Suchergebnisse

Alors qu'une grande partie du nord de l'Arménie était détruite en décembre 1988 par un puissant tremblement de terre, le contentieux entre l'Arménie et l'Azerbaïdjan s'envenimait dans le sillage du pogrom de Soumgaït de février 1988. À partir de l'analyse d'un conflit d'indemnisation, l'article montre comment les autorités du district de Spitak ont manipulé le programme de reconstruction pour empêcher les sinistrés azéris de revenir dans leur village. Le gouvernement soviétique s'est montré incapable de rétablir la justice et la pluralité ethnique, précipitant son discrédit au Caucase. Classiquement, la catastrophe accentue la vulnérabilité sociale des groupes minoritaires. À Spitak, l'« économie de la catastrophe » a permis en outre aux dirigeants locaux de faire aboutir leur projet ethno-politique en opposition à la doctrine officielle.

This articles examines what happened with the penitentiary system built under Stalin and known by the name Gulag after the death of Stalin in 1953. It concludes that the Gulag of the Thaw was a hybrid construct. The inertia of the Stalinist model was so strong that giant camps (even if renamed colonies) in remote regions remained an important part of the system, at least until 1964. Notwithstanding official insistence on prisoner reform and regionalized colonies, the penal institutions remained profit oriented, even those that had set up their own work facilities for re-education. Convict labour remained the only way to finance the penal system. Moreover, the economic and political leadership was reluctant to abandon the mobilization capacities of the camp forced-labour system. The camp paradigm was still haunting the detention system.

Under Gorbachev, the Soviet government proved unable to face the dismantling tendencies that led ultimately to the collapse of the Soviet Union as a political regime and a territorial state—the awakening of nationalism, the loss of state legitimacy, ecological disaster, and financial crisis, to name only a few. This article reveals that the Soviet government was acutely aware of these growing risks and of the need to address them in a new way. It analyzes how emergency management developed in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s and draws attention to the activity of the State Commission for Emergency Situations (GKChS), a little-known, but influential governmental agency created in July 1989 to respond to the disasters plaguing the country, be they industrial, natural, ecological, or social.