninist political science asserts that a political system is an expression of the relations between classes & of the means by which the dictatorship of the ruling class is enforced. Therefore, the important criteria in the classification of bourgeois systems are: the rights & liberties of the Wc, how the Wc is represented in the parliamentary institution, what share the Wc has in state power & to what extent the state is forced to respond to PO & use democratic means of government. The Soviet juridical literature is criticized for not recognizing the full diversity of bourgeois systems. However, Marxism-Leninism brings to light what all these systems have in common: they are dictatorships of the bourgeoisie. A. Orianne.

The political map of Europe was transformed by the collapse of the Soviet Union & the reunification of Germany, ending four decades of stability & leading to new political configurations: the emergence of the independent Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania -- with regional links not only to neighboring Russia but to Western Europe as well. The recent political history of the Baltic states is summarized, from their interwar independence to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact & their renewed independence in the early 1990s. Also discussed are postindependence demographic & social problems & prospects in the Baltics: the presence of large Russian minorities, language tests for citizenship, & the states' aspirations for European Union membership. The European Union has tried to serve as go-between for the region, & there are especially close & positive ties between the Baltic states & the Nordic countries. A. Siegel

Modalities of censorship, disciplining practices and film. A comparative analysis of the historical reception of Sergei Eistenstein's battleship potemkin (1925) in Belgium and the Netherlands This article deals with the historical reception and censorship of one of the most controversial movies in film history, Sergei M. Eisenstein's Soviet-Russian propaganda film battleship potemkin (1925). After a short overview of its turbulent censorship in major Western European countries, the manuscript compares the Belgian and the Dutch cases. This comparative approach is useful in order to understand the differential effectiveness of the various forces trying to discipline the movie – from local municipalities to political parties, pressure groups and the industry itself. Besides the observation that the Dutch and Belgian cases strongly differ, also from those in countries with an obligatory national censorship system, the article demonstrates how the potemkin event became a site of struggle, the target of intense ideological pressures, debate and different types – modalities – of 'censorship'.

'Will the Netherlands be defended?' The debate about NATO's main lines of defence at the beginning of the 1950sAt the beginning of the 1950s, the Netherlands would not have been able to defend itself in the event of a Soviet attack. Despite the fact that NATO, under the leadership of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Eisenhower, and later General Ridgway, was in the process of rapidly building up its defences, it was still incapable of conducting a forward defence. The pivotal political and military issue in the short term centred on one question: Which areas in Western Europe could and should be kept and which not? Answers to this question exposed conflicting national interests and points of view, particularly those of the Dutch and the French. As it was taking a considerably long time to build up the Netherlands' defences, the Dutch government had very few trump cards to add weight to its demands. Indeed, in the summer of 1952, when Parliament asked to be given a precise account of how the Dutch defences were progressing, the government was practically boxed into a corner.